SB WvW, Condi Vs Power
Arrg this is a hard one for me right now, I’m mostly power, toughness, healing and with food I can sit at around 1800 toughness with over 1000 healing and still get close to 2000 power but I’d been considering if I’d be better off with condition damage over power, given my build gives me 300 condition damage anyway, but I feel that to get the most from conditions I’d have to drop my utilities and take at least two traps and I do agree with what you said about traps but I’m just not sure I want to lose my utilities.
Just not sure if I’d be better with my close to 2000 power or with around 1000 power and over 1000 condition damage. Trying to decided if I HAVE to take traps if I go condition damage or if I could stick with just my bow and sword conditions in my current BM hybrid build and wear them down as I’m very tanky (or even use traps but don’t take the improved traps and stay tanky).
It also looks like critting is more important that just power.
Great thread!
The bravest animal in the land is Captain Beaky and his band.
(edited by capuchinseven.8395)
Seem we do have a tipping point crit wise between condition and power and I think it can be reached in WvW but not in sPvP. As for Traps Sol plays them in a Power/Precision build while I have seen others play condition build without any Traps!
I don’t really know how to move forward with this as what we ‘think’ it should look like turns out to be a sandbox and players like Sol and others have thought outside of that sandbox -example being Traps in a Power/Precision build.
Last night I tried a condition build instead of power, keeping a typical BM bunker like build (nothing in skirmishing for traps, but keeping myself tanked up and well healed) and then instead of running Cleric gear which I’d normally run in sPVP I ran Shaman, so condition/toughness/healing (can’t remember the order of the stats for Shaman).
I swapped out my defence runes and slotted some condition duration and did the same with my weapons.
It was very powerful next to a purely power based defence build even without the trap traits, the only down side was a lack of stun/immobilise breaks which I’m used to running. Once you managed to get the bleeds and poison running and then get them onto the traps the damage would just fly as your BM pet rips into them (a thief managed to bring down my pet fast last night and instead of swapping it out like I normally would before it died I let it die and carried on without a pet for the fight and he still went down pretty hard, the damage was just flying off him, even when it was cleared I’d just put it back on him again).
The damage was very high and survivability other than the lack of utility was still very very good with high toughness, healing and regen.
This is just one night though and not the first time I’ve tried with traps outside of the normal skirmish build (I’ve tried them as a power build as well but I preferred the utility) I spent some gold on some new apothecary exotic items with real life money as well so I’m going to give the same build a try in WvW because it did work really well for me.
I think it’s because when you go with power (even up close to 2000), without the precision you’re just not getting as much out of it as you can, but when I build up my precision my survivability suffers drastically. With condition damage and traps I can keep my damage up and not lose any survivability other than utility, although conditions can be cleared of course so they come with their own issues. It does mean though that in a BM build you’re not as dependant on your pet for damage and overall right now I prefer it.
The bravest animal in the land is Captain Beaky and his band.
After thoroughly testing cleric’s gear on my ranger I gotta say it just doesnt work. At least not without double ravens. Cleric double raven bm tank works in spvp because you still have 13k burst.
Sb builds come down to high precision skirmish build and bm bunker condition build which I use. Axe/torch/sb, birds, apoth gear, LR and entangle on lower cd has a huge tank, plenty of condi dps and utility. U can shift from long to short range.
Cleric usually goes along with full evasion vigor tanking which means gs/sword/dagger which means melee which means ure dead in wvw. The only prob is not enough burst damage unless u sport double ravens.
Power sb stopped being effective after the qz nerf.
(edited by nerva.7940)
Yeah I agree, Cleric in WvW doesn’t cut it, at least that’s my personal view. High power just doesn’t work without a decent chance to crit as well. Conditions come with restrictions and problems of course but at least you don’t have to lose survivability when you stack conditions.
Something else that some others miss is condition duration as well, I personally find once you hit around 1000ish condition damage that using + condition duration food, sigils and runes is much more effective than adding on more and more condition damage.
The bravest animal in the land is Captain Beaky and his band.
I’ve been wondering about this myself. I chose to go toughness/condition/healing/power rather than toughness/power/healing/condition , but I do wonder if there is a way to better balance to have more power while keeping condition damage up without mitigating much of the toughness out. When I use the short bow I can see the conditions flying up and down doing decent damage, but for those times when raw damage from power is more welcomed, I find my overall damage output to be lacking. Although my pet does most of my damage, when it is down and I can’t get another pet up, those few short seconds make me wish I had more power. Suggestions welcome!
Mon Fils — Favorable Winds [Wind] — Blackgate
Ranger’s guide to PvP/WvW: http://tinyurl.com/oht3e9z
Ranger’s guide to PvP/WvW: http://tinyurl.com/oht3e9z
As I said, sb works only with high crit, or high condi dmg
Power all the way.
Even with 0 condi damage bleeds have a nice base damage.
DPS lost for not having any power is a lot more dramatic. Especially against high toughness enemies.
DPS lost for not having any power is a lot more dramatic. Especially against high toughness enemies.
Conditions ignore armour which is the stat increased by toughness.
The bravest animal in the land is Captain Beaky and his band.