Guild Wars 2

Having played both sets rather extensively, i still have no idea which set is more effective.

Using Rabid, i have used full undead runes to capitalize on toughness whilst using sigil of earth for bleed crits procs. (More dps in the short term)

Using Carrion, i used the typical “wild bill” 2/2/2 runes. (Far superior bleed duration and ultimately, higher damage if the bleeds last their full duration, but less DPS meaning those with access to a lot of condition removal pose a greater threat)

For both sets i used the 0/0/30/20/20 traits but recently changed up to take advantage of mug and the trickery trait line buff.

I noticed however, that the majority of P/D (if not most) users use Carrion, why is this? Or perhaps, they’re simply situational?

I use carrion on my condition build (can’t speak for others) for several reasons.

1)Thieves don’t have good crit procs. We have the occasional fury, and 2 second haste (which, if using a P/D right, is nigh useless), and 1 stack of vulnerability per second, but basically you are using Rabid for the Sigil of Earth, and the Sigil is only so-so at best.

2)Thieves benefit more from vitality. As a class with the lowest HP, giving us a lot more HP makes us quite a bit more survivable. Thieves have the ability to hide and disengage, so healing up isn’t too much of an issue.

3)Thieves benefit more from power. Precision is really only good if you have good procs or if you have a high crit damage. That build has neither. Because of this, the extra power will help out with doing more damage than precision would. I also run D/D right next to P/D, and power really helps out with Backstab, Heartseeker, and even Shadow Strike.

I use Rabid with Undead runes, as you said, on my P/D build. /shrug

0/0/30/20/20 – shaman build
use shaman + undead rune

20/0/30/20/0

Well, technically, it’s a Venom Build.
Bleed Runes, P/D+D/0 with a Sigil of Geomancy in the offhand dagger, full carrion.

Sigil of Geomancy is great against people who try to press into melee range no matter what.

Spending a lot of time in melee range > Rabid
Low ability to heal > Rabid
Procs on crits > Rabid
Low health pool > Carrion
Poor condition removal > Carrion

Also carrion has steady damage, you will always perform these less or more 800 sneak attacks, while rabid will put out between 600 and 1000.

And I’ve tried shaman, and find it awful. Sure sure you heal a bit more with shaman equipment, but a good P/D can easily survive against 2+ ppl, he might not kill anyone but the dumbest players who stands afk on the caltrops using his condition cleanse utilities and wonders why he still has bleeds on him.
But hey, the shaman P/D wont do that either. So Power or Crit chance is a much greater addition. It’s when a class has large access to burning and bleeds at the same time power/crit chance loses its value.

And 25% condition duration equals 25% more cond damage on P/D and by using all 2×2×2 runes and placing 5 points in deadly arts you’ll have 50% more cond damage as simple as that. And with the wild bill build 75% more condition damage for everytime you sneak attack. And besides that, you’ll also run around with 14+ might, depending on how many venoms you decide to roll with.
Doing ~10 more dmg per bleed tick might be better against classes with high condition management. Afterall you’ll do ~280 extra dmg on 7×4 ticks, not bad huh? While that 1 second extra will provide you with up to 800 more dmg uncleansed.
Caltrops will also have 2 seconds longer bleeds with wild bills 65% bleed duration
which can stack up to 20 bleeds along with sneak attack on ppl standing idle on caltrops.

Personally I’d only take cond dmg over cond duration when bleeds are around and above 10 seconds or if I have really high access to bleeds.

Having used both I can tell you they both work just fine, though with full carrion your dps output will be a bit better.

Condition thieves damage will benefit more from Power than from Precision in the long run, so I consider Carrion to be better.

Unfortunately Carrion is not available in Ascended form, so we end up with something else: I went with these Condition Damage/Toughness/Vitality/Precision accessories while keeping 3 Carrion/3 Settlers. My thief gets around 19k hp (5 WvW stacks) and keeps above 3k armor while my condition do 130~140 damage based on the amount of might stacks I have (10/0/30/0/30). It’s an excellent setup for fighting outnumbered due to an stupid high survival, but lacks burst.

The best thing about condition builds is that you can easily switch from Roamer to Zerger build, while this is not possible on a glass cannon thief.

Rabid is the berseker equiv of a condition build, which I can’t really recommend.

How about a mix of shaman/apoth/carrion with undead runes? Undead runes encourage stacking toughness, which synergizes nicely with tuning crystals.

In WvW, condi damage > duration because of all the condition removals available to players. Note: If they aren’t running any form of condi removal, it doesn’t matter anyways since you’ll own them

Single best source of duration increase is food, so use that. If you really need more you can give up minimal stats and get a giver’s weapon or two, but the precision is really a wasted stat on those weapons.

rabid is really good to mix in on rangers and what not. but i find it to be really unproductive as a full set on th ieves. just my experience. i would never use rabid again.

I might edit my signature to say, “Don’t take anything Travlane says seriously”, but anyway..

Carrion is probably the best for the average p/d build right now. Thieves benefit more from vitality than toughness in our initial stat distribution because of our inherently low health pool, so Rabid wouldn’t exactly be the best choice unless you’re packing some cleric’s gear as well to increase your EHP. I do advise you to try out both sets and the different synergies you can achieve with them, because people will tell you that their builds are the best when in reality, rabid gear may suit your playstyle better than carrion. Just some food for thought.

I’m not partial to stacking condition damage, even though that’s P/D’s main damage source. I like my bleeds to hurt enough to be worth cleansing, but have power be my heavy-weight. It adds some spike to my Mug and keeps my secondary weapon set from being completely anemic.

For that reason, I like Carrion on at least my pistol and dagger. For a set with no healing (which I have a habit of stacking), I’d armor Carrion with Undead runes and Soldier accessories. I’m actually going Shaman/Undead armor and acessorizing with half cleric/half soldier. I wouldn’t really recommend it, though. I like the added heal on Mug, Assassin’s Reward and Signet of Healing when lazily slumming the overworld, but with the game as it is, it quickly loses value on harder content and pvp compared to the added damage I could be doing.

I use a 50/50 combo of Carrion and Rabid (for the toughness). I have just enough critical chance to make decent use of the Sigil of Earth.

I wonder if celestial would be a good option for that weapon set..

roamzero.9486:

I wonder if celestial would be a good option for that weapon set..

I’ve pondered down the same line, though my gut tells me no. The major draw to Celestial seems to be the availability of both precision and crit-damage on the same piece. Second is the even spread for toughness and vitality, but most thieves really want straight vitality.

Crits don’t really seem the optimal route for P/D. But, without crunching the numbers, I can’t call that a pure rule. For all I know, Celestial could hit some kind of sweet spot with the right trait build.

Clockwork Bard.3105:

roamzero.9486:

I wonder if celestial would be a good option for that weapon set..

I’ve pondered down the same line, though my gut tells me no. The major draw to Celestial seems to be the availability of both precision and crit-damage on the same piece. Second is the even spread for toughness and vitality, but most thieves really want straight vitality.

Crits don’t really seem the optimal route for P/D. But, without crunching the numbers, I can’t call that a pure rule. For all I know, Celestial could hit some kind of sweet spot with the right trait build.

One thing that this thread made quite clear is: There is no best stat combination on a P/D. Mix and match until you find your ideal set, even Celestial might have it’s place in there.

FROM A MATHEMATICAL PERSPECTIVE THERE IS NO REASON TO GO RABID ON A P/D THIEF

The amount of total damage you get from power compared to precission is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu(100 more u)uuuuge.

Using Sigil of Earth in no way compensates for the lost on direct damage (remember that even if you’re a bleeder, there is still direct damage and the difference is so big that it compensates losing some more bleeds from sigil of earth).

If you do the derivate to distribute 1000 points between power and precission to get the maximum damage scenario, the result says that not only you give all 1000 to power, but you also substract points from precission (resulting on a very small percentage of anti-critical hits that will heal your target) to get maximum average damage.

That’s how poor Precission is compared to Power. And given how a P/D set won’t get many on crit benefits (and sigil of earth is faaaaaar from being enough to cover it) you chose the one that will result on more damage total.

Some professions, like the Necromancer or maybe the Ranger, can benefit from precission on condi builds, as they have access to very consistent bleed on crit aplications, but even then they’re more effective when mixing some Carrion with Rampager or Rabid.

As for defense, while Toughness helps in the long term, being a tier 3 HP profession (and HP tiers are HUGE compared with Armor tiers, despite Armor having a visual explanation and HP not as you can get the same physical form on any profession) means that investing on HP increases your survivality way more than on a tier 1 HP profession so it’s completly ok to go Vit instead of Tough, specially when you’re already getting 300 Tough from Shadow Arts on a P/D set.

Mathematically, on a Thief Carrion curbstomps Rabid.

I still don’t have ascended equipment because I don’t want to make big investments on stat combinations that will be worse for me than their Exotic counterparts (Exotic Carrion versus Ascended Rabid). At least they said Ascended will be crafteable in the future and Carrion is crafteable.

Lokheit.7943:

FROM A MATHEMATICAL PERSPECTIVE THERE IS NO REASON TO GO RABID ON A P/D THIEF

The amount of total damage you get from power compared to precission is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu(100 more u)uuuuge.

Using Sigil of Earth in no way compensates for the lost on direct damage (remember that even if you’re a bleeder, there is still direct damage and the difference is so big that it compensates losing some more bleeds from sigil of earth).

If you do the derivate to distribute 1000 points between power and precission to get the maximum damage scenario, the result says that not only you give all 1000 to power, but you also substract points from precission (resulting on a very small percentage of anti-critical hits that will heal your target) to get maximum average damage.

That’s how poor Precission is compared to Power. And given how a P/D set won’t get many on crit benefits (and sigil of earth is faaaaaar from being enough to cover it) you chose the one that will result on more damage total.

Some professions, like the Necromancer or maybe the Ranger, can benefit from precission on condi builds, as they have access to very consistent bleed on crit aplications, but even then they’re more effective when mixing some Carrion with Rampager or Rabid.

As for defense, while Toughness helps in the long term, being a tier 3 HP profession (and HP tiers are HUGE compared with Armor tiers, despite Armor having a visual explanation and HP not as you can get the same physical form on any profession) means that investing on HP increases your survivality way more than on a tier 1 HP profession so it’s completly ok to go Vit instead of Tough, specially when you’re already getting 300 Tough from Shadow Arts on a P/D set.

Mathematically, on a Thief Carrion curbstomps Rabid.

I still don’t have ascended equipment because I don’t want to make big investments on stat combinations that will be worse for me than their Exotic counterparts (Exotic Carrion versus Ascended Rabid). At least they said Ascended will be crafteable in the future and Carrion is crafteable.

I agree that power is a lot better than precision on most p/d builds. However I prefer toughness because selfhealing (which is, atleast in my build, a cornerstone of a lot of p/d builds) scales a lot better with toughness.

I think you are also underestimating toughness on a thief. My guardian has somewhere around 3K+ while my thief has around 2.5K. The same way a guardian with low health, some healing and toughness beats a vitality character when it comes to survival, so does a thief with those stats beats another thief with vitality when it comes to survival.

Damage output is prolly higher with carrion though, but the amount of extra survival you get in exchange is well worth it imo.

A mix is also nice. I have 2.9k toughness with 16.5k Hp on my P/D build. I have to almost try to die with all my condition removal and teleports

Smo.6520:

A mix is also nice. I have 2.9k toughness with 16.5k Hp on my P/D build. I have to almost try to die with all my condition removal and teleports

Yeah, I’m also using a mix. I was just voicing my support for toughness on a thief. I don’t like playing a character with a health pool below 16k.Besides, toughness/vitality and precision/power are stats that synergize very well, so it makes perfect sense.

Just mentioning something I heard Jumper say on the SoaC Thief podcast

Jumper (pro player) Tested Using Pistol with Rabid, Beserker, and Carrion gear.
Results: Both Beserker and Carrion gear were more DPS that the Rampager set.

I hope this helps

My P/D set uses a mix of carrion and apothecary. I really like the stat spread of this combination… seems far more survivable without giving up much damage. You could convert a carrion pure P/D over inexpensively using the settler’s jewelry if you wish to give it a shot.