Guild Wars 2

• PVE being primarily event farming, with a couple of dungeons tossed in every now and then.

I’ve been D/D + backstab in berserkers for a long while, switching between S/P and P/P sometimes. But I’ve been getting really, really, REALLY bored with having to use the same 2-3 weapon sets for months. I’ve been thinking about a P/D Sneak Attack build, which looks pretty fun, but I’ve heard very mixed reviews of condition damage builds in PVE, especially if you do a lot of dynamic events like the dragons and Orr temples (which I do). So I’m cautious to go and spend 20+ gold on condi gear only to find out it doesn’t perform well in PVE.

Anyone want to give out some opinions on the matter?

Condition build is good if build right. I use P/D and D/D in WvW and dungeons and it;s awesome. With food, traits and runes you can easily reach 1400 condition damage with carrion armors plus it’s not a glass cannon and have more survivability.

i’m a d/d balance build, and death blossom is fantastic in PvE. since it hits multiple targets, you end up getting a ton of xp and loot, especially when rolling with someone who can pull the mobs into a nice little ball for you to murder. the gear gives you toughness too, so you can take a few hits while your bleeds do their thing, or you can just pop stealth and remain untouched while you watch them all die. it’s also pretty good against bosses, if you’re careful about it. use them as the middle portion of a run by, and your initiative will have a little time to regen. so you can do it several times without interruption.

Since (i daresay) most thieves carry a shortbows secondary, I run conditions with p/d or d/d as my main weapons. Both are good with the p/d being excellent against single targets or bosses with the bleeds and stealth while d/d can shine while fighting against mobs with a boss or melee mobs that are tough to kite around. Since the shortbow does condition damage, instead of splitting my damage by running straight crits or a bsckstab build, I run conditions with a main weapon setup that helps it out so that both sets do good damage

It depends on what kind of PvE. For solo, dynamic events, and casual dungeons, condition specs can do fine.

For higher level fractal dungeons, or any exploration path your group is struggling on, then you will be better off running a crit damage spec.

Basically, bleeds/poison can do decent damage, but you just do so much more damage with crit damage, that you cant really compete. A caltrops/death blossom thief may be able to stack bleeds up to 20 on something, but that stack will still only tick for like 140 max even with food, cond damage gear etc. Compare that to one pistol whip attack from sword/pistol, which can deal 15k+ damage in 5 seconds.

AoE damage? I guarantee cluster bomb will beat death blossom every time.

And then theres the dreaded 25 stack bleed limit, and 1 poison limit.

Personally, I enjoy playing condition specs, and I still play them when Im farming or playing wvw, but the way things are right now, youre just providing less damage for your team by speccing that way.

Even “support” or “control” condition specs are just an illusion. Crit damage specs incorportate those qualities into themselves, like sword/pistol pure damage spec being able to keep Ae blind up, and still drop blinding power/refuge for downed teammates.