Guild Wars 2

Condition Build

This build focuses on putting conditions (bleed,poison,blind,weakness,cripple) on your foe.

Attack 1 (blood/rending/putrid curse). this applies 2 x stacks of bleed and 1 stack of poison.
Attack 2 (grasping dead). this applies 1 stack of bleed and 1 stack of cripple allowing you to both keep your distance and add another bleed.

These 2 attacks leave your opponent slowed and suffering from some conditions
When they get close to you simply blind them with Attack 4 (deathly swarm) this is 6sec condition with an 18 sec CD, continue your onslaught with Attack 5 (enfeebling blood) to reduce their damage and another stack of bleed. at this point in the fight you should have ~4 stacks of bleed on your target and they would have suffered from a poison and you would/should be at distance. at this point you should use Attack 3 (feast of corruption to give you some LF)

This is a very basic breakdown of the initiator to a fight, if everything goes according to plan. I’m not going to instruct you on how to continue the fight as this is situational. but what I am trying to demonstrate is a very basic method for applying conditions for a condition build, while at the same time keeping yourself out of harms way.

Traits:

I will only explain my Major trait choices as these are what I aim for.

• I have chosen Spiteful Spirit (10 points in Spite) as retaliation while entering DS is very good for mitigating as much damage against your opponent. please note we are not going a power build so any further in spite is wasted trait points.
• I have chosen Weakening Shroud (10 points in Curses) enfeebling blood is amazing, it applies 2x stacks of bleed and 1x stack of weakness
• I have chosen Banshee’s Wail (20 points in Curses) the reason for this is we will be using the Wail of Doom to daze our opponents and Locust Swarm to get to a safe distance, these are needed for survivability, the more frequent we can use them, the more we will survive to output damage from a distance.
• I have chosen Spectral Attunement (30 points in Curses) this was chosen as I have Spectral Armor and the fact there was no other traits that I would benefit from. Essentially this was needed for my maximum amount of condition damage from Curses Traits.
• Close to Death was simply to output more damage when our opponent is below 50% health
• Vampiric Precision was chosen to heal me as I crit
• Vital Persistence was chosen to keep me in DS form for as long as possible

All this can be seen from my link, the idea of this build is to output as much Condition damage while still being hard to kill. (if you are dead, you output little to no damage)

A good combo is Blood is Power then Plague Signet on your opponent – this does good damage provided they don’t wipe the effect.

Abilities to help me survive in this build are as follows:

Scepter: Grasping Dead (Cripple 5s)
Scepter: Feast of Corruption (Possibly the best and most overlooked attack that is never used correctly, the more conditions you have on a foe when you use this, buffs your LF) with LF you can enter DS = survive
Dagger: Deathly Swarm (Blind 6s)

Axe: Unholy Feast (Retaliation 3s)
Warhorn: Wail of Doom (Daze 2s)
Warhorn: Locust Swarm (Cripple 1s while Swiftness 10s)

And for my skills:

Consume Conditions (…)
Plague Signet (transfer my conditions to a foe)
Spectral Armor (Protection 6s) and (gain LF when taking damage)

Dont forget DS – if we can keep this building up all the time, we take no damage, we only take the damage that we build into DS. please note this is not a MM/DS build for pure tank/survive, it is a condition damage build with survivability.

To answer everyone’s thoughts on why I didn’t choose a staff.

1. AoE is difficult to use in PvP (lets be honest, you can do a lot of damage to many enemy IF they are in your AoE and very little damage 1v1)
2. you can stack bleed every (6sec) with Mark of Blood provided they actually walk over your mark
3. Chillblains is great, I love it, but it is a (20sec) CD – no traits
4. Reaper’s Mark is Fantastic, I love it, but it is a (40sec) CD – no traits
5. Scepter/Dagger combo gives a more reliable condition stacking (hence this build) and allows for better survive (Grasping Dead 10sec CD, Deathly Swarm 18sec CD, Enfeebling Blood 25sec CD) – no traits

Power Build

This build focuses on raw damage, while retaining survivability.

Let me start by explaining the weapons. I have chosen staff as my main weapon to place marks all over the ground (at time of writing this, I have decided Spectral Grasp is better than Signet of Spite) I’ll explain shortly.

Stage 1, place marks on ground
Stage 2, switch to Axe/Focus for burst

To explain this build I will now explain my traits and how they are used

Traits:
Spiteful Spirit: retaliation for 3sec when in DS
Spiteful Marks: 10% more damage from marks
Greater Marks: marks are larger and unblockable
Close to Death: 10% more damage if foe is below 50% health
Staff Master: 20% faster skill recharge
Fear of Death: Fear on Downed
Master of Terror: Fear lasts 50% longer

Ok…

by now you have scenarios building in your head, yes this is bursty damage with very good CC and CD reduction.

The Ideas with this build is to place all marks/wells on top of each other and then cast spectral grasp on someone to pull them on top of all your damage. from here you want to CC them as much as possible so they take maximum damage, you can do unholy feast (axe) to slow them down or spinal shivers (focus), or you can pop into DS for retaliation (after the fear effect has ended) – keep thinking outside the box as you might come up with a very good CC ideas.

after they have taken all the damage from marks/wells, and you have used your axe damage abilities, switch back to staff for more marks or LICH to finish them off.

I don’t feel the need to explain this build further as it’s not designed for high survive, however the sigils on the weapons I have chosen give a little life steal back. I have taken Master of Terror as you will most likely get downed a lot and this will work well with Fear of Death.

I will post a PvP video shortly, keep an eye out

MM Build

yet to be explained

Youtube Montage: Condition Build
####! GW2 PvP Montage #1