Guild Wars 2

What would you suggest for WVW as well as general pvp?

Which ever you prefer, glass cannon is harder to pull of in wvw outside of a 1v1.

If you want to melee go for cannon if you want to be ranged and wear people down slowly go condition.

I prefer Condition over glass cannon in WvW and pve. Can be pretty decent if you know what you are doing, and most don’t have condition removal (as most i’ve run into in WvW are glass cannon with out cleansing skills).

A good P/D condition thief that can show you how good they can be

but as the previous poster said: its all preferance

Yeah, pure glass-cannon is kinda sucky outside of 1v1. A single CC at the wrong time will get you killed.

Condition Damage builds tend to be a bit more durable and sustainable but have other issues.

1. Auto-Condition cleansing has become abundant. Almost all professions are relying on traits/abilities that cleanse Conditions passively every few seconds. This includes Thieves, Eles, Guardians and Rangers.

2. Not enough pressure to prevent revives. I found this especially problematic when playing Pistol/Dagger. Yes, P/D is insanely overpowered and hard to kill but it’s really hard to stop people constantly reviving each other when engaging zergs.

While undoubtedly effective, P/D made me absolutely DESPISE the down-state/resurrection mechanics in this game.

3. Pistol/Dagger is really, really boring. Yeah, it’s fun being overpowered and taking on groups of 4 and coming out on top. But the always same play-style and lack of pressure really make it quite repetitive over time.

After playing both, I prefer direct damage over conditions. Condition builds typically have a lot of survivability, but take forever to kill a single target.

Full on glass cannon isn’t that great either. I’m talking the typical 25/30/0/0/15 builds that I see most thieves run. The problem is that unless you are incredibly skilled, or your enemies are just complete idiots, there’s almost no way to survive a 2+v1 as you have very little ways of mitigating damage outside of blowing 1 target up before they can react and running away as fast as possible.

Basically, I’d go for a direct damage, but somewhat balanced build.

Just for gearing sake, I’d say that Physical Damage gearing (not just GC) are a lot more flexible for what builds/traits you can take than condition, which pretty much locks you in to 10 or 20 deadly arts and 20 or 30 shadow arts.

Moral of the story for all of this is, too much of one extreme or the other isn’t so great. You may gib newbs, and you may fool yourself in to thinking you’re awesome, but most folks will figure out youre a one trick pony and either facepwn you, or simply leave you alone.

If you go hunting for duels, either will work.

As many have said, GC is good for small engagements in WvW, but 1 bad AEO or CC in a big fight and you are done for! I prefer Conditions, I can survive in big battles and do very well flipping camps and slapping yaks. There is nothing more enjoyable than watching people guard a yak as it bleeds to death, while you hide in stealth!

There is a great condition build using only shadow arts, acrobatics, and trickery which will give you 100% condition duration, 1300+ condition damage, and plenty of survivability. Just need the proper runes and sigils.

I’ve tried both glass cannon and conditions and the reason why condition builds have better survival is because of the traits taken. Most glass cannons take power and crit tree and they leave out the available survival skills such as 1 second longer stealths, blinds when going into stealth, etc.

After playing with a lot of different builds, I came up with a build with the help of other thief friends. This is a backstab build with the playstyle of a p/d thief. I haven’t gotten the time to add builds and gear to the description but I’ll add asap!

I am just being stickler for details but a backstab build can never be like P/D because P/d allows you to do things like stack 10 bleeds on someone sit in shadow refuge for 7-8 seconds while they are still dying then attack. Every time you go in stealth whatever your chosen target is they are still taking damage even though you are not attacking.

With that being said your build looks pretty good your missing the feline grace which is another important part of P/D. I do like everything else though I would probably drop 5 trait from critical strikes to pick up feline grace for the times you are exposed you have more mitigation from dodge rolls. This looks like it would fit sword/dagger very very well though.

glass for 1 vs 1, condi for the zerg groups.
for pvp, i can’t tell.

Direct damage, not glasscannon. With the survival traits done.

direct damage , up to you what weapon set you decide to pick.
D/D -burst
S/D – 1 vs1
Shortbow works awsome in groups /zergs
minimal stats:
2500 defence /15000 hp , to survive initial burst /random aoe
at least 50% critical chance- to output some decent dps and keep initiative up with shortbow

Glass cannon wins. No one has 10k backstabs, 8k spammable heartseekers, 7k steals and 7k cloak and dagger.

I have a GC set and a D/D + SB condition set. I much prefer running with my condition build. I’ll admit, I have not tried the direct damage with survival traits.

There’s just too much that can and will go wrong against a competent opponent if you’re playing GC. GC build is fun for a few kills. You laugh how you killed someone in 1 second, then you realize you have 12k hps and it’s not so funny.

I haven’t tried P/D condition still. I just like D/D SB for some reason. You don’t kill things super fast, but you have a ton of suvivability and can put pressure on multiple enemies with a few death blossoms and a choking gas.

I say try them both and come to your own conclusion. That’s how I made my choice.

Good luck!

My only experience has been with condition P/D and recently tanky S/D and D/P builds (Dazelock S/D and Tanky dps D/P). I have come to enjoy D/P far more than the other sets I have played in WvW. 10/0/30/15/15 for either S/D or D/P

With a mix of Berseker’s, Soldier, and Valkyrie gear/trinkets your damage output is pretty good. The issue with a tanky dps Thief is the lack of Fury (you could spec 0/10/30/15/15 but you’re losing out on mug), which makes it so that your burst isn’t reliable. I don’t mind that in exchange for the survivability the Shadow Arts tree provides though.

You could also spec 10/30/30/0/0 but without 15 points in Acrobatics you’re losing out on Feline Grace, which improves your survivability by a lot. Also losing out on Bountiful Theft, which grants Fury whenever you want to burst with Mug.

Condition P/D is the best 1vX spec the Thief has in WvW. It’s come to be a pretty boring and skill-less spec imo though. The effort the P/D Thief puts into killing his opponents versus what the other guy has to put out is very low, but if your only concern is having an optimal 1v1+ build that’s your best option.

sPvP/Tourney pvp Glass Thief is the best spec atm.