Guild Wars 2

So I’ve essentially played with dual swords and a rifle since day one, and specced to maximize bleed damage but I am now starting to question my stat choices.

I went with Rampager armour and weapons, use 5/6 Krait runes with a coral orb in the last piece, and run earth sigils (60% chance bleed on crit) on all my weapons. My accessories are only Masterwork right now, but only because I was working on getting badges for Invader stuff.

I’ve noticed that this makes me rather glassy and hence I’m starting to look for more survivability. I bought the Defender backback for it’s vit/toughness, really the best of the three for me. I’m considering changing the jewel/orb type I use to one that includes vitality.

Bleed spec needs condition damage, I can’t give that up, and I need precision to apply more bleeds, so I can’t give that up either, so that means I can change out power for another stat.

I was thinking precision/condition/vitality would be ideal, but I can’t find that stat combination anywhere, though toughness gear does exist.

I’m also reconsidering the accessories I want to buy. I was going to go with Invader (power/vit/tough) but really I should probably follow along the same lines as above and try to find prec/condition/vit.

Lastly, I’m considering switching over to Chrysocola jewels as they have vitality, however they lack precision so I’m tempted to stick to coral, but again coral has no survivability stats.

Any suggestions? It seems difficult to gear how I want as the stat combination I’d like to change to doesn’t seem to be available.

Precision and condition damage are a must for bleed spec, of course. I think earth sigils are a bit redundant. If you got maximized (or a lot) crits, you can go for lifestealing instead, that would give you a better survivability.

But it would help if you could post your build, a big part of your char is in his traits.

Sorry, I should have included that.

I run 30/30/0/10/0
-5% power—>vit
-3/7/12% damage
-5% damage with sword off-hand
-50% longer bleed
-40 Precision per signet
-10% crit with sword equipped
-1 second immobilize on cripple

I run healing signet/might signet/precision signet/dolyak signet (sometimes use for stability)/rage signet(use all the time while travelling, try not to use it much in combat)

I WvW a lot, so I got in the habit of carrying a Warhorn that I’ll equip for group swiftness and be able to move around quicker, equipping my sword off-hand again for smaller fights.

id say go for the pre/cond/tough as from what ive read alot of, toughness out does vit at a certain point.

signet specs fail, dont use the 40 precision 5 signet thing, take some utility moves..

Thing is I highly prefer passives over active skills, and the 200 precision from the signets is very useful for higher crit and thus applying more bleeds.

I did just take another look at the signets though and may switch out might for stamina, I use dodge rolls a lot and the active remove all conditions would be handy.

For toughness vs vitality from what I understand toughness does not reduce condition damage, while vitality gives you a bigger health pool overall. Though considering vitality doesn’t seem to exist on prec/cond gear I guess I’ll have to go toughness.

Yeah, apparently, you already got lots of bleeding with your build, earth sigil seems unnecessary to me. A lifesteal (33% on crit) can be great.

Your build is a bit similar to Yojack’s one, you should take a look at his, and probably take some ideas.

Also, signets aren’t really good. It’s your choice, but then you’re glass cannon, and suffer of a lower survivability.

If equipped correctly, you can reach 100%crit (98% actually) even without it on sword, which will make a great deal of bleed, lifesteal, etc.

Also, Healing signet (200hp/s) heals less than Mending (224hp/s +2 condition removal), that heals less than Healing Cure (288hp/s on max adre, which is easily reachable).

healing signets passive is 1% of your total health pool. so yea, if you want healing regen go healing signet, adrenalin health, and get 6/6 doylak signets for armor…

whats wrong with swapping some rampagers for Carrion? You drop a bit of precision, but get vit, and a higher amount of condition damage (which is the high stat n carrion items)

@vurijin : That’s not really a good idea. Healing signet really heal less than the others heal, and isn’t worth it.
Also, the Dolyak bonus set is really bad, only 30hp/s. Just forget it.

Rampagers armor with carrion trinkets is a nice balance. Gave up the trinkets a while back. The precision bonus isn’t worth the other goodies you could have, especially defensive. Love having invulnerability and fear.

oh, and check out the undead runes. I chose to use them because I have so much toughness. Really helps with that condition damage.

^ I was thinking of using the undead runes but your power gets dropped off, heh. I’ll have to rethink the armor choice ><

For bleed spec, try out a sigil of geomancy, swapping as often as possible.

This sigil fantastic and imo way better than earth as far as applying bleeds. It says that it applies an AoE bleed for 7 seconds, but what it doesn’t tell you is that it’s a 3 stack of bleeds and has an initial frontloaded blast damage of 500-800. Also, that 7 seconds is entirely affrected by bleed extenders so for most builds it lasts longer than it takes to swap.

Earth fans sometimes tell me how they can get more than 3 bleeds in nine seconds but in general, they are wrong. First, most bleed builds don’t have super high crit and the earth sigil is based off that. Second, Earth won’t affect everyone in a big AoE around you like the Geomancy sigil will — use this in the right place and your screen will literally fill up with bleed ticks on everyone around. Third, the Geomancy gives that 3 stack immediately so you get more ticks off in the time a earth sigil player would be taking to build bleeds with crits. Finally, the initial blast adds the extra 500+ damage.

Then, crazy as it sounds… Give up on precision. Use the freed up precision stats for toughness or vitality. Let your bleeds come from the regular abilities+sigil every 9 seconds. And since the weird bleed tree does give you precision, you will still apply a few this way anyways.

Also, many of your best options for survivability are not gear or stats at all, but rather abilities. Endure pain, dodging, blocking with shield offhand, etc

Just as a heads up, if you want to survive longer, toughness will always be better for survivabilty over vitality.

@PanH yea it heals less, but its also healing you for 1% every 3 seconds, so if you got 20,000 health as a base, thats 200 health every 3 seconds, than with 3 adrenaline fool you got another 330 + healing stat from Adrenal Health, so thats 530 every 3 seconds and im sure doylak does more than 30hp/s.

@Velleman : Geomancy is a cool sigil, especially against Mesmer. But outside of that case, I don’t use it much. Your build (or way to play) looks fine, but a 100%crit works fine too. Don’t get wrong on people that make other builds which works too.

@ vurjin : Do you really know what you’re talking about ?
First, no, Dolyak does only 30hp/s. It’s worthless, most runes have a better effect than that. You can check it by yourself. And it’s not affected by healing power.
Healing Signet does ALWAYS 200hp/s at lvl 80, unless you have healing power, then it’s + 0.0325 per healing point, which is low. I don’t know where you get that 1% thing, but it’s wrong.
Adrenal Health, on the other hand, is worth it, especially if you run a build without bursts skills. If you have high crit, Sigil of Blood + Adrenal Health will bring you the most regen you can get without huge sacrifice.
You have to realize that a spec based on regen or tank doesn’t work because you’ll give up too much on other stuffs, like utilities, etc.
A build based on shouts works, on banners works, on everything works, except tank. Just give up, it’s currently impossible. Try Guardian for that.

The best part in playing a condition damage build is that all armor and weapons are dirt cheap.

“@Velleman : Geomancy is a cool sigil, especially against Mesmer. But outside of that case, I don’t use it much. Your build (or way to play) looks fine, but a 100%crit works fine too. Don’t get wrong on people that make other builds which works too.”

Absolutely right. I agree completely. Especially at this early stage of the game where I’m convinced that most builds haven’t been properly experimented with yet. I suspect there’s more than a few surprises yet in store for us and it wouldn’t shock me at all if a month from now condition warriors (or some other thing people think is sub-par) have magically gone from derision to high praise.

Right now a lot of people have flocked to the cookie cutter builds that are dominating pvp and there’s a TON of potential for discovery outside those builds.

Sorry if I came off as suggesting this was the ‘right’ way to build a bleed build. Really, I was just suggesting a build that I think is currently somewhat overlooked and could help the OP get the survivability he’s looking for. By relying on the geomancy sigil and swapping constantly, you can still get a lot of bleeds and can put a lot of AoE pressure out and you don’t really need any precision to do it.

In this way, it frees up those stats for toughness and maybe even some trait line pts for defense. Perhaps most importantly, it eliminates all need for the +40 signets and can put some much needed utilities into the mix. Bulls charge is perhaps essential for Geomancy to work well and endure pain will definitely help survivability.

Also, I’d recommend a shield offhand on the swap instead of the rifle. Sword has no trouble getting to melee anyways and this way you can swap whenever you like while still maintaining a strong melee presence. Also, with condition, it’s effective to just apply conditions and then bunker under shield stance and endure pain while the bleeds do their work. Plus, shield will give another good stun to make sure geomancy sigil doesn’t get avoided.

Though as you say… all this may be too much of a departure from the initial ideas the OP had in mind