Guild Wars 2

I’m playing a hybrid build, trying to keep both power and condition high. This is working great on world map leveling, and fills pretty well my playstyle.

When attacking single target strong mobs (veterans/champions) I usually unload all my corruptions and also my Scepter/Dagger skills, than change to a power weapon. I’m still undecided on Axe vs Dagger, trying to figure out which one works better for me (I know I’ll eventually have to choose between strong melee or weak ranged).

My only problem is the decision between Life Blast vs Axe/Dagger. In other words, how long worth staying in shroud casting Life Blast instead of leaving shroud to swing Axe/Dagger?

This is important to me because it’ll dictate if I should invest on Soul Reaping or Spite as my second trait line (Curses was the first one).

Taking a look at the wiki, Life Blast deals only 345 damage which seems pretty bad for a 1.4 sec casting skill. Is the wiki really correct? At this point, staying on Dagger 1 (or even Axe 2+1+1..) seems simply better than camping shroud for Life Blast.

So guys, how Life Blast actually compares to Axe/Dagger in dps? Ultimately, my question is: Worth investing on Soul Reaping to improve Life Blast to cover my power needs, or can Axe/Dagger cover that (thus allowing me to focus more on Spite instead)?

Swinging with a dagger mh will give you higher damage than camping Lifeblast.

I don’t know that there’s much which is overly challenging while leveling. So you could really go with either playstyle and the matching traitline until you reach your third. : D

In terms of raw damage output before vulnerability/might, traited axe and lifeblast quite close, however it is possible to load a significant amount of extra might and vulnerability application onto death shroud, and when you do so it pulls ahead significantly.

Looking at current five player content, if your group is not stacking might and vulnerability effectively you will do more damage with a traited shroud build. If the group is already taking care of might and vulnerability application then staying in dagger/x/x is the optimal choice, only flickering into death shroud briefly to proc some traits. If you know that your going to have to range a boss then traiting to buff death shroud is going to be a better choice most of the time because of lower team boon output, but it is not a common situation.

In terms of build, you almost always want spite, the extra might application combined with close to death is a larger damage boost then is obtainable in any other tree.

So Life Blast in used mainly in long fights to stack might/vulnerability? This way Spite seems the way to go for both axe and shroud..

But considering I’m using a condition heavy build with corruptions, should dhuumfire + piercing from Soul Reaping line allow Life Blast to surpass Axe/Dagger dps? Or even dhuumfire is not that great comparing to, say, just dagger auto?