Build Constructor: [Link].
Tried various variations. This is the one I found to be the best.
Notable variations and reasoning:
Skills
- Devourer Venom – Panic Strike causes devourer venom to apply poison. Keeping people in your poison fields is a bigger problem than getting 5+ poison stacks. Devourer helps with both. Also it provides more utility in a teamfight.
- Basilisk Venom – Same drill here. We want to isolate people to get pulmonary and torment stacks. Sadly the whole point of this build is to make it to where your opponent doesn’t get to play.
Traits
- Mug – Burst / sustain.
- Sleight of Hand – Honestly I don’t think you can have a real thief build without this. Steal cooldown is important for mug / endurance gain / 3x poison stacks with the new Potent Poison. Super important for gapclosing. And if you get the interrupt you’ll apply both pulmonary and torment.
- Impacting Disruption – For pulmonary.
Runes / Sigils / Amulet
- Sigil of Energy x2 – Playstyle involves swapping weapons on cooldown for endurance gain. I don’t find the “steal a boon on interrupt” sigil worth it since it can’t steal stability.
- Sigil of Venom x2 – Duration to help get 5+ stacks. Found I didn’t need more poison duration than this.
- Rune of the Warrior – Playstyle involves swapping weapons on cooldown for endurance gain. Vitality makes you tanky. Power helps pulmonary burst.
- Carrion Amulet – Also makes you tanky, especially with all the dodge spamming. Gives right amount of Power / Condi for damage.
Playstyle
Spam all your skills, except shadowstep, on cooldown to maximize endurance and dodges. That includes heal, signet of agility, and weapon swap. Save signet and shadow return for condi clear as needed. Dodge in choking gas for the whirl finisher. Also keep in mind you have 3 aoe team utility spells.
Thoughts? I know there are other variations that give better results in certain situations. Particularly with the ebb and flow of cooldowns. This one though I found to be very reliable consistently, with a good mix of sustain, utility, and both condi and physical damage.