Condi Thief Rune of Traveler sPvP?

[H a z Z y.1762]

Does condi thief need to use rune of the traveler (versus thorns for better dmg) in sPvP to fill its mobility role, or is infiltrator good enough?

[saerni.2584]

Mobility is a mindset. And Shortbow. Otherwise use what makes sense to do damage.

[babazhook.6805]

Better damage can also be accomplished by better sustain. If you can stick in a fight longer you can get more condition stacks on and keep applying them even if your overall condition stat is lower. Do not overlook healing/toughness/vitality as a roundabout way of doing more damage.

In one of my own builds I use Tormenting runes in P/d. Those added heals coupled with the recent adds to SA (shadow savior etc) help keep me in a fight longer meaning I can generally get more overall stacks on. They also boost up duration of Torment which can be hard for an enemy to cleanse directly as I can keep adding Cover conditions .

[Yasai.3549]

Lynx is better if yu have no need for Condi Duration, and imo, it is better.

Condi gets cleansed very fast in sPvP, so I rather get more direct damage/Condi per second than to try and extend the duration.

Honestly, this is what setup time is for before every match : yu can easily take a look at the scoreboard and see what sort of classes yu are facing, and tailor the build a little to see if yu can't squeeze out abit more damage vs their comp.

[Trianox.3486]

If you have a dodge/DrD build, I like using rune of Mirage, 4sec torment on dodge, in addition to everything else ends up stacking nicely. It has condi DMG and toughness. (But keep in my the torment application is on a single target only.)

I like Krait runes, for build using death blossom.

I use thorns for the DrD shortbow-only and interupt build. Extremely annoying and 95% poison duration. But I agree with previous comments, duration isn't as important in sPvP unless we talk about burning OR a build with ton of interupts that prevents cleansing.

[H a z Z y.1762]

A lot of people are talking about condi duration, but with travelers / carrion + two venom sigils, poison is already at 95% duration. I am wondering more if taking thorns is worth the trade off of more condi DMG while losing 25% movement speed.

I feel like the damage isn't as important as it is to decap and also move around the map quicker to get to the +1s at the key times.

[saerni.2584]

Depending on your build you can get away without needing enhanced movement speed. Personally, I don’t need the need because most thief builds can move quickly anyway.

For example, if your build has a lot of swiftness, or has SA’s 50% bonus in stealth, or has a lot of teleports (like taking a combo of Shortbow, Shadowstep and Steal together in a Core build you will be highly mobile even without taking a so-called mobility rune.

On the damage side, I’d recommend a hybrid because cleanse heavy builds will make short work of a condi only build. The extra damage will make them more likely to mess up and not cleanse the stuff you need to continue ticking. Condi duration won’t help that much in that context.

[babazhook.6805]

Condi duration is about your shorter lasting Conditions and not those already long enough. As example if you have a 6 second base bleed and a 4 second base torment 50 percent more duration to torment tends to do more damage over the course of the fight. If you can get poison, torment and confusion in some combination all up to that same 6 second bleed duration you are way better off then getting bleed to 12 seconds.

Due to cleanses you want as many different conditions ticking at once over the same condition ticking longer.