Guild Wars 2

Please forgive my lack of deeper understanding regarding condition removal for a Thief. Been actively playing mine for 3 days now and I hit 47 last night so haven’t got grandmaster trait access yet.

From what I’ve gathered with what I can use we have three different condition removals on two healing skills (HiS – burning, poison, bleeding & Withdraw – immob, chill, cripple), condition removal on Signet of Agility (1 per proximity based allies) and condition purging when traiting Shadow’s Embrace.

I’m running D/D primarily (love the playstyle) with Signet of Malice, Assassin’s Signet, Signet of Shadows, Caltrops and Thieves Guild being my staple slot setup. Weapon swap is a mix of SB or P/P depending on the situation. As is evident from above I’m not using stealth all that much and prefer a LDB + Caltrops condition/bleed approach.

Is there a deeper element that I’m missing? Some interaction between traits or skills that allow for further condition removal? I’d greatly appreciate any insight you could share.

Shadowstep (which becomes shadow return) is a good stun breaker with 1200 range and will cure 3 conditions, if you are using a condition build you may wish to switch out Assassins signet for Shadowstep.

Thank you Silent Leaf

Try using Shadow’s Embrace and stealth more often (you can’t overstate the usefulness of CnD). It is a great trait for SiM builds, because you lack the condition removal from HiS. LDB builds are awesome and provide a lot of survivability, but you are a thief and acrobatics alone won’t keep you alive forever without some stealth mixed in, more so in PvP (it also helps with positioning skills such as caltrops).

Bleeding? CnD or use a stolen stealth skill.

You might also consider replacing Assassin’s signet for Shadow Refuge, which is great utility, or Shadow Step, as mentioned above.

Shadow Refuge + Shadow’s Embrace/Rejuvenation allows you to pretty much reset combat, even from the worst circumstances.

One additional note: SoM is awesome with dagger storm and sort of wasted with thieves guild.

Thanks for the advice Rolos, pushed hard and hit 55 now, almost time for Grand Master traits woot! Taken the advice and switched in a few skills and swapped my traits around, making better use of s/p and stealth, going better, so excited to hit 80 soon!

Anytime!

The trick with stealth is to use it to pace the fights. Make your opponents fight at your rhythm by “pausing” combat every now and then. You are in control: no attacks are exchanged unless you decide it.

This way you can keep an eye on your positioning, cooldowns, conditions, boons, etc. and make more efficient decisions, while keeping your initiative high and lessening the risk of it running dry.

On this note, Roll for Initiative is another awesome skill to have for LDB builds, as it helps you keep your initiative and, consequently, your bleeding stacks up. The fact that it breaks CC with the press of a single button only makes it more useful.

Ah if you’re going with S/P, consider opening the fight with Infiltrator’s Strike, the Return portion of it will shadowstep you back and at the same time remove a condition.

LyzeUH.1398:

Ah if you’re going with S/P, consider opening the fight with Infiltrator’s Strike, the Return portion of it will shadowstep you back and at the same time remove a condition.

Sword shadowstep works very well with daggerstorm. The return shadowstep lasts longer than the daggerstorm, unlike the shadowstep utility skill. It offers a very quick escape option if you get too much aggro, and the condition removal is nice.

For general condition removal I make use of the shadow’s embrace trait often. Blinding powder becomes even more valuable as an escape skill when shadow’s embrace is traited.

Signet of Shadaws is just good for traveling distances, in combat it is only good for stomping – you might want to replace that to get more stealth options.