Guild Wars 2

So with today’s changes, has anyone been trying to run a condition thief? I keep trying to put something together with D/D or P/x but nothing seems to work particularly well enough to take over D/P.

i haven’t tried out a condition build yet but i’ve been fighting against hordes of p/d thieves in spvp

If you are looking for a D/D concentrated build I’ve been looking into three routes for the traits.

Now when testing this earlier I was able to get steal down to 17.5 seconds, however somewhere between 8pm and about an hour ago the recharge given by the Trickery trait line has become bugged and it no long gives the 30% recharge that it should be. So take this with a grain of salt for now until fixed, as two of the builds won’t work to optimal standards until this issue is resolved.

The first build Dagger/Dagger + X/X

10/0/0/20/30

(10 points spare for personalisation, suggest Shadow Arts 10 if you want more condition removal)

Full Carrion Armour and Accessories, Giver’s/Carrion Weapons.
Full Runes of the Adventurer.

Sigil of Agony + Sigil of Corruption

Deadly Arts III
Acrobatics III, IX
Trickery III, ?, XI

Heal: Withdraw
U1: Caltrops / Shadow Refuge
U2: Signet of Agility
U3: Shadowstep / Roll for Initiative
Elite: Thieves Guild / Dagger Storm

The final 10 points can go into Acrobatics if you want “Power of Inertia” + Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew. Giving you 2 stacks of Might on dodge.

If you need more condition removal though put it into Shadow Arts for Shadow’s Embrace. This frees up Shadow step for Roll for Initiative, so you can take Trickster for the 20% tricks cooldown reduction. Otherwise take Bountiful Theft to help yourself and allies out with more vigour (actually this gives you perma vigour).

The second build Pistol/Dagger + Dagger/Dagger

(Relies of the Steal recharge bug being fixed)

0/0/20/20/30

Full Carrion Armour and Accessories, Giver’s/Carrion Weapons.

2 Runes of the Krait
2 Runes of the Afflicted
2 Runes of the Centaur

Sigil of Agony + Sigil of Corruption

Shadow Arts IV, VI
Acrobatics ?, IX
Trickery III, VII, XII

Heal: Hide in Shadows
U1: Caltrops / Shadow Refuge
U2: Blinding Powder / Signet of Shadows
U3: Shadowstep
Elite: Thieves Guild / Dagger Storm

The sthird build Pistol/Dagger + X/X

(Relies of the Steal recharge bug being fixed)

0/0/30/0/30

Full Carrion Armour and Accessories, Giver’s/Carrion Weapons.

2 Runes of the Krait
2 Runes of the Afflicted
2 Runes of the Centaur

Sigil of Agony + Sigil of Corruption

Shadow Arts IV, VI, XI
Trickery III, VII, XII

Heal: Hide in Shadows
U1: Caltrops / Shadow Refuge
U2: Blinding Powder / Signet of Shadows
U3: Roll for Initiative / Infiltrator’s Signet
Elite: Thieves Guild / Dagger Storm

Right there you go, three builds that work using the new traits. I know many of the new skills are nice and shiny but they just aren’t built for condition builds, with the exception of Skale Venom, which oddly enough is terrible now, just awful, the damage from torment is laughable at best.

EDIT
Adding a forth build as I had a fiddle with precision for extra bleeds in PvP (ie WvW) environments.

Dagger/Dagger + X/X

0/0/0/20/30

Carrion Armour, Rabid Accessories, Rampager Weapons

2 Krait Runes
2 Afflicted Runes
2 Centaur / Lyssa / Altruism Runes

Sigil of Earth + Sigil of Corruption

Acrobatics III, IX
Trickery III, ?, XI

Heal: Withdraw
U1: Caltrops / Shadow Refuge
U2: Signet of Agility
U3: Shadowstep / Roll for Initiative
Elite: Thieves Guild / Dagger Storm

Currently using this, and having great fun with it

You can definately run a condition build as opposed to a direct damage build. I think that direct damage builds are more effective but condition builds provide much higher surivability.

Lately I’ve been running a P/D build and it performs pretty well. I rarely ever die and never die to a single person. The condition damage is definately lower than my engineers because it lacks burning and confusion, but when you get up to 20+ bleeds it’s still pretty good.

D/P builds are good I suppose but I’ve yet to see one good enough to make me a believer.

Strangely enough, I’ve been killing D/P thieves quite a bit with my P/D build. I’m not even using torment. I was P/D before this disaster of a patch. I’m not that good of a thief, so they must have been bad.

(Torment – tried it, was let down, went back to caltrops and smiled all night)

I was running D/D and D/D swap for init condition build before the patch to get used to it and found it very comfortable in sPvP.

10/0/30/30/0

After the patch it is just nuts….I run geomancy/Agony on the weapons so swaps are for init and bleeds.

Only troublesome chaps are the new necros…. but with 30 shadow arts you needn’t fight anything yu don’t want to anyway.