Guild Wars 2

Ele healer is great for Matthias, but IMO whether or not you use staff depends on the rest of your group setup.

I’ve found that with my group, we are more successful if I run W/E/Temp with Auramancer and D/Wh. The main reason is because that build can generate an absurd amount of protection, which the staff build does not have.

The staff build has more direct healing, but without group protection many of the “squishy” classes can be 1 shot by Matthias’ attacks. The protection helps keep them up if they miss a dodge.

If your group already has protection from another source, then the staff build is likely better.

Viper.2436:

So we must go condi build…?

In the vast majority of scenarios, a power based PS build will be your best bet as a warrior. Solo it does fine damage.

In group settings you don’t bring warriors for their max personal DPS, you bring them because of their group buffs. That doesn’t mean all warriors are created equal.

Arms/Tactics/Berserker is really the only viable option at this point. On bosses that move a lot (Matthias) and specific group comps, it can be a better option than the power GS PS build.

However, the Arms/Disc/Berserker build is no longer very viable. It falls behind engi, necro, and thief in terms of condi damage and below all power builds.

I’m indifferent on most of the topics at hand, but I have a question for those who are strongly in favor of “easy” mode raids.

What are the distinct differences that you see between an raids and fractals/dungeons?

At a very high level here is what I see the differences are:
- Raids have 5 more players
- Raids are more challenging
- Raids have exclusive rewards

In an easy mode raid, which of those are still true?

In my eyes it is just the 5 more players. The amount that you reduce the exclusivity of the rewards must be appropriate to the amount that you reduce the challenge. I competed as a team athlete at a very high level for over 20 years and that has rubbed off on my opinions outside of athletics.

Due to that, I believe that if you trivialize the challenge you must remove all of the exclusivity of the rewards. If “easy” mode raids are just as easy as low level fractals and dungeons, then the rewards should be of the same level as low fractals and dungeons. If “easy” mode raids are just as challenging as higher end fractals, then they should have the same level rewards as higher fractals.

Maybe there is a degree of difficulty that is in between current raids and high end fractals. In that case there could be an argument for reduced rewards, but I don’t think that is the difficulty scale that folks in this discussion are asking for.

Getting millions of participation awards should never equate to an Olympic gold medal in any circumstance.

So if you remove “Raids are more challenging” and “Raids have exclusive rewards” then all you have left is “Raids have 5 more players”. Is this really what the “easy mode raids” community is looking for? Dungeons with 5 more players? What is the gain? Why don’t they just work on fixing dungeons/fractals…oh wait they are doing that.

See this discussion on meta battle for an updated version of the condi thief build. Trickery wins out now due to the Lead Attacks trait.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Venom_Share

Hanza.6872:

ButterPeanut.9746:

DPS: ~31k (theorectical max, no where near real game play)

Weapons: D/D

Testing condition: Solo but did math do account for venomshare inside the raid test arena. Used all boons and all profession buffs in order to compare against other classes. Again, this is not 100% realistic but is a good way to compare classes. For example engi is regarded as the “meta” condi class but this thief build can definitely keep up or even pass it depending on the engi’s rotation

Build description: SA/DA/DD

See video below for further details and for example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kTft63S6pw

Wouldn’t the thief count as one of the 5 people obtaining the venom. Meaning you should add *4 as venomshare multiplier? Since you already have your own venom in the dps calculation?

The thief does count and multiplying by 5 is the same as adding times 4

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, it’s really hard to say what is best right now.

• Engi is great in ideal situations and synergizes well if you have an epi necro in the group (since it brings lots of burning), brings some condi removal/healing and also has good blinds for encounters with adds. However, it loses a lot of steam on messier fights and has a higher skill cap.

• Necro is very straight forward, can work very well at ranged, and epidemic is really strong on encounters with adds.

• Condi thief seems to have a lot of potential and is probably the closest replacement for slick shoes with shared basi venom. Skelk can give a good bit of sustain and the DPS seems to have a lot of potential from what was shown in the vid. However, I haven’t seen anything showing how it compares in a test without 100% alacrity since it will benefit a lot from this.

If I was to do some quick napkin math to guess what condi thief would be like without 100% alacrity, I’d guess that it’s around 25k, which is on par with a perfect rotation engi and necro under the same conditions:

16k DPS without venoms
15k DPS from venom share (delta calculation from video) with a 33% reduction = 10k DPS
16k DPS without venoms + 10k DPS from non-alacrity venoms = 26k

The lack of alacrity (or a-lack-rity…get it?) would reduce the 16k a bit since alacrity affects steal and Impairing daggers, but shouldn’t be that massive, which is why I’d guess 25k. Again this is rough math.

Source for DPS comparison of other builds without Alacrity: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

I was getting between 23.5-24.5k dps with the same math and the same buffs that QT did. Might, fury, quickness, banners, assassin’s presence, spotter, frost spirit, 2 grace of the land stacks, EA.

As we thought, this build does benefit a bit more from alacrity. But assuming 0 alacrity uptime isn’t correct either.

I wasn’t able to get skelk venom to work in the arena. I checked combat log and couldn’t see any damage being done by the lifesteal.

Dahkeus.8243:

ButterPeanut.9746:

But you can make the same argument for other classes while moving. For example, moving bosses for engineer will drop their DPS because they move out of fire fields.

Very true, but if you’re comparing condi thief to power thief, then you won’t see that same dps loss for power.

That is true. Staff thief is pretty consistent with its DPS if you have permanent quickness. I personally didn’t want to make a berserker ascended set because I felt the condi set could give me more bang for my buck if I wanted to play engi or ranger.

But you can make the same argument for other classes while moving. For example, moving bosses for engineer will drop their DPS because they move out of fire fields.

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, it’s really hard to say what is best right now.

• Engi is great in ideal situations and synergizes well if you have an epi necro in the group (since it brings lots of burning), brings some condi removal/healing and also has good blinds for encounters with adds. However, it loses a lot of steam on messier fights and has a higher skill cap.

• Necro is very straight forward, can work very well at ranged, and epidemic is really strong on encounters with adds.

• Condi thief seems to have a lot of potential and is probably the closest replacement for slick shoes with shared basi venom. Skelk can give a good bit of sustain and the DPS seems to have a lot of potential from what was shown in the vid. However, I haven’t seen anything showing how it compares in a test without 100% alacrity since it will benefit a lot from this.

If I was to do some quick napkin math to guess what condi thief would be like without 100% alacrity, I’d guess that it’s around 25k, which is on par with a perfect rotation engi and necro under the same conditions:

16k DPS without venoms
15k DPS from venom share (delta calculation from video) with a 33% reduction = 10k DPS
16k DPS without venoms + 10k DPS from non-alacrity venoms = 26k

The lack of alacrity (or a-lack-rity…get it?) would reduce the 16k a bit since alacrity affects steal and Impairing daggers, but shouldn’t be that massive, which is why I’d guess 25k. Again this is rough math.

Source for DPS comparison of other builds without Alacrity: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

The point that I wanted to make with this video is that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a “best”. Necro, Engi, Thief, Burn PS warrior, and Druid all have pros and cons for condition damage builds. Every group will be a bit different. Unfortunately if you aren’t engi or necro a pug group probably won’t take you, but maybe some analysis and awareness for condi thief can change that

Thaddeus.4891:

ButterPeanut.9746:

Did you see the math at the end? It ends up around 31k.

I went in as a solo player and did two tests:
1. No venoms
2. Using venoms

Then I subtracted the difference between the two. This should account for the damage from 1 instance of the venoms. (RNG aside with crits and such)

Then I multiplied that difference by 5 in order to account for the venoms being shared to 5 people. That ended up being around 15k DPS just the venoms. Then I added the “venomshare” damage to the baseline with no venoms. This ended up around 31k which is right where engi is.

Obviously this is a vacuum test where you have every buff, but so were the tests for condi engi. Reaper is probably the only class where the DPS could be much better than in this arena because you can’t keep your minions up as long (at least solo) and you can’t epidemic bounce.

Ya saw it after. Around 31k sound about right. That would put the Condi Thief right between the Tempest D/W and the Condi Engineer in the dps ranking. Would be nice to have a video of test with Normal Buff like qt.

I’ll do it later today.

Rising Dusk.2408:

ButterPeanut.9746:

Condi thief gets no love. It has just as high of a ceiling as engineer and is an easier rotation and has more CC (now that slick shoes is gone). It doesn’t do very well in fights where you waste venoms on adds, but if you time it right it can be very effective. It also has insane opening burst by using venoms twice in a row.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kTft63S6pw

I still use a condition Thief in basically all content. It’s incredibly strong and has the single strongest burst CC skill in-game. I’ve played it on Gorseval and a number of other raid encounters as well and it’s super strong. It has problems against adds and cleaving, as you noted, but it’s overall a ton of fun and has a built in ~75% evasion uptime on its rotation making it silly defensive. Good stuff all around!

Well said! The point of these tests for me was to prove that it could be a viable option. Every class scales with boons differently so the arena tests are always a little skewed. But the fact that I could equal or surpass a condi engi build with full boons on a standing still target means that this build is no slouch.

I did run it on the 4 million HP golem, but you can’t make him move so it is a loss in torment damage. It ended up around 28-29k.

I’ll give it a shot with skelk venom.

Yes these are vacuum tests, but so were the tests for every other class. In real fights I’ve seen well above 20k (janx :P).

Every class scales with boons a little differently. Staff thief is entirely based on quickness where this build shines more with alacrity, but so does ele, engi, etc.

The point of the investigation to me was to prove that condi thief can be a viable option. I’ve run in on vale guardian and have seen 25k+ for the first phase with double venoms. Only having 2-3 people on the red guardian drops the DPS a bit, but basalisk venom can easily solo break vale guard which keeps your revs on sword. It’s a balancing act but condi thief could definitely be part of that discussion.

One place where the build could actually do more damage is if you play with classes that drop poison or fire fields.

Did you see the math at the end? It ends up around 31k.

I went in as a solo player and did two tests:
1. No venoms
2. Using venoms

Then I subtracted the difference between the two. This should account for the damage from 1 instance of the venoms. (RNG aside with crits and such)

Then I multiplied that difference by 5 in order to account for the venoms being shared to 5 people. That ended up being around 15k DPS just the venoms. Then I added the “venomshare” damage to the baseline with no venoms. This ended up around 31k which is right where engi is.

Obviously this is a vacuum test where you have every buff, but so were the tests for condi engi. Reaper is probably the only class where the DPS could be much better than in this arena because you can’t keep your minions up as long (at least solo) and you can’t epidemic bounce.

DB is actually a DPS gain if there is a fire/poison field under you and if you don’t have quickness. However in this particular video I always had quickness and I didn’t test with others in the group so I didn’t have combo fields.

I will try again while staggering the venoms to see how the leeching applies.

Condi thief gets no love. It has just as high of a ceiling as engineer and is an easier rotation and has more CC (now that slick shoes is gone). It doesn’t do very well in fights where you waste venoms on adds, but if you time it right it can be very effective. It also has insane opening burst by using venoms twice in a row.

DPS: ~31k (theorectical max, no where near real game play)

Weapons: D/D

Testing condition: Solo but did math do account for venomshare inside the raid test arena. Used all boons and all profession buffs in order to compare against other classes. Again, this is not 100% realistic but is a good way to compare classes. For example engi is regarded as the “meta” condi class but this thief build can definitely keep up or even pass it depending on the engi’s rotation

Build description: SA/DA/DD

See video below for further details and for example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kTft63S6pw

Vale guardian is another fight where condi thief shines, unless you absolutely need a ranged DPS. It can very easily break his bar every time in the rotation phase which can keep other classes in their max DPS state (Rev not going to staff for example)

Condi thief can be very good depending on the fight. The DPS on a single target is pretty similar to reaper unless they have a ton of jagged horrors/epidemic depending on the fight.

Everything you stated there is true. I personally only really use my thief in raids.

One other piece to consider is that an ascended medium viper set is much more versatile than an ascended berserker medium set.

Vipers with Berserker runes is best in slot for Thief and Engi, and can be viable on condi druid too. There are probably better rune combos for condi druid, but you can definitely make it work.

There is a venomshare build on meta battle that is pretty solid. It gives you some options in regards to sinister versus vipers for the trinkets.

It doesn’t have the same theoretical max as power thief but it is viable and very fun.

It also gives a bit of utility with a shared basilisk venom which is handy depending on the encounter. For example it can pretty much solo break Vale guardian and is up for every one of his break phases, which would allow your revs not to swap to staff.

That is not 100% true.

Banners, Empower Allies, Spotter, etc all apply to 5 targets. However, their reapplication interval is more frequent than the total number of time of the buff.

For example, the buff for a banner lasts 6 seconds, and the reapplication rate is 3 seconds. So if 5 different people happen to be able to swap closer and farther from the banners every 3 seconds, than in theory 10 people could have permanent buffs from 1 warrior.

More than likely, there will be some overlap between the first application and the second application.

This is why you see many guilds running one warrior in the first subgroup of a raid squad with 7 total people. In theory, they should be able to might cap, EA, and banners on 7 people instead of 5 just based on the randomness of the players positioning and the longer application duration versus the frequency.

My group has the same problem. It’s almost like all of the “wiggle” that used to be on Gorseval is now on Sloth

I know that I cannot be the only one VERY tired of the hostility, negativity, and complaining for the sake of complaining on raids in the last few weeks.

So…I’m creating this thread to give the raids the praise they deserve and some constructive feedback.

Raiding is the most fun that I’ve had in GW2. I thrive on challenging content that brings out the best in players and makes them better, even if that takes time. I’m not going to get into an “easy/story” mode in this thread and I’d ask that others do the same. There are plenty of threads for that.

Without going into a laundry list of items, I’d like to highlight a few things that I think Anet did really well:
1. Progression of difficulty between the bosses (especially wing 1)
2. Diversity of encounters. (wing 1 vs wing 2 might as well not even be the same game they are so different)
3. Fun extra rewards such as the statues for the guild hall

Here are a few small things that I feel they could improve without drastically changing the content/dev time:
1. Make all AOE markers on the players more obvious and distinguishable between the environment. For example, there is no excuse for making the volatile poison AOE so far above the players head AND the same color as many other details in the arena. I don’t have trouble with it, but I know that many do and it greatly depends on your graphical settings. I’m sure this is more difficult than I am making it out to be, but being a software developer myself, I believe this is something that should be evaluated during Dev/QA.

2. I think the addition of the “hard mode” achievements for wing 2 is wonderful. However, I think they need tiny bit more incentive to complete them. Even if I was able to complete them today, if everyone in the group has that achievement, there is no additional incentive. I believe that every time you run the raid, you should have to evaluate with your team whether or not you should attempt the “hard mode”. This could be something simple as an achievement/title/collection that requires you to collect an item that is dropped via the “hard mode” multiple times, or a small increase in the drop rate for ascended items, etc.

3. In a particular raid wing, I think it would be cool to give players a choice as to what boss/encounter comes next. Obviously not for every boss in every raid, but in other games I enjoyed raids where after killing 1 or 2 bosses, you could choose to go left or right to fight a certain boss. That way, if you were struggling or got tired of attempting a particular boss, you could swap over to the other one.

I’d be interested to see what other people think and to give their own positive feedback.

I can’t be the only one out there who is very tired about people complaining that because it is in the raid, it is “not accessible” to most players.

Everyone has access to the raid. Those who don’t raid are making an active choice not to do so. Whether or not people are in a raiding guild, or if they have the time to raid, that is still a choice that they make. If it takes 10+ hours a week for your group to be able to kill a boss, and you don’t have that time available, that is still a choice.

I’m not saying that everyone has the ability to “shift” their schedule to be able to make the time commitment, but that is not the fault of ANET.

I like to think of them putting this story in the game as a positive. Let’s be honest, if it wasn’t in the raid, it wouldn’t be in the game at all. The small number of raid developers have been doing a far better job than other areas of development, IMO.

In regards to Havoc Mastery

With the buff to dagger auto attack, my best guess is that the the extra power damage should offset an occasional extra dodge. Even without that trait you can complete Dodge/DB/AA rotation. I’d like to think that 7% extra power damage is better than ~1 more impairing daggers per minute.

“I need to test this, but I believe Potent Poison is multiplicative duration, making the ideal flat duration 50% (150%*1.33=200%).”

I don’t believe this is correct, if it is it, that is a game changer. All other condition duration modifiers for other classes are additive, not multiplicative. For example, burning duration on condi warrior should be at 66-67% before King of Fires because it adds 33% duration to equal ~100%. I’d assume potent poison is the same…But if not, than that could affect how much Viper’s gear you need.

Whirl finishers is a great point. I was taking that into consideration but forgot to mention it in my original post. That also does validate even more than bursting could be better than agony because the damage will affect any additional burning/confusion that the thief doesn’t get on it’s own.

This build is so fun and I’m glad it’s useful!

I’d be interested to see the math on bursting versus agony. I know other classes use things like earth/geomancy and they are much better than bursting, but not having a bleed duration trait makes bursting seem more applicable.

One additional benefit that hasn’t been mentioned yet is if you use the viper armor with berserker runes you can also swap that gear set over to an engineer and have best in slot condition damage with that class as well.

Very interesting spreadsheet. But I think there are a few things that you could do to improve it even further. I’m not sure if the link you posted for the viper based build was wrong, but it appeared the same as your sinister build when I clicked it.

In the sinister build, you also have over 110% condi duration! Remove some of that! I haven’t run the numbers, but in both builds I would anticipate that Havoc Mastery is a greater gain than Brawler’s Tenacity.

Here’s the build that I would suggest
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAoYn8lCFNhNNBemC8PhlWCbeE2CfhaBgQ0CgbRdEKCA-TBSAQBBUPwlUCGR1fk2DAAbK9E4+DA4EAESlBkCYRlVA-e

Edit: Ran the math in the build you linked you have 130% poison duration! Anything over 100 is a 0% DPS increase.
Food/Utility = 30%
Malice sigil = 10%
Viper’s Weapons+Amulet = 12%
Runes = 45%
Potent Poison = 33%
Total = 130%

I’m not quite convinced this is the 100% best condi thief build for raids. Let me explain.

First, how much of this build is based on quickness due to the majority of the damage coming from auto attacking with D/D. Do you think the difference between this build and the traditional venom share D/D build with Daredevil dodging and is close depending on how much quickness you have?

Even if this build is a bit higher, what purpose does it serve? If you are going to use a venom share thief build in raids, I imagine it is because you need condition damage (i.e. vale guardian). The build you posted will do much less condition damage due to not using Daredevil dodging and dagger #3. If you are doing the majority of your damage from dagger auto, and a 32 second cool down on venoms, why take condition thief? Why not just play staff power thief which probably does more DPS than both venom share builds.

If you need condition damage and have the gear/build for a thief, I feel like the traditional venom share build is the way to go, even if it is slightly less overall DPS. It should have more of its DPS from conditions.

I’m interested to see your testing and hope that you prove me wrong

I hate to do this, but I do want to bring up one more topic related to the numerous posts above. But, unlike some of the other posts, I’m not trying to point any fingers, call anyone bad/good, just simply an observation.

I’d like to first point out that I am not in a “hardcore raiding” guild, but my guild has cleared Sabetha 5-10 times (still no eternal 1 death many times).

To me, it sounds like you don’t have an issue with raids. You have an issue with playing raids as a ranger, which to me is a strange concept.

I’m sure that all of the experienced raiders on this thread will agree that being a good raider is much more than being a good player. It is also being a flexible player. Being in a raid group is much like being in a team sport. The success of the team is the only thing that matters. Personal “success” doesn’t exist in raiding.

So, I’m going to make a few assumptions about you as a player, but I think they are fair ones. You said that you’ve been around since launch. I think it is a fair assumption to say that you have multiple level 80 classes. If not, than you probably have enough tomes to get a level 80 very quickly. I think it is also safe to assume that you have enough laurels/other currency to get ascended trinkets for a new class very quickly.

Is there a reason why you haven’t tried many different classes/roles in the raid? I started as a PS warrior because that is what my team needed me to do, but in order to improve my “skill” as a raider, I leveled up an ele, thief, mesmer, and revenant. Thankfully, if you have those account wide currencies, it is pretty easy to gear a class for raiding. Ascended armor isn’t required and there are many other discussion on that so I’ll spare you another.

Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. But either way, being adamant about playing one particular class in a raid, probably means they aren’t for you. Not because you can’t play them, or because you are good or bad. You could be the best ranger in the entire world, but they still may not be for you. The reason is because they are about the 9 other people in your party. They may already have 1-2 druids/rangers (as many stated above…this DOES happen). So, what do you do? Do you want to raid? Or do you want to raid as a ranger? Again, not accusing of anything here just something to think about.

To your point about Druid. Druid is not a healer. Druid is an elite specialization. That being said it does have good healing capabilities. But the real reason you take a Druid into a raid is due to the team support they give with spotter, glyphs, and grace of the land. Granted some of those are tied to healing, but that doesn’t mean you are a dedicated healer. Honestly, when I play fresh air tempest, I would consider myself an “off healer” because i end up using wash the pain away and feel the burn when others around me are low on health, not myself. I’m also doing very high DPS as we all know fresh air is OP right now

Druid the specialization being required as a build is NO different than a Mesmer being a Chronomancer, a thief being a daredevil, a warrior being berserker AND Tactics for PS, etc.

Hopefully this was helpful for some folks. Good luck, and I hope you do find a good group of people to raid with! Raids have been the most fun I’ve personally had in GW2.

12 Legendary Insights
- 0 mini’s
- 0 ascended items
- 0 boss specific items

If you are going for a burn warrior build than definitely sinister ascended trinkets.

You can get 99%-100% burn duration with either of the two following setups:

1 – With Mordrem Loop Ascended Amulet
- Viper’s Armor and Weapons
- Runes of Berserker
- Sigils of Bursting and Malice
- 4 Sinister Ascended rings/accessories

2 Without Mordrem Loop Ascended Amulet
- Viper’s Armor and Weapons
- 5 Runes of Nightmare+1 Black Diamond
- Sigils of Bursting and Earth
- 5 Sinister Ascended Trinkets

The goal is to maximize condition duration as close to 100% as possible without sacrificing condition damage. Using exotic trinkets viper trinkets is overkill.