Guild Wars 2

Gungnir Grimm.7123:

ok, a few things. with pistol dagger, you should really be 30 points into shadow arts since you stealth so much. it also doesn’t benefit much from the crit strikes tree. also, with the sigil of earth’s CD it isn’t that great for condition thieves. we don’t have any crits bleed traits like necros or warriors for it to synergize with, and we don’t need it to get a lot of bleeds stacked. carrion and apothecary are generally the best for P/D thieves depending on if you want to be more damage (carrion) or tanky (apothecary). power will show more returns on a condition build then precision since you need crit damage to make crits really shine. for runes, 2 afflicted, krait and centaur runes give you 45% bleed duration, then one sigil of agony in your weapons puts you at 55% giving pistol bleeds 2 extra ticks as they get an extra tick every 25% duration.

for might stacking the might on dodge trait works well with might on dodge food, and might on stealth from shadow arts. or for food you could also use veggie pizza to increase your bleed duration and damage.

also, the thing about P/D condition builds is they are about attrition. it really isn’t a great idea to try and hybridize them between crits and condition damage. you sacrifice way to much survivability for so little gained.

I see so I need to focus more on damage over time rather than direct damage, thank you for your advice

I am new to this class and am still learning about its mechanics but the thief is very interesting to play and fun to use with that said I’d like some advice from the more experienced thief users here.

Firstly I play my thief in WVW most of the time.

I run a 0/30 (III V XI)/10 (IV)/30 (II VI IX)/0 build. My utility skills are usually:
Withdraw – Blinding Powder – Caltrops – Shadowstep – Dagger storm

My equipments are:

-Full Carrion set armor with 6x Superior rune of undead slotted in
-Rabid Trinkets/amulets/rings
-Rampager Pistol/Berserker Dagger
-Berserker Short Bow

- I want to give my thief a harder punch but at the same time I still want to retain a respectable bleed damage, if I change my Carrion set to a Knight set will it be viable?
- If I slot a Sigil of earth to my Short bow will the bleed chance on critical proc on multiple targets or will it proc only on the first target?
- What are other rune choices I can look into for my build?
- How can I tweak my build to be able to stack some might buffs?
- Is Rampager weapons a better choice for me than Berserker weapons?

Greatest Strength: Staff Marks
I really like my Staff and the mark abilities that come with it. It makes me an excellent team support, siege support, crowd control and condition management all in one while keeping a safe distance from enemies.

Greatest Weakness: Attack Animation Speed
In my opinion, some of the necromancer’s skills have slow cast or firing animation, spectral grasp and dark path come to mind. Maybe increasing the speed of the projectiles/moves just a little bit would be nice.

Good thing I found this thread. I also have the same problem. My rune set up are:
2 Superior rune of Grenth
2 Superior rune of Svanir
2 Superior rune of Ice
This should increase my chill duration by 60%, however I don’t see an increase in the base chill duration on skills like spinal shivers or chillblains. I tested it on enemies and the chill duration is exactly the same as when I unequip all my armors.

The stat bonuses (+toughness, +condition dmg, +vitality) of the runes works fine and reflects in my stat sheet but the chill duration increase doesn’t seem to work.
My questions are:
1. How does the increase in chill duration from items work?
2. Does the condition duration from spite and condition duration from items add up with each other?

Thank you, hopefully someone can shed light on this.

For some additional information the skills I commonly use with chill are:
Chillblains, Spinal shivers and Spectral Grasp. I also use Sigil of Hydromancy.