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Condi or Power DD


Wentworth.6901

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I have a thief that will be level 80 soon, and I will immediately go to unlock Daredevil. I want to know before investing anything, acquiring weapons and armor, whether I should go condi or power. What are the benefits of each? What weapons and specializations does each use? I did look at Metabattle builds, but I couldn't tell too much from it. I will be doing end game pve and low tier fractals.

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You can use pvp stat swap now to figure out playstyle.

But in general, although some people have strong opinions about “optimal” end game PvE, you can be fine with a lot of different builds.

High end PvE you are using group for boons so you won’t need to focus on building for that. Fractals will be less consistent so ensuring you have boons like might and Fury/Quickness (for power builds) can be useful.

As an example, people use DA/Trickery/Daredevil. Then the builds change depending on condi vs power and the weapons.

As to slots, you want more DPS oriented stuff for high end PvE where there are group support players to heal etc. In smaller groups more defensive options may be helpful (stun breaks, teleports, condition cleanses, etc.)

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Condi daredevil uses double dagger/dagger and the rotation focuses around bleed and poison. It uses venoms and caltrops utilities, with impaling lotus dodge and death blossom as the main rotation attacks for applying condis, and autoattack, weapon swap, channeled vigor, steal, etc. to help keep up your initiative and endurance. The stats are all viper's, which for the most part has to be crafted yourself.Power daredevil uses just one staff, leaving you free to get utility from your off-weapon (I prefer pistol/pistol because unload offers decent single target damage while letting you stay ranged and mobile, and daredevil isn't as reliant on shortbow for mobility). The rotation focuses on staff's strong autoattack, using bounding dodge just enough to keep your endurance from capping for it's 10% damage buff and the extra 10% damage buff from staff master trait, and then dumping initiative into whatever skill best fits the situation (weakening charge for the most dps on your primary target, vault for the mobility/evade/better aoe, and even dust strike isn't that bad as a quick and fairly spammable blind+vuln application). The stats are full berserkers, which can be bought for cheap and found on any gear with core stats (like basic ascended jewelry from laurels/fractals).

Condi has a slightly higher benchmark dps under ideal conditions (32k condi vs. 30k for power staff), but in practice I find that the power is much more consistent in putting out good numbers.

-For starters it's much easier to gear for power (zerker stats are way cheaper and more accessible than viper's).-The staff rotation is simple resource management that is just about impossible to screw up (worst case scenario you're literally just autoattacking and still hit 75% of your potential dps). And it only requires to you stay in melee range, which is easy to do because you can dodge into your target, weakening charge snaps you to the target or you can vault or steal to cover larger/more dangerous distances.
-On the other hand condi has the same levels of resource management, but is also reliant on cooldowns (making alacrity uptime much more important), has weapon swap timing (so no off-weapon utility such as shortbow or P/P), requires your allies to be grouped up and hitting your target for venomshare, requires the target to stay within your ground effects, and has the longer ramp-up time that naturally comes with long duration condis (so in lower-mid tier fractals you're still building up your condis while power dps has already killed the thing).-Power dps has access to Invigorating Precision from critical strikes tree, and since around 90-100% of our dps comes from crits, that means we have the option to give up just 6-7% of our dps for near-infinite sustain. In open world or less organized instanced pve (like low-tier fractals and pug raids) where you lack a good healer, this is an invaluable trait to have. Just in case it's not clear how strong this is, on Gorseval raid boss during his retaliation phase (take ~700 damage each time you hit him) invigorating precision alone is enough to keep my scholar buff up throughout throughout the phase, and still has healing leftover to help healers get my health up after his ground aoe damage.-Staff just comes with much better overall utility than dagger/dagger, giving it an overall nicer feel. There's the aforementioned freedom of initiative spending, and all of its skills feel good to spend initiative on. It can provide permanent weakness or constant blinds, helping your and your team's survival, while also maintaining ~10-15 stacks of vulnerability just from the autoattack for extra damage for everyone. It's less reliant on its utility slots for damage, whereas condi really wants those venoms/caltrops, giving you more freedom for things like shadowstep, projectile block, stealth support, or extra dodges/condi cleanse.

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@Blackari.2051 said:do not look at metabattle for PvE builds tho ...

I don't know what your issue with metabattle is, but for thief at least, their 100 rated PvE builds (viper D/D condi and zerker staff) are the exact same max dps builds as those used by benchmarkers like qtfy or snowcrows. Metabattle also provides an actual explanation about what the rotation is, why you use certain abilities the way you do, and explains alternative trait/utility options for when you're in a situation where there's other things to worry about than raw potential max dps under ideal conditions

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