Guild Wars 2

Is a condition damage spec viable for dungeoons? I figure that since Rifle has such a long bleed duration, it has a very easy niche to stack VERY high amounts of bleeding on a foe.

But is it really? Before I waste my money on condition damage, do you guys have any success stories to tell? Or should I just stick with Power+Vitality+Toughness?

The Longbow #3 and Burst skill are one of our best AOE’s. Sword main hand’s Flurry when hitting multiple enemies is amazing. You’ll be drooling over the numbers.
I wouldn’t recommending foregoing Power entirely though. Its no fun hitting destructible objects for nothing.
But hey thats why you always carry a Greatsword/Axe anyways.

Generally speaking, you do not need much condition damage to really make it hurt.What you need is fast stacking attacks.So I’d advice to get some, but not to focus on it much.
As far as stories go, there aren’t any really.It’s a sustained damage and most of the time you won’t even feel like it even exists.But it packs a real punch and from 10+ stacks you’ll definitely feel a big difference.
All in all – condition damage is perfectly viable in dungeons.

I run a Condition build for dungeons that has me around 13-16 stacks if no one else is landing bleeds in the party. If you’ve got like two other Necros and you’re a CD build then you’re losing out on usefulness. Hopefully at that point you’re at least staying alive. Certainly never make a CD glass cannon. I find that to be the worse type of build on a warrior.

I run a healing shout build in dungeons that gets is damage from sword plus rifle bleeds. I use rampagers gear (power, precision, condition damage) with superior soldier runes(vitality, toughness and shouts cure conditions) and have done very well in dungeons. My traits are arms: 25, defence: 15, tactics: 30.

Conditions aren’t as strong as direct damage in dungeons, because of the #25 cap. After 25 bleed stacks are reached, all further attacks are wasted. Also, only the most powerful stacks are applied, if you’re the only one applying bleeds then it will be okay, but if there are two or three people applying bleeds, one or two of them will be doing no damage at all.

I also don’t see any point in using the rifle in a condition build, since it only has one single skill that applies conditions, you’re better off using the bow, which applies some mean aoe burning, since it has two very high damage burning aoe skills, one covering a huge area, it dwarfs the condition damage causing by plinking at a single target with your rifle. I understand some people love guns, but the longbow is much better at condition damage.

Would it make sense to use longbow+rifle for a condition build? And what traits?

The rune I was thinking of is Rune of the Undead whereas the armor Precision+Toughness+Condition Dmg and accessories Power+Precision+Toughness.

With Rune of the Undead, toughness gets added a ton to condition damage, so the lack of Coral accessories still seems ok in this build.

But how would the equipment match up with weapons like Mace and Great Sword? Aren’t there traits to bleed on crit?

Here is my advice on condition build. Dont go full on condition, go semi tank condition. Everything from killing mobs to bosses to wvw will be about stacking bleed and dragging the enemy health down. To do that, yes you need condition damage, also crit (trait 33% to apply bleed on crit and sigil of earth 66% chance of the same), power because you do still have to hit the target. But, toughness and vitality too.

I recommend the karma gear, has toughness and precision, mix with some vitality (also full rune soldier, 6 set bonus remove conditions on shout makes it I think the best warrior rune and its all vit/tough) and power gear and add some crit here and there in accessories. I have near 1600 toughness, 26k health, 33% crit and my bleeds tick over 100. With the health pool and toughness, it means I often tank mobs, in the defense tree I have (gain adrenaline when hit) which means I pop a full flurry very often, its great damage, and ok survivability.

As for the stack limit, honestly, it will rarely matter, with above spec, you will often have the highest bleeds apart from necros, and you only really need 10+ to see good damage. Remember, a bleed ticking for 100, 10 stacks, thats 1000 damage every second, couple that with decent power in strikes, which will crit often with shouts, good damage.

Now the hidden gem of this build especially in wvw is your ranged damage. Just go get full adrenaline and use the bow skill, add the crit and a sigil of earth, and watch the numbers fly about. And the point of using a rifle as condition? Yes only the auto attack adds bleeds if you dont crit, but thats what you are using the majority of the time, not to mention you are stacking 10-15 bleeds auto attacking alone.

In uncoordinated situations direct damage > condition damage (stacking issues). I would just go power.

I have a level 80 Necro and 80 Warrior. So maybe i can compare them a bit for you…

The necro stacks bleeds to about 20stacks withing 5-10 seconds and keeps them at 20-25 stacks on the main target and about at 10-25 (depending on rotation) stacks at 4-5 other targets.

The direct damage while going full bleed-spec as a necro is pitiful of course. Normal attack hits for 150-300, one single strong attack at 15sec CD which hits 1500-2000, other skills not reaching 1000 damage. So 80-90% of my damage are bleeds.

The warrior on the other hand cannot reach that high bleed stacks. Or at least not against more than one target. And that serious lack of AoE (which necros get through huge AoEs that stack bleeds + epidemic) makes the condition-warrior not that viable in dungeons in my opinion.
You can however mix condition damage and direct damage with a nice rotation of sword/sword (or rifle if pure ranged) and longbow, but you should not drop power completely. Either go power/vitality/condition (s/s + lb) damage or power/precision/condition damage (rifle + lb).

Burning in itself isn’t that strong sadly. When my necro was at 2000ish condition damage (might and stuff) the burning(through guardian) hit my targets for 800ish. My bleeds on the other hand hit the target for 160ish, but multiplied by 20-25, which lets you reach about 3000-4000 damage/second. That is 4 to 5 times more damage than burning.

That’s why real condition builds are forced to focus on bleed and maybe burning as a sideeffect. Without applying bleed on multiple targets, pure condition warrior is not viable in my opinion (talking about dungeons).

Don’t forget the longbow combo fields(happens often).
Use the adrenaline skill, then lb 3 in the circle and you’ll give party wide 3 might stacks.Coupled with the burning attacks,the 3’s nice damage and the dot, the longbow is awesome to switch to for about 5-6 seconds then back to the main weapon.
An advice though – either use shield or mace for off-hand.Shield can give you 3 sec invulnerability, and mace can give you a nice CC(even if boss’ stacks aren’t down, you’ll still interrupt his current action every time). It’s just that I find axe or sword in off-hand to be quite underperforming in dungeons, but it could be just me…