Guild Wars 2

I’ve had conflicting reports on whats the preferred condi class for raids. war condi or engi condi?

Depends on which boss you are talking about. You can’t really go wrong with either.
But I’d say it looks like this:

VG – Engie
Gor – Warr – hands down
Seb – both

They are both good. For all three, the Warrior will have better dps. But Engineer have better CC and Healing/Blast which bring quality of life and more security while doing the circle at VG. He also bring slick shoes for Gorseval, which is very powerful and can be more efficient than the warrior to take care of the spectral darkness. For Sabetha in paricular, engineer don’t seem to have a particular advantage over a Warrior.

In the end, they are both pretty good. There is also the Condi Necro and Condi Elementalist which are both pretty good too, but a bit under engie and warrior. The advantage of Condi Necro is epidemic, which is very good at Gorseval, especially when you have more than 1 condi in your team.

Engineer is better against VG because it has lots of cc and seeker control and can attack from extremely long range.

Warrior does insane dps against gorseval and is better in general, though it is worth noting that most groups will always bring one engineer against gorseval to break his bar with slick shoes.

Against sabetha the engineer utilities are unimportant, and warrior is better simply by having more damage.

In the end both are very good; however nothing is beating warrior in terms of condi dps, especially against an immobile target.

VG Engineer
Gor Burn Warrior
Sabetha Necro

Besides engi, war, and necro, do groups take venomshare thieves or condi rangers?

Ribeye.1360:

Besides engi, war, and necro, do groups take venomshare thieves or condi rangers?

Basically never

Venomshare Thieves, I can’t see why. It will just drop your dps, while not bringing much to the team.

Condi Ranger on the other end can be a decent choice. Not great, but decent. We used it during our early raid when we weren’t sure if two condi engineer were enough for VG (turn out they are more than enough). That said, I doudt that you will find a place in pug with such a build. In a guild group ya, for VG you can probably find a place, but most likely even a guild group will ask you to find another character for Gorseval.

It is possible to kill Gorseval with a ranger, but until your group is experienced at this boss, you will likely kill him at the extreme limit, so every advantage count at that point. It’s pretty much the same for Condi Guardian.

Condition Thief is actually surprisingly good. It can easily reach condition Engineer level DPS, benefits from Alacrity a lot (venoms are a pure DPS gain whenever cast), spends 80% of its time evading, and can single-handedly deal 75% damage to VG’s breakbar allowing you to keep other classes like Herald in their primary DPS sets. It’s no condition Warrior, that’s for sure, but having one in the raid group is actually really nice.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Condition Thief is actually surprisingly good. It can easily reach condition Engineer level DPS, benefits from Alacrity a lot (venoms are a pure DPS gain whenever cast), spends 80% of its time evading, and can single-handedly deal 75% damage to VG’s breakbar allowing you to keep other classes like Herald in their primary DPS sets. It’s no condition Warrior, that’s for sure, but having one in the raid group is actually really nice.

Ok I have BIG BIG BIG doubt about that tbh. I just can’t see how. The only venom that give condition dps give torment and poison, not that impressive tbh. Yes the thief have access to a good amount of bleed, but I don’t I just can’t see a thief reach the level of a ranger or guardian let alone a condi engineer.

Do you have videos or at least a build to present?

Video
Build

The most important thing to remember is the +33% damage to poison trait, which makes poison application incredibly strong for the Thief. Otherwise check it out! I promise it’s really good!

Ok here my approch. I looked at your video during the Red Guardian phase because that’s where you concentrate the most on dps. You never heal and dps as much as you can.

The fight start a 6:05 and finish at 5:36. It’s hard to seel with the low quality so feel free to tell me if I make a mistake. So the total fight last 41 seconds.

You did 1 Steal, but you could have done 2 so I’ll give you 2 steal. So here the list of attacks during that 41 seconds fight.

- 2 Steal, 2 Trap, 2 of each venom, 8 Lotus and 8 Dodge and 4 full auto-attack sequence. Again feel free to step in if I made a mistake. If anything I think that I gave you too much attacks, but it’s ok.

That give in total 294 hits (because several attack have 3 hits) so on average you should trigger Dagger training 98 times during that fight.

Total of 704 seconds of poison, 609 second of bleed and 146 second of Torment. In reality you have a lot of condition left on the bar when the guy is dead so not all those condition are actually part of your dps, some are wasted. But for simplicity stake let’s include all of that in your dps. Let’s not forget the 33% power to poison and a constant 10% to all condition damage because of your trait. Let’s also not forget the +5% condition damage from rune of Berserker because it doesn’t increase you condi dmg stat, but do increase your damage number. I’ll also take into account that the guardian move always so the torment do more damage. I also took into consideration +170 and +750 condi damage stats from banner and might.

That give us a total number of 195323 damage divided by 41 seconds for 4763 dps of condi. Tbh the swap sigil was useless there so you number could have been higher. But that’s pretty low don’t you think? I don’t really know what’s the engineer dps now, but from what I remember pre-hot it was around 21k with the perfect rotation. Now with viper but the nerf to food, it’s higher than that. But lets say that to be competitive it need to at least reach 18k dps like the Guardian can in theory. And let say that you could reach 5k condition damage with the right sigil. Do you think that your condi thief can do 13k of direct dps? And if he can, what does it say on condi thief if 75% of their damage come from direct damage?

I know that that kind of math can be wrong and feel free to tear that apart if you can. I would love to have 9 condi build that are around the 18-20k dps mark, one for each profession. But I doubt that it’s the case, at least for the thief it doesn’t seem so.

I didn’t do the math on direct damage, but it seem that a condi thief can do between 10 and 15k dps, which is very low for raid. It’s the same dps I have on my engineer when I tank in half rabid with no flamethrower or when I do the circle on my engineer at VG and can’t dps properly for 80% of the fight.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Video
Build

The most important thing to remember is the +33% damage to poison trait, which makes poison application incredibly strong for the Thief. Otherwise check it out! I promise it’s really good!

I made a spreadsheet specifically for maxing venomshare DPS, and it seems pretty solid. I even measured 15k DPS in a fractal recently with low might stacks, dire armor, and no sigil bonuses (didn’t swap for doom proc and had no corruption stacks).

Spreadsheet

Thaddeus.4891:

Ok here my approch. I looked at your video during the Red Guardian phase because that’s where you concentrate the most on dps. You never heal and dps as much as you can.

The fight start a 6:05 and finish at 5:36. It’s hard to seel with the low quality so feel free to tell me if I make a mistake. So the total fight last 41 seconds.

You did 1 Steal, but you could have done 2 so I’ll give you 2 steal. So here the list of attacks during that 41 seconds fight.

- 2 Steal, 2 Trap, 2 of each venom, 8 Lotus and 8 Dodge and 4 full auto-attack sequence. Again feel free to step in if I made a mistake. If anything I think that I gave you too much attacks, but it’s ok.

That give in total 294 hits (because several attack have 3 hits) so on average you should trigger Dagger training 98 times during that fight.

Total of 704 seconds of poison, 609 second of bleed and 146 second of Torment. In reality you have a lot of condition left on the bar when the guy is dead so not all those condition are actually part of your dps, some are wasted. But for simplicity stake let’s include all of that in your dps. Let’s not forget the 33% power to poison and a constant 10% to all condition damage because of your trait. Let’s also not forget the +5% condition damage from rune of Berserker because it doesn’t increase you condi dmg stat, but do increase your damage number. I’ll also take into account that the guardian move always so the torment do more damage. I also took into consideration +170 and +750 condi damage stats from banner and might.

That give us a total number of 195323 damage divided by 41 seconds for 4763 dps of condi. Tbh the swap sigil was useless there so you number could have been higher. But that’s pretty low don’t you think? I don’t really know what’s the engineer dps now, but from what I remember pre-hot it was around 21k with the perfect rotation. Now with viper but the nerf to food, it’s higher than that. But lets say that to be competitive it need to at least reach 18k dps like the Guardian can in theory. And let say that you could reach 5k condition damage with the right sigil. Do you think that your condi thief can do 13k of direct dps? And if he can, what does it say on condi thief if 75% of their damage come from direct damage?

I know that that kind of math can be wrong and feel free to tear that apart if you can. I would love to have 9 condi build that are around the 18-20k dps mark, one for each profession. But I doubt that it’s the case, at least for the thief it doesn’t seem so.

I didn’t do the math on direct damage, but it seem that a condi thief can do between 10 and 15k dps, which is very low for raid. It’s the same dps I have on my engineer when I tank in half rabid with no flamethrower or when I do the circle on my engineer at VG and can’t dps properly for 80% of the fight.

Huge problem. Red only has three people, so he loses 40% of his venom dps since he isn’t sharing with five. Also, I don’t know where you got your numbers, but I count closer to 1000 effective seconds of poison (4 per dagger training, 216 per spider, 40 per steal, 12 per auto chain, and 20 per trap), didn’t look at the others. Given that I can reach 15k DPS in highly suboptimal conditions, I’d say your math is off somewhere.

Wait a sec. Venomshare don’t help his dps. He give more dps to the other. I hope you don’t count the dps of other getting his venom as his dps right? Yes venom share boost the dps of other and that count, but not as his dps. So the dps of the thief is the same whatever he have zero or 4 people with him.

Ok I got 2 Steal x 2 Stack x 20seconds = 80 second of poison or ya 40 per steal.

I also got 40sec per trap, 2 trap equal 40 second.

We got the same for auto-attack with 1 stack of 12 poison per sequence. He use 4 chain so it’s 48second total

Finally, yes it’s 1 stack of 4 second for dagger training. He do 294 hits so 98 × 4second = 392 second total.

For the Spider Venom. It give 1 stack of poison, 12 second duration with each attack and you have 6 attacks so it’s 6 × 1 × 12sec = 72second per spider. Against, you can’t count the dps of other that you boost. When we talk about the dps of the PS warrior we do count the dps of the 4 other have because of might, banner and EA? No they are seperate. The dps of thief is one thing and the dps support the thief have is another thing. He does 2 Spider Venom so 72second x 2 = 144 seconds total.

80+40+144+48+392 = 704 seconds of poison over 41seconds.

I can include the dps of the venom on 4 other people than the thief if you want. And Instead of 4763 dps of condition, it’s 7307 dps of conditions. What’s the big deal? You would still need to do 10k of direct damage dps to reach the level of a Zerker Dragonhunter.

EDIT : If I change the exotic viper trinkets on the build Dusk presented to ascended sinister and a rabid ascended back item and changing the on swap sigil to a 10% condi duration sigil. That bring the dps including the Venomshare on 4 other people to 7957 dps.

Thaddeus.4891:

Wait a sec. Venomshare don’t help his dps. He give more dps to the other. I hope you don’t count the dps of other getting his venom as his dps right?

That’s the coolest part about VenomShare—It is your DPS because the game counts it as you applying the conditions from the venoms. So when an ally with a venom strikes the VG, it’s the Thief applying the condition, gaining the benefits from traits / condition duration, etc.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Thaddeus.4891:

Wait a sec. Venomshare don’t help his dps. He give more dps to the other. I hope you don’t count the dps of other getting his venom as his dps right?

That’s the coolest part about VenomShare—It is your DPS because the game counts it as you applying the conditions from the venoms. So when an ally with a venom strikes the VG, it’s the Thief applying the condition, gaining the benefits from traits / condition duration, etc.

Correct. And even if it counted as allied DPS and not yours it’s still damage the thief is adding to the group so I don’t see what difference it makes. In a five man sharing scenario, you can easily hit around 15k not including direct damage.

Edit: as for your warrior comparison, there’s a big difference. You dont count banners because you don’t know how it affects the DPS of others completely. With venoms it’s well defined. 30 stacks of poison with the thief’s condi damage and duration. I can give you the exact amount of damage every stack will do, and that damage is entirely because the thief used a skill and runs with certain stats, so it is counted as his DPS (ignoring the fact that the game actually does count it as the thief’s stacks).

Also, a chrono may have low DPS, but you want them because of the ~20% DPS boost they bring to everyone with alacrity. You can’t quantify with a DPS number, but you quantify it as a percent and count it as a benefit of chrono. So you can’t just ignore 80% of the venom effectiveness because other people are needed.

Thaddeus.4891:

Did you two guys just stopped at this sentence and didn’t continue to read? I talked about that more later and I still don’t see how you can do 15k dps without direct damage. If i include 4 other players getting the venom I reach near 8k, not 15k.

Look at the spreadsheet I linked. You are comparing optimal DPS of a condi engi or zerk DH vs some numbers you pulled from one video. I’ve hit 19k on a poison tic with no food or multiple other bonuses. I’ve seen pics of 30k poison tics from VS thieves.

Zodryn.4216:

Thaddeus.4891:

Did you two guys just stopped at this sentence and didn’t continue to read? I talked about that more later and I still don’t see how you can do 15k dps without direct damage. If i include 4 other players getting the venom I reach near 8k, not 15k.

Look at the spreadsheet I linked. You are comparing optimal DPS of a condi engi or zerk DH vs some numbers you pulled from one video. I’ve hit 19k on a poison tic with no food or multiple other bonuses. I’ve seen pics of 30k poison tics from VS thieves.

I removed my last post, because 1) I just realized that I completely forgot about vulnerability and 2) I saw a mistake in my formula.

I going through your spreadsheet right now. So far you used 35 instead of 30 for the might (it’s been a year since they changed that) and Sigil of Corruption on swap weapon isn’t usable in raid, but it’s not a mistake.

I’m starting to see the potentiel tbh. But I’ll work on that during the week end to affine the result, but so far condi thieves are more impressive that I originally tough. But I’ll shut up for now and do my homework for real.

Ooh thanks for pointing out the might issue. I’ll fix that. I’m working on a more detailed spreadsheet with more options, but feel free to copy that one and paste your stats into it and whatever mods you expect (like might stacks). It autoupdates most everything.

Zodryn, I noticed in you’re spreadsheet you’re using Brawler’s Tenacity coupled with Impairing Daggers. This also benefits the heal skill, which is nice, but I’m not sure if it’s higher DPS than using Needle Trap with Deadly Trapper or not. 3 stacks of poison is nice, it’s true, but Havoc Master giving 7% damage all of the time is pretty good considering the high Power stat.

In testing it’s hard for me to know which is better for that third utility, so if you could shed some light on why you picked ID that’d be great. With your build you’re low on bleed duration, so I’m not surprised it’s better for you… But I think with full viper’s you can get bleed duration up to 66% which makes Needle Trap pretty great.

This discussion highlights the dire need for real damage meters >.<.

PLS ANET WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT REAL NUMBERS.

Engineer is on the backburner right now, what people have figured out is that chilling the orbs is better control then knocking them back. Engineers have mortor attacks at range which dont’ do much dps compared to condi necro which does 100% of it’s dps at range.

Your prefered comp is 1 necro and the rest burnzerkers for all 3 bosses. Warriors and revs have plenty of knockbacks for seeker control, so you dont really need to kitten your party’s dps just for air blast.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Zodryn, I noticed in you’re spreadsheet you’re using Brawler’s Tenacity coupled with Impairing Daggers. This also benefits the heal skill, which is nice, but I’m not sure if it’s higher DPS than using Needle Trap with Deadly Trapper or not. 3 stacks of poison is nice, it’s true, but Havoc Master giving 7% damage all of the time is pretty good considering the high Power stat.

In testing it’s hard for me to know which is better for that third utility, so if you could shed some light on why you picked ID that’d be great. With your build you’re low on bleed duration, so I’m not surprised it’s better for you… But I think with full viper’s you can get bleed duration up to 66% which makes Needle Trap pretty great.

I tried various builds and so far I find full viper with sinister rings and earrings provides the best DPS (spreadsheet doesn’t reflect that build). You get around 67% bleed duration with that, but it’s still a toss up between needle trap and impairing daggers.

They have different uses. I will say ID actually does good direct damage while Needle doesn’t. I’ve swapped havoc master in, but I still like ID. If you have multiple targets, or you aren’t getting might from your party, trap is better. Single target with plentiful might I’d bet on ID.