Guild Wars 2

I use a power/DS/Spectral build in PvP and love it. In PvE I’m having a harder time deciding on a build. Right now I’m just running dungeons and doing dailies and maybe a bit of WvW. Eventually I’ll run some fractals too but right now I’m just farming for dungeon gear.

Anyway, I don’t really want to run a full condition build in part b/c it’s just not my style and I like to do decent direct damage. I’ve been trying to find a good hybrid build, but most of the ones I see involve scepter to cover the conditions half of a hybrid. Scepter is just not my thing as it feels like I’m hitting them with a wet noodle. I pretty much never leave home without staff because of the AOE and tons of utility and for doing damage I like to run with dagger mainhand. With this in mind I’ve come up with this build to start:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAoYWjMap7VambMcKCpCPDqw7jUcMjR9ocrDdA;T8AA1yqEOJpSVlyJqcMBJCyqjLHpOLPGEMzA

It’s probably not optimal so I’d love advice on it. I know this doesn’t offer a lot to a dungeon party, but I don’t want to go full support b/c I’d like to be able to hold my own in WvW. My thinking with going 30 into Soul Reaping is that the crit damage from traits scales really well. I feel like crit damage is the stat that is most easily boosted by traits and the 30% I get allows me to worry less about finding gear with crit damage and I can focus on more survivability, condition dmg, etc. The other reason I put 30 into Soul Reaping (aside from the survivability DS offers) is the CD reduction that lets me flash in and out of DS often for things like fury.

My thinking with this build is that with enough crit chance I should be able to apply a decent amount of bleeds (barbed precision, mark of blood, BiP, Enfeebling blood) but still be doing plenty of direct damage. So it’s not really intended to be a full 50/50 hybrid build, but rather more of a 70/30 power/conditions build with the bleeds and other conditions supplementing my direct damage. I would gear for extra toughness/vit since I’ll be in melee range a lot with daggers, but the blinds and weakness I get from dagger offhand and combos should help mitigate damage as well.

Lastly if I’m doing both direct and condition damage, the might from BiP will boost both so I’d like to keep that might up as much as possible. I’m traited to reduce the BiP cooldown and then with runes I was gonna go for an extra 60% might duration. Without any extra boon duration from traits this gives me an 80% uptime on the 10 stacks of might from BiP, not to mention any other might I get from DS or allies.

For utilities I see BiP and Well of Suffering as essential, but the last utility skill I swap out situationally. I have poison cloud there right now b/c I have the cooldown traited but i could take another well or spectral walk or whatever.

If I was to stick with the 30 in SR and 20 in curses then I have 20 left over and I’m not totally set on where to put them. I have 10 in spite and 10 in death right now, but I could also see going 20 into blood for siphoning, 20 into death for more might duration, or 20 into spite for more condition duration.

It’s also possible that this build is just trying to do too much and I should move some other traits around to try and go for more bleed duration or well support or something. It’s possible that the idea of doing a hybrid without scepter is just flawed to begin with, but like I said before I’m focusing more on direct damage with supplemental condition damage so I feel like scepter is conditions overkill in this context. Lemme know what you think!

No thoughts advice from anyone?

I can’t access the build link here at work, but I think your build sounds pretty solid. You’ve put a lot of thought into it so you should have good results.

I’ve found that the Axe Training trait (if your other weapon set is Axe mainhand, that is) is a godsend for hybrid builds. It is a great buff to your direct damage and the extra condition duration from the spite line helps your conditions too. You also get Spiteful Marks in that line! You should do some tests between that and your current build to see which one does more damage. Off the top of my head I’m not sure whether the constant fury and extra crit damage would outpace 20% bonus damage and reduced cooldown.

I run what I consider a hybrid build without using a scepter. The key is that I mainly run dungeons or WvW and I count on my allies to bring the conditions…I just spread them. Well, I do have the conditions from my staff, from BiP and Epidemic, from my focus, and from whatever I transfer with staff 4, and finally from Corrupt Boon (I love fighting overconfident guardians!)…but I just count on someone else to provide the large stack of bleeds (or confusion) that I then spread with Epidemic. I find it to be quite effective, so much so that I’m now torn between trying the high-retaliation uptime axe build I’ve been sitting on for a few months (I was waiting for axe buffs) and keeping the build I’m using now.

lettucemode.3789:

I can’t access the build link here at work, but I think your build sounds pretty solid. You’ve put a lot of thought into it so you should have good results.

I’ve found that the Axe Training trait (if your other weapon set is Axe mainhand, that is) is a godsend for hybrid builds. It is a great buff to your direct damage and the extra condition duration from the spite line helps your conditions too. You also get Spiteful Marks in that line! You should do some tests between that and your current build to see which one does more damage. Off the top of my head I’m not sure whether the constant fury and extra crit damage would outpace 20% bonus damage and reduced cooldown.

I’m using double daggers and staff, so no axe for me. Thanks for the advice though.

I’m still not fully geared yet, but I’ve added sigils of earth and geomancy to my gear to give me even more bleeds. I’ve gotten as many as 17 bleeds on a single target (this is with no help and no scepter!) but the full stack doesn’t last that long. On average I can keep 6-9 stacks of bleed active while beating on mobs with dagger. Fortunately, as I’ve said, the bleeds are just there to supplement my direct damage so I’m feeling pretty good about this build right now. Currently with the 10 stacks of might from BiP my condition damage goes up to 800+. I don’t think I need more than that so I’m going to be focusing on power/precision the rest of the way.