Guild Wars 2

So I just discovered how to withdraw forward and I feel like a brand new thief. I was rolling with krait runes before, but now that I can reliably aim “on heal” abilities I want to use one of these two rune sets.

Loving Balthazar right now, but wondering if I should save up for tormenting runes, as I often run with skale venom so have 2 sources of torment in my kit that would benefit from the +35% duration, which is nothing to scoff at. However, the ICD on torment on heal is 20sec, while withdraw is 15. (Balthazar is 10 so its every heal)

Basically it comes down to: 35% torment duration verses + having 1 unique condition and a slightly better on heal.

switching between 0/0/4/4/6 and 0/0/6/2/6

which runes would you choose? I don’t like complexity too much for thief and I am having fun with the “on heal” runes you have to aim with withdraw, any other good ones I’m not thinking of? (I’m going to be using withdraw anyway for the vigor uptime, might as well take advantage)

What I am finding is that simply having another condition such as a burn is not as effective with my playstyle as being able to reapply a damaging condition quickly to great effect.

The heal is the only source of burn for a thief and must be obtained through that rune which then has durations that only help that single source of burn.

The torment runes on the other hand have durations that boost all your sources of torment. That said I still found it hard to get a lot of torment onto a foe. My own playstyle still relies on those bleeds with torment as a cover.

I actually went Runes of Grenth. The Chill not doing a lot of outright damage but there a number of sources of chill. I threw it ICE on a sigil of one weapon set (4 secos skill on hit so no need to crit 10 second ICD) I then use Hydromancy on each set for the chill on swap.

You then have the heal chill with a 10 second icd cool down and the on hit chill that has the 30 second cooldown.

With 100 percent chill duration I can chill for 6 seconds on heal, chill for 4 seconds on weapon swap chill for 4 seconds on a hit with one weapon set and then get the three strikes at 2 seconds each with the venom. The chill from being hit a sort of bonus.

Fighting an Ele you can then steal a 20 second chill. I am finding it easier to keep chill on all the time then I ever did burning and the secondary effects of chill are more then a little helpful . Bleeds can still be reapplied quickly.

With a withdraw forward into a group along with a weapon swap when you reach them you can have 10 seconds of AOE chill laid down and do this every 15 seconds and still have other sources at hand for that 5 second downtime.

Wow runes of grenth huh? Very very interesting. I’m glad you suggested something cheap, definitely going to test these out when I get home. I think i’ll only do hydromancy on SB, I don’t want to give up agony sigil or bursting on dp.

Also, thats another thing- using SB secondary right now but mostly for escaping and poison field… What’re your thought about d/d second set

D/D is also a good set, especially when fighting outnumbered. The AoE bleeds are crazy, easy access to poison from aa chain and heartseeker is a great escape tool.

The thing with p/d is that you doesn’t really need that much condition duration. You can apply bleeds and poison with short intervals (especially bleeds). Torment is also at hand with some cooldown. The reason is that this game has so much condition removal that your conditions are rarely going to tick for their full duration (rarely above 4 seconds really).

What I find is that Balthazar works great for me, since we don’t have any access to burning else. It is the most hard hitting condition in the game and work as a really nice burst right after your enemy has used their cleanse or heal. Smart use of burning, bleed and torment bursting can finish someone off pretty fast.

I prefer d/d as my off hand to p/d. I use P/d for constant steady pressure . Eventually a cleanse is used and then I can reload bleeds that are long lasting quickly.

The quicker you get them back on and the greater the number of stacks the more damage the ticks will do before the next cleanse. Add to that and the bleeds with no condition duration are longer then a p/d bleed with 100 percent on bleeds.

The damage one can do with chill is very often underestimated. I tried Balthazar runes and they are very very good . The problem is that extra duration on the rune set applies to one source of Burn , that from the runes themselves and I found myself trying to get that burn via heal only to find a sudden need for a heal.

What I got with grenth is a 30 percent duration to multiple chill sources rather then just that burn coming off the Runes.

Chill CAN be deadly if used right. As example if you prevent an elementalist from switching to water to get their cleanse on 12 stacks of bleeds for 4 extra ticks, that is 6800 more effective damage those bleeds did.

In essence you are extending the uptime of your damaging conditions.

I havn’t experimented with other rune sets because krait just fits with thief so perfectly. The on-elite proc fits perfectly since we have a low cd elite, bleed is our primary DoT and necessary to put out some longer lasting stacks that don’t disappear so quickly which adds to our ability to kite rather than go on the full offense trying to keep stacks and variety up.

The rest for thief imo don’t bring nearly enough to our condi kit to be worthwhile. Some have a unique twist to them but in the end the benefit of krait runes on a condition thief are really high.

Geiir.7603:

The thing with p/d is that you doesn’t really need that much condition duration. You can apply bleeds and poison with short intervals (especially bleeds). Torment is also at hand with some cooldown. The reason is that this game has so much condition removal that your conditions are rarely going to tick for their full duration (rarely above 4 seconds really).

What I find is that Balthazar works great for me, since we don’t have any access to burning else. It is the most hard hitting condition in the game and work as a really nice burst right after your enemy has used their cleanse or heal. Smart use of burning, bleed and torment bursting can finish someone off pretty fast.

I agree straight up with everything here. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Geiir.7603:

D/D is also a good set, especially when fighting outnumbered. The AoE bleeds are crazy, easy access to poison from aa chain and heartseeker is a great escape tool.

Completely disagree here. D/D is a terrible set for a condi build. There was once a time idiots would stand in your death blossoms, but that time’s long gone. Nowadays, whenever I run into someone dumb enough to play condi on d/d, I just move out of the way of his death blossoms, watch him blow all his initiative, then laugh as he fails to do any damage to me as I walk away.

The problem is that death blossom is so easily avoided by anyone who doesn’t actively fight you back. And if they decide to run, even if you do catch them (which you won’t), you won’t do any damage with any of the hard hitting attacks (CnD, backstab, heartseeker).

all the above rune suggestion are great it all depends on your style

i like balthazar – new condition which no one expect you to do which buff your dmg around 1k dps
grenth – also used it few times. great against melee class as p/d keep you in safe distance while you can pew pew them to death. also good in gorup fight for aoe chill like mention above
krait – the most common but for me doesnt give any edge. same conditions every 45 sec which i can proc even without the runes. but give more duration to our AA bleeding. so for me not so usefull like the above runes
torment – another good runes which buff you duration mainly

>>ompletely disagree here. D/D is a terrible set for a condi build. There was once a time idiots would stand in your death blossoms, but that time’s long gone.

Absolutely false.

If you are talking 1v1 perhaps but in battles of several aside they do not just move aside. They are focused elsewhere which is also why a thief using CND and backstab can be so deadly here.

I use DB every night and they are not just laughing and moving aside. DB uses less ini then a Cnd and sneak attack and a sneak attack is as easily dodged. You have 5 or six enemy clustered on a wall as they take out siege and battle with your mates they are not going to just move aside when they see a DB coming. If this the case an AOE from an elementalist such as meteor shower is “just waste” as those are more telegraphed and easier to avoid.

Those that burn all the INI on a db are the same as those that would burn it all on heartseekers. That does not mean heartseeker useless.

Again you have two weaponsets. Use them both depending on the situation.

Thanks for all of the helpful responses guys, I decided to stick with the balt runes for damage. Grenth was fun but are pretty ineffective verse other thieves, which seem to be my most common foe (great vs ele though, switching to this in PvP duels vs ele for sure) but am now considering possibly scavanger runes for heals and extra condition damage (I have a lot of vitality) still deciding.

I also decided to stick with shortbow. I mostly need my second set for escape purposes only, and heartseeker feels way more clunky and less reliable than my nice clean shadowshot. Plus I like to travel in style and SB 5 is too fun. I’ll definitely keep D/D in my bag though for flipping camps, death blossom OP for that

try d/p as defense weapon set .also you can do nice combo with blind shadow strike and shadow shot bp+hs +sneak etc

babazhook.6805:

>>ompletely disagree here. D/D is a terrible set for a condi build. There was once a time idiots would stand in your death blossoms, but that time’s long gone.

Absolutely false.

If you are talking 1v1 perhaps but in battles of several aside they do not just move aside. They are focused elsewhere which is also why a thief using CND and backstab can be so deadly here.

I use DB every night and they are not just laughing and moving aside. DB uses less ini then a Cnd and sneak attack and a sneak attack is as easily dodged. You have 5 or six enemy clustered on a wall as they take out siege and battle with your mates they are not going to just move aside when they see a DB coming. If this the case an AOE from an elementalist such as meteor shower is “just waste” as those are more telegraphed and easier to avoid.

Those that burn all the INI on a db are the same as those that would burn it all on heartseekers. That does not mean heartseeker useless.

Again you have two weaponsets. Use them both depending on the situation.

This is why I find this set good too.

Mango:
Only using d/d would be a waste since it is, as you said, easy to counter. I tend to switch to it in certain situations. When facing many opponents trying to pin me down it is very good combined with caltrops on evade. That’s a bleed spamming bot for sure. :p

I’m usually roaming with sb because the AoE poison are more beneficial to my group than spamming bleeds. I also run Richochet so my sneak attacks are sort of AoE which helps a lot in outnumbered situations.

There are one rune that many forget exist; Rune of the Undead. When using dire gear this can be extremely strong! More toughness and condition damage? Sounds good to me, especially when the focus is damage per tick and not duration. If you can’t afford Balthazar, the Undead runes are quite good too.

I tried a lot of runes for my condi thief and let me say that Krait runes are better since against enemies running -40% condition duration those runes do their work. If you run Balthazar you won’t be so happy. Ye they are fun but I personally think they don’t adapt on every situation like Krait runes do. Also I run 2/0/6/0/6 to increase my condition duration and have another easy access on poison and might with venomous strength

I’ve settled in to P/D and shortbow and I’m happy with krait runes. Corruption and Agony sigils on the P/D and Force/Malice on the shortbow. I build my stack of corruption and guard buffs then switch to my shortbow. Pizza and toxic focusing crystals. Upscaled players in EoTM just melt in front of me.

Krait #6 effect is particularly good when zergs collide, then I position to the 2nd row of the zerg and let the shortbow bounce arrows all over the place. If the fight isn’t going well, or I don’t see a lot of healing being splashed I can just stealth away and fight another day, because I’ve probably already got all the loot bags I’m going to get from the fight.

I’m loving playing thief.

I use perplexity, and I couldn’t be happier. Perplex with slight of hand is an easy combo to pull off most of the time, giving you the interrupt on top of a stack of confusion. It’s so easy to get confusion+bleed+torment+and poision on a target that it’s scary. Perplex is also nice because you should be in the SA tree, which means you have a little more time to wait for that key skill to interrupt.

I think it worth pointing out that there no “right answers” as to what Runes or weapon sets to use. Everyone must choose what is right for them. I as example see no issues with the length of my bleeds so forgo krait.

My DB gives 17 second bleeds and my p/d gives 6 second bleeds and are easily reapplied.

The OP prefers his SB as his off weapon for the mobility and it very good for that. I keep SB in my pack as an alternate weapon but find it more cumbersome in combat so more often then not use d/d as the second weaponset.

The OP has decided he prefers the Burn off Balthazar to deal with thieves. I was motivated to change to Grenth from Balthazar in part because I found it more successful in dealing with the highly mobile classes like the thief.

The key is what works for each individual person and his or her style and what people have FUN with.

I currently have every profession to 80 with a single toon each and 3 thieves to that number. Over 90 percent of my time is spent with the thief. I find leveraging that single heal withdraw with its short cooldown and its other abilities works so well with any runeset that gives a “on heal” bonus.

>> If you can’t afford Balthazar, the Undead runes are quite good too.

As are scavenger. You can also make runes of the adventurer work in a hybrid type build focused on lots of evades.

50 percent endurance regain on every heal coupled with Might on dodge food and Power of inertia in an acro build affors a whole lot of dodges and might building.

Im surprised no one mentioned runes of the nightmare.

Traveler runes are great for those that must play with a 25% speed boost. Drop the signet for Blinding Powder, which gives you some extra access to initiative gain, condi clear, defense, a free sneak attack, etc. Not to mention the 10% condi duration boost on the runes.

>>Im surprised no one mentioned runes of the nightmare.

These are an excellent choice. Without much effort you can get all durations to 100 percent on all conditions. The fear is then great for warding off that first attack which can often be telling.

You can then load the conditions on and get that initial advantage of the first damage.

@mango
I agree in part about what you said.
D/D condition is hard to be good if its your support set having P/D as first.
D/D condition needs to be built around it to be played, but if built properly can really kitten all classes, except a bit of good invi thieves.

Then you talked about dumb players with a D/D condi build, well you should know that dumb players are everywhere and they play most of builds, even S/D or D/P, the most easy set for thieves, if played by a dumbabumpa are easy to deal with…