This tierlist is purely indicative. Squad composition and personal proficiency can make the listed specs surpass OR underperform expectations, sometimes up to an entire tier in either direction.
Introduction
A list of some of the best specializations for Condition DPS in Guild Wars 2.
The list we are presenting today is divided into 5 tiers, but two of those tiers, S+ and A+, are somewhat of an extension, or a half-tier of sorts.
You may notice that, unlike our Power DPS Tier List, this list has its tiers a bit more spread out. The reason for this is that Condition Damage builds can have certain inherent disadvantages that make it harder for this type of build to stand out in some encounters, such as slow ramp-time or frequent fight phases that cleanse all conditions, or prevent new ones from being applied.
As such, while we use mostly the same criteria we used for Power-Based builds, we have also added some weight to wether a specific build has to worry less about these natural disadavantages.
Evaluation
How do we evaluate the strongest Condition DPS builds in Guild Wars 2?
For today's rankings, we've taken into account the following criteria.
Damage
- More damage is good. In particular, the time it takes to ramp up damaging conditions, and the reliability in which they can be applied has some additional weight for this tier list. Historically, meta Condition Damage builds for Guild Wars 2 engame have had some combination of several factors, such as a short ramp-up time, a high damage ceiling, or exceptional group utility to compensate for their slow payoff.
Utility:
- Crowd Control, defensives skills for the party, group healing, etc. are included here. While modern Guild Wars 2 support builds are extremely powerful and already cover most of these things, having some of them for free in a standard DPS build is still extremely valuable for a party's overall power, which is the primary metric to worry about in instanced group content.
Flexibility:
- This mainly refers to the opportunity cost that swapping skills, traits, or weapons in the build can incur. Flexible utility slots and weapon diversity are a big plus for this category.
Explaining each tier:
What makes a class S+ tier in Guild Wars 2?
Each of these sections contains an overview of the tier, along with a list of the recommended build variants for each spec. To make the most of your preffered class and punch above your weight, we recommend you also take a look at the rest of the available variants here:
List of Condition DPS builds for raids
S+ Tier:
Once again, this tier houses special outliers. Weaver and Harbinger are just loaded with overall reliability and damage potential. Chronomancer and Antiquary also feature mechanics that make them hit harder in actual encounters than their already-high benchmark would suggest.
For Chronomancer, this would be the copious amounts of Confusion it can apply, which isn't as powerful as it was in the past, but is typically enough for an extra thousand or two points of DPS. While rather unwieldy at times and a somewhat difficult build to pick up, adding in-encounter damage to its already strong baseline makes it perform very well in many encounters where you would already play a Condition Damage build.
For Antiquary, it's the trait in Trickery trait line that contributes that extra 1k-3k damage on a boss. "On interrupt" means it requires catching an enemy during its attack animation (unlike many traits that function "on disable"), so while other builds (particularly ones that use a Spear) have access to this trait, it is significantly more consistent with Antiquary's wealth of Initiative. Inevitably, some of those 's will just hit at the right time.
Here are the build links for the recommended variants in this tier:
S Tier:
Some excellent choices with very diverse kits are in this tier. Particularly, this tier is home to some specs that have parts of their kit really stand out among every other pick, such as Firebrand tomes and Specter's Shadow Shroud.
Some of the fastest Condition Damage ramp in the game can also be found here; Specter and Reaper are among the few Condition Damage builds that seem to ramp down instead of up, mainly because of how front-loaded their condition applications are, which allows them to perform well in encounters that normally have a shorter phase duration.
Here are the build links for the recommended variants in this tier:
A+ Tier:
A very solid tier, just barely behind the S tier. Most of the builds in this tier are very reliable and independent, but are still able to pitch in when it's time to prioritize the group (something that Tempest particularly excels at).
This is also the home of Core Condition Thief, which doesn't look flashy, but does out-bench pretty much every condition build we maintain on Thief that isn't Antiquary. Any prospective Condition Daredevil will be forced to try to leverage Combo Fields as much as possible to catch up, which coincidentally, is something that Condition Thief can still get some (lesser) value out of.
Here are the build links for the recommended variants in this tier:
A Tier:
The Slow and Steady tier. The builds in this tier either have some exceptional reliability propping them up like Virtuoso or Mechanist, or particularly useful tools that can help the group at little to no ooportunity cost, such as Scourge's passive group Barrier and flexibile utility slot. Paragon's and the low tradeoff for are also noteworthy and make it a welcome addition to many squads.
It's worth noting though that, while the builds in these first four tiers can easily give or take ground from one another, and are very close comparatively in the vaccuum of Condition Damage builds, this is the tier where they can start failing to outperform a Power-based counterpart. Despite having very solid kits, builds in this tiers don't get particularly rewarded for their long ramp-up time, so unless you can leverage your chosen build's unique strengths in your current squad and encounter, you may find that Power builds will simply race you to the finish line.
Here are the build links for the recommended variants in this tier:
B Tier:
Solid, but unimpressive. Builds in this tier start having gaps in more than one area, and while perfectly playable, they don't do much more than getting the job done. Some of them are also considered slightly more challenging and unwieldy on top of that, such as Mirage or Conduit.
Wait, there's something missing here...
Is my specialization bad for Condition Damage?
The following Specializations have been left out of the list:
- Scrapper
- Dragonhunter
- Troubadour
- Herald
- Deadeye
- Vindicator
- Spellbreaker
- Luminary
- Untamed
- Galeshot
- Ritualist
As well as most Core Specializations.
Most of these specializations have little to no support for Condition Damage in their traitlines. However, despite not being able to quite match a full DPS build, some of these specs like Deadeye, Scrapper, and Untamed have enough of a foundation in their core to function as an offensive support build. The "floor", so to speak, of an offensive support is lower on average, so these specs can hold their own against their competitors despite their DPS builds not being fully fleshed out.
Those will be discussed more in depth another time, but meanwhile, here are a few links to builds that fall in that category:
