Guild Wars 2

I have been trying out and tweaking a death blossom condition build on BWE2 and BWE3. It seemed to work quite well. In the end I want to use this for PvE solo, fractals and raids.
I however am a bit in a doubt regarding some gear/trait-options.

This is the build I want to use, with my current gear that I have been preparing:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoY4Yn8MBNPhtNBemC0PhlWCzrMcHiCzjwV4LULA0FWAA-TByHABCq+juKLo9JAEx+DlpfoOlgFpUDgTCAA-e

In short:
- Two sets of dagger/dagger with weaponswapping when off-cooldown for extra initiative and endurance while being able to spam death blossom on both actionbars. Lotus training for the conditions on dodge and the extra condition damage.
- Pistol/dagger set for ranged option
- Switch out traits in trickery to “thrill of the crime” and “bountiful theft” in raid settings to support your group more.

Some things that are still on my mind:
- Sinister or carrion: carrion gives that extra vitality and keeps you alive longer, especially with raids. Sinister however gives you that wee bit of extra physical damage through a higher crit chance. Sinister doesn’t add anything for condition damage though. A dead thief deals no dps.
- Acrobatics or trickery; acrobatics does give a lot to the endurance synergies but lacks the damage options/support that trickery offers.
- Runes: affliction or scavenging: affliction gives a lot of extra condition duration thus more stacks in the end. Scavenging; life steal and a condition damage boost (120 extra). Maybe even a total different set of runes?

I made a much longer post on a similar thread a few weeks back, so I’ll give you the cliff notes here from a guy that has been playing deathblossom in pve for years and tested it extensively with daredevil in the BWEs. There is no “one way” to build it, but here are some things to consder that have changed my build over the years as I went from secondary DPS to primary melee initiator on my PvE groups. Much of this is focused on survivability, so if you like to keep skewing toward damage but feel you need just a tiny bit more tank, consider any or all of the below points!

Energy sigils ain’t that great, use a shortbow, you will need to drop back if you take a big hit and regain SoM health sometimes and SB1 and 2 are great ranged multihitters to do that quickly

Consider mad king runes any time you are running SoM. The bird attack counds each bird strike as an attack, turning your elite in to a pretty nice burst heal without putting your signet on cooldown. It also combos very well with carrion gear on any bleed build. This lets you swap out daggerstorm for BV or another elite for single target fights and still get a nice (and more frequent) burst heal. It’s going to give you enough duration that you can near-cap it with food, and in general tends to have great overall synergy with the damage pie of deathblossom builds and the healing charactersitics of SoM. I pretty much swear by it for this build.

Consider a sigil for condition removal. It actually helps a lot due to the high hit volume of deathblossom (and now lotus)

Consider roll for initiative as a stunbreak. It gives many of the benefits of withdraw (on demand evade to get you out of a tight spot) while still allowing you to use SoM as your heal. It is also a trick, which means it drops a condition when traited. The initiative it grants makes a nice DPS boost, or a good emergency refill when you need to shortbow-heal at range with some cluster bombs after rolling away after a big hit.

Seriously consider a plague sigil. With potent poison this is actually pretty solid aoe damage for a sigil.

Go Carrion, if using a crit sigil take enough sinister pieces to get crit around 10-15% depending on your digil cooldown. Without taking critical strikes, crit doesn’t really do much at all for the condition thief aside from buff the minimal point of your damage. Having more base HP is extremely important when using SoM as a heal, as you don’t have much in the way of reliable burst healing so you need to have a deeper hp to take a few more hits and generally survive if you have to drop back and SB heal.

Caltrops! Caltrops actually proc SoM, and are useful in PvE as many bosses are stationary, and most trash is happy to cluster on you, taking your phat bleeds and providing you extra HP. They’re also a trick which lets you use them as a condi cleanse (though this isn’t usually practical due to the cooldown, it does help passive removal a bit.)

Don’t count out shadow refuge! SR, aside from its ninja nurse abilities, is also a pretty fly combo with SoM and offhand dagger. dancing dagger procs both the dark combo field lifesteal and som on each target hit. If you take a big hit and still have a lot of init, SR can allow you to spam a bunch of dancing daggers and be back up at full HP. The dark field also interacts (less reliably) with shortbow auto for the same healing trick, and it also interacts favorably with impairing daggers (which as of laucnh are 100% projectile finishers) SR is always a good swap for boss fights for both group utility and personal survivability given its versatile nature as either a big stealth or a very useful dark field for personal healing combos as listed.

C-c-combos!
Don’t forget, shortbow 2 is a burst finisher which can net a lot of useful group heal. Necro wells are dark fields which grant the same powerful stacking heal interactions I noted in the paragraph on SR. deathblossom, lotus, and daggerstorm are whirls, so keeping in water, dark, or light fields whenever possible helps team and personal survivability with healing, cleansing, or lifestealing combos that passively trigger while you’re just doing your normal whirly thing.

Thanks for all the input! Will certainly make use of this to adjust the build!