Guild Wars 2

Now this posts is just going to be a summary of the changes I think they shoud apply to thif traits/skills to allow more diversity in builds (and make non-zerker thief not the only option in PvE).

First of all thief needs a condi weapon. Right now we only have dagger, pistol and shortbow which are all hybrid weapons. One of these needs more condi focus. Shortbow and pistol right now are absolutely terrible as ranged weapons and need a rework anyhow.

If they made dagger into the condi melee option, they should probably add condis to the auto-attack. A major buff to the ‘Dagger Training’ trait is also needed. To prevent spamming Death Blossom they could give it a Flip-over skill (the way it works with Sword/dagger)
If they decided on Shortbow as the condi ranged option they should also add condis to the auto-attack (and they could drop the bleed on pistol auto, making pistol a lot better too). Choking gass also needs to be improved (longer duration and maybe make the last pulse deal more poison).

As for traits: Right now thief also doesn’t really have a condi trait line. Deadly arts has condi traits but it also has ‘Improvisation’ (should be in Trickery imo), ‘Excecutioner’ and ‘Revealed training’ (should be in Shadow arts) making it more used for regular dmg builds. First of all ‘Dagger Mastery’ needs to be improved. If they changed traps to actually be usefull they could change ‘Deadly Trapper’ to inflict additional poison instead of vuln.
Shadow arts should probably also have some condi support as it also has the venoms trait. They could probably merge ’Shadow’s Embrace’ and ’Shadow’s rejuvenation’ to make room for a new adept trait. I would love to see a trait that adds poison dmg to stealth attacks, but it should probably be a Grandmaster. Maybe change ‘Rending Shade’ to something like that?

Next they should fix the currently worthless traps. First of all: make them circular! After they changed ranger traps (and removed the thrown traps ) to make ranger traps and DH traps more similar, one would expect to see a similar change to thief traps. Unfortunately Anet seems to have forgotten Thief actually has traps and has totally ignored them for the past 4 years.
If they change the trap trait to inflict additional poison on trigger traps could actually be usefull for condi builds. Needle Trap needs more dmg, and maybe they could remove the immobilize from it. Tripwire should probably be changed to ‘Snare Trap’ or something inflicting knockdown, cripple and torment (+poison from trait). Ambush can actually stay the way it is as long as they give the summoned thief a huge buff. Maybe give the thief a shortbow and let him inflict bleed on auto + use Choking gass/ cluster bomb? The thieves created with the ‘Thieves Guild’ elite could also use a buff.

If they decided to add the missing trap heal and elite that would be a bonus

Concerning Elite Skills: Dagger Storm would be more usefull if it had shorter cd and shorter duration.

If they would implement all these changes (which are honestly not that hard) I think Condi Thief could become a viable option.

Look at my signature. Condi thief is viable. And not just D/D death blossom.

I don’t think condi thief is even remotely viable in PvE. In PvP maybe it is, but I’m not talking about that here.

I’ve commanded HoT zones pre nerf.

I’ve beat champions solo.

Condition damage not viable in PvE? What?

As a player who usually runs condi builds with necro/ranger, I feel like condi thief just doesn’t come anywhere near that level. I’m interested to know what build you are using though.

Thief already has Condis on dagger AA, it applies bleeding at a pretty fast rate, one thing you should note, All thief weapon sets except staff and Sword are Hybrid weapons they have both Power attacks and Condi attacks.

They also have Venoms which allow higher application of Condies the same with traps, yes some traps need a re-design and Venoms could use a buff.

Before the August 9th change Viper Thief was pretty viable in Raids, as well as in open world content, as with Saerni I ran around using a Condi build mine was just D/D and solo most Hot champs minus the Arrow head from AB hero point.

Look in my signature for video w/ build. It is the same for PvE and WvW.

Looks like a tank build with low personal dps…
You could probably kill a champ with it but wouldn’t it take aaaages?
Also I see no way this is usable in raids with a dps that low.

With the stealth it could maybe make a WvW build but for PvE I really see no use.
How much dps does it actually put out? (you can easily test on golems in LA aerodrome)

In PvE the build can either stay the same or take the trait to reduce venom cooldowns. Now that venomshare is baseline you can do much more condition damage. Probably your burst approaches…between 10 and 14k every 32 seconds.

Condi builds are generally built to be more tanky. If you want to do more damage you could always swap out for Viper’s to hit more consistent “high” numbers—although I would not recommend it personally. The thing to keep in mind is that sometimes having “more damage” isn’t the best option. Say in Fractals, where you might be able to safely res your entire team because of your survivability. Worth more to your team than a few extra big numbers imo.

I don’t have access to a computer to run tests so you will just have to test it out damage wise in Heart of the Mists on that big golem.

Condi-evade Daredevil isn’t too bad atm IMO. Some things that could be changed though, without touching Condi-evade too directly:

Most of Thief’s condi damage comes from bleeds, and most of the bleeds are at a crappy base 4s duration, this should be upped to 5.

Pistol #2 still sucks, extended duration on the vuln and maybe replacing the immob with slow could fix it.

Backstab could use a condi on it to make D/D more hybrid, maybe something neat like 25 stacks of bleed for 1s. Maybe some poison or torment on Dancing Dagger.

Shortbow bleeds on cluster bomb and exploding cluster bomb should be adjusted.

Those are my main suggestions.

Just compared to any other profession the dmg is just miserable. Just tested it and my druid with cheap rabid gear (no food/utility) that is semi-specced for healing does more than 7k solo dps per second, and it has huge healing/sustain. With full Viper gear a condi ranger can reach 10 k solo dps (no food or buffs).
When going for full condi on thief with a squishy Vipers melee build I reach about 5.5k solo dps…
That’s only about half the dmg of the ranger…
So no not really viable I guess, at least in PvE.

That aside I think any Thief will agree that most condi-based skills are poorly designed, especially traps.

Well, I consider that DPS “viable” even if it isn’t as large as some other classes. Class utility makes up for the smaller DPS on the conditions. And PvE content is easy enough that adding in some extra DPS only slightly effects the outcome. Of course, I wouldn’t mind more DPS on my current build…but it is WvW and not primarily PvE.

If you wanted more condi DPS the best option would be to swap out for Lotus Training in Daredevil and drop the SA line for DA, which will give you more poison DPS. Honestly, if all you care about are pure DPS numbers without any of the survivability or utility then condition damage isn’t for you (at least on thief).

saerni.2584:

Look at my signature. Condi thief is viable. And not just D/D death blossom.

lol players you opposing looks like kitten with the other hand while one hand pressing keyboard.

Alexander.6250:

Just compared to any other profession the dmg is just miserable. Just tested it and my druid with cheap rabid gear (no food/utility) that is semi-specced for healing does more than 7k solo dps per second, and it has huge healing/sustain. With full Viper gear a condi ranger can reach 10 k solo dps (no food or buffs).
When going for full condi on thief with a squishy Vipers melee build I reach about 5.5k solo dps…
That’s only about half the dmg of the ranger…
So no not really viable I guess, at least in PvE.

That aside I think any Thief will agree that most condi-based skills are poorly designed, especially traps.

Needle trap is hardly “poorly designed” it one of the best utilities avaialable to a thief and can be used to apply significant condition damage.

Trip wire is not a condition trap nor are any of the others, albeit Shadow trap can be used in a condition build.

Gibimo.2193:

lol players you opposing looks like kitten with the other hand while one hand pressing keyboard.

Was more a “concept” video than “best fights I’ve ever had” video. Yeah the players suck, but I don’t regularly record video and I was just trying to show my build.

I might record more in the future and showcase a “best fights” montage…but that’s only if I have the time/motivation.

I play a condi thief religiously, and I find any other play style not even worth it cause it can’t compare. As the way it stands, conditions for thief are a way too OP of a play style.
I run full bleed damage and dodge. 50 stacks of bleeding and nothing can hit me and I have constant regeneration for if something does.
If I run venoms with vipers, I can usually 1 shot someone to death.
If I run traps, they get activated I 1 shot again.

If you set yourself up right you can find yourself surprised when someone beats you in a 1v1 on condi thief.

A buddy of mine saw a build in WvW (vanilla thief) and it was very trolly and effective. 100% stealth uptime and it was a condi build. You can easily play with 3/4/5 people and can typically down them, however due to the nature of the build it actually takes a bit of time but very rewarding due to watching them auto attack the air between condi bursts.

I took it into PvP last night (the salt tasted good) and it was fantastic. Not the best for capping (100% stealth uptime does that…be cool if Anet changed that you can cap while stealthed) but no one saw me coming or going…it was magical.

d/d condi build is great on thief, potent poison trait in DA gives crazy effeciency to your poisons, basically its +77% dps to poisons from a single trait

so if you are really dead set on boosting your condi DPS you should maximize your ability to apply poison through venoms and runes and you will see some really good numbers

Once again people I’m talking about PvE builds, NOT WvW builds, NOT PvP builds. There is a huge difference in effectiveness.

saerni.2584:

Well, I consider that DPS “viable” even if it isn’t as large as some other classes. Class utility makes up for the smaller DPS on the conditions. And PvE content is easy enough that adding in some extra DPS only slightly effects the outcome. Of course, I wouldn’t mind more DPS on my current build…but it is WvW and not primarily PvE.

If you wanted more condi DPS the best option would be to swap out for Lotus Training in Daredevil and drop the SA line for DA, which will give you more poison DPS. Honestly, if all you care about are pure DPS numbers without any of the survivability or utility then condition damage isn’t for you (at least on thief).

I think you didn’t read my post very well: healing condi druid (almost immortal build) still does more damage than full dps thief with zero survivability. And you actually really need dps since raid bosses have enrage timers. Sure you can play condi thief if you enjoy it, the problem is that any other class easily does it better in PvE with much less effort. The reason condi thief works in WvW is because of stealth. Stealth is not very effective in PvE at all.

So I did some more extensive testing: I made the best straightforward sustainable condi build I could in hearth of the mists using rabid amulet on every profession, and measured the average dps for a 2-min fight against the indestructable golem (no allies present)
results: (in #damage per second, measured using legal jaxnX dps meter)
Ranger: 8800
Necro: 7900 (surprisingly low actually)
Ele: 8900
Engi: 8100
Guard: 8100
Warr: 8200
Mesmer: 8300 (has a ramp-up time of like 30 seconds :P )
Thief: 4900
Revenant: 4900

Thief and revenant clearly underperform compared to the other classes. It is also noteworthy that both revenant and thief are the only 2 classes requiring to be in melee range at all times to achieve this dps, resulting in lower survivability also. Between revenant and thief, revenant has a clear advantage in group support, while thief has more dodges. Revenant also deals a larger amount of torment damage, so the dps would be higher against moving targets.
When it comes to survivability, ranger(druid) and necro have a clear advantage over the rest
(note: since I main ranger and don’t play much condi on other classes, the dps on each of these could most likely be improved quite a bit. Even so, the gap between Revenant/Thief and the rest is very clear.)

This is quite unfortunate as I would love to play condi thief in PvE.

Alexander.6250:

Once again people I’m talking about PvE builds, NOT WvW builds, NOT PvP builds. There is a huge difference in effectiveness.

And unfortunately saying the thief “underperforms” in PvE in the build concept that is objectively overpowered in the PvP formats and thus saying the profession when built in such a way is “weak” is going to get you nowhere.

You’re doing the equivalent of trying to make a berserker thief a healer and are saying it’s relatively weak when compared to a druid.

Condi thief isn’t going to get you optimal damage in PvE. If you’re playing for optimal damage in that environment, you need to optimize for it on the build-profession level rather than just how you want to deal your damage. There’s zero diversity in an optimal scheme, because it’s optimum, which is defined as “greatest degree attained or attainable under implied or specified conditions” and thus entails only one (via -est suffix) solution.

I’m not really sure what you’re playing for a build, but those numbers across the board are pretty abysmal. Condition thief can do way better than 4900 DPS on its own (I’ve pushed something like 12k when solo in the limited time I played one), and it scales better in groups by having a 30-poison + 20-torment 30-bleed dump via shared venoms, and caltrops which none of the other classes mentioned can boast, which is absolutely insane, considering this damage comes from utility skills alone.

In essence, you’re effectively playing wrong and not playing the right build while not mentioning what your content goals are aside from “PvE”, which could mean everything from hardcore speed clear raids to open world.

Conditions themselves are wildly overpowered to the point where most of WvW is considered a joke these days since in anything but the biggest of blobs it’s really the only competitive way to play outside of tank/sustain druid.

He got those numbers from Hotm golems not from the Special Forces Training Dummy

DeceiverX.8361:

You’re doing the equivalent of trying to make a berserker thief a healer and are saying it’s relatively weak when compared to a druid.

Condi thief isn’t going to get you optimal damage in PvE. If you’re playing for optimal damage in that environment, you need to optimize for it on the build-profession level rather than just how you want to deal your damage. There’s zero diversity in an optimal scheme, because it’s optimum, which is defined as “greatest degree attained or attainable under implied or specified conditions” and thus entails only one (via -est suffix) solution.

On the first thing: I’m just trying to make a condi thief do condi, so that’s totally not the same.

The whole point of this post is that the only way to play thief in PvE is to go non-condi. Other professions can choose between normal dmg, condi dmg or hybrid, and one of these is going to be better in certain situations. When it comes to thief there is just such a huge gap in damage basically reducing you to 1 choice.
I wouldn’t mind running a sub-optimal build, but there are limits.

I know in PvP/WvW it’s a totally different story. But I’m a PvE player, and I don’t like PvP balance issues holding builds back in unrelated content.

And about the numbers: Those are absolutely not ‘optimal dps’ numbers or anything, I just equipped similar gear on different professions and checked what they could do with it, to get a good comparison. (it’s also the sustained average dps from a 2min fight, so not burst dps)

Alexander.6250:

DeceiverX.8361:

You’re doing the equivalent of trying to make a berserker thief a healer and are saying it’s relatively weak when compared to a druid.

Condi thief isn’t going to get you optimal damage in PvE. If you’re playing for optimal damage in that environment, you need to optimize for it on the build-profession level rather than just how you want to deal your damage. There’s zero diversity in an optimal scheme, because it’s optimum, which is defined as “greatest degree attained or attainable under implied or specified conditions” and thus entails only one (via -est suffix) solution.

On the first thing: I’m just trying to make a condi thief do condi, so that’s totally not the same.

The whole point of this post is that the only way to play thief in PvE is to go non-condi. Other professions can choose between normal dmg, condi dmg or hybrid, and one of these is going to be better in certain situations. When it comes to thief there is just such a huge gap in damage basically reducing you to 1 choice.
I wouldn’t mind running a sub-optimal build, but there are limits.

I know in PvP/WvW it’s a totally different story. But I’m a PvE player, and I don’t like PvP balance issues holding builds back in unrelated content.

And about the numbers: Those are absolutely not ‘optimal dps’ numbers or anything, I just equipped similar gear on different professions and checked what they could do with it, to get a good comparison. (it’s also the sustained average dps from a 2min fight, so not burst dps)

Before they made Venomshare baseline Thieves would raid Using Vipers, the thing is you have to know the rotation for it and it was desirable in some team comps, go look up the old Viper Thief raid build it may not bring as much dps as a regular power thief but it was over 20k dps.

Alexander.6250:

DeceiverX.8361:

You’re doing the equivalent of trying to make a berserker thief a healer and are saying it’s relatively weak when compared to a druid.

Condi thief isn’t going to get you optimal damage in PvE. If you’re playing for optimal damage in that environment, you need to optimize for it on the build-profession level rather than just how you want to deal your damage. There’s zero diversity in an optimal scheme, because it’s optimum, which is defined as “greatest degree attained or attainable under implied or specified conditions” and thus entails only one (via -est suffix) solution.

On the first thing: I’m just trying to make a condi thief do condi, so that’s totally not the same.

The whole point of this post is that the only way to play thief in PvE is to go non-condi. Other professions can choose between normal dmg, condi dmg or hybrid, and one of these is going to be better in certain situations. When it comes to thief there is just such a huge gap in damage basically reducing you to 1 choice.
I wouldn’t mind running a sub-optimal build, but there are limits.

I know in PvP/WvW it’s a totally different story. But I’m a PvE player, and I don’t like PvP balance issues holding builds back in unrelated content.

And about the numbers: Those are absolutely not ‘optimal dps’ numbers or anything, I just equipped similar gear on different professions and checked what they could do with it, to get a good comparison. (it’s also the sustained average dps from a 2min fight, so not burst dps)

If you’re only getting 4900 damage per second on average, you’re doing something wrong. Just on poison ticks alone with shortbow on a poison build I can get my thief to permanently maintain over 5k DPS.

There is only “one choice” for the thief in PvE (which means nothing since optimal builds are not a requirement to complete the content) because when it comes to DPS, it’s the best in the game because of how the class is designed to get all its power damage from scaling modifiers on otherwise low damage coefficients. Blame ANet for boosting dagger and staff AA coefficients by such massive amounts after HoT to make the thief have any purpose in PvE at all, since before the bumps, the class was literally useless in groups. This was stupid from both PvE and PvP perspectives, and shouldn’t have been done, but ANet doesn’t know how to balance things very well. Condi can’t see damage increases without substantial kit changes because it’d otherwise be massively overpowered in the competitive formats; conversely to you, I only play the competitive formats unless absolutely required otherwise, and I do not like the current totally non-sensical PvE balance getting in the way of what should be a very interesting and dynamic gameplay experience. Just because you want boosts for PvE if something isn’t performing so well doesn’t mean they’re justified in general.

Conditions shouldn’t ever be near-optimal damage either on theoretical principles alone – not until three offensive stats are required to get them to mirror power. There’s no reason why I can roll around on a condi thief with almost 25k hp and 3k armor and still 100-0 most players in a matter of seconds while never getting hit for damage to begin with.

I think they can still buff condi thief somewhat without making it too OP in PvP. For example; if choking gass would apply extra poison on the 3th hit. Players are smart enough not to stand still in damage fields, while npcs are not.
Making the thief from ambush deal condis would also only be effective in PvE.

There are more options than just increasing numbers on what we already have.

I think condi thief is at a pretty cool spot since they can utilize both major stats of viper equipment. I actually think if epidemic wasn’t a thing, you’d see more condi thiefs filling that condi spot.

Been having decent results running a condi in PvE with full Viper armor and full Rabid trinkets (for a bit of Toughness defense). Its a bit glassy, but it works when using Dodge and evade as your main defense mechanics and letting your posion/bleeds deal most of the damage. Thing I like is that the Viper stats and weapon sigils (Burst and Force on all weapons) allow me to do a power based stomp if needed.