Guild Wars 2

Cause condition damage sucks, more specifically, bleeds. I learn yesterday the only thing it’s good for in WvW is taking out noobs who’s below lvl80 and without exotics gears, with a competent warrior or guardian you gonna get face roll, hard, it doesn’t matter how many sneak attacks you put out, it’s not gonna bring their hp down to matter.
Seriously this is not a l2p situation, it’s a design flaw on bleeds with thief, the damage is pitiful.
I see some vids rolling p/d setup and facerolling other players in WvW, go against a warrior or guardian or even a mesmer with full exotics, and you gonna have a bad time.

One would think having 1500 condition would make a difference, nope, it doesn’t. I hate this, i hate that we have to FORCED to play a gimmick build (pistolwhip or backstab) instead of what we want to play. I love p/d but the damage is so kittened up it’s not even funny anymore.

/rant

That is the spec I roll in wvw, and I don’t get rolled by warriors, guardians or mesmers. 80, exotics, whatever.

One of the keys you are probably missing to deal decent bleed damage is likely condition duration. For some reason, people can tend to disregard this stat. Your base bleeds with p/d are only 4 seconds long, that isn’t very long at all. So you’re going to want to add more! Every +25% you add is going to give each of your shots another tick of bleed… increasing your total bleed damage by the same increment essentially.

Yes, condition removal can reduce the benefit, but if you ignore this stat completely you may as well not be using conditions after all.

Now, that of course isn’t everything. How you play the character is going to have a direct effect on the outcome of the fight. I find this build personally gives me enough control over the outcome that I have little trouble fighting anyone, even fighting multiple opponents.

maybe if you provide us more info we can help you to figure out something to try over changing your play style.

condition thief is slow but very effective, 15+ stacks of bleeding + poison with d/d + shortbow poison aoe not so up.

You went heavy condition damage on a pistol without any condition duration increase? Yet you cannot figure out why your damage is so low…

Run 30/0/10/0/30 traits with full Carrion armor, accessories and weapons, with dual superior Sigils of Agony, 2 Superior Rune of the Afflicted, Superior Rune of the Centaur and 2 Superior Rune of the Krait for 95% bleeding duration increase. Stay ranged during ranged fights and go invisible when melee.

Condition damage doesn’t suck, just sucky people.

Nova, that is excessive. The condition duration cap is +100%. In wvw/pve there is no reasonable cause to gear/trait over 60%, as you can gain an easy +40% from food buff.

3Aff/3Krait still adds 30%, if you go 30 trait deep that’s your 60%. Or you could go 20 deep and pick up a sigil of agony, or only 10 deep and double agony. How ever you get there doesn’t really matter too much. But overkill is just going to be lost stats you would otherwise have.

Hello guys and gals, what Trait Spec should a lv 40 leveling Thief use while using S/P and SB as offhand? I switched over from D/D because I wanted something different for a while.
Please advise,
Thx.

Roger, I may be mistaken but that sounds like a power/crit build for pistol whip and shortbow spamming.

Every class/build has a counter. Expect to find that in your new build too.

I’ve been running S/P for a long time — even while D/D thieves laughed at it……I had the last laugh.

I’m also one who switched from P/D to S/P.

I got pretty much fed up of doing slow damage against burst users. Constantly fighting for my life and getting little in return.

Even my shortbow does more damage than P/D.

P/D isn’t about crazy condition damage…it’s about survivability.
You gain the ability to infini-kite with DD and CD. If you build properly you can deal an additional 45% damage to your enemy (25% if they’re above 50% health).

Leave the heavy condition damage to the D/D builds because they can spam it easy…

i´d love to use S/P which i did before the nerf, but it´s not strong enough in wvw, no matter how i build it. S/D is superior.

For WvW burst damage rules supreme as you rarely have fair 1v1 or even 1v2 situations where you have the time and room to outplay your enemies.

However in those rare situations P/D rules supreme over any D/D burst-build.