Guild Wars 2

I’m considering moving my more or less meta zerker thief to viper/sinister condi instead. Does anyone with experience making this change have suggestions for or against? I probably do 60% open world and 40% fractals/dungeons, but I’d like to get into raids eventually too.

Froptimus.6741:

I’m considering moving my more or less meta zerker thief to viper/sinister condi instead. Does anyone with experience making this change have suggestions for or against? I probably do 60% open world and 40% fractals/dungeons, but I’d like to get into raids eventually too.

So, while I haven’t raided on thief, I have recently put together a condi set which I’ve been using quite a bit. Here’s my experience on condi vs power for thief builds:

Pros of Condi:
– Tons of evades as part of the damage rotation makes it easy to survive
– Chews through breakbars very quickly with shared BV
– Deals much better DPS than most expect
– Whirl combos work great with fire fields and ethereal fields
– Scales better with Alacrity than power since so much damage comes from cooldown-based utility skills

Cons of Condi:
– Evade-based rotation often makes it easy to fall off ledges (sometimes you just need to aim towards a wall and drop your target to control movement)
– Relies on filling utility skills with damage, so it’s tough to fit in stun break or refuge without affecting dps.
– Low access to swiftness unless you are solo running Trickery
– Vipers/Sinister gear is much more expensive than zerk

Also, here’s what I’ve been running. Trickery can replace SA when you’re not in a group.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8lCFNhdmCeNB8PhlWCTLAEiWAcLqjQRY+EuCfhA-TBSAQBhUZQEV/5SKBDo+ABu/AAeCAYTpn0OFAkCYRlVA-e

Honestly, I expect that the actual dps of venom share is higher than what many people calculate since lifesteal is not listed in combat logs (and won’t show up in a legal damage meter) and since fire fields are common, you get a good amount of extra dps from burning.

My one big concern was the potential aoe loss of vault/bound/wc. Do you still do okay against big groups with lotus/db?

Froptimus.6741:

My one big concern was the potential aoe loss of vault/bound/wc. Do you still do okay against big groups with lotus/db?

Yea, lotus/db are also AoE. It has less max targets (3 max, vs 5 on staff Vault) though.

venom share is good single target burst (especially since you can pre-load it, and then double venom a target), but it’s not as good for sustained dps. And its power is wasted for AoE, as it’s all single target.

With 3 venoms (heal, spider, skale), the lifesteal portion is going to add about 30k damage over 32 seconds (24s with perma alacrity). Spider venom alone can get you 8k poison ticks (with 25 might and lotus buff), but only for 12 seconds, on a 32 s cooldown. Total poison damage from it is about 100k. and skale venom is about 1/4 as strong (I’m assuming the target is moving about 20% of the time)

and initiative doesn’t scale with alacrity or quickness. You can death blossom once every 4 seconds, and each cast is going to do about 13k damage
Lotus does about 5k and takes .75 sec to use, so that’s 6-7k dps while using it. Dagger auto chain should do about 5k power damage against 2000 armor with an extra 2.5k poison damage. With quickness that’s almost 7k dps.

So if baseline dps is 7k, death blossoms add about 2k dps for 9k, and then venom share with perma alacrity adds about 6k. then steal and the third utility skill combined is about 1k dps

so I reckon you can get 16k sustained single target dps with might, fury, alacrity, quickness.
and here is my assumed build

though I assumed 100% uptime on lotus training buff, which isn’t possible, but you can add banners and stuff for more dps

Venomshare is a waste of time unless you’re raiding. You’ll be much better off taking trickery for dodge caltrops and lower steal cooldown so that you can take more survival/utility in the open world, fractals, or dungeons.

In the more controlled tank/dps environment of raids where your DPS really matters, and you very rarely have to defend yourself or bring utility other than your venom damage and breakbar shred, swapping out trickery for venomshare is the way to go, but outside of raids you’re going to be a much better help to your party and yourself by taking shadow refuge, bandit’s defense, and whatever third utility you want.

Dahkeus.8243:

Froptimus.6741:

My one big concern was the potential aoe loss of vault/bound/wc. Do you still do okay against big groups with lotus/db?

Yea, lotus/db are also AoE. It has less max targets (3 max, vs 5 on staff Vault) though.

Keep in mind, however, that it hits 3 times, which actually translates to anywhere between 3 and 9 targets hit.

Thanks all for the info! I’ve started building out my condi gear.