Guild Wars 2

So I finally got around to playing around with venomshare thief. Just finished finding the max dps build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVl8MhmmYRTwwJw/EHtElOACxFYfoRXiyX0joIA-TBSBQBTSJYHVG4v9Hao6PO7BA0P9AUTpHAOBAkCYRlVA-e

Your rotation is auto attacking and popping venoms (turns out daredevil dodge is a dps loss. it could still be correct however since your going to have to dodge at some point and it mitigates how much damage you lose),

Will post a video when I can convince my team to let me bring it LOL

I’m not quite convinced this is the 100% best condi thief build for raids. Let me explain.

First, how much of this build is based on quickness due to the majority of the damage coming from auto attacking with D/D. Do you think the difference between this build and the traditional venom share D/D build with Daredevil dodging and is close depending on how much quickness you have?

Even if this build is a bit higher, what purpose does it serve? If you are going to use a venom share thief build in raids, I imagine it is because you need condition damage (i.e. vale guardian). The build you posted will do much less condition damage due to not using Daredevil dodging and dagger #3. If you are doing the majority of your damage from dagger auto, and a 32 second cool down on venoms, why take condition thief? Why not just play staff power thief which probably does more DPS than both venom share builds.

If you need condition damage and have the gear/build for a thief, I feel like the traditional venom share build is the way to go, even if it is slightly less overall DPS. It should have more of its DPS from conditions.

I’m interested to see your testing and hope that you prove me wrong

ButterPeanut, the argument is not just about the power from dagger autos, but that the poison on AA 3 is competitive with the bleed from DB and the mod/condis from Lotus. With quickness and the aftercast reduction, I believe they are probably pretty close. You can also run Sinister with Orr or Thorn runes for higher condi damage than Viper since you only worry about one condition. Overall, you should still have plenty of condi output.

Edit: upon extensive calculations (will post shortly), here is what I found:

• Pure AA DPS is almost exactly the same as AA+DB+Lotus if you switch from viper to sinister and have 100% quickness uptime
• If you have 0 quickness, AA only is a 3.5k DPS loss
• With 100% quickness, Backstab and Lotus still improve DPS over pure AA, while DB decreases it
• There is no scenario where best DPS Is AA only

Edit 2: Calculations. Feel free to make a copy if you want to edit the spreadsheet. Turquoise fields are user input. I kinda shoehorned the power DPS stuff in really quick, so the power stat doesn’t auto update based on stat choice, and there are a few other incomplete things.

Very interesting spreadsheet. But I think there are a few things that you could do to improve it even further. I’m not sure if the link you posted for the viper based build was wrong, but it appeared the same as your sinister build when I clicked it.

In the sinister build, you also have over 110% condi duration! Remove some of that! I haven’t run the numbers, but in both builds I would anticipate that Havoc Mastery is a greater gain than Brawler’s Tenacity.

Here’s the build that I would suggest
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAoYn8lCFNhNNBemC8PhlWCbeE2CfhaBgQ0CgbRdEKCA-TBSAQBBUPwlUCGR1fk2DAAbK9E4+DA4EAESlBkCYRlVA-e

Edit: Ran the math in the build you linked you have 130% poison duration! Anything over 100 is a 0% DPS increase.
Food/Utility = 30%
Malice sigil = 10%
Viper’s Weapons+Amulet = 12%
Runes = 45%
Potent Poison = 33%
Total = 130%

Yeah the build link is a relic from when the template didn’t have stat selection, so it isn’t accurate. Poison is overcapped because flat duration is beneficial to a point for bleed and torment, while the Thorn 6 bonus makes it superior to any other option* besides Zerk runes. A Backstab rotation would probably benefit more from Zerk runes, I just didn’t bother switching to them.

I’ll make the power field update with stat and rune selection so you can easily see how Zerk and Thorn compare. You can swap it now if you want, but it will only auto update condition related stuff.

*Edit: As an example, Trapper/Nightmare result in much less poison overcap, and 25% more flat duration, but it is a DPS Loss due to slightly lower condi damage and the loss of Thorn 6.

Edit 2: The build you posted is good, but the agony sigil is not as good as bursting. Even if DB is in your rotation, most of your damage comes from poison, and you’ll get more mileage out of the 6% condi damage boost. Havoc is a good choice. I don’t have power % mods in the template yet, but I’ll add them.

I’d be interested to see the math on bursting versus agony. I know other classes use things like earth/geomancy and they are much better than bursting, but not having a bleed duration trait makes bursting seem more applicable.

One additional benefit that hasn’t been mentioned yet is if you use the viper armor with berserker runes you can also swap that gear set over to an engineer and have best in slot condition damage with that class as well.

Here’s a simple version of the math:

• Assume Bursting is roughly a 5% damage increase for all conditions (not all conditions scale 1:1 with condi damage)
• Since you have 166% duration already, a 20% increase to bleed duration is an effective 12% DPS increase to bleed only
• For 12% bleed to account for an overall 5% DPS increase, bleeding needs to be at least 41.67% of your total condi DPS

Using DB And Lotus, bleeding is somewhere around 30% of your total condi damage, and therefore Agony is worse. It will probably be better if you drop ID and Skelk for Needle Trap and Caltrops, but even then Bursting is competitive.

So one thing that everyone in this thread is missing is that dodging with Lotus Training and Death Blossom have combo finishers. What fields are most commonly used in raids? Fire and ethereal. Both of these, when you whirl through them, create lots of added conditions. I can maintain upwards of 8 burning stacks on VG and even more on Sabetha through the use of whirl finishers inside of Wildfire fields. This adds a substantial amount of damage that simply autoattacking with quickness lacks.

Also, the idea that Sinister gear is better than Viper’s is very wrong. Daredevil condition DPS relies primarily on poison, it’s true, but so many other damaging conditions get created between Skelk Venom / Lotus Training / Death Blossom / Whirl Finishers that maxing Viper’s is hands down better. The extra condition duration on the burning from whirls alone is critically important for overall DPS and makes Viper’s irreplaceable. Also don’t forget that with Viper’s you can use Berserker runes which are great.

tl;dr: Daredevil > Critical Strikes, Viper’s > Sinister

The only part about the build that I haven’t ironed out yet is:

• Havoc Mastery or Brawler’s Tenacity (w/ Impairing Daggers)
  The big difference here is that BT also benefits your heal skill and gives you extra endurance, which in turn helps with more whirls and more damage mitigation. Practically I lean towards BT because the extra survivability makes up for minor teamwide mistakes against the raid bosses or RNG in enemy attacks (ie. getting double blue gooped by Gorseval’s spirits).

Good point Dusk, but even when I blow all of my endurance and init on whirling through fire fields it does not make enough of a difference to justify any stat change. Even with 100% duration, it’s only 2s of burning per whirl (assuming the projectiles even hit), which is roughly on par with a proc of Dagger Training (4s poison with 33% extra damage). It’s a nice bonus when you dodge, but it’s nowhere close to replacing AA damage.

If you have enough quickness uptime, Backstab, AA, Lotus is superior to a DB rotation (edit: quickness doesn’t matter, BS>DB), at which point Sinister is superior to Viper since you don’t need as much flat duration. They are in the same ball park though, so it’s not like Viper is invalidated.

After more research, Berserker rune is superior to Thorn if you have 3 or less Thorn stacks, Thorn is better after 4 stacks. They are pretty close in any case so this is again a matter of preference. Thorn has a more even damage spread (50/50 condi/power) while Zerk is weighted more towards power (45/55 ish). At least some Viper is desirable if you choose Zerk since you want to hit the poison cap. I need to test this, but I believe Potent Poison is multiplicative duration, making the ideal flat duration 50% (150%*1.33=200%).

Havoc is superior to BT by a reasonable margin (it has a much larger impact than Zerk vs Thorn), especially with a Backstab rotation. I still like BT though.

As ButterPeanut mention, Viper with Zerk runes is BiS for Engi, so that’s a safe bet, but there are certainly other options. There are many variables involved that make one set slightly better or worse than another, so try not to worry about it too much. Just please, don’t use Sigil of Blight.

“I need to test this, but I believe Potent Poison is multiplicative duration, making the ideal flat duration 50% (150%*1.33=200%).”

I don’t believe this is correct, if it is it, that is a game changer. All other condition duration modifiers for other classes are additive, not multiplicative. For example, burning duration on condi warrior should be at 66-67% before King of Fires because it adds 33% duration to equal ~100%. I’d assume potent poison is the same…But if not, than that could affect how much Viper’s gear you need.

Whirl finishers is a great point. I was taking that into consideration but forgot to mention it in my original post. That also does validate even more than bursting could be better than agony because the damage will affect any additional burning/confusion that the thief doesn’t get on it’s own.

This build is so fun and I’m glad it’s useful!

In regards to Havoc Mastery

With the buff to dagger auto attack, my best guess is that the the extra power damage should offset an occasional extra dodge. Even without that trait you can complete Dodge/DB/AA rotation. I’d like to think that 7% extra power damage is better than ~1 more impairing daggers per minute.

Ok, so Potent Poison is very interesting…

Tooltips:
All skills that apply poison have 33% longer duration, but, it changes the actual duration of the skill itself. For example, Spider Venom has its duration changed from 6s to 8s. You can then increase that by up to 100%, resulting in a max duration of 16s! This is the way Chemical Rounds works for Engi on pistol skills. This is backed up by the fact that Potent Poison does not alter the tooltip of Dagger Training, since it is an on-hit effect, and not a skill.

Functionality:
When using a skill that deals poison, in is increased by a flat 33%, capped at 100%.

So…it’s possible that it is intended to work like Chemical Rounds, but it currently does not. That or every single tooltip that references poison is wrong.