Guild Wars 2

I keep jumping back and forth between builds on my purely PvE D/D thief and the crux of them always falls down to whether I want the 5% dagger damage + 10% damage vs targets with conditions trait, or Infusion of Shadow (gain 2 initiative when stealthing). Changing builds rearranges more than that, but these are the main points.

I find myself running out of initiative fairly often when going with the 15%, whereas taking Infusion of Shadow lets me keep up the CnD + Backstab chain much more consistently. But 15% is a fairly significant amount of damage, It’s very difficult to tell which ends up doing more, and by how much. Anyone have any opinions on the matter?

If you instead went even further into Shadow Arts, it’s worth noting that Hidden Assassin is actually superior to Expose Weakness.
With Hidden Assassin you can very easily maintain at least 6 stacks of Might even without any +Boon Duration, which is roughly equal to a constant +10.5% damage.
Shadow Arts has other traits as well that are far superior to +5% damage on daggers.

go infusion, survivablity trumps damage

You can easily do the math.

Break down how much (flat) damage you are dealing with Infusion of Shadow with the additional Initiative.

Compare that to the +15% damage (that can scale higher on boons/buffs/vulnerability also).

Just because you ran out of Initiative doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing less damage.

IMO, I’ll take the +15% damage.

Pre-patch it was a toss-up. You’d lose some burst for infusion of shadow, but make it up in volume.

Post-patch, put it all into the damage. You cannot stealth enough to take full advantage of infusion and the damage up front is as good as ever.

Rizzy.8293:

go infusion, survivablity trumps damage

I agree with this if you want more survivability.

If your looking for the HIGHEST DAMAGE in PvE, and don’t care about anything else.

30/30/10/0/0 with damage traits + Infusion of Shadow, is the highest sustained damage you can get.

The might doesn’t come anywhere NEAR as much damage, because its not 5% + 10%. Damage modifiers are cumulative, so your actually losing 58% (1.58) on your damage modifier.

Not only that, but your losing 200 Power as well.

Your DPS drops from 7466 DPS to around 4457 DPS when you switch from a 30/30/10 build into a 10/30/30 Build. You would need ~6 stacks of might to make up for the power difference, and then enough might to counter the damage modifiers.

The pitiful amount of defense you gain is not… worth it…

First of all, I wasn’t trying to say the Might outdid the hundreds of lost Power as well, that is insane. I clearly said it was simply better than Expose Weakness. It’s not like that lost Power just goes to nothing anyway, you get an equal number of other stats instead.
Second, it DOES allow you to stack Might at least 6 times. I said exactly that as well. And this is AFTER that Reveal nerf.
Third, You’re trying to compare Hidden Assassin alone against both Expose Weakness and Dagger Training. If you got Hidden Assassin, you’d get to choose another trait in place of Dagger Training, and since Dagger Training blows relative to many other traits it wouldn’t be hard to come out ahead in that regard.

I’ll even give examples. All these Shadow Arts traits grant more than 5% overall damage;
Infusion of Shadow
Hidden Thief
Leaching Venoms
Patience
And Venomous Aura assuming you also took Leaching Venoms.
That’s just comparing raw damage.

Dagger Training is only a valid choice within Deadly Arts because somehow most of the other traits in there manage to be even worse.
Hell, even Venomous Strength combined with Quick Venoms and 3 Venom skills would only barely grant over 5% overall damage, unless you also have a lot of +Boon Duration.