Guild Wars 2

Can you count? 1, 2, 3?

That and a half decent party is all you need in CoE
Google/Youtube some guides or be brave and join a gw2lfg and ask a few questions (they can’t do more to you than kick you^^)

CoE is, once you know the basics, really easy. And berserker/damage is probably the most efficient gear in this dungeon.

If you play on an EU server and need help, feel free to invite me for a few runs.

AntiGw.9367:

The game was designed so that everyone would be useful in a party, so your elitist has no “right” to discriminate like that.

I would love to see some proof for this claim.

Anyway, cheerleader lfg Arah p4 or fotm 48+. WSP ME I’M PRETTY!!!

Firebird Gomer.9563:

Molch.2078:

*Play the game the way you want is awesome, but we need tools to find other like-minded players.

Its called a Small Guild. You might wanna try it sometime =-)

The other thing you might want to think about is the day that elitism comes and bites you on the bum.

I am not an elitist. I spend the most of my time ingame with either my “Teach newbs how to Arah”-guild (and I dont care about profession or playstyle there) or with friends. Why do you think that it is necessary to get personal?

There is a difference between
I want to play the game the way I want
and
I want you to play the game the way I want

Let’s imagine this is implemented in the game. The uberzerker CoF1 elitist can create a group and sort everyone out who doesn’t match his needs. This part of the game is happy.

The hippie can create a group, too. Go to gw2lfg and make a “lf4m cof p1 everyone welcome” – you’ll find ppl in no time. This group isn’t affected by the change at all, because noone uses gear check. They are happy, too.

The one and only victim would be the one, who enters a elitist speedrunn group wit ha crap build and expects to get carried. But remember, the stupid elitist has the same rights you have. And currently he has no way to figure out if you match his needs or not.
And you have no way to recognize him as a elitist prick. You don’t want to play with him, he doesn’t want to play with you – a kick would be a win-win situation.

Play the game the way you want is awesome, but we need tools to find other like-minded players. With out them, there are groups with two or more players, who have contradicting ways to play the game.

This would be one such tool.

“Play the way you want”, eh?

Awesome. I want to play as a cheerleader. Human, female. No armor. Uses /dance and writes GOGO TEAM in allchat. Runs away as soon something comes to close.

Okay, lets be serious now. When you enter a dungeon, you enter a group. So stop running selfish and bad builds and start beeing more usefull. As soon as you do that, you shouldn’t be afraight of gear/buildchecks. It doesn’t need to be the meta or the most efficient, but when I see one more MF/PVT – ranger with a bear spamming LB1 I am going to cry.

Syn Sity.5826:

Farming isn’t really supposed to be fun. You farm to make money and buy nice stuff, you do other things to have fun.

Yes. Look at me for example. I play computer games to have fun.

…ohwait.

If some people want a second job instead of a game, more power to them. I don’t mind. People want farm. I see no problem to give them a way to farm.

Molch.2078:

What has this video to do with dps?

24 responses, 16 from TE. Please use the EDIT.

If you want to compare thief and warrior dps, you need to master both thief and warrior. Not just one of them.

Alexander Dragonfang.1759:

Molch.2078:

Still waiting for a valid argument to use non-zerker builds for PvE-Dungeons other than:

• I don’t want to.
• I can’t because I die all the time.

The first makes it up completely, why would someone play in a way he does not want to?

Maybe you misunderstood me. The phrase “other than” indicates, that I consider both of those arguments valid.

If you play a suboptimal build because you don’t want to or can’t, thats fine. Its a game, not everyone needs to be Wethospu. I won’t flame, kick or hate you for that.

What has this video to do with dps?

Olba.5376:

Molch.2078:

Olba.5376:

Dolan.3071:

Also note that the +15% crit chance buff from Heightened Focus is inaccurate. I’m fairly convinced its still +9% as it was originally if it even buffs you at all (Effect doesn’t display on the stat page and the supposed crit rate boost is more of a placebo effect.)

Is you conviction based on a gut feeling? Or have you actually been in a situation where you did not crit when you should have?

Because if you ask me, testing a hypothesis like yours isn’t too easy. Granted, you can always go to sPvP and smack around things with 86-90% crit rate and get within a 99.999% confidence or something, but whether that’s conclusive proof is up to debate.

I just tried that in PvP. 65% critchanche + fury + HF = 100%, but you won’t crit always. Bug Wars 2

Just to clarify, you did your test with full adrenaline, right?

Ofcourse

Olba.5376:

Dolan.3071:

Also note that the +15% crit chance buff from Heightened Focus is inaccurate. I’m fairly convinced its still +9% as it was originally if it even buffs you at all (Effect doesn’t display on the stat page and the supposed crit rate boost is more of a placebo effect.)

Is you conviction based on a gut feeling? Or have you actually been in a situation where you did not crit when you should have?

Because if you ask me, testing a hypothesis like yours isn’t too easy. Granted, you can always go to sPvP and smack around things with 86-90% crit rate and get within a 99.999% confidence or something, but whether that’s conclusive proof is up to debate.

I just tried that in PvP. 65% critchanche + fury + HF = 100%, but you won’t crit always. Bug Wars 2

There is no maximum amount of conditiondamage you can aquire. Of course at some point, your gear is maxed out.

The tooltip is the description you can read, if you move your mouse over a skill. Some + % conditionduration buffs are calculated wrong. For example, conditionduration is capped at 100%. If you increase a 6 second bleed by 500%, it will last 12 seconds, but the tooltip shows 36 seconds and a much higher damage.

lunyboy.8672:

Molch.2078:

Thief
Dungeon Build 15/15/10/30/0

I think I found the issue in your signature.

And please stop asking for dungeon nerfs, they are already easy enough.

Yeah, let’s call out someone playing a profession other than yours (or one of the other OP professions) because they don’t have the game breaking mechanics to make this run “easy.”

Why don’t we try to help people who want this engagement to go easier with actual tips, since the subtitle of this section of the forum is “Players helping players,” not “players insulting other players based on their builds or profession.”

And all the +1s, no wonder people don’t bother asking for help from this forum more than once, when the stock answer is “L2P nub.” This is not the first post about the infinite spider spawn on this path, so before you criticize, perhaps you should research a bit.

To the OP: Dulfy has a fantastic guide for F/U path that specifically calls for a thief (or mes of course) to stealth the party through a certain section:

http://guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/twilight-arbor-explorable-guide-lets-go-forward

and make sure you are potted up with the nightmare court slaying potion, and for extra DPS use the sigil of dreams/sigil of night combo.

The infinite spider spawn isn’t directly addressed in any guide that I have read so far, but if you stay together and can get a refuge off, it may just reset them a bit.

Wait.
First, I main a thief. And second, the OP asked for a nerf. Thats the thing that bugs me.

“Oh, dungeons is too hard. NERFNERFNERF.”

All I want to say is, that, if you have problems with a dungeon in this game, you should look at yourself first. Maybe you’re just a bad player. Maybe you’re doing it wrong.

And there is nothing wrong with beeing a bad player. I’m not Mr. uberhaxxor. But when I fail, I try again. With a different tactic, different group, different something.
Point in case: Lupicus. It took me 6 different groups and countless trys to kill this guy.
“OMG LUPI OP”-posts written by me? Zero.
And don’t start with arah p4 before the nerf… one frigging day…

No, beeing bad or unexperienced (call it whatever you want) is nothing to be ashamed of.
But if you fail for half a hour and then run crying to the forums, thats just sad. Man up and ask for help. Don’t blame the game.

I think, If your not part of an organized Team, 30/25/0/0/15 is superior to 30/0/0/10/30.

Forcefull GS is insane strong. If you have enought might already, 30/0… is ofc better.

Still waiting for a valid argument to use non-zerker builds for PvE-Dungeons other than:

• I don’t want to.
• I can’t because I die all the time.

30/25/00/15 Major traits on damage
GS + Axe/something
Full Zerker. If full zerker is too hard, use some knights.

.

Wesnoth.1705:

Molch.2078:

The way I want to play my thief is full zerker, shadowstep in and go down immediately, dish out tons of damage thanks to + 50% damage while downed and then die a hero.

Your armour repairing bills doesn’t aprove this >:3

When I said full zerker, I obviously meant zerker trinkets. I don’t wear armor. I am a special snowflake.

“The kinds of things I’m referring to:
- Intentionally kiting mobs onto a player to get them killed.
- Following a player around with a mariners horn or choir bell playing a single note repeatedly.
- Repeatedly casting AOE swiftness on players before they make a jump in a jumping puzzle to make them miss.
- Following a player’s small character around with a large character so the player can’t see their own character.
- Endlessly running circles around a player wherever they go.”

Those are some good ideas… and they bother you? Mind if i ask: Which server do you play on?

spoj.9672:

BobbyT.7192:

what happen to playing the way I want?

That quote is exactly whats wrong with the gw2 community. Anet basically encouraged everyone to leech. In wow you dont take all healers or all tanks, you take what you need. Why should gw2 be any different? The advantage gw2 has is that any class can play any of the roles relatively well and you can provide support while still dealing good damage. The problem is noone realises that and they try to all play full support or tank with 4 other full support tanks and so the dungeon is a horrible snail paced fiasco.

People are so determined to play how they want that they forget they are supposed to be working as a team to clear dungeons. Most dont even swap weapons or utilities to deal with each situation more effectively. Its just selfish and those players are far more toxic than so called “elitists”.

The way I want to play my thief is full zerker, shadowstep in and go down immediately, dish out tons of damage thanks to + 50% damage while downed and then die a hero.

And I am rather offended by parties kicking me for that playstyle. Please Anet, do something about this.

That has nothing to do with the player. Eg. Ascalonian Catacombs will always scale to lvl 30 for storymod and 35 for explorable mod.

Because of the giant burning marshmallow chasing him.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endurance
“Endurance regenerates over time, at a base rate of 5% per second and a max rate of 10% per second, effects which grant additional endurance regeneration do not stack beyond double the normal rate”

A thief gets his endurance back with dagger autohit and 15 acrobatics. Therefore he profits from that buff food. A class like mesmer or guardian (engineer, too? Dunno, I don’t play engi) who has perma vigor cannot use this bufffood.

When I said in various situations, I meant various situations in dungeons ofcourse. If you have a guardian or a mesmer everytime you do arah, fine, you won’t need a theif for smokefields. It’s unlikely, that you need a thief for stealth, too. But those things make the dungeon easier. And I think thats good? No?

I am still unable to see the numerous incorrect arguments you pointed out, sorry

You should try to avoid damage – not facetank it. A boss with 1.000.000 HP hits you (15-25k HP) for 5k damage, so you can return a 1k retal? I don’t think thats worth it.

It’s nice to have, but you shouldn’t base your entire build around it.

Efficiency = Fun. Imho.

frans, have I insulted you? You sound angry. If so, I appologize, that was never my intention.

The OP claimed, that a thief has nothing but damage. I argued, that AoE blind and stealth can be usefull in various situations. You cannot deny that.

The OP claimed, that thiefs die a lot in dungeons. I gave a few examples, how you can avoid damage. I play my full zerker thief in arah and I die as rarely as I die with any other class. Furthermore, I see no reason to give you any proof whatsoever. You don’t believe me? Fine. Why should I care?

What’s your point anyway? That a theif sucks in dungeons? Well, I play every class but engeneer and I can say for sure, that the thief is one of the stronger classes for dungeons. If you think a thief is bad, go reroll ranger or necro, then we talk again.

c&n damage coefficient: 1.5
BS damage coefficient: 2.3

11k c&d equals a 11/1.5 × 2.3 = 16.8k BS

In my arah runs, I would prefer a unexperienced zerker thief over a unexperienced pvt thief any time, even if the zerker dies 5x more. At least he would have noticed his mistakes.
The pvt guy on the other hand would have done nothing, gained nothing and learned nothing…

@frans.8092

Blind doesn’t work on the big guys and nobody cares about trash mobs anyway.
You don’t, I don’t, but not everybody skips them, uses LoS or has enough damage to burst them down.

thief has the 15% endurance refund, but half of the available classes have a trait to give a permanent +50% endurance, and most have easier access to vigor.
10 seconds of vigor every time you use your 15 second cd-heal which is a dodge, too. And you can use + 40% bufffood.

While occasionally preventing damage, weapon evades are too short too time reliably with GW’s wacky timing.
I play with delay and ~10-15 fps and it works fine for me most of the time.

access to damage mitigation that allows them to keep doing damage.
What do you mean? Things like endure pain?

panicbutton.1053:

Yep I know — there are 20 other posts about it. Lets make more :P

In a game where there really is no dedicated healer or specific rolls in dungeons, thieves need some help in order to make them a more-wanted class. You all have to admit that everyone just wants the “heavies” in their party since thieves spend most of the time rallying for survival and are just to squishy. <- this is not true.

There should be a bit of revamping in terms of damage imo(within dungeon play). Warriors/Guardians are tanks, <- this is also not true so let them be. Lower their damage, however increase their ability to hold aggro so they can remain tanky. Since DAMAGE is all that a thief can offer, <- again, not true make classes such as the thief deal more damage so they are a wanted commodity in dungeons.

Without a dedicated healer/tank/dd rolls in a game, it seems to only be a balance of tanks and dd. <- It’s a balance of dd, dd and dd I really see no other solution :/

There are NO tanks in pve. The end.

A thief has more damage mitigation than every other class in this game. Dagger/Dagger 3, Sword/Pistol 3, Sword 2, Shortbow 3, more dodgerolls than god himself and stealth.
Oh, and blinds, lots of blinds for utility.

This – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCdnhkdHXYg – is a CoF p1 speedrun.

Thief
Dungeon Build 15/15/10/30/0

I think I found the issue in your signature.

And please stop asking for dungeon nerfs, they are already easy enough.

As far as I know, axe 5 reflects Lupicus big AoE in phase 2. Just stand near to him and use it when he does his animation.

And I’ve seen thiefs spamming 20k Heartseeker at lvl 75. Always depends on the situation. Warrior brings more buffs and AoE damage. A buffed thief brings more singeltarget damage and a few tricks, like stealth and smokefields. But I don’t know if we need another thread about thief vs. warrior dps.

Should it be a berserker build ?

Well, that depends on you. Do you want to invest some time, run with friends/guild, run the dungeons multiple times, learn the mechanics and master the game? Then it should be a berserker build. Always. On every class (very few exeptions).

If you usualy WvW/PvP and just want your Dungeon Master, use whatever fits your playstyle.

I would love to give you some advice, but I would simply copy-paste everything written by randomfightfan.

Fossilized Amber.1352:

I go full PvT (power vitality toughness) with orrian runes. 30/0/20/0/20 all conditions with my shortbow. Pop poison fields, blast finisher, skale venom, caltrops on dodge, and dagger storm. Throw those down in a rotation that is comfortable until your heal recharges and heal up rinse and repeat

holy kitten in a sandwich… thfk I just read…
Please try carrion armor (conditiondamage/power/vitality) and use D/D from time to time instead of SB.

can use spaaaaace to ignore the 15 char limitation. And I think CM is the winner.

You

Bajenalex.3405:

ChungHan Ho.5837:

Hi, Molch, you mentioned in another thread that theoretically dagger does 30%-50% more damage than axe or DS1. So does it mean that dagger is a better option than axe/DS build for a pure direct dps role? Thank you.

Haven’t you been listening to Nemesis? It has better DPS but (probably) worse DPS uptime! Have a dagger on the second weapon set and use it if you can but you can’t stand in 130 range 24/7 with a glass cannon build. Getting downed will make you lose more DPS than you gained by using the dagger.

To Molch: Interesting points and math! Thanks for spreading the message! It’s always easy to miss something and you pointed that out perfectly. Also kudos to Nemesis for admitting this. ^^

Man, I love this community. Everyone are so helpful. Keep doing what you do, guys!

The DPS uptime of Dagger is up to you. If there are people meleeing mossman in lvl 50 fotm with a glasscannon thief who has 12k hp, you can’t say that melee DPS uptime < range DPS uptime. And sometimes melee is even easier then range.

If you are experienced enough to use the dagger, you will do more damage. Especialy in organized groups.

Fade.1743:

Since you’re using one well, would Focused Rituals be a good alternative over Reaper’s Precision if you’re going with the 30/10/0/0/30 build?

If the situation needs you to use your well on range, Focused Rituals is a must. If you are fine in melee, it’s a don’t. Change your traits the same way you change your utilityskills – it always depends on the situation.

Kanto.1659:

The Might stacking is much better…. precisely when we have the bleeds that Nemesis did not wish. I remember doing the same with my engineer and grenades. I could get as much as 17 stacks of Might and they would tick as much as 90 per second on a full berserker gear.

With a build that does not have bleeds the rubies seem much better.

On a dungeon boss (the only metric that seems to matter as silver mobs are not a particular objective and world bosses have so many people hitting them that it does not matter if we sit there auto-attacking) we also have conditions lasting less (half time, was it?) which means even a dedicated condition player will not reach 25 stacks on their own.

Champions don’t see to have that duration halved thing, but, then we enter the realm of pugs. Can we trust a pug to provide Might? Can we trust a pug to have a dedicated bleeder? On a pre-arranged group throwing random conditions will just annoy the one person who is geared and set for them.

Even if you run my 30/10/00/30 build, you won’t get more then 2-4 stacks of bleed and scholar/rubys are still superior.
Engeneers on the other hand stack much more bleeds with grenades – here I would prefere the might.

Nemesis.8593:

While i don’t entirely agree with the calculations… i believe you’d win 4-5% more damage by doing it your way, not 6…

Yeah, 4%, 6%. -2%, tbh that depends on the situation. My should be a little bit ahead but not by much. I think I forgot the 3 × 25 power your runes give…

The tl;dr of my Wall of Text would be:

1. Curses is not as bad as it sounds but a valid alternative.
2. + % might duration runes aren’t worth it, since ruby orbs or something similar, will give you the same damage but you get more out of team buffs.

Targuil.3741:

Molch I suspected the same about % stacking but wasn’t sure and wiki was wrong so I didn’t mention it. Still, it only makes % stacking all the better which is nice, and it means scholar runes would give DS a considerably bigger boost than ruby orbs even and being over 90% health in DS means you’re getting the boost.

Yes, Scholar runes are even better. Especially if you sacrifice some precision and calculate a banner of discipline, your damage will go insane^^

Edit: Banner of discipline and Scholar runes instead of ruby orbs.
(2616 + 836 -120 + 185) x (1 + 1 × 1.7 – 0.12 + 0.08 + 0.15) x 1.1 = 10871

Nemesis build with discipline.
(2616 + 790)(1 + 1 × 1.58 + 0.15) = 9298

Thats 17% more damage. Scholar is so utterly overpovered above 90%^^

Zzod.5791:

Molch.2078:

+ % Bonus damage does not stack like that. If you gain + 20% Damage, that wil multiply your damage by 1.2. Now, if you gain another 25% damage, you won’t do + 45% damage but 1.2 × 1.25 = 1.5 aka + 50% damage.

I am pretty sure you are wrong about that. Everything I have seen in this games where these kind of multipliers come up suggest they are additive and not multiplicative. i.e. the behavior of + or – % duration runes.

I tested it in the mists. Unless the damage calculation for a theif is different from a necromancer (thief has more +% traits, therefore is better to test that) I am pretty sure that I am right

As I promised, some minor or major mistakes. (btw, I find it kind of funny how I was right about youtube comments…)

Attention: I don’t do this because I have nothing better to do then flaming some Necro-VIP. I do this beacause you cannot imagine HOW HARD I want a DS build to work. I created my necromancer just because I love DS.
And your build is not bad. But it is not perfect. And the video is not, too. I made up my mind about DS and DS based builds build and I would love to discuss that topic. You once said, a critic is never bad in your book, and a critic I am.
Oh, and btw, I won’t discuss if Dagger or DS1 has better DPS, we did that in another thread, and, to quote one of my favourite DotA 2 heroes:
I do not care to see that dark grey place again.

Sooo, here we go…

• + % Bonus damage does not stack like that. If you gain + 20% Damage, that wil multiply your damage by 1.2. Now, if you gain another 25% damage, you won’t do + 45% damage but 1.2 × 1.25 = 1.5 aka + 50% damage.

• ~11:20. The main target of a glass cannon build is to deal damage. Conditiondamage is damage, and if you put 10 points into curses, you get a trait that makes use of that conditiondamage. It’s not much damage, but it’s more than you get from Death Magic. And this trait causes one second of bleed. While in DS this wil cause on average 0.44 stacks of bleed… thats nothing. At 16:55 you talk about 10 stacks of bleed. I am sorry but thats a huuuuuge exaggeration.
  On the other hand, your build would profit from Reapers Precision. More Life Force = more damage AND more survivability.
  You have a use for everything you get here, while the toughness from DM is a total waste. Remember, you’re a GC. You cannot sacrifice damage for any form of survivability – thats against the rules.

• 13:40. That may be nitpicking, but thats not what exponetially means.

• 17:39. “In a ten second circle if you hit with life blast 10 times, you now have 20 stacks of might.” This is wrong, LB hits once per 1.5s. Later in the video you even show that.

• 21:12. Its actually 25.5 seconds. And thats NOT enought to reach 25 might only with DS1.

Your final stats: 2616 Power (without might), 1974 Precision (54%) and 108% critical damage.

Without boonduration, BiP gives you 10 might for ten seconds every 30 seconds, thats 3.3 might on average. While in DS you get 15 Seconds of might every 1.5 seconds. Remember you won’t be in DS the whole time. But we’ll assume an DS uptime of 100% to get the most out of those mightstacks. This would give you, all in all, 10 + 3.3 = 13.3 stacks of might average.
Therefore, 70% mightduration pushes you to 22.61 stacks of might on average (NOT 25. 25 stacks are a peak while in DS and using BiP. I assuere you, you will have phases of low might stacks.)
22.61 stacks of might are equal to 22.61×35=790 Power.

Your Build: (2616 + 790)(1 + 1(100% critchanche in DS) x 1.58) = 8787
Now, lets try something different. We are going to invest 10 points into curses. Next, we replace 250 precision with 250 power (sigil of bloodlust) and last but not least, we replace your boon duration runes with ruby orbs.
We lose 100 + 84 – 250 = 66 Precision. We are still over 50%. We lose 22.61 – 13.3 = 9.31 stacks of might ( 325.85 power) and gain 120 + 250 = 370 power with bloodlust and ruby orbs AND + 12% critical damage.
(2616 + 836) x (1 + 1 × 1.7) = 9320

9320 / 8787 = 1.06
We won 6% damage. For free. Just because math.

And another thing. Your second rule was: never to gain an advantage at the cost of your teams disadvantage. You aplied this rule to bleed stacks but you have not considered mightstacks. If your poor Guardian, Warrior, Elementarist or Ranger wants to buf might to his team, his effectifness drops because you are already maxed out.

My suggestion will not only do more damage without team support but will also be more team friendly.

27:30 – to be continued

1800 votes and 15% voted “Thief” as the worst dungeon profession… thats 270 players who have no idea what they are talking about.

I do not like this survey.

“Let’s use all my elites and burst skills and see how big a number I make!”
Burst skills used in this video: Frenzy. The end. Everything else has 10 seconds or less cd or a high uptime (banner/SoR)

1) Deal as much DPS as an engineer does
Show me how an engeneers grenade hits for 3k. A single grenade, btw

2) At 1500 range
Who wants to use range anyway?

3) While maintaining 25 vulnerability and as much as 15 might.
This is a team game. Its enough if your entire team together maintains 25 might/vuln.

… why again shouldn’t I call this guy a troll?

I like skipping trashmobs. They get boring really fast.
You don’t like skipping, for whatever reason.
Currently I can play the game my way, you can play the game your way.
Everyone is happy.

…why should I be forced to play the game measured by what you think is “right” and “wrong”?

wish.1027:

The correct way to do it is to record 30~ seconds of auto attack animation, watch it once through to make sure it doesnt lag or skip, then pick a starting point, delete everything in front of it, then find the next time that exact frame occurs, and delete everything after it, then look at the videos time length.

Then you did it wrong, too. Look at the icon of dagger 1 in both of your pictures. It is not the same.

And just to get this straight. We’re arguing about the difference between 2.06 and 2.07 seconds, yes?

And since 0.01 seconds are the smallest step your program can measure, you have to calculate a error of + – 0.01 anyway. It could be anything from 2.065 to 2.0749999 sec.

Targuil.3741:

You should also calculate that with 50% more critrate in DS you can invest more in power and still crit every hit. Also your wells will always crit in DS. Pure nontraited damage is much lower yes, but traited may be a different story.

A berserker build reaches the highest amount of power possible. At which point can you sacrifice some precision to get even more power?

Nemesis.8593:

I have no idea what you calculated there… all i know is the dagger 1 cicle hits up to 50% harder but about 25% slower.

First, I tested the true duration of the dagger chain and the ds1 skill. The results said, that dagger chain takes 2 seconds to complete, while ds1 takes 1.5 seconds.

Then I looked up the specific skill coefficients for dagger1 and ds1.
http://pvx.gw2buildcraft.com/Damage_Calculations#Necromancer

Next, I divided skill duration with damage coefficient, to get a skillcoefficient per second. This number is proportional to your dps.

At last, I compared the two coeff/sec. And as you can see, Dagger deals 50% more damage than DS1.

Nemesis.8593:

I also know that you can’t stay always in DS 1 This is true or always at melee range. This is not true

At least not for like 95% of the game.

Nemesis.8593:

You are not taking into consideration activation times of skill and the delay between activations… it’s not 50% higher, it’s actually only 20% higher… trust me on that one.

Go to loins arch. Grab a watch and messure the time it takes tho hit the dummys 10 times (100 times if you want) with the full dagger chain. Result: 20.23s
DS1? 15.15s

Therefore DS1 has a cast time delay and whatever you want of 1.5 seconds, Dagger 1 has 2 seconds.

DS1 has a damage coefficient of 1.4 -> 1.4/1.5 = 0.933
Dagger chain has a coefficient of 2.8 -> 2.8/2 = 1.4

1.4/0.933 = 1.5
q.e.d.

Edit: Axemastery, eh? Okay. Effective coefficient is now 1.4 x1.15 = 1.61, coefficient/s = 1.07
1.4/1.07= 1.3
And again, I don’t see any reason to sacrifice those 30% damage.

And I know for a fact, that there are enought ppl out there who melee moss man or dredge trash. Afaik the only two bosses where range is better are shaman and dredge.

Two bosses. In an entire game.

Dagger 1 has a 50% higher skillcoefficient per second than DS1. Thats 50% more dps. With support and a 30/25/00/15 Build (or 30/30, w/e), you reach ~90% crtichanche. You can ignore some critical hit chanche in a DS build, but your still missing precision while generating LF. And Dagger 1 deals roughly the same damage as Axe 2.

Why should I use Deathshroud or axe in a direct dps build?