Guild Wars 2

Heyo guys, my thief just reached level 80 and I have a problem deciding which path to take. I loved using condition damage leveling, but I feel that in a condition heavy team, my “talent” would be wasted. I’ve tried a crit build from lvl 70 and I found it extremely strong, but extremely vulnerable at the same time. Can anyone list me the pros and cons for each (both PvP and PvE) and a general rotation about how I should play to achieve the best results? Numeric values are welcome

Edit: Oh, and forgot to mention that I prefer D/D or maybe P/D. Still waiting for PvP comparison + general rotations, since I’ve tried both but I found that I somehow miss the point of the crit builds, and generally always die against 2+ enemies with them.

well some quick pro’s and cons for PvE:

Condition damage:

Pros:
Can deal damage while on the move, freeing you up to avoid more of those nasty attacks without loosing much damage
Damage ignores armour of enemies
Often comes with other effects that debilitate the enemy in useful ways.

Cons:
Effectiveness reduces for every other condition heavy user in the team
Damage tends to be more DPS less Burst reducing your effectiveness on trash.
Limited in the types of conditions possible (no reliable burn or confuse for instance)
Doesn’t work on “objects”

Critical damage:

Pros:
Potentially some of the biggest numbers in the game
Other critical damage users don’t lower your effectiveness (and some times increase it)
High burst allowing for quick removal of trash

Cons:
Evading attacks often costs you damage
Once you’ve burnt your initiative your damage plummets until it recharges
“Objects” can’t be critted
Effected by armour and other defensive skills (block, protection etc)

Also, by going the condition way, you’ll also increase tough/vit, making you a bit more tankish. But imo, I’ve found direct damage much more effective overall, you just need to be extra careful.

Fhaeris.9237:

Also, by going the condition way, you’ll also increase tough/vit, making you a bit more tankish. But imo, I’ve found direct damage much more effective overall, you just need to be extra careful.

that really depends on the gear you take, rampager gear for instance is prec/pow/cond

Dasorine.1964:

Fhaeris.9237:

Also, by going the condition way, you’ll also increase tough/vit, making you a bit more tankish. But imo, I’ve found direct damage much more effective overall, you just need to be extra careful.

that really depends on the gear you take, rampager gear for instance is prec/pow/cond

Rampager gear is complete garbage from a mathematical standpoint. Even with sigils and trait to bleed on crit (and even then we lack the later) it doesn’t compensate at all.

Precission on its own is garbage. It needs a huge lot of investment on CD to be decent and even then Power is still superior by a large huge margin.

The only thing precission is good for is once you’ve maxed Power, give you maxed DPS at the cost of your survivality (not saying this isn’t viable as in this game is easier to kill fast than to resist for long, but this is the only scenario you will really take efficency from Precission as it consumes 2 atribute lines plus maxed Power to do something).

Precission in an scenario like Rampager is a complete waste of resources, no matter your sigils and traits. Even heavy on-crit builds will need some CD to justify the Precission invested.

I highly recommend Carrion over Rabid and Rampager as numbers don’t lie and Carrion give you almost the same direct damage than Rampager (precission as primary atribute raises damage poorly), more condition damage and a lot of Vitality apecially for a Tier3 vitality profession.x

Dasorine.1964:

Condition damage:

Pros:
Can deal damage while on the move, freeing you up to avoid more of those nasty attacks without loosing much damage

I keep reading this in topics about condition damage, but I don’t get it. I did about 5K damage with one death blossom (14 sec with runes and sigil) with my condition DD build. Now imagine how fast you do 5K damage with dagger or sword crits. It doesn’t take 14 seconds (nor can it be removed at halftime). It takes 2-3 seconds, then you can dodge for 10 seconds as well if you want to compare it this way… Sure, with a crit build you stay close and are more vulnerable to melee attacks, but you keep continuing doing damage as well – or you swap to your bow and pop 4K+ cluster bombs along with 1,5K autoattacks from range… I love my bow, I like that I can change to ranged as a thief. That said, condition DD is fun to play, but I just find crit better for the bow. I keep changing between dagger and sword in melee however because of sword daze (but dagger is still better if you need fast focus damage on something).

Strayhand.8216:

Dasorine.1964:

Condition damage:

Pros:
Can deal damage while on the move, freeing you up to avoid more of those nasty attacks without loosing much damage

I keep reading this in topics about condition damage, but I don’t get it. I did about 5K damage with one death blossom (14 sec with runes and sigil) with my condition DD build. Now imagine how fast you do 5K damage with dagger or sword crits. It doesn’t take 14 seconds (nor can it be removed at halftime). It takes 2-3 seconds, then you can dodge for 10 seconds as well if you want to compare it this way… Sure, with a crit build you stay close and are more vulnerable to melee attacks, but you keep continuing doing damage as well – or you swap to your bow and pop 4K+ cluster bombs along with 1,5K autoattacks from range… I love my bow, I like that I can change to ranged as a thief. That said, condition DD is fun to play, but I just find crit better for the bow. I keep changing between dagger and sword in melee however because of sword daze (but dagger is still better if you need fast focus damage on something).

well with my build I hit 25 bleed stacks in a few deathblossoms with caltrops, which comes out at around 3.2k damage per second for 15 seconds from the stacks alone (plus a few thousand damage per deathblossom for hits), and throw in poisons for another 200 damage a second and you get a decent amount of damage per second that ignores armour while your not actually hugging the boss, yes a crit build will do more damage per hit and be able to hit more damage in a single burst, but you are more vulnerable by staying nearer the boss and you still loose a lot of that damage when you dodge away or run out of initiative, so in general it will equal out some.

as for rampager gear, it was a lot better before they nerfed on crit food, before I could hit 100% crit rate with a 180% damage modifier on crits plus constant health drain on an area of mobs, which was not only decent damage but a massive boost to survivability, with the nerf however I agree its much less useful but still usable, rampagers comes with hefty power which works well with the critical damage (again easy to get 100% rate of crits so thats a permenant 80% damage boost with just the critical strikes line damage boost).

A lot of this has to do with if you want PvE, WvW, PvP, etc. In PvE I find condition thief very well suited, because of the AoE of DB and Caltrops, and the fact that mobs generally don’t bother to dodge. Also you’re more specced for tankiness so mistakes are a little more forgiving than if you were a crit based thief.

Problem I had with running condi thief, which is why I’m switching to crit thief, is in dungeons. Sooner or later you will run into a group that can also stack bleeds, and at that point when you see the bleed stack is already at 25, ur a sitting duck. Yea you can elongate poison duration but that doesn’t have the damage output of bleeds, and yes I can fly around stealth rezzing people (but you can still do the same in a crit build if you so desire).

In a WvW or PvP situation though, this condi build in my opinion is a lot weaker. If you steal up to an opponent to drop caltrops, he wont just stand there stumble around like a moron, he’ll get out of the caltrops AoE. You stacked 25 bleeds? Excellent, condi removal skill! Now he has no bleeds, and you’re out of initiative and caltrops is in cool down. And oh look, you’re a condi thief… what are you going to do to me, DB? Caltrops? Noted… let me just go avoid those skills and lets see what else can you do. Uh oh…

Silver.4798:

And oh look, you’re a condi thief… what are you going to do to me, DB? Caltrops? Noted… let me just go avoid those skills and lets see what else can you do. Uh oh…

Switch to SB cluster and poison them while backing off, CnD and escape/reposition into fresh set of conditions (condition removal tends to have a cooldown), do everything else a non condition thief can do (albeit weaker hits with em) people got to stop thinking a specific build is a 1 trick pony.

Dasorine.1964:

Silver.4798:

And oh look, you’re a condi thief… what are you going to do to me, DB? Caltrops? Noted… let me just go avoid those skills and lets see what else can you do. Uh oh…

Switch to SB cluster and poison them while backing off, CnD and escape/reposition into fresh set of conditions (condition removal tends to have a cooldown), do everything else a non condition thief can do (albeit weaker hits with em) people got to stop thinking a specific build is a 1 trick pony.

As you just said, if you’re doing everything else a non condi thief would do then it will be a lot weaker. An opponent will not be freaking out over the below avg damage you would be doing in comparison to a thief specced for burst damage, you will not get anywhere close to killing the opponent off of CnD backstabs if you don’t have the appropriate specs into power/crit/crit damage.

I hear what you’re saying about not doing the same thing over and over but initiative is a limited resource, you cannot CnD to BS AND DB, the second you use up CnD to BS you just used up initiative that could’ve been used for a DB. Only way that works is if you spec for power/prec as well as condition, and in that case, so you do some condition and some burst while being overall not good at anything.

What I’m saying is vs an intelligent opponent, the problem with a d/d condi thief is first of all getting off all 3 hits off on a DB and spamming DB. Ppl will dodge out of that and range you generally or just get out of your way, since DB and caltrops are your primary means of stacking bleeds, its easy to anticipate and kite. You don’t get the guranteed 25 stacks of bleed for 13 secs for 5k total damage or whatever it is you’re specced for. You can get maybe 5-6 stacks. SB, unless you’re right on top of the opponent, its hard to stack bleeds off of CB.

DPS oriented crit builds have their own issues, for example dodging CnD if you’re going d/d BS build. There are other ways to stealth however (traiting stealing gives you stealth, or outright stealing to opponent and immediately CnD, or dropping blinding powder and HS into the smoke combo field for stealth, shadow refuge if you REALLY need to stealth, etc). More options I find in this build than condi thief.

It should also be pointed out that Protection does not reduce condition damage. It only affects direction damage which means it affect critical damage.

I want to reiterate however that condition thieves EXCEL in PvE, and they do alright in dungeons provided you don’t have another teammate who also stacks bleeds. It’s not all doom and gloom and lolololol look at that condi thief, etc. In my limited experience though, I had a lot easier time in WvW with a crit build, likewise I had a lot easier time when leveling in PvE with a condi build.

It could be that I’m not skilled enough to make Condi thieves work in WvW situations against opponents. I just gave an anecdote of MY experience with playing condi thief in wvw situation vs a more burst crit oriented thief.

Silver.4798:

Snipped for post length

I think you’re playing a condition thief wrong. You don’t want to spam DB unless you know they are out of condition removal OR you can nail multiple targets with it(even if the bleeds are removed the damage you’ll do vs 3 targets is equal to that of a full duration on a single target). You also try not to steal to your enemy to start the fight, steal will provide 3 initiative back, so almost an extra DB. D/D condition is not for 1v1 fights, it’s for group skirmishes where you can put bleeds on a few people, it does alright in 1v1 but that is not it’s strength.

You also miss P/D as the major 1v1 condition build. Pistol #1 can stack 5 bleeds alone and it costs no initiative. The stealth pistol #1 will stack another 5 bleeds. All of your initiative can be used for C&D or escapes(pistol #3). You also cannot be kited since it has a 900 range. 5-6 stacks for an average? try 10 or 12. In 20s with an average of 10 bleed stacks that’s 20k damage not including all the damage you do putting those bleeds on.

Caltrops are also far from the primary means of stacking bleeds. They help in stacking bleeds but they are more of an area denial and CC. They are extremely hard to see(especially in the heat of battle) and by the time you notice you’re in them you’ve got 4-6 stacks of bleeds on you. A good thief is either going to force you into them(standing in them vs melee opponents, keeping them between a ranged opponent and backing up) or if you don’t go into them then the thief has gained time to regen initiative and other cooldowns. They are also invaluable for slowing dowkittenerg, heck I used them just yesterday on a garrison wall to slow dowkittenerg so the friendly zerg could get away. I also used them in another zerg vs zerg before the battle started to cripple their forces, do decent damage, and possibly use their condition removal cooldowns up. That sets the enemy zerg up at a pretty big disadvantage.

Condition builds have all the options except burst dps a dps thief has but more. All the things you list as options a condition thief can and will do, except maybe the smoke one unless the thief is running P/P which gives up C&D. I don’t know what utilities you think condition thieves use but I run blinding power, caltrops, and shadow refuge. I can stealth just as long as a DPS thief, have more health, more defenses, and more toughness.

BS thieves have 2 things going for them, Burst damage and stealth. The problem is that if someone survives the burst damage all you have is stealth. A BS thief out of stealth is dead, they have zero survivability. An intelligent player, as you mentioned, will not have many issues dealing with stealth either so that further lowers a BS thief survivability. BS thieves are incredibly easy to deal with if you can take 1-2 hits. Heck I just toss out caltrops and it ruins their day. They are good at picking off low health players, but most experienced players will kill them. My buddy and I loved using traps to kill them, he would put down the ranger fire trap and I’d drop the thief KD trap, here comes mister BS thief and now he’s knocked down and burning to death lol.

I think you also overlook utility skills. I like to run bountiful theft(stealing gives vigor for 15s and steals 2 boons and gives them to all nearby allies). Not only is the vigor awesome(more dodgetrops!) but being able to remove boons is invaluable. Enemy speeding away? Not anymore! Guardian tossing up protection and regen? Nope! Got 15 stacks of might? Now I do! Thief doing dagger storm? No more stability!

Ur right, my bad, I forgot about p/d condition builds, I didn’t run across many of those (then again it’s not like I wvw every day either, mostly I see burst thieves of the d/d, d/p variety) so I can’t comment. But I do see their potential.

The theory of how they work seems sound, although I imagine it will take forever to kill someone esp if they have adequate condition removal (i.e. a thief that has the “remove one condition every 3 sec” trait, which removes one condition immediately upon going to stealth and one more after 3 secs, given the many ways a thief can stealth I can see this become a loooooooooooooooooong drawn out struggle).

Again I never came across a p/d thief, and I generally don’t use the heal 1 condition every 3 sec trait unless I’m in dungeons, (I don’t know many people who do), so my opinion here is simple conjecture. I kind of like my chances with a burst d/p (s/p offset) against that build.

(Fast forward a couple of nights and I’ll probably be cursing myself out for jinxing myself… watch)

Crit Thieves tend to be very glassy and their survivability is laughable. A tanky thief, even in Dungeons (whether they’re Condition or not), is more acceptable.

In WvW, if you’re not a solo roamer, the Condition Thieve is incredibly good at stacking the conditions. Cluster Bombs, Caltrops, Dagger Storm, Poison AoE, Death Blossom, you’ve got plenty in your arsenal. Make it better by increasing your Condition Durations and adding some additional Conditions. Don’t let Bleeds be your Thief’s one-trick: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage

Suralin.3947:

Crit Thieves tend to be very glassy and their survivability is laughable. A tanky thief, even in Dungeons (whether they’re Condition or not), is more acceptable.

In WvW, if you’re not a solo roamer, the Condition Thieve is incredibly good at stacking the conditions. Cluster Bombs, Caltrops, Dagger Storm, Poison AoE, Death Blossom, you’ve got plenty in your arsenal. Make it better by increasing your Condition Durations and adding some additional Conditions. Don’t let Bleeds be your Thief’s one-trick: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage

Its just a shame we have no reliable access to burn or confuse Wheres my burning venom or fire traps

Dasorine.1964:

Suralin.3947:

Crit Thieves tend to be very glassy and their survivability is laughable. A tanky thief, even in Dungeons (whether they’re Condition or not), is more acceptable.

In WvW, if you’re not a solo roamer, the Condition Thieve is incredibly good at stacking the conditions. Cluster Bombs, Caltrops, Dagger Storm, Poison AoE, Death Blossom, you’ve got plenty in your arsenal. Make it better by increasing your Condition Durations and adding some additional Conditions. Don’t let Bleeds be your Thief’s one-trick: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage

Its just a shame we have no reliable access to burn or confuse Wheres my burning venom or fire traps

Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s why I look out for fire fields and such.