Guild Wars 2

Hey all, hopping in to ask a quick and general opinion on a certain sigil.

Now i’m a P/D condition thief and i’m relatively pvp seasoned. So in the endless struggle to optimize my character i’ve hit a conundrum.

At the moment I’m using two Sigil of Agony in my weapon, 10% bleed duration.
as well as 2 afflicted 15% bleed duration
2 centaur 15% bleed duration
2 krait 15% bleed duration.

This gives me… If my basic math is right. =P 65% bleed duration.

Now the conundrum. I wonder if it’s worth saccing 10% on a weapon for the Sigil of Corruption

((10 condition damage on kill, stacking up to 25 times. Stacks are lost on down))

The benefit is I can pre-buff the condition damage off NPC’s and creatures, the downside is it’s lost on down.

The downside to the bleed sigil is with so much condition removal in PVP I might be OVER buffing my condition duration… The plus side is the people who lack condition removal and are stuck with my lovely, lovely bleeds.

So I come to the Thief community and ask their general opinions. Damage vs Time

seeing as the pistol bleeds only gain a tick every 25% bleed duration, more than worth it. so only the 25% 50% 75% and full 100% marks give those bleeds extra ticks. death blossom is every 10% if you use it as well.

IMO, Condition Damage > Condition Duration in terms of Bleeding. But in terms of Vulnerability or Cripple on the other hand, Condition Duration please.

Any condition that deals damage should be spec’d Condition Damage and any condition that stacks non-damage debuff (i.e. chill, cripple, vuln) should spec’d Condition Duration.

So if your goal is to stack bleed, then go for intensity instead of duration.

sPvP I run with 3 Krait runes, 3 Afflicted runes, 2 Sigils of Agony on my P/D and a Sigil of Corruption on my SB.

That gets you to +50% Bleed duration with decent Condition Damage. Just remember to swap out to Shortbow when it’s safe to get more CondiDmg on stomps or when you know kills are coming.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

IMO, Condition Damage > Condition Duration in terms of Bleeding. But in terms of Vulnerability or Cripple on the other hand, Condition Duration please.

Any condition that deals damage should be spec’d Condition Damage and any condition that stacks non-damage debuff (i.e. chill, cripple, vuln) should spec’d Condition Duration.

So if your goal is to stack bleed, then go for intensity instead of duration.

In general, Duration is far superior to Damage for conditions (As long as they’re not cleansed)

Since 1 extra tick often does much more damage than is gained by similar effort into condition damage.

For example:

Bleeds do 42.5 damage per tick base with a scaling of 0.05 * Condition damage. With a 4 second bleed (The duration of P/X bleeds) it will tick 4 times for 4x 42.5 = 170 damage. 25% extra duration will give it an extra 42.5 damage over the duration whilst it would need 212.5 condition damage to be equivilent.

This discrepancy only further increases the more condition damage you already have:

1000 Condition damage – 92.5 damage bleeds.
Would need 462.5 Condition Damage to be equivalent damage to 25% condition duration. 925 Condition Damage to be equivalent damage to 50% condition duration.

But as said previously, P/X Bleeds are 4 seconds long so they only benefit from Condition Duration at the 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% marks, anything inbetween gives no benefit.

As far as I can tell, 100% bleed duration is not possible to achieve in PvP (I can get up to 95% but with a pretty bad build) but 75% is (2x Centaur, 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted runes + 2x Agony Sigils + 10 points into Deadly Arts = 75%) which would give 7 second bleeds.

In short, as long as you can get the highest of the plateaus you’re aiming for, any more condition duration is wasted and best served going for extra condition damage.

Taril.8619:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

IMO, Condition Damage > Condition Duration in terms of Bleeding. But in terms of Vulnerability or Cripple on the other hand, Condition Duration please.

Any condition that deals damage should be spec’d Condition Damage and any condition that stacks non-damage debuff (i.e. chill, cripple, vuln) should spec’d Condition Duration.

So if your goal is to stack bleed, then go for intensity instead of duration.

In general, Duration is far superior to Damage for conditions (As long as they’re not cleansed)

Since 1 extra tick often does much more damage than is gained by similar effort into condition damage.

For example:

Bleeds do 42.5 damage per tick base with a scaling of 0.05 * Condition damage. With a 4 second bleed (The duration of P/X bleeds) it will tick 4 times for 4x 42.5 = 170 damage. 25% extra duration will give it an extra 42.5 damage over the duration whilst it would need 212.5 condition damage to be equivilent.

This discrepancy only further increases the more condition damage you already have:

1000 Condition damage – 92.5 damage bleeds.
Would need 462.5 Condition Damage to be equivalent damage to 25% condition duration. 925 Condition Damage to be equivalent damage to 50% condition duration.

But as said previously, P/X Bleeds are 4 seconds long so they only benefit from Condition Duration at the 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% marks, anything inbetween gives no benefit.

As far as I can tell, 100% bleed duration is not possible to achieve in PvP (I can get up to 95% but with a pretty bad build) but 75% is (2x Centaur, 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted runes + 2x Agony Sigils + 10 points into Deadly Arts = 75%) which would give 7 second bleeds.

In short, as long as you can get the highest of the plateaus you’re aiming for, any more condition duration is wasted and best served going for extra condition damage.

My position is this;

If it takes 4 seconds to deal 170 dmg (42.5/tick) and you can deal that same amount of damage on the first tick with 850 Condition damage, then Condition Damage is better than Duration — that is with +0% duration. Even if it is cleansed, the damage is done and if not cleansed, it will simply compound over time the more stack of bleeding you add on.

Now let’s compare the effort to achieve the damage in comparison to duration.

+25% gives extra tick = 170 (4s) + 42.5 = 212.5
To get +25%, we need to have 10pt in DA + 2 Centaurs

To achieve that damage within the 4s tick, we only need 250 Condition Damage.
250 Condition Damage = 220 (4s)
To get to 250 Condition Damge, we can easily get that amount (+ more) with a carrion amulet (+798 Condition Damage).

By one amulet, we just added damage comparable to +75% Condition Duration — which again the full damage is done within 4s of bleeding with Condition Damage while Condition Duration will take 7s-8s to deal that much damage.

Now to get +75%, according to you, you need all these;

2x Centaur, 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted runes + 2x Agony Sigils + 10 points into Deadly Arts

All that is equal to ONE carrion amulet. Any extra Condition Duration only makes Condition Damage look even better.

Keep in mind also that there are many passive protection against Condition Duration and few, if none, passive protection against Condition Damage. Condition Damage is either mitigated by Regen or completely removed, but they are easy to reapply.

IMO, deal the damage as soon as possible rather than trying to put it off.

@SirVincent: Those protections against CD Duration will also hurt your not prolonged bleeds anyway.

Once stable a +75% duration (my method for getting that is a bit different and gets more CD damage) is VERY powerful and you can get a lot of bleed stacks on your target. Condition Builds tend to produce fights a bit longer than usual so you’re getting the extra time.

Btw how exactly do you achieve 170 damage/tick bleeds? Just curious about that part.

Of course if you’re going for Bleeds you get Condition Damage (in fact there isn’t an amulet for condition duration it’s basically the way to go to maximize it). And of course the Carrion Amulet makes your conditions very strong (it’s the point of that), but you made an unfair comparison.

If you can find a combination of runes and sigils that can give you 75% condition damage then you can make a fair comparison. Amulets/PvE Armor+Trinkets are meant to be what really makes you stronger.

Having a very high CD, and then upgrade it with +75% damage through duration makes it really strong.

In fact when you already have a high CD, you will prefer to add in duration as it’s percentile increase, rather than more bits of CD that are aditive increases (good when the atribute is low, not significative when already high).

@OP: The method I use for +75% is: 2*Sigil of Agony, 3*Rune of the Krait, 3*Rune of the Afflicted, 25 DA points.

It gives you 110 extra condition damage (the lvl 3 from Krait and Afflicted), and +10% direct damage (Carrion gives you a very good amount of Power so it’s useful) against foes with conditions (which means basically always).

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Now to get +75%, according to you, you need all these;

2x Centaur, 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted runes + 2x Agony Sigils + 10 points into Deadly Arts

All that is equal to ONE carrion amulet. Any extra Condition Duration only makes Condition Damage look even better.

But since there’s not a Condition Duration amulet it means you’re going to be using the Carrion Amulet anyway, so that’s a non issue.

You only have to compare the relative damage outputs from the things that share slots so that would be – Runes and Sigils (Traits could be counted but I still have 30 points in Trickery on my P/D PvP build so I’m not losing out on Condition Damage)

Runes – A maximum of 211 Condition damage (5x one kind of rune + 1 of another)
Sigils – A maximum of 250 Condition damage (Via stacking Corruption)

Whilst you can still get 75% duration which with the Carrion Amulet would require 925 condition damage to match the damage output (261 < 925) meaning getting the condition duration is higher.

You also might point out that cleansing would reduce the effectiveness of condition duration, but since you lose out on a minimal amount of damage and also if you account for the speed at which the bleeds are reapplied (Especially via sneak attack) and how often most builds can cleanse, duration still out does damage.

Lokheit.7943:

Btw how exactly do you achieve 170 damage/tick bleeds? Just curious about that part.

That’s just a regular one stack of 4s bleed from firing one Vital Shot.

Of course if you’re going for Bleeds you get Condition Damage (in fact there isn’t an amulet for condition duration it’s basically the way to go to maximize it). And of course the Carrion Amulet makes your conditions very strong (it’s the point of that), but you made an unfair comparison.

Not really unfair because that’s the amulet available in PvP.

If you can find a combination of runes and sigils that can give you 75% condition damage then you can make a fair comparison. Amulets/PvE Armor+Trinkets are meant to be what really makes you stronger.

That’s not a good comparison since for every points you add to Condition Damage, the damage from Condition Duration for that extra tick(s) also adds up.

But let’s accept for a second that +75% duration doesn’t have damage increase, a regular one shot of Vital Shot will produce a 4s bleed for 42.5dmg/sec. With +75%, the total damage after 7s is roughly 298 damage.

To match that, it will take around 650 Condition Damage to bleed for 300 total damage after 4s for 75dmg/sec.

The difference is, if the duration is shorten due to counter condition duration items or if the condition is cleansed, your +75% duration are just wasted damage stats.

The PvP amulet of +798 condition damage insures that you deal a condition damage comparable to damage as if the condition has been ticking for 8s.

Having a very high CD, and then upgrade it with +75% damage through duration makes it really strong.

In theory, yes I agree.

In fact when you already have a high CD, you will prefer to add in duration as it’s percentile increase, rather than more bits of CD that are aditive increases (good when the atribute is low, not significative when already high).

My position is this: If you already have high enough condition damage, there’s no need for Condition Duration, instead invest those attribute slots for survival or raw damage increase.

when it comes to pvp its always best to work on the assumption that they will get removed quickly, so I tend to work with damage > duration except if your running pistols in which case you sort of want to be hitting 25-50% duration so you can maintain stuff like sneak attack bleeds.

When it really comes down to it you want the enemy dead, the sooner they are dead the better (specially for thieves) a short stack that hits hard works best for this and prevents the larger portion of the damage getting cleaned. Duration would work better in a more WvW sort of situation where you could tag a large number of people with conditions from relative safely with a good chance maybe 1 of them forgot to bring their condition removal but I’d still take damage over duration and as Vincent says stack other stats when hitting the top end amount.