Guild Wars 2

OIIIIIO.7825:

Wow, at least anyone coming to this thread will not have and question over which trait is better for dungeons.

Sundering Strikes is greater DPS than Mug. It has been discussed and beaten to death now.

*Note this isn’t any new news. I dare say all the good thieves have been using this in dungeons since it got buffed.

/Thread GGKTHNXBYE

I was still running Mug up until a few weeks ago when I took a serious look at the math and realized just how good SS is, haha!

Auesis.7301:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That’s blindly assuming that no one else in the group can stack vulnerability.

If all I can maintain is 1-stack, it’s still more reasonable to take Mug because someone in the party will be out stacking me and the extra damage I get for using mug with their vulnerability stack over shadows the need for SS.

That’s the point, someone else will be doing it better and you’re better off taking advantage of it by choosing damage.

Um, he just said that 1 stack of Vulnerability will result in the net damage gain for the group surpassing Mug, therefore disproving the notion that you can capitalise on sub-25 Vulnerability with Mug and somehow get more damage than using SS. That simply isn’t true.

What are you talking about? Of course you can capitalize with Mug and get more damage in a 25 stack because there’s no damage benefit in SS — your target is already has 25 stacks.

How exactly can you capitalize 25 stacks of vulnerability using SS?

You’re getting yourself confused.

I don’t know if you’re being stubborn just to be annoying, but I don’t even get your point anymore. If the group gets 25 stacks without you, don’t take SS and use Mug to capitalise on the maximised stacks.

You’ve just contradicted your last sentence;

“…disproving the notion that you can capitalise on sub-25 Vulnerability with Mug and somehow get more damage than using SS.”

“If the group gets 25 stacks without you, don’t take SS and use Mug to capitalise on the maximised stacks.”

Make up your mind.

If the group doesn’t, take SS and end up with more group DPS contribution than Mug. It doesn’t matter if others are better at applying Vulnerability. The more the merrier UNTIL the cap is reached.

Really, I don’t think this is a difficult concept.

I’ll say again. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO IS APPLYING VULNERABILITY, AND IT DOESN’T MATTER IF OTHERS ARE BETTER AT IT THAN YOU, AS LONG AS THE CAP IS REACHED.

Of course it matters who apply the vulnerability, that’s the core point here. The duration of SS’s vulnerability is not long enough to benefit your group. The premise of his post is based on false assumption that a Thief with SS can maintain the vulnerability stack for 30s — that’s why the net damage gain looks amazing.

Even using PW — it cost 5 init, that you get back in 1init/s in 5s.

With the base 12 init bar, that’s only 2 PW that have a 50% chance to stack vulnerability at 100% crit chance — then you get the down time while you wait for your initiative to get back up. 3s later, you can do another PW — then a 5 second wait.

PW has roughly 1 – 1.25s casting time (3/4s for the pistol whip + some undetermined time for the actual sword flurry = roughly 1.25s), plus the pre-cast and after cast delays makes the idea of maintaining a 6s vulnerability at 50% chance for 30s not even close to reality. You need to be really lucky to proc SS on the pistol whip or the first swing of the flurry just so you don’t get any gap.

As I’ve mentioned before, against an Unshakable mob, that’s only 3s duration. >.<’

The issue here is not Vulnerability or the net damage gain, it’s the duration that can make the theoretical (potential) net damage gain possible.

Yes it’s great with the 50% chance.
Yes it’s great without the ICD.
But why cut us off the knees by making it 6s from the previous 10s?

What the…? You literally REVERSED what I just said. Like, completely, literally. I said the EXACT opposite of what you think I said. I’m done reasoning with you.

Duration doesn’t matter unless you stop attacking, lol.

If you’re auto attacking your target, you will always have at least a few stacks of vuln up.

Sir vincent:
“…disproving the notion that you can capitalise on sub-25 Vulnerability with Mug and somehow get more damage than using SS.”
“If the group gets 25 stacks without you, don’t take SS and use Mug to capitalise on the maximised stacks.”

The first sentence means that mug will never be stronger than SS when the monster does NOT has 25 stacks of vulnerability. This is because even 1 stack of vulnerability (+1% incoming damage) will outdamage mug.

The second sentence says: If the monster DOES have 25 stacks, SS will be useless because it can’t add an extra stack. In this case mug is better.

And since only 1% extra damage already outdamages mug, just AA the enemy will be able to maintain one stack. Heck it’s even easy to maintain 4 stacks with my high evade build.

This thread has quietly become legendary; I think it should be referenced in a sticky post for posterity. Sundering Strikes is even better than I thought it was, and I was already on the SS bandwagon to begin with.

Dahkeus.8243:

Duration doesn’t matter unless you stop attacking, lol.

If you’re auto attacking your target, you will always have at least a few stacks of vuln up.

I agree that there will be some stack of vulnerability. It’s sad to see that SS can only stack 4-5 stacks and even worst on Unshakable mobs. Duration do matter though, because the longer you can keep a large stack, the more DPS.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Sir vincent:
“…disproving the notion that you can capitalise on sub-25 Vulnerability with Mug and somehow get more damage than using SS.”
“If the group gets 25 stacks without you, don’t take SS and use Mug to capitalise on the maximised stacks.”

The first sentence means that mug will never be stronger than SS when the monster does NOT has 25 stacks of vulnerability. This is because even 1 stack of vulnerability (+1% incoming damage) will outdamage mug.

Thank you for the clarification, that made more sense to me. In that case, yes, you are right and the previous comment is right. I never dismiss the damage output that Vulnerability can provide.

If 4-5 stacks is all we can do, then I’d simply be sad about it seeing that other professions can stack vulnerability rather easy without relying on crits and procs. I used to be able to maintain 10 stacks on my own when it was 10s (base) duration, 33% proc chance with 1s ICD. Such a massive DPS loss.

The second sentence says: If the monster DOES have 25 stacks, SS will be useless because it can’t add an extra stack. In this case mug is better.

Thanks.

And since only 1% extra damage already outdamages mug, just AA the enemy will be able to maintain one stack. Heck it’s even easy to maintain 4 stacks with my high evade build.

Thanks, you explain these points better. Since that is the case, even moreso that it is a massive nerf because having it at 6s reduces the number of stacks by at least 3 stacks in comparison to the previous state, which is a 3% damage loss.

I digress.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I used to be able to maintain 10 stacks on my own when it was 10s (base) duration, 33% proc chance with 1s ICD. Such a massive DPS loss.

There are no prizes for “maintaining” stacks. It’s not like balancing a spinning plate on your forehead; Vulnerability only increases damage, it does nothing else. No achievements at stake.

Your party is suffering the whole time that you’re ramming up against the limits of the ICD. After three seconds of combat, you’re still the Little Engine that Could under the old system, with a couple of applications of Vulnerability. Under the new hotness, you’ve already got a few by this point with more on the way.

Time is money when you are DPS’ing.

Interceptor.2653:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I used to be able to maintain 10 stacks on my own when it was 10s (base) duration, 33% proc chance with 1s ICD. Such a massive DPS loss.

There are no prizes for “maintaining” stacks. It’s not like balancing a spinning plate on your forehead; Vulnerability only increases damage, it does nothing else. No achievements at stake.

Your party is suffering the whole time that you’re ramming up against the limits of the ICD. After three seconds of combat, you’re still the Little Engine that Could under the old system, with a couple of applications of Vulnerability. Under the new hotness, you’ve already got a few by this point with more on the way.

Time is money when you are DPS’ing.

I see what you’re saying, that in a 3/4 of a second using PW, you can have 4-5 stacks of vulnerability, while in the old version, 1 PW = 1 stack due to the ICD.

I am glad that the ICD is gone also but it would have been nice if the 10s duration stayed.

With 100% crit chance, 25 in Deadly Arts, and dagger auto (2 attacks per second):

Formula for average maintained procs is (proc duration) / (proc chance) x (attacks per second)

Current version is:
(6 × 1.25)/(.5)x(2) = (7.5)/(1) = 7.5 stacks maintained on average

Formula for procs with ICD is:

(proc duration) / [(1 / ((proc chance) x (attacks per second))) + (ICD)]

So old version was:
(10 × 1.25) / [(1 / (.33 × 2)) + 1] = 12.5 / 2.52 = 5 stacks maintained on average

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

With 100% crit chance, 25 in Deadly Arts, and dagger auto (2 attacks per second):

Formula for average maintained procs is (proc duration) / (proc chance) x (attacks per second)

Current version is:
(6 × 1.25)/(.5)x(2) = (7.5)/(1) = 7.5 stacks maintained on average

Formula for procs with ICD is:

(proc duration) / [(1 / ((proc chance) x (attacks per second))) + (ICD)]

So old version was:
(10 × 1.25) / [(1 / (.33 × 2)) + 1] = 12.5 / 2.52 = 5 stacks maintained on average

Well, in reality, you’re not just auto-attacking with your dagger, but CnD’s vuln contribution does kick in as well, which pretty much offsets that.

And yea, there’s no reason in penalizing your party by taking Mug just because you wish SS stacked vuln as well as (insert class/build here).

P.s. If you’re going to compare a thief to another class, compare it to a class using a min/maxed dps build, not some condi duration stacking build. =P

Running Sundering strike with the 9x hit from sword pistol whip…. yummy vulnerability spam.

Dahkeus.8243:

P.s. If you’re going to compare a thief to another class, compare it to a class using a min/maxed dps build, not some condi duration stacking build. =P

That’s the imbalance. Elementalist, for example, doesn’t need to be a “condi duration stacking build.” They can stack 4 stacks of vulnerability with 15s duration — no runes, traits, nor sigils — every 2 seconds. :/

my god what has this escalated to.
Since point was missed from my post I’ll clear it out:
If your target lives for 30 and more seconds you are most likely not doing a pack of trash mobs.
If you are doing A SINGLE MOB that will live for 30 seconds you benefit your party much more as D/D with vuln on your every-3-seconds CnD.
And at this point benefit from SS is marginal. To maximize efficiency of SS, you need to PW or Unload the target, at which point you
1) do less damage than D/D
2) do less vuln stacks than D/D
For aoe scenarios you proc-base SS will be just as marginal due to randomness and only 3 targets. If you care about team that much you can come on (or invite one) ele/engi that will give you 15+ might, 15+ vuln without any need to invest directly.

^ Even one stack of Vulnerability from Sundering Strikes is worthwhile to your group, as has been mentioned several times in this thread. Surely D/D can maintain this.

Interceptor.2653:

^ Even one stack of Vulnerability from Sundering Strikes is worthwhile to your group, as has been mentioned several times in this thread. Surely D/D can maintain this.

Yes, but the OP was wondering if it was worth taking his thief over his engi for this trait. So I guess the discussion should come back to bomb/nade engi (25+ in explosives) vs. SS thief. That talk needs to factor in overall contribution to the group though.

Edit: Just to clarify it’s 6 second base duration with a 50% chance on crit on up to 3 targets vs a 5 second base duration on hit on up to 5 targets.

It looks like if you were going to bring your thief no matter what, SS would be the trait to bring.

Dahkeus.8243:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Dahkeus.8243:

P.s. If you’re going to compare a thief to another class, compare it to a class using a min/maxed dps build, not some condi duration stacking build. =P

That’s the imbalance. Elementalist, for example, doesn’t need to be a “condi duration stacking build.” They can stack 4 stacks of vulnerability with 15s duration — no runes, traits, nor sigils — every 2 seconds. :/

Who cares, lol. If you wanna cry about grass being greener on the other side of the profession balance, go make a complaint on the balance forums.

Obviously the OP does…

Hadrian Vega.5463:

I would just like to get some high vulnerability in dungeons so I could justify taking my thief over my engy.

..somehow that topic has been lost due to some high level of arrogance.

This thread is about whether it’s a good idea to take Sundering Strikes. Another profession’s ability to stack vuln better or worse than thieves has no impact on whether SS is better than other alternative traits.

/facepalm

Still, situational heal is better. Unlike SS, it can save thief from deadly mistake.

Sadly work and some dying components have kept me from getting to experiment further with SS. Sometime next week I should have a nice new rebuild in which I can apply some of what I have read in the thread. Hoping it can renew my enjoyment of the class.

Hadrian Vega.5463:

Sadly work and some dying components have kept me from getting to experiment further with SS. Sometime next week I should have a nice new rebuild in which I can apply some of what I have read in the thread. Hoping it can renew my enjoyment of the class.

To sum things up.

If you care about party contribution even with 1 stack of vulnerability, then take your Thief with SS. Based on this thread, you can probably pull off 12 stacks with 3 PWs (if you have 100% crit chance) that would last 6s (base) duration, 3s (base) against Unshakable mob.

But if you care about high stacks of vulnerability — higher than possible 12 stacks — and with longer duration, you have to look at some other professions like your Engi or an Ele.

Actually, I found this more useful as a trait when alone – the vuln from this removed the need to apply other conditions for the +10% damage trait.

indeed it helps get off the effect

Any thoughts on this skill in Wv3? vs Mug? or Potent Poison? Assuming at least 15 in DA for weakness…

stinkypants.8419:

Any thoughts on this skill in Wv3? vs Mug? or Potent Poison? Assuming at least 15 in DA for weakness…

In zergs in WvW, it’s good, but when roaming, it’s pretty weak compared to mug since it’s only you doing increased damage from the vuln as opposed to 5 people in a dungeon getting the benefit. On top of that, the heal and spike damage provide particularly strong benefits in PvP, which makes Mug harder to pass up.

If you have at least 15 in DA, mug really is easily the best option for most PvP type situations.