Guild Wars 2

I leveled my thief as my first gw2 toon as a condi bleed thief, then specced it out with appropriate gear and good looks, nearly 20 gold (which was a lot for a first timer) was spent on this toon. It was near and dear to my heart.

Then I went to do dungeons and fractals, found out how friggin useless it was. Swapped to burst thief. I fly, things die, all I can say is “oh my.” All my previous gear was deleted.

I also have a fully exotic geared condi necromancer now, so my need for condi damage has been assuaged. But torment… and new runes to support torment… and P/D having torment… it got me wondering again.

Can a bleed + torment P/D thief be viable? Perhaps not so much in PvE, but in wvw and PvP?

I’m thinking of something like this in WvW. This build editor didn’t update yet so the new runes arent available, but I want superior sigil of bursting (not superior sigil of agony) and I want superior rune of tormenting (not afflicted).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqYVlUmaPXaS6E+5EB3Dni0m694rj1sdFuKA-jwxA4MBRKAItAiVAkCLiGbBrIas6YioaA-e

I never played a P/D thief, but the general idea seems interesting. I’ll be focusing on stealing a lot and this gives me my stealth without use of CnD, sneak attack and try to land the 3 skill as much as possible.

Thoughts on this build?

EDIT: Rotation that I was thinking of:
Shadow Strike —> activate skale venom —> steal —> sneak attack —> shadow strike —> kite and spam 1 until steal is off cooldown (which is about 20 secs) and do it again, OR get close enough to CnD to get off more sneak attacks.

What I had in mind was stacking more torment rather than bleed since the P/D seems to excel at kiting, and torment does more damage when target is moving…

Hiya Silver,

I’ve been experimenting with the build you’re mentioning for about a week now. I have 2 Lyssa, 2 Mad King and 2 Centaur runes, (a total of 35% bleed duration & 20% other condition durations) a Giver’s pistol (10% cond. duration) and Carrion Dagger (with Sigil of Corruption for cond. dmg 25 stacks). Furthermore – full Carrion exotic armor & jewellery. Utilities: Shadow Refuge, Caltrops & Shadow Signet. Elite: Either Daggerstorm (if running with Zerg’s in WvW) or Thieves’ Guild (1v1 combat situations).

My traits are:
0
0
30
30
20

I have ~20k hp, incredible survivability and my IRL friend also runs the exact same build, we do devastating AoE damage. It might even work better in PvE than in WvW. I would definitely recommend you to try it, as you probably won’t regret it. Duo with my friend, we managed to get 16 torment and 25 bleed stacks on 1 enemy. ^^

If you need more information, feel free to PM me in-game.

iPsychO if I can recomment it, try putting your bleed duration either at +50% (you need 5% more) or reduce to 25% and reinvest in something useful. from 26 to 49% duration, the effect is exactly the same for all your Pistol Bleeds (not for the caltrops where you need either 33% or 66%, but most of your bleed damage will come from the pistol, and the dodgedrops are also 4 seconds so they benefit form 25 or 50%).

iPsychO.5043:

Hiya Silver,

I’ve been experimenting with the build you’re mentioning for about a week now. I have 2 Lyssa, 2 Mad King and 2 Centaur runes, (a total of 35% bleed duration & 20% other condition durations) a Giver’s pistol (10% cond. duration) and Carrion Dagger (with Sigil of Corruption for cond. dmg 25 stacks). Furthermore – full Carrion exotic armor & jewellery. Utilities: Shadow Refuge, Caltrops & Shadow Signet. Elite: Either Daggerstorm (if running with Zerg’s in WvW) or Thieves’ Guild (1v1 combat situations).

My traits are:
0
0
30
30
20

I have ~20k hp, incredible survivability and my IRL friend also runs the exact same build, we do devastating AoE damage. It might even work better in PvE than in WvW. I would definitely recommend you to try it, as you probably won’t regret it. Duo with my friend, we managed to get 16 torment and 25 bleed stacks on 1 enemy. ^^

If you need more information, feel free to PM me in-game.

0/0/30/30/20 ?

That mean you have 80 Traitspoints ^^

That’s not quite true on the bleed duration math above. It is correct given a single application you won’t see the extra tick unless you can round up to the next second. However if you are continuing to stack durations as is common in a pistol build then the quarter second boundaries that conditions are timed in will add up. +45% bleed on 4s is 5.8s so will fall out kitten -3/4 sec and every 4 shots will give 23s of damage ticks rather than 4 single applications (letting the bleed drop between) which would give 20s of damage ticks.

Lokheit.7943:

iPsychO if I can recomment it, try putting your bleed duration either at +50% (you need 5% more) or reduce to 25% and reinvest in something useful. from 26 to 49% duration, the effect is exactly the same for all your Pistol Bleeds (not for the caltrops where you need either 33% or 66%, but most of your bleed damage will come from the pistol, and the dodgedrops are also 4 seconds so they benefit form 25 or 50%).

You’re better off in increasing the Condition Damage of bleed than trying to squeeze another tick from it. Extending the condition duration of a damaging condition is a waste of stats.

The OP had it right.

Lanny.6987:

That’s not quite true on the bleed duration math above. It is correct given a single application you won’t see the extra tick unless you can round up to the next second. However if you are continuing to stack durations as is common in a pistol build then the quarter second boundaries that conditions are timed in will add up. +45% bleed on 4s is 5.8s so will fall out kitten -3/4 sec and every 4 shots will give 23s of damage ticks rather than 4 single applications (letting the bleed drop between) which would give 20s of damage ticks.

Except this isn’t how it works.

Each bleed has it’s own duration and it ticks separately.

If a bleed lasts 5.8 seconds, it ticks for the first 5 seconds, and disappears after extra 0.8 seconds of being active without ticking.

Each bleed is separated so if you put 5 bleeds with 5.8 seconds each, all of them will have that 0.8 seconds period where they are active but won’t tick.

If you want to add condition duration on bleeds, go for full seconds, else you’re just throwing resources for absolutely nothing that could be used on something else.

If you don’t trust me, film bleed experiments and then put them at super low speed and start counting the bleed ticks, this is how it works. Full seconds or you’re wasting resources.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Lokheit.7943:

iPsychO if I can recomment it, try putting your bleed duration either at +50% (you need 5% more) or reduce to 25% and reinvest in something useful. from 26 to 49% duration, the effect is exactly the same for all your Pistol Bleeds (not for the caltrops where you need either 33% or 66%, but most of your bleed damage will come from the pistol, and the dodgedrops are also 4 seconds so they benefit form 25 or 50%).

You’re better off in increasing the Condition Damage of bleed than trying to squeeze another tick from it. Extending the condition duration of a damaging condition is a waste of stats.

The OP had it right.

While I think we’ve already had this dicusssion, once you reach a good amount of condition damage, it’s much better to get extra seconds (to increase your damage by 25 or 50% even if it comes 1 or 2 seconds later but condition builds are meant to stay for a bit longer anyway) than trying to get every extra condition damage you can for +5-10% condition damage over what you already have in comparison.

If I have to chose between +5-10% damage, or +50% damage with the extra build up starting to trigger 2 seconds later (but once it does all the damage is accelerated and at the end kills much faster than that +5-10% unless that somehow that other set killed in less than 2 seconds) I chose the later. You have to take into consideration where your current condition damage is and if investing more on it will make a bigger difference over getting full extra ticks.

The problem with this build that I am experimenting with is the superior rune of tormenting… it extends my torment duration by 45% but doesn’t really do much for my bleeds. That combined with going 0/0/20/20/30 or any combination of 0/0/x/x/x doesn’t give any condi duration, and it makes no sense to invest in deadly arts at the expense of shadow arts or acrobatics/trickery. Outside of venoms deadly arts doesn’t really offer much condi support or survivability.

I don’t think we have the tools yet to stack a significant amount of torment alone yet, whereas we can stack 20 bleeds with ease. I don’t think I managed to stack 10 torment yet on my own =(. I therefore sadly conclude that I am unable to create a satisfactory torment thief at the moment, and that bleed p/d thief is the superior condi thief at the moment. Sigh.

Don’t bother with stacking torment duration. Go for pure condition duration. It will increase duration on everything, including torment. Until I went with runes of perplexity, I had +75% condition duration, and +25% bleed duration. So every non-bleed condition lasted 75% longer, and my bleeds had a full 100% increase.

It’s not all that hard to hit 50% condition duration, and 75% isn’t that much harder to hit. Even if you didn’t bother with the last 25% bleed duration, +75% is very respectable.

Lokheit.7943:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Lokheit.7943:

iPsychO if I can recomment it, try putting your bleed duration either at +50% (you need 5% more) or reduce to 25% and reinvest in something useful. from 26 to 49% duration, the effect is exactly the same for all your Pistol Bleeds (not for the caltrops where you need either 33% or 66%, but most of your bleed damage will come from the pistol, and the dodgedrops are also 4 seconds so they benefit form 25 or 50%).

You’re better off in increasing the Condition Damage of bleed than trying to squeeze another tick from it. Extending the condition duration of a damaging condition is a waste of stats.

The OP had it right.

While I think we’ve already had this dicusssion, once you reach a good amount of condition damage, it’s much better to get extra seconds (to increase your damage by 25 or 50% even if it comes 1 or 2 seconds later but condition builds are meant to stay for a bit longer anyway) than trying to get every extra condition damage you can for +5-10% condition damage over what you already have in comparison.

If I have to chose between +5-10% damage, or +50% damage with the extra build up starting to trigger 2 seconds later (but once it does all the damage is accelerated and at the end kills much faster than that +5-10% unless that somehow that other set killed in less than 2 seconds) I chose the later. You have to take into consideration where your current condition damage is and if investing more on it will make a bigger difference over getting full extra ticks.

When it comes to bleed, all that is matter is how much damage you’re dealing per second and how many stacks can you apply.

Too focus on getting an extra tick that you’re sacrificing other important stats that your condition duration is currently taking up.

Skale venom is an incredibly weak utility. It isn’t worth taking in any build other than maybe a venom share one for coordinated team play. Even then you are giving up a valuable spot that could be used by a stunbreak or good utility like SR.

Fade.7658:

Don’t bother with stacking torment duration. Go for pure condition duration. It will increase duration on everything, including torment. Until I went with runes of perplexity, I had +75% condition duration, and +25% bleed duration. So every non-bleed condition lasted 75% longer, and my bleeds had a full 100% increase.

It’s not all that hard to hit 50% condition duration, and 75% isn’t that much harder to hit. Even if you didn’t bother with the last 25% bleed duration, +75% is very respectable.

With nourishments I get +70% condition duration and +35% bleed duration in my build mentioned above. With my gear I’m having ~1400 condition damage, that is:
-25 Corruption Sigil stacks;
- Nourishments.

I personally find the condition damage quite good. My bleeds hit 105 per tick. Usually I shadow refuge inside my opponent, cast Caltrop (utility skill), then dodgeroll through my opponent twice. You’ll find that you’ll be having 15-25 bleeding stacks within a few seconds. After that I spam all my initiative on skill #3 (inflicting torment), whilst still auto-attacking my opponent each time I run towards him. If opponents attempt to run away, I use skill #4 (throwing dagger) and then Steal towards them with my 1500-range-trait on Steal. IMO it gives you the upper edge in mobility.

In conclusion: I find this build to work particularly well in PvE circumstances, especially when there’s a couple of mobs involved. In Heart of the Mists, this build also works very well when applying at the capture points. In WvW I do recommend running along with another player, preferably one that has immobilization or stun skills so that you can keep your foe in the caltrops as long as possible.

free bump for you

I have a completely different approach. I run a 20/0/0/20/30 build. Deadly arts helps to increase the offensive utility of steal (I also have sleight of hands in trickery). In addition it put weakness on the target and yes, I am playing with spider venom and scale venom.

Also I am geared for max condition damage, and not for max condition duration. I dont aim to only stack bleeding but to put bleeding, poison and torment on my opponent. Poison is very good for keeping opponent from effectively healing. And most of people have 1 or 2 abilities to cleanse conditions. I don’t want to stack 25 bleeds, so they just go ahead and cleanse it. When I have three different conditions on them, they tick away so quickly, and even if they cleanse a condition, the others still nag at him.

Another tip is to use 2 body shots after applying all the conditions. This will increase the damage on the opponent by additional 20%.

I mostly dodge, leaving caltrops for bleeding, and when the opponent comes close, I rather use the dual ability to shadowstep away and inflict torment on my opponent, rather than stealthing, since this build is a non-stealth one.

Youkay.5294:

I have a completely different approach. I run a 20/0/0/20/30 build. Deadly arts helps to increase the offensive utility of steal (I also have sleight of hands in trickery). In addition it put weakness on the target and yes, I am playing with spider venom and scale venom.

Also I am geared for max condition damage, and not for max condition duration. I dont aim to only stack bleeding but to put bleeding, poison and torment on my opponent. Poison is very good for keeping opponent from effectively healing. And most of people have 1 or 2 abilities to cleanse conditions. I don’t want to stack 25 bleeds, so they just go ahead and cleanse it. When I have three different conditions on them, they tick away so quickly, and even if they cleanse a condition, the others still nag at him.

Another tip is to use 2 body shots after applying all the conditions. This will increase the damage on the opponent by additional 20%.

I mostly dodge, leaving caltrops for bleeding, and when the opponent comes close, I rather use the dual ability to shadowstep away and inflict torment on my opponent, rather than stealthing, since this build is a non-stealth one.

Vulnerability does nothing to condition damage. Using body shot in a condition build would be a total waste of initiative. Total.

infantrydiv.1620:

Vulnerability does nothing to condition damage. Using body shot in a condition build would be a total waste of initiative. Total.

Are you absolutely sure about this? I might run some tests… But actually, it would make sense to increase condition damage on vulnurable targets.

Youkay.5294:

infantrydiv.1620:

Vulnerability does nothing to condition damage. Using body shot in a condition build would be a total waste of initiative. Total.

Are you absolutely sure about this? I might run some tests… But actually, it would make sense to increase condition damage on vulnurable targets.

I’m sure. >.>

Silver.4798:

…
Can a bleed + torment P/D thief be viable? Perhaps not so much in PvE, but in wvw and PvP?…

Sure → http://youtu.be/NvJ3YFAfTCA, bonus funny situation !