Thanks for the tips Astral.
So the build is greatly dependent on bleeding effect. Do you prefer condition damage or condition duration for equip and traits? Also can bleeding status be removed?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYEQNAoYVlcmCNXeS7E+5ECXBL07BZ9VoV3jrSrsKA;TsAKfM+I8x6jzHpPrKGVcq4VxsCAThis is a rough estimate of the build I'm currently using at level 80, with minor variations in the 10/20/30 Traits depending on if I'm doing PvE, PvP, or WvW.
Bleeding stacks can be removed, but only by certain abilities, and I believe it counts as a single condition per bleed. Thief skills like Hide in Shadows removes all damage over time conditions, and I'm sure that other classes have them, but they appear to be limited to a select few Healing slot skills, Elite skills, and trait lines.
The trait build gives a great amount of Condition Damage and the Steal duration reduction with Trickery, which brings the cooldown to about 30 seconds and is great for certain enemies, since it allows you to move even while immobilized, enabling you to keep up with those pesky ranged classes. Acrobatics gives you more dodging proficiency as well as covering for the general lack of survivability by granting a good chunk of health, and enabling you to capitalize more on Caltrops dropping when you dodge. The real key points of that trait line is Assassin's Reward, which gives health per initiative spent, 10% increased damage when Endurance is not full, and Might and Swiftness every time you dodge. Finallly, I throw 10 points into Shadow Arts for that little additional bit of survivability via the stealth below this much health mechanic.
Sigil of Earth in both weapons with a mediocre crit chance means that I do get occasional bleeds from doing nothing more than attacking people, and with the huge number of hits going out it does add up quite a bit.
Superior Rune of the Krait gives a sizable Condition Damage increase, as well as 15% added to all Bleed duration. I'm toying with a build that has Deadly Arts to capitalize on the +%Condition Duration, but I've found that with Trickery for the Condition Damage/Steal cooldown reduction, and the survivability from Acrobatics does well for outlasting your opponent, which is essentially what the build is all about. Besides, I regularly cap out on the maximum 25 bleeds on a target on my own, so I see little to no reason to get much more than the rune set.
All of my level 80 gear has Condition Damage, Vitality and Healing on it, which makes each hit I make from Signet of Malice give back 120 health out of my current 20,000 total. It doesn't sound like much, but when you're hitting lots of people at the same time (and hitting insanely fast compared to other classes), the healing adds up by a ton. I run into literally 40 people in WvW, and barring them all focusing me with high damage abilities (unlikely to happen in most disorganized zergs) I can hit Dagger Storm, which procs 120 health ticks each hit and each
bounce and walk out with no damage done to me, and lots of angry people attempting to chase me back into my portal.
Similarly, a shortbow with Sigil of Earth gives a bunch of health, because if you hit a poison cloud in a group of ten people, you get ten ticks of healing per application of poison, and I believe that the poison cloud applies 3-4 rounds of poison. Same thing for the explosive arrow, which if split gives 3x healing per target hit. In WvW zergs, all this can add up to giving amazing amounts of healing while on defense. As EveryZig said, if you split the arrow right above an enemy, the damage itself isn't that great but it applies 3 bleeds which do well with this condition damage build, as well as 3 chances to crit and apply the 5 second Earth sigil bleed. Another thing of note is that if you throw down a poison cloud, then an unexploded cluster arrow in it, you can give enemies Weakness, which makes half of attacks that aren't crits do 50% reduced damage, as well as cut their Endurance regeneration by half for the duration.
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Topic: Guild Wars 2: Bookah Wars, you silly bookahs. (Read 188035 times)