Guild Wars 2

Hi,

after reaching level 80 and playing some WvWvW and alot of sPvP i feel most comfortable with the p/d build and probably d/d as secondary or maybe shortbow.

so i found my favourite build in sPvP that i want to translate into my “normal” character that i leveled up to 80.

Q: for what kind of set should i actually aim for? i know most of my damage come from bleeds, so condition damage is most important.
What about power or precision? i looked for equipment and wanted to go condition damage/vitality/toughness, but theres no such piece.

i found some with power/vita/cond dmg and some with healing power/toughness/cond dmg.

maybe some condi thiefs can tell me how much impact power has on this build.

i will be doing mostly WvWvW with friends and maybe some dungeons with my guild mates. right now i am playing a d/d berserker thief and am doing fine but i like the p/d playstyle more plus i dont like to die almost instantly because of some random hits.

0/0/30/20/20 Is a nice strong bleed build, letting you run things like shadowstep and Shadows refuge for escape and survival. In full carrion I can usually take on 2 to 3 players well enough and still have plenty of chance for escape. Damage can be a bit low sometimes but with a Short bow you ALWAYS have an escape option. I usually ONLY ever die in this build if I choose to stay in a bad situation.

20/0/30/20/0 Is much better damage but runs you low on defensive utilities. You’ll be running spider venom, devourer venom for the large extra damage/on call immobile for when they get a little too close. ((This is the current build i’m running.)) This build is hard to lose with one on one, because between spider’s poison and -33% healing on the hostile and your bleeds it actually outputs quite a bit of damage + the weakness effect when you poison an enemy making every attack against you that IS NOT a crit hit half damage or “Glancing.” This is also a nice strat with the shortbow on towers, poison their whole field and the enemies damage is severely reduced. Also, final trait in the shadow art’s tree can be swapped at will from shadow rejuv ((Healing in stealth)) to venomous aura, meaning while roaming solo in WvW or Spvp if you happen to group up with a few people, swap traits and suddenly you’re rolling a support thief.

there are a few other builds people have fiddled with including full apothecary which from what i heard makes you godmode invincible between all the healing we thieves can dish out if set up right, but I heard it’s low on the damage side.

thanks for the answer but

i lose 200 condi dmg for 200 power and 20% condi duration when speccing 20/0/30/20/0 instead of 0/0/30/20/20. aint power pretty much useless since almost all my damage comes from bleeds anyway?

how about swaping spider venom for caltrops + devourer poison, to keep them in the field? i tried spider venom a few times but enemies usually pop their condition remover and all the poison is gone, while i am left with the 45 sec cooldown on spider venom.

0/0/30/20/20 works well with Reyna (shaman) armor/weapons + apothecary trinkets.
The main issue with p/d is that enemies have a very easy time outmaneuvering/escaping you and it’s possible to completely shut down condition builds such as p/d with runes + food. P/d really works best in small group battles (also great for soloing camps).

You can try both 20/0/30/20/0 and 0/0/30/20/20 out but as WereDragon stated, you will find that 20/0/30/20/0 provides more damage output. This is for a few reasons:

- A healthy balance between condition duration and damage is needed, and without the +200 duration from Deadly Arts, you are getting bleeds that don’t last long at all

- Using spider venom, you will get ~300 damage ticks every second while it is applied (if you land all 5 it is applied for ~45 seconds), plus the 33% decrease to their heal is effectively a dps booster. If you are worried about players removing this, use it when they are about to heal. Plus, if you take quick venoms the cooldown is reduced to 35 seconds.

- The extra power is significant enough to warrant it

- Traits such as gaining might when applying venoms, combined with gaining might while in stealth make up for the lacking condition damage

- Using sigil of corruption will have your bleeds ticking at around 130 at 25 stacks, with each bleed hitting 6-7 times.

Personally I feel that the trickery traitline is much more for trolling, as it is much harder to die with the extra initiative and all of the escape utilities you can use. That being said, it lacks the dps to kill stronger players, and you may find that while you can live in outnumbered fights, you will find it hard to get many kills.

The Deadly Arts traitline is less forgiving with less initiative and little to no escape utilities, but if played well you can dominate in outnumbered fights.