Guild Wars 2

So, I play a d/d + p/p condition thief. I know it’s not the most effective build, but it’s what I have the most fun playing, so I try to optimize it as best I can.

I have enough laurels for about 2 ascended gear pieces, except… They all seem as if they’d actually be worse than what I already have.

All of my gear is currently exotic carrion gear, and there is no ascended carrion gear and apparently it’s not a huge priority for Anet to add it as it has been absent since ascended gear was released.

Anywho, the only viable condition ascended gear that is available is either gear that is:

-Cond. Primary
-Toughness Secondary
-Precision Secondary

or

-Precision Primary
-Cond. Secondary
-Power Secondary

Whereas Exotic Carrion provides:

-Cond. Primary
-Power Secondary
-Vitality Secondary

So, from my understanding, power is better than precision if you do not have any crit damage (which I don’t), and vitality is better for thief than toughness due to the thief’s low hp pool.

Is this true, then, that getting ascended gear would actually decrease the effectiveness of my build?

If it helps at all, my current stats are as follows:

1,898 Vitality (20,000 Health)
1,932 Power
932 Precision (5% Crit Chance)
932 Toughness
1,159 Condition Damage

Any input regarding this would be appreciated, thanks!

Thief doesn’t have any traits that stack Burn/Bleed on critical strikes.
Which makes Carrion superior to Rabid. It could however work
to go full rabid as well, since the high crit chance would make up for the lost power,
though you would have a lot lower health pool.

If I were you I’d save the laurels to buy pieces with crit dmg for future builds
or use them for other characters.

I actually like the ascended with the toughness. You’re getting the candy damage and it makes me even harder to kill in my P/D fun times. Yeah, the precision is kinda meh, but hey, who doesn’t like seeing that extra red number splotch once in a while?

toughness > vitality when you got high acces to healing and lifesteal since they are not precentual and heal fixed amount of hp
example :
shadow rejuveration heal for 340 /sec
assasin reward 1100 /initiative pool / omnomberry ghost 325 /crit (1 sec CD)
10 sec stealthed / 15 initiative waste / 3 criticals – 3400 +1100 +1000 = 5500 HP
If you also consider to add healing skills, armor will become more valuable then vitality on an build with 0 /0 / 30 /20 /20
1. IF you got max Hp 14000 = 40% hp regenerated.
2. if you got max hp 21000 = 26% of hp regenerated
The build with more toughness will be able to stay longer in combat

Rayya.2591:

toughness > vitality when you got high acces to healing and lifesteal since they are not precentual and heal fixed amount of hp
example :
shadow rejuveration heal for 340 /sec
assasin reward 1100 /initiative pool / omnomberry ghost 325 /crit (1 sec CD)
10 sec stealthed / 15 initiative waste / 3 criticals – 3400 +1100 +1000 = 5500 HP
If you also consider to add healing skills, armor will become more valuable then vitality on an build with 0 /0 / 30 /20 /20
1. IF you got max Hp 14000 = 40% hp regenerated.
2. if you got max hp 21000 = 26% of hp regenerated
The build with more toughness will be able to stay longer in combat

Yeah, I have heard that with substantial healing that toughness is more effective. Im not using any form of lifesteal though as I prefer hide in shadows.

I guess i will continue to save for future build, or keep waiting until they make ascended carrion…. Just frustrating not being able to spend your laurels for your set. Thanks for the input guys!

So there is one other Ascended set I noticed that may be of use. I’m not exactly sure if I should use it or not though. It’s stats are:

-Cond. Primary
-Toughness Secondary
-Vitality Secondary

So I would be losing the power-gain from rings, amulets, and accessories if I do this …. but would gain toughness in place of power. Does anyone know how viable this would be for condition builds? My fear is that in circumstances where my conditions are periodically cleansed, the lack of power would kitten my overall damage in this case.

But I would also be a bit more survivable. My main focus is WvW, though I do plan on doing an occasional dungeon.

No, there isn’t Ascended gear for Carrions (which is why I refuse to take Ascended equipment at all as a protest until all play styles, at least the ones you can forge, are covered).

Rabid most times is garbage in comparison with Carrion. Vitality is great for a tier3 HP profession even if Toughness is good for sustained battles, and even if we take them as more or less balanced for the Thief, the big difference comes on the offensive choice of Precission versus Power. Even in builds with bleeds on crit there are many cases where the total damage from a Carrion is far superior to Rabid just because Precission is trash as a damage aumentator (Power is faaaaaaar better even with 250 critical damage or superior Power is still far better). If you have the option to increase either Power or Precission, gor for Power unless there are a lot of traits and sigils optimizing your crits (and even then Precission should be acompained with Critical Damage, not Condition Damage) except for some spare builds, specially Necromancer builds, Carrion is the superior choice from a mathematical perspective. And still you can’t find Ascended Carrion equipment.

Frankly I don’t like the way Ascended tier is being introducted at all, but I guess will time things will get stable.

@Lunaire If it’s the amulet I think it is, it’s “partially rabid” which means wasted points on precission you’re not really using.