Grieving Thief?

So I have not played thief too much compared to other classes, but I have recently been curious about whether thief can also pull off Grieving like Firebrand can.

Sorry for explaining the obvious here, but I only recenly understood how Grieiving stats work, and why the Firebrand can make use of them effectively, so I will just restate my understanding here:

Firebrand has runes and stats which increases the duration of burning, its only real condi damamge, by 100% without any Expertise. Hence you can build the class in such a way to make expertise from Vipers irrelevant. The next reason Firebrands can pull off Grieving is becasue it has Radient Power and Right Arm Strength with increases its crit chance by 25%, which makes up for the crit chance loss compared to Beserker gear, and means you can take advantage of the Ferocity of Grieving more effectively.

Now with Thief, we can actually boosts our Poison duration in the same way, so we do not need expertise:Potent Poison 33%, Rune of Thorns 45%, Truffle Burger 15%, = 93% already. You can use Sigils or a bit of Expertise to get to 100% poison duration increaseI am not sure if poison is primary enough to discard expertise and build around it, but I cannot test this right now.

With regard to crit chance I am actually rather dissapointed with Thief, how is it that guardians have better Crit taits that Thief??? LOLKeen Observer gives 7% bonus while you are above 90% hp, and Twin Fangs gives 7% while attacking from behind or the side, and that is it. We get a 14% bonus on very circumstantial conditions whereas Firebrand gets 25% on conditions that can be met 100% of the time. In terms of Skills we can use our sigil for an increase of 180 Precision which gives another 8.5% crit chance but takes a utlilty slot.

The unique trait that Thieves have is No Quater which increases the benefits of fury and extends the duration of fury. Does anyone know if it is possible to have 100% fury uptime with or without this trait in a standard meta team setup?

PS: Not worthy of its own Thread, but I am quite confused why Core guard would get a sigil to improve condi damamge and Core thief does not, what was the design there at launch??

I am currently using Grieving thief in a p/d build. Off hand i keep switching to find the best suited combo. The trinkets are not grieving as I kept some carrion so as to maintain a bit of vitality. This speaks to WvW experiences.

1>Condition durations are not as relevant as the burning stat as burning tends to have a lower base duration over the various conditions a Thief has. Yes it nice to have longer durations but you are getting most of your damage through having a wider variety of conditions on coupled with the ability to continously reapply. Thief in grieving can get poison/bleed confusion and torment readily.

2>using various iterations I found I tended to like using DE over Daredevil at least in WvW. This because DE gives better stealth access which helps with the P/d auto and traiting MARK allows an abundance of condition adds from range. The added access to might is also a tremendous benefit out of the DE line. That said I also found success in core. Daredevil just does not work as well all round as there too few benefits to conditions and specifically p/d.

3>the base crit rate need not be that high and especially when in DE (another advantage of that line) as the combo of this line with TOTC gives excellent fury uptime. It not 100 percent but it sits at 70+ most of the time with just a tad under 200 percent from ferocity. This uptime can be either through taking CS (cs/da/DE) or using TOTC out of trickery if you drop CS.

4>The use of mercy in combo with IMPROV can also be very effective dependent on builds faced. As example you can absolutely wreck a scourge from range with improv/mercy usage along with your weapons AA and do so more readily then were you to take potent poison. There a balancing act that goes on here dependent on what you want to see more off in your build. If you take potent poison it pushes you more towards using Spider venom. If you take Improv you can use something like binding shadow if in DE. Binding shadow can add great damage to both power and conditions wherein you can easily get vuln up to 25 percent that ticks on both condtions and power.

Keep in mind as well the power of lead attacks. This adds 15 percent damage to both condition ticks and power damage. if you do decide to take potent poison you and focus on conditions you can get 33 percent from potent 15 percent from lead attacks up to 25 percent off vuln PLUS whatever might you have managaed to stack via the DE line (generally 20 stacks) all added to your condition tick for posion with 33 percent less on the other conditions. You get all of these adds to your Power damage less the 33 percent less out of potent.

In summary what you have to leverage out of a thief build to make grieving work in a hybrid build is not so much added durations as those percent adds used in conjunction with might stacking. Here the "two for ones" of lead attacks , vuln and might stacking along with access to a wide variety of damaging conditions over the one will maximize damage output. Keep in mind what I outlined leaves very little in the way of defensive traits. I like to min max as a theoretical start and then scale it back to try and find a sweet point that suits my chosen weapons and playstyle which differs for everyone.

^Great reply thank you

Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

in any condition build, you'll want to maximise damage and duration. Viper's is usually the best because it supplements the condition damage with power.

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

I do not concur. In a condition build that can continously reapply conditions you are not as needful of upping durations and in particular with a hybrid build. What you want is to apply more condition stacks in short order as supplement to power damage. With ferocity in a build over duration you will get bigger hits off your power attacks then added condition durations will get you.

if we compare vipers directly to grievers and assume all vipers gear we are talking a 42 percent duration add. The bleed off P/d AA is 5 seconds. Confusion off BA is 5 seconds and torment off shadowstrike is 5 seconds. 42 percent adds about 2 more ticks to a condition and those 2 extra ticks will not make up for damage loss due to having no ferocity. A single shadowstrike with CRIT will net far more damage then that torment ticking two more times. (shadowstrike has both a condition add plus a very underated damage attack which most neglect because they tend to use p/d in condition builds) You can easily get over 4k on such an attack on crit due to ferocity.

The same is true with the AA auto. If you have crit/ferocity over duration in that same p/d set and use a sneak attack you will apply just as many bleeds as a duration focused build which will take close to just as hard, but also see an immediate and MUCH higher return on the raw power damage due to the ferocity add of grievers. A sneak attack might stacked with Ferocity kick ins will net the same 5 bleeds and much more damage then you will get from those bleeds ticking a few seconds more .

This is not something that should be tested on Golems. I am talking about wvw and pvp stuff where people can and will cleanse conditions. Having played these specs and comparing them directly, it my opinion that in a hyrbrid build one is better off investing in Ferocity over duration.

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

Adding onto Babazhook, Vipers is really only worth it if you expect the fight to be incredibly drawn out, or you do not have the ability to constantly reapply condi.

The upcoming update will also spread the damage out across a longer duration now for Condi, making Grievings a better PvP option or a good alternative to the more expensive Vipers in Raids. And Vipers likely exclusively being used for Raids, or specializations who have condi's that do not last very long.

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

Thanks again for the detailed reply. I did the damamge test vs the golem and I wish there was a way for me to get cheap grieving gear so I can run a test there. I understand that duration is maybe not as important since I am contastly applying my condis, but would love to see the damamge boost from ferocity vs the golem. I hear what you are saying in terms of playing PvP, but I am also thinking of what to gear in terms of PvE (and whether I want to having a fully geared FB and Holo).

Quick question, in your Grieving hybrid setup, are you using the Critical Strikes Trait line? There is a lot in there for power, but it means you have to ditch some of your condi traits from Trickery

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

I will agree with you that grieving is better for p/d. However, the reason why is because Shadow Strike actually has good power scaling and the set overall has shortlived conditions. It won't get as much benefit from expertise. Something like d/d, where you have access to long condition durations on skills with low power damage benefits from the expertise, unless you plan on doing a power-based hybrid build where Deathblossom becomes an evade-counter instead of the main source of damage. One of the things about expertise builds is that the conditions tend to stack higher, prompting the target to use their cleanses.

But really, it all depends on what you want out of your condition build.

@Omnicron.2467 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

Yes and here is where you have to make a choice as to what type of damage it is you want to emphasize. If you are leaning Conditions then you would want to Go TR and forgoe crit strikes. This will also reflect in the types of Utilities you are taking in 6-10. If you want to lean power then CS a good choice but here is the thing.

CS line offers little to the condition side of the equation wherein trickery with BA and lead attacks along with that extra INI helps both conditions and power builds. DA is very much the same in that you can boost both Condition and power damage. I prefer DE, DA and TR wherein I am getting benefit to the power side and the condition side out of each trait line thus getting a more a balance between condition and power damage.. That said I am speaking to p/d as my preferred set and it has too many condition damage sources in the build to lead me to wanting to sacrifice the same for more power out. If i was in a set like s/d , there far less in the way of natural condition damage sources and it would likely be better served by going the CS route.

They key difference here when comparing p/d to s/d is that the #1 of P/d has natural bleed adds on each and every shot whereas s/d does not have any condition adds on the #1 (at least damaging ones). Since I am applying all of those bleeds each and every time the p/d #1 used, I want to ensure they tick hard, With ferocity add that p/d number 1 will also hit very hard power wise.

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

The problem with d/d is your base durations on your main source of bleeds is already 10 seconds. My rule of thumb in any condition build is that once you are pushing durations over 8 seconds further adds to durations suffer from diminishing returns due to cleanses. Obviously this would not apply in PvE. The other differnence between d/d as a hybrid set and p/d as a hybrid is the nature of each skill and the INI they will compete for.

IE. P/d #1 no ini but every shot applies a bleed and power damage from range , increased significantly with a stealth attack.P/d #2 helps BOTH condition and power.P/d #3 is both power and conditionP/d #4 is both power and condition.

The point is that no matter which of the skills I use I am not robbing Peter (conditions) to pay Paul (Power) when it comes to using the INI in p/d. Grievers in adding all of that extra damage to each attack will outperform.

Now the DAGGER #1 is a VERY hard hitter and if you taking vipers you gain little extra damage by adding an two seconds to the Poison you get off that chain. You are rarely going to get more then one poison stack of the d/d #1 chain before you have to pull back so you are getting minimal benefit from durations.

The real benefit of added durations is not so much extra damage of those 2 extra ticks(at least not directly)when taking vipers over grievers. It is extending the length of your CC's and cover conditions. Your cripples, immobs, weakness and blinds .

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

You may have a point with your rule of thumb. However, I take advantage of this when I use something like Ebola. First I want to compare damage.

On a d/d condition build using grieving and (let's say) berserker runes with bursting/accuracy sigils, deathblossom does 3.3k of bleeds assuming all attacks land and the full duration goes through. On one with vipers, krait runes and agony/bursting, DB can do 6.4k with 20s per stack.

Now as for the benefits, if you land multiples of this skill on a player, you will eventually force them to burn up their cleanses because the length of the conditions allow them to stack pretty high. In fact, a stack of 20 bleeds (which is slightly above average but easily obtainable) on vipers translate to a 6464 tick. A full duration of 20 stacks of 20s of bleeds on that build is 129,280 potential bleeding damage. This is not including the poison that is also present. And because I can easily reapply more of those bleeds, the player will run out of cleanses at some point just to keep them off. In other cases, if the player does not have many cleanses I can apply and reapply stacks until they burn cleanses, and then wait until those ticks down the player.

Another thing I like about d/d is that it can easily work with Signet of Malice due to it's massive AoE capabilities, which can turn the passive into a pretty powerful heal.

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

The problem I have with d/d condition build is they are too easily neutralized. I did play one for some time and switched over to P/d. I have yet to lose to a D/d build condition while on my P/d. #2 wrecks those builds.

If you are d/d against a thief that uses stealth and SE you will never get anough conditions on. If against a power build using something like staff with EA traited you can spin and he can vault and he will come out ahead. If you have SOM traited and you in an evade/evade standoff your healing is compromised .

THAT all said we are talking hybrid here and using grievers as opposed to Vipers. DBlossom is the main way of applying damage condition wise in a d/d build and is just does not do enough on the power side of the equation. Thus you are either pushing it to the condition side if you focus on DB or to the Power side if you want to use the #1 chains and heartseeker. As such I tend to find you might as well go all out power or all out condition. I am not convinced you can get it to work well in hybrid and especially if focusing the condition side and going for durations.

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

I actually have fought stealth thieves with that trait. :PDB tracks those it hits in stealth so if it cleanses it won't matter much. But yeah, with d/d conditions having vipers on merely supplements the condition damage with some steady power damage. You can actually use trailblazers if you want to go full condi with d/d and just spam evades.

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Omnicron.2467 said:Well I finally ran the dps tests without food and with exotic viper gear, and without special runes, and as a baseline trying to make my trait and skills focused towards poison, I had 40% of my damage come from poison, but 20% from bleeding. So I think trying to max poison duration while trying to buff the power component of your damamge with Grieving might not be as effective as going with Viper

You should try an apothecary/shamans or settlers mix. In fact there was a period of about a month where I continously met those Ebolo types on my own (which have long since disappeared) and wrecked them with my own.

The reason being the toughness is of no benefit. The added seconds do not amount to a lot since your own evades are cleansing and your SOM heals are much higher. In fact I took this into a midst of an enemy swarm and did the DB evades and rarely lost health. That until the people faced learned how to counter the build.

You can get heals of close to 3k per db with SOM and assasins traited PLUS PR and GI out of Acro will remove conditions. Confusion will rarely be on you if facing a condition mesmer. With this build if you near a pair of enemy and they close to one of their own camps, you run INTO the camp to fight for even more heals. It a long and ultimately boring process but you can solo flip towers and the like with it as well and even take one from some small number of enemy defenders if they try and hold one (dependent on skill). It all about 3, 3 ,3 at the end of the day, can be boring as heck and is countered too easily with CC and range.