Guild Wars 2

I have a lot of experience running condition builds, but with the thief it lacks a lot of the tools and toys other classes have that allows them to excel in a condition build. For the time being, i’m going to stick with crit build (a first for me) but i will still consider the condition thief.

What the thief DOES have that would excel in a condition build
Traps: Traps always excel in any condition build, but they are always situational
Venoms: These provide a great amount of debuff/cc as well as a single terrific condition skill: one that adds poison to attacks. This makes such a build potentally viable, particularly with Lotus Poison
Serpent’s Touch, Lotus Poison: A terrific boost to your hands down best condition skill, and a great controll addition to one of the classes most seen assets. Traiting far enough into Deadly Arts is a must for any prospective condition thief.
Steal: Most of the skills stolen from enemies are terrific condition based skills. Although it would take heavy traiting into trickery to make the most of it, it has considerable potental
Sundering Strikes: Most of the best condition builds, in my opinion, have high precision to take advantage of earth sigils, as well as many built-in chances on crits. While the thief’s sole trait chance is underwhelming, it does go well with rabid gear
Shadow Arts, Acrobatics and Stealth: This unholy trinity makes the thief a lot harder to kill then nearly any other condition build could be, if used right.
Shortbow: Great AoE and two amasing condition skills. This weapon, however, is weighed down by the fact that it’s auto attack has no base condition. However, use cluster bomb enough and… maybe it will become truly effective. Cluster Bomb in particular is a great skill and can really punch up the shortbow’s damage to the greatest of condition weapons, but its far more tedious then even grenades to use well.
Dagger: The auto attack has poison, but no bleeds or confusion. This will trigger Lotus, weakening your enemy to the point where being in meele range to begin with is viable. Death Blossom is nice, but with all honesty i havn’t got enough experience with duel daggers to make a informed opinion of their effectiveness for condition spamming.
Pistol: Finally, something that looks like it belongs in a condition build. The auto attack inflicts bleed. A ‘survival set’ of pistol and dagger will keep you alive with great efficiency.
Harpoon Gun: Another good condition weapon, the only one in the entire class that, at a glance, is built around conditions as a source of damage.
Dagger Storm: I don’t have a lot of experience with this either, but it appears to be a potent condition skill.

What Thieves DON’T have.
The simple fact that Thieves only possess one terrestrial skill capable of inflicting bleed on the auto attack, as well as the lack of a critical trigger trait that causes a damaging condition, weigh this class’ viability as a condition damage dealer down tremendous. This is a shame, because otherwise this class has a tremendous of potential for the task.

Discuss

Edit: Removed items from my list weighing to the idea of a critical/condition thief as a source of extra bleeds (as is so common with nearly every other class’ condition build).

personally id say may shortbow auto could do with a bleed also, but meh.. as a main condition thief who plays wvw,pvp,tpvp id say we have a nice bag of situation use toys.. theres and the good thing is theres always a situation! though we cant just spam 1 for condition build like some classes, we can certainly have no trouble stacking bleed and keeping poisons up.

id say the main choices are venoms for a poison uptime.
or personally i use caltrops,shadowstep,blindingpowder

caltrops is amazing situationally, shadowstep is a must have or any stun breaker for tpvp. shadowstep is just my fav. and having a safe on demand stealth can be usefull. personally i think sneak atk is awesome, body shot is pointless, 3rd skill the retreat i think shadow shot, is ok, but tbh most the time u wanna be closing in to stealth not retreating so i barely get much use

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.6.10.13.13.29.29.11.33.154.169.173.174.177.9.9.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.486.484.481.497.503.0.513.517.0.0.0.30.20.20
thats what condition build i use,

lots of survivablity and bleed stacking, my philosophy is stack bleed faster than they can remove bleed, since my bleed tend to only last about 5seconds, getting 20 stacks up fast even if they are removed causes huge dmg. i use 3x 15% bleed duration runes also.

I’m honestly not sure what this topic is supposed to be discussing, because it’s already well established that condition Thieves (D/D death blossom spamming and P/D Vital/Sneak attack spam) are incredibly viable and survivable as hell. In fact, D/D death blossom is one of, if not the best builds for PvE leveling up until Orr.

For example, a 0/0/30/20/20 P/D build will keep you constantly stealthed and allow you to stack up an insane amount of bleeds while doing so. A D/D build with similar options allows for the same thing.

yeah, thieves can rapidly stack bleeds without sigil of earth or on crit bleeds from talents. the thing is our pistol’s sneak attack and dagger/dagger’s death blossom stack bleeds quickly, combined with things like caltrops, and our mobility means we kite while things bleed out. a D/D cond thief can death blossom 3 times, steal DB again and there are 12 10 second bleeds in about 5-6 seconds. before cond duration, and before switching to pistol/dagger for auto attack bleeds and sneak attack., in pve you can stack 25 bleeds on a target in under 10 seconds with just death blossom and caltrops. we dont need precision for our condition builds. it is why most run coarrion or healing power/toughness/cond damage. we can stack defense without hurting our ability to bleed, instead of relying on crit to help stack them.

It’s certainly not a concept. Condition build thieves are incredibly deadly. D/D or P/D gives you great survivability, even more so when you’re running SoM. Heck, I was soloing a siege line with caltrops, SoM, and CnD to help my main force make a push. And I can tie up considerable resources from the enemy because I can constantly stealth, heal, and deal damage at the same time.

This is vary intriguing. I’ve played condition builds on nearly all the other classes, but the thief works a bit differently… Carrion instaid of Rabid? Intriguing. I’m going to try some of these ideas out myself. If anyone else could post some more of their own condition thief builds, i would be grateful.

yeah theres not much “on crit” effects on thief so really no point using crit rate builds for conditions, it also gives you opportunity to use weapon swap sigils etc which in a way are more reliable. also the extra vitality on thief combined with stealth synergises nicely whereas the extra toughness is nice but i feel the loss of hp is crappy.

Here’s a perfect example of a P/D condition Thief that combines persistent stealth from Cloak & Dagger to use Sneak Attack and stack up an extra 5 bleeds. The Pistol #1 ability Vital Shot also applies 1 bleed every time it hits.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqYVlUmaPXeS6E+5EB3ji60m6p4rdtTxVlPA;TwAgyCuogxMjYGrPOYk+sAZEw+j5CA

Here’s the same build, but slightly different for use with D/D – D/D. It combines 2 Sigils of Energy for constant dodging with Quick Pockets for constant Death Blossom spam.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY4YlUmSOXey7E+5EBnCj6UPFfFtdPuqVrKA;TwAg2Croay0koJbTumkNtCYEw+j5HA

The basic premise with P/D is that you want to stack as many high damage bleeds as quickly as you can with C&D → Sneak Attack while maintaining that stack with reapplication and bleed duration. In the case of the D/D build, it’s more focussed on extreme survivability combined with bleed damage.

Hope I helped.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYUQFAFmQ2e0TVIPppQmAgOFXlVB

I’m running this as a SB condition(y) build. It works pretty well… SB kite with Choking Gas and Cluster Bomb for a bit… final SB with Disabling Shot, then steal > CnD > backstab > LDB > HS. Mix that up from time to time but it works pretty well. I do need to manage initiative, but don’t we all. This build is great for WvW harassment too.

Though I just got a new sword… so I need to see how the S/D mix would work into that.

Also thinking about moving the 3 from DA into Trickery to get the synergy from First Strikes for the S/D mix.

This is the condition build I’m running:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAoYVlcmKPHay7E+5EhniviWtH30mtsTxV1KA

The gameplay goes like this:
- Spider Venom;
- Dagger Storm when available;
- Caltrops;
- Spamming Death Blossom;
- Dodging dropping more caltrops;
- Roll for Initiative to get initiative;
- Steal to approach enemies and get initiative;
- Start all over again.

I barely get hit, because I’m constantly evading with Death Blossom, Dodge and Roll for Initiative. As far as I tested, I find it really good in PvE, but it lacks of damage in PvP. The Death Blossom damage is too weak and it is really difficult not to die trying to stack bleeding in other players (that most of the time will just remove it).

You could also use a Short Bow and Shadowstep skill, going into the mob, dropping Caltrops and returning to you position to use Cluster Bombs.

I believe this build has a good synergy between traits and skills, but could be buffed in PvP, possible by increasing the Death Blossom output damage.

Nice build brunohstein, I was doing something similar prior to SB build.

Right now i’m using P/D (shortbow for groups) and D/D with both mainhands using doom and offhand using corruption. I plan on getting nightmere runes, and my utilities are hide in shadows (yup), caltrops, blinding powder (shadow refuge for groups), signet of shadows (Infiltrator’s signet for groups) and Thief’s guild (yup, major distraction = major survivability boost, great for large mobs and skill point bosses). I haven’t got the points or manuals to trait vary far into trickery yet, but i can already manage 24 bleeds on anything that manages to stay alive long enough. One disadvantage of carrion equipmenting (although right now i have to split between pow/prec and cond/prec) is my enemy dosn’t usually live long enough for the bleeds to stack up vary far :P.

Edit: ATM i’m primary PvE. I do PvP, but not often. Still, PvP builds are often the best in PvE as well.

I’ve been rolling a condition thief in tourneys for a while now.

The biggest problem with thief for condition builds in my opinion is the complete absence of Burning across all of its weapon skills, utilities and traits, which is why I’ve been rolling a full set of Balthazar runes. Works pretty nicely with Withdraw once you get used to positioning and aiming your rolls to end at the enemy. =)

I have found in my limited experience with the Thief that Power is a better secondary stat than Precision when running a very heavy Condition Damage build.

Chance on Crit items are really great, but for a build that has to rely so heavly on condition damage it seems to me like increaseing your base power would net you a better gain than stacking as much crit as you can and hoping to get as many Chance on Crit procs as possible.

I’ve found a good condition damage build to include 30 points in Deadly Arts.
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckzzc0zMoMnbooMnbox9MpfmVbMac
Wearing Carrion gear for the condition damage, additional Power, and Vitality for a bit of coushion durning heavy AoE fights (not needed most of the time as a D/D with dodge traits you can avoid most damage).

The other option that it OP is suggesting is to wear Rabid gear with just as much Condition Damage on it, but it has Precision, and Toughness instead of Power and Vitality. I think this could be a viable build, and may be a lot of fun to try. I would still assme that Carrion gear would net a great Damage per Second ratio with a D/D setup due to the attack speed and from the base damage increase from Power.