Guild Wars 2

Hey everybody, I have enough gold for one set of exotic armor. I run a 0/0/30/20/20 D/D and SB rainbow bacon wings condition build. I don’t use the caltrops utility except in unique situations. My question is this: Apothecary’s or Carrion for a condition thief? I use both Assassin’s reward and Shadow’s Rejuvenation so I benefit greatly from the extra healing power of Apothecary’s, but I am unsure if that is worth the hit my vitality takes from not having Carrion. Also, is the added toughness worth it as well? My play style involves a lot of applying conditions then stealthing away for a few seconds so I believe I would utilize the healing power quite well. Would a combination of the two sets be better? Any help would be appreciated!

My skill-bar, incase you were wondering, includes blinding powder, shadow step, shadow refuge, and either dagger storm or thieves guild depending on the situation.

I haven’t done number crunching but I’m pretty sure toughness would be better than healing power for longer duration fights. I guess you could have both but I prefer vit and toughness so that I can survive BS thieves, nade egnies, HUNDURD BURRRRDS and the like.

for a condition build, carrion is pretty much king. its highest stat is condition damage, and with the thief’s naturally low hp it helps us take a hit. while the healing power/toughness would help, the 300 toughness/healing power from traits is enough for most situations. though carrion armor and apothecary trinkets would be another way.

ultimately though with the healing from stealth shadow refuge becomes a second heal skill that with the right traits also cures conditions and recharges your initiative. the healing doesn’t scale the best with healing power, and with the power on carrion, your attacks add up for some decent damage mixed in with the bleeds

I’d put forth that mixing in some Rampager would allow you to better maintain power-based offense. 20 in Acrobatics/Trickery means you’ll likely be pushing Might anyways, and Rampager will ensure that things like Cluster Bomb, C&D and auto attacks are far more effective.

People gear up with an idea like “I’m a condition build, I should min/max for that”, but there are very few skills that only do pure condition damage, and with linear scaling an investment in other offensive stats is going to give you a leg up in more situations than you realize. Consider that for much of the duration of a Death Blossom or utilizing a Cluster Bomb from a “safe” location you will get zero mileage out of defensive stats but plenty of damage out of power/precision. This is why, personally, I’m a huge fan of things like the new +allstat rings, Divinity Runes, and Triforge Pendant. If you’re using power-based damage, condition based damage, taking hits, and healing yourself, you’re getting a lot of net value out of utilizing every one of those stats. Same with Might, if you’re pushing Might stacks and not using one of the two bonuses that Might gives, you’re missing out on the effect of a lot of stat points.

Ok, cool. Then what about runes for my armor. I was going to go with a full set of undead for apothecary’s, would you recommend something else for carrion or would undead work well enough for carrion as well?

EpicSuperFail.9518:

Ok, cool. Then what about runes for my armor. I was going to go with a full set of undead for apothecary’s, would you recommend something else for carrion or would undead work well enough for carrion as well?

Undead works, but I would highly recommend keeping a stock of condition duration food with you if you use it. I use 3 krait 3 affliction for the bleed duration of 30%, with death blossom every 10% bleed duration you get an extra tick of bleed, and if you use a pistol/dagger set as well, 25% increments get you an extra tick, so with most of the rare veggie pizza line of food, you can get 2-3 extra pistol ticks depending on your weapon sigils, and a lot more out of DB. that said, since bleeds are easy for players to cleanse if they are aware, so for pvp pistol gets more out of the duration boost than D/D.

as for Tulisin’s rampager idea, mixing it in doesn’t net you much of an increase in damage, and one of the main draws of condition builds is their durability, while you could go full GC with rampager and have one devastating dagger storm/DB, you come to the problem of being made of glass, and taking longer to kill someone than a full burst build.

any other questions?

Gungnir Grimm.7123:

EpicSuperFail.9518:

Ok, cool. Then what about runes for my armor. I was going to go with a full set of undead for apothecary’s, would you recommend something else for carrion or would undead work well enough for carrion as well?

Undead works, but I would highly recommend keeping a stock of condition duration food with you if you use it. I use 3 krait 3 affliction for the bleed duration of 30%, with death blossom every 10% bleed duration you get an extra tick of bleed, and if you use a pistol/dagger set as well, 25% increments get you an extra tick, so with most of the rare veggie pizza line of food, you can get 2-3 extra pistol ticks depending on your weapon sigils, and a lot more out of DB. that said, since bleeds are easy for players to cleanse if they are aware, so for pvp pistol gets more out of the duration boost than D/D.

as for Tulisin’s rampager idea, mixing it in doesn’t net you much of an increase in damage, and one of the main draws of condition builds is their durability, while you could go full GC with rampager and have one devastating dagger storm/DB, you come to the problem of being made of glass, and taking longer to kill someone than a full burst build.

any other questions?

So if every 10% gets me an extra tick, would a sigil of agony be better than a sigil of geomancy for my dagger?

Tulisin.6945:

I’d put forth that mixing in some Rampager would allow you to better maintain power-based offense. 20 in Acrobatics/Trickery means you’ll likely be pushing Might anyways, and Rampager will ensure that things like Cluster Bomb, C&D and auto attacks are far more effective.

People gear up with an idea like “I’m a condition build, I should min/max for that”, but there are very few skills that only do pure condition damage, and with linear scaling an investment in other offensive stats is going to give you a leg up in more situations than you realize. Consider that for much of the duration of a Death Blossom or utilizing a Cluster Bomb from a “safe” location you will get zero mileage out of defensive stats but plenty of damage out of power/precision. This is why, personally, I’m a huge fan of things like the new +allstat rings, Divinity Runes, and Triforge Pendant. If you’re using power-based damage, condition based damage, taking hits, and healing yourself, you’re getting a lot of net value out of utilizing every one of those stats. Same with Might, if you’re pushing Might stacks and not using one of the two bonuses that Might gives, you’re missing out on the effect of a lot of stat points.

That seems like a good line of reasoning but I’m worried that by specializing in nothing you would not be able to do anyone thing effectively while performing everything “ok.” Have you had much success with this idea?

EpicSuperFail.9518:

So if every 10% gets me an extra tick, would a sigil of agony be better than a sigil of geomancy for my dagger?

that depends on a few things, for pve, it is quite possible, for pvp on the other hand Geomancy can be used for a quick 3 stack bleed AoE to get bleeds rolling faster, which can have more of an impact on people who cleanse them often. most people tend to use 1 agony and 1 corruption sigil. so assuming you don’t end up on your back a lot, you get a nice boost to both damage and duration

Alright sweet, thanks!

EpicSuperFail.9518:

That seems like a good line of reasoning but I’m worried that by specializing in nothing you would not be able to do anyone thing effectively while performing everything “ok.”

That isn’t really how GW2 works. Condition damage scales linearly, so there’s no diminishing returns or exponential gains. Given that a certain amount of stat points will boost damage by a given percentage you have to look at your overall damage type output before stats. For a made-up numbers example, say you’re doing 500 power-based DPS and 500 condition-based DPS. Also assume that pushing all of your stats in one direction will double DPS (100 % increase). If you push them all towards conditions, you’re doing 500/1000, 1500 total. If you push them all towards power you’re doing 1000/500, 1500 total. If you split them down the middle you’re doing 750/750, 1500 total. Gear specialization, in this case, doesn’t reward you with DPS, but does make your damage a little more versatile (a big part of it can’t be stopped by condition removal, but a big part of it is also delivered immediately without a need to wait).

Now, for actual application you have to take into account two major factors not demonstrated by such a simple example:
1. DPS is not always split 50/50 between the two damage types. DPS type is usually decided by skill choice. You choose to use Death Blossom more than other abilities because you’ve decided to synergize with condition damage more. This means that your total DPS output could shift to something like 75/25, meaning doubling one side or the other could have a different effect on actual DPS. However, it is important to note that the ratio will almost never be 0/100 in favor of condition damage, although 0/100 in favor of power-based damage is possible.

2. There are more synergies than those granted purely by gear stats, namely benefits inherent to traits (triggers, etc.) These benefits do stack multiplicatively with raw stats and can create stat sweet spots. For instance, the swiftness-on-crit proc from the Critical Strikes line makes each point of precision more valuable than its raw effect would suggest, however it also creates a point of diminishing returns wherein more points past a certain level (where you’ve got a lot of swiftness-proc CD due to proccing it really fast) are worth less than points before that level. This significantly complicates the point.

The reason I suggest Rampager’s gear in your specific case and all-stat gear in general is that the raw benefits of these stats are large enough to offset the small losses. In specific, with Rampager you give up a rather small amount of Condition damage in return for a large sum of power/precision. Even if power-based damage is <25 % of your total raw damage output (remember, this means naked, not comparing your beefed-up conditions to ignored power damage), the offensive boost is going to be significant. In the case of Divinity Runes/Triforge/etc you often do experience a very real drop in offense or defense when switching from something like a 90/64/64 neckpiece, but the raw returns are nearly double the raw losses on the other (defense/offense) side.

People are used to creating incredibly streamlined stat/skill setups in other MMOs, and those aren’t ineffective in GW2, but that kind of build philosophy can result in overall combat effectiveness when skills and situations refuse to cooperate (Cluster Bomb will always have a significant power-based component, C&D will always be useful in a pinch, even the most power-based dagger builds will apply poison with auto attack, etc).

I use Carrion for my Cond build, I would recommend going that.

Tulisin.6945:

EpicSuperFail.9518:

That seems like a good line of reasoning but I’m worried that by specializing in nothing you would not be able to do anyone thing effectively while performing everything “ok.”

That isn’t really how GW2 works. Condition damage scales linearly, so there’s no diminishing returns or exponential gains. Given that a certain amount of stat points will boost damage by a given percentage you have to look at your overall damage type output before stats. For a made-up numbers example, say you’re doing 500 power-based DPS and 500 condition-based DPS. Also assume that pushing all of your stats in one direction will double DPS (100 % increase). If you push them all towards conditions, you’re doing 500/1000, 1500 total. If you push them all towards power you’re doing 1000/500, 1500 total. If you split them down the middle you’re doing 750/750, 1500 total. Gear specialization, in this case, doesn’t reward you with DPS, but does make your damage a little more versatile (a big part of it can’t be stopped by condition removal, but a big part of it is also delivered immediately without a need to wait).

Now, for actual application you have to take into account two major factors not demonstrated by such a simple example:
1. DPS is not always split 50/50 between the two damage types. DPS type is usually decided by skill choice. You choose to use Death Blossom more than other abilities because you’ve decided to synergize with condition damage more. This means that your total DPS output could shift to something like 75/25, meaning doubling one side or the other could have a different effect on actual DPS. However, it is important to note that the ratio will almost never be 0/100 in favor of condition damage, although 0/100 in favor of power-based damage is possible.

2. There are more synergies than those granted purely by gear stats, namely benefits inherent to traits (triggers, etc.) These benefits do stack multiplicatively with raw stats and can create stat sweet spots. For instance, the swiftness-on-crit proc from the Critical Strikes line makes each point of precision more valuable than its raw effect would suggest, however it also creates a point of diminishing returns wherein more points past a certain level (where you’ve got a lot of swiftness-proc CD due to proccing it really fast) are worth less than points before that level. This significantly complicates the point.

The reason I suggest Rampager’s gear in your specific case and all-stat gear in general is that the raw benefits of these stats are large enough to offset the small losses. In specific, with Rampager you give up a rather small amount of Condition damage in return for a large sum of power/precision. Even if power-based damage is <25 % of your total raw damage output (remember, this means naked, not comparing your beefed-up conditions to ignored power damage), the offensive boost is going to be significant. In the case of Divinity Runes/Triforge/etc you often do experience a very real drop in offense or defense when switching from something like a 90/64/64 neckpiece, but the raw returns are nearly double the raw losses on the other (defense/offense) side.

People are used to creating incredibly streamlined stat/skill setups in other MMOs, and those aren’t ineffective in GW2, but that kind of build philosophy can result in overall combat effectiveness when skills and situations refuse to cooperate (Cluster Bomb will always have a significant power-based component, C&D will always be useful in a pinch, even the most power-based dagger builds will apply poison with auto attack, etc).

That’s a very valid point. Hmmm…. realistically with rampagers what kind of stats would I have? Also what armor/trinkets/weapons do you run and what type of build should I run? I am afraid of sacrificing too much survivability with this armor set and related build but the idea of sustained damage as you said is attractive. That’s what draws me towards condition builds. Survivability and sustained damage.

The trade off for taking pure Apothecary compared to pure Carrion stats is about 25% direct damage, 12% condition damage, and 15% EHP. You gain, however about a 25-30% more HP per heal on most of the healing traits (Shadow Rejuvenation in particular), which translates to almost 100% more effective healing when factoring in EHP. A mix of Carrion armor + Apothecary trinkets might be the best option IMO.

roamzero.9486:

The trade off for taking pure Apothecary compared to pure Carrion stats is about 25% direct damage, 12% condition damage, and 15% EHP. You gain, however about a 25-30% more HP per heal on most of the healing traits (Shadow Rejuvenation in particular), which translates to almost 100% more effective healing when factoring in EHP. A mix of Carrion armor + Apothecary trinkets might be the best option IMO.

I feel that way too.

I’m running full Apothecary armor (Runes of the Soldier (5) and Rune of Ice (1), Chrysocola Earrings (with Apothecary upgrades), Shaman rings and a Shaman amulet, all with the apothecary upgrades.

I lose a little power, but I end up with 925 healing power, 2708 Armor and ~19.2K health, with ~1525 condition damage (+55% bleed duration), after food buffs, sigil of corruption and the constant might stacking from entering stealth, dodging, poison use etc.

I find that it makes for a pretty durable P/D build. Atm, I’m running 15/0/30/15/10 that seems to work pretty well.

Heals are pretty good from what I’ve seen, and I’ve tried two different healing approaches. Leeching Poison (500ish per poison)/Shadow Protector (261 per regen tic), or running Shadow Protector(261 per regen tic)/Shadow’s Rejuvenation (531ish), with Assassin’s Reward (409ish for CnD).

I haven’t tested the first one that much, but it looks promising with Lotus poison to reduce damage.

Fade.7658:

I’m running full Apothecary armor (Runes of the Soldier (5) and Rune of Ice (1), Chrysocola Earrings (with Apothecary upgrades), Shaman rings and a Shaman amulet, all with the apothecary upgrades.

I lose a little power, but I end up with 925 healing power, 2708 Armor and ~19.2K health, with ~1525 condition damage (+55% bleed duration), after food buffs, sigil of corruption and the constant might stacking from entering stealth, dodging, poison use etc.

I find that it makes for a pretty durable P/D build. Atm, I’m running 15/0/30/15/10 that seems to work pretty well.

Heals are pretty good from what I’ve seen, and I’ve tried two different healing approaches. Leeching Poison (500ish per poison)/Shadow Protector (261 per regen tic), or running Shadow Protector(261 per regen tic)/Shadow’s Rejuvenation (531ish), with Assassin’s Reward (409ish for CnD).

I haven’t tested the first one that much, but it looks promising with Lotus poison to reduce damage.

Cool! I’m glad apothecary’s is viable for a condition thief. I am starting to think it may not be the best option though. For example, on a D/D condition Ele it would be great simply because they are always in their opponents view. They would constantly need the toughness and healing to keep them alive. For us as thieves however, we can stealth which can reset the aggro on us bar AOE’s. I may be wrong in this thinking, and I really do like the idea of doing major healing everytime I stealth, but I think there were some valid points in this thread that the extra damage from carrion or rampager’s is worth it.

So, I am curious, do you disagree with my thinking? I do think that there is alot of potential for Apothecary’s on a thief. How much do your bleed’s tick for with your spec? I am genuinely curious because I have not yet purchased any armor sets while I try to figure out what I want to buy. I am even now considering Rampager’s, which is something I have completely ignored for forever haha.

If you’re only trying to keep yourself alive, Toughness is always better than Healing Power.
That Healing Power only increases how much you heal yourself for, but the Toughness lets you survive more damage by reducing the damage taken AND makes your heals equally more effective by increasing their proportion relative to incoming damage.

Healing Power is a support stat.

The bleed tics start at around 115 or so, but ramp up fairly quickly as stacks of might build up. Average stacks of might is around 6-8. I typically see average tics of 126 or so during a fight.

As for healing power, I wasn’t actually aiming for it. I wanted the toughness that came with it. It is a nice perk though.

Ah, right. I wasn’t thinking in the context of the actual question. For a “unicorn” Thief Apothecary actually does look best. The only way to pair Condition damage with Toughness is either through Rabid or Apothecary, and with stacked healing and neither Power nor Critical Damage I would actually place Healing Power over Precision.
As far as Carrion goes, the Vitality would be hugely counter-productive for the self healing.

Fade.7658:

The bleed tics start at around 115 or so, but ramp up fairly quickly as stacks of might build up. Average stacks of might is around 6-8. I typically see average tics of 126 or so during a fight.

As for healing power, I wasn’t actually aiming for it. I wanted the toughness that came with it. It is a nice perk though.

Sweet! Thank you for your answer.

Grimwolf.7163:

Ah, right. I wasn’t thinking in the context of the actual question. For a “unicorn” Thief Apothecary actually does look best. The only way to pair Condition damage with Toughness is either through Rabid or Apothecary, and with stacked healing and neither Power nor Critical Damage I would actually place Healing Power over Precision.
As far as Carrion goes, the Vitality would be hugely counter-productive for the self healing.

Haha yeah, I still kind of want to be a unicorn, but right now I am in a state of analyzing all viable thief builds except GC burst. Hate that stuff lol. Your answer helps me alot, thank you!

I’m actually actively running 0/0/30/20/20 apothecary in WvW, and I will tell you that it is incredibly viable. I run a similar build (Shaman) in sPvP and can go toe to toe permanently with any guardian. I’ve even tanked guardian/necro in sPvP for 5 minutes. I call it the troll build.

The main thing to remember, that your primary stats are toughness and healing power. Condition damage is kind of a side note. If you want to do dps, the you shouldn’t be rolling 0/0/30/20/20. Let’s not kid ourselves here, we’re not going to be downing people in 5 seconds no matter what we do. While Toughness is preferable to healing power, there are no other armor sets that provide those stats.

The nice thing about this build is it’s versatility. I run with this build 90% of the time in WvW:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAV4YlUmiP3ey5E95EB3Djq0m6pwrltTBW1KA;T8Ag2yrEWJtSdlyKqvMfJ+y+l7L5XrDGBsBB

Just swap Toughness with Healing in the amulet and you have apothecary. (Seriously, why can we not get these stats on exotic armor in pve/wvw?) I carry 1 pistol, 2 daggers, 1 sb. Shortbow and pistols both have Sigil of Agony. Daggers have Sigil of hydromancy in the offhand, Sigil of Superior Venom(Sigil of corruption for wvw) in the main hand. You can swap amulet and rings for shaman’s to get some extra vitality, Might not be a bad idea to carry those around with you for specific situations.

Don’t listen to anyone who ever tells you that condition duration is better than condition damage. They haven’t done the math. point for point, bleed does better with damage than duration. I only suggest condition duration for sb/pistol because the conditions are so short. (also corruption is horrible for sPvP, always run bleed/poison duration.) I ran the numbers, and i don’t remember exactly what I came up with, but it was something to the effect of 10 Condition damge works out to 1.5% damage per second, while condition duration is a static 1%. Can’t find where I posted that at at this time.

At any rate, versatility, right, back on track. There are SOO many different talents you can swap out to change how the build works and feels. IX in shadow arts is a given. The Master slot and Adept slot have A LOT of flexibility. X is good for initiative, which means more spam, which means more stacks. VIII is great for survivability, and being able to close distance invisibly makes for some interesting situations. Master of Deception, or 1, is a GREAT talent. The only bad ones in this line are 9,7,3, and 2. (even if you main shortbow, for this build you don’t want 7 because it only increases damage for hits, we are focused on bleed/poison) #4 I would only spec if you go with dagger storm and signet of malice.

DAGGER STORM AND SIGNET OF MALICE!!! OMG!!! 7 1/2 seconds of being practically invulnerable, stacking all kinds of bleed. The bigger the crowd, the more invincible you are. Signet works well with death blossom and cluster bomb, too. Not so great a combo for sPvP, though. Still, if you spec DS and Signet, be sure to slot tallent 4 for condition removal, as you lose that capability from hide in shadows.

Next is the acrobatics line. All of the master level talents are decent, but 10 and 9 stand out. 10 is decent healing , but I wouldn’t call it epic, and depending on your play style you might do better with 9. I still roll 10 almost exclusively. 7 is also useful but not great. Often I find that I get killed most often because of cripple. You shouldn’t need 7 if you are running talent 4 from the shadow tree, though. For the Adept slot. 2 and 6 are the most universally useful. I replace signet of shadow for ambush trap in sPvP, so 5 might not be bad in that situation. In WvW, when I’m heading downhill, I’ll always put in #1, which is awesome, cause it stealths you and everyone within melee range.

The final talent tree, trickery, isn’t that great. You NEED preparedness. Unfortunately, the Master level talents all suck. Some people swear by bountiful theft. Personally I think it’s crap. Sometimes, it can be useful, and if you spec #8 in shadow, may even be absolutely worth it. Most of the time, I only use it when someone is running away, or I run low on initiative. Again YMMV. This leaves us with the Adept slots, which, 1, 3 and 6 are actually pretty good. 2, 4, and 5 aren’t bad either, but don’t really work with this build. I would take 5 points out of this line and put it into deadly arts for serpents touch. However, if you were doing that, it would mean that you are focusing more on stealing. If that’s the case, thrill of the crime and bountiful theft are better talents for the task.

So as you can see, very, very….. very versatile. Give it a run. Make people mad. Have many lulz.