P/D Condition - Help me learn this?

P/D Condition - Help me learn this?

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Posted by: FinalPatriot.8034

FinalPatriot.8034

Hello folks!

Way back when, I leveled my thief with full conditions only to hit 80, jump into WvW and then jumped by about 5 people every time I came out of stealth. I swear, it felt like everyone just stopped and yelled, “LOOK , A THIEF! KILL HER!”

So… I quit playing my thief and rolled a warrior. /sigh…

Anyways, I’ve been watching several of these P/D Condi builds on YouTube and was amazing at how well they could survive and really just troll small havoc groups. It looks like a ton of fun but to be honest, I’ve not a clue how to play it. By chance, do any of you know a link to a site that has a decent guide on how to play a P/D thief?

Any help would be great!

Oh, and here is the build I was talking about : Pistol/Dagger + D/D or LB

Laura Seranus – Mesmer –
“Shatter Me!”
“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

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Posted by: panicbutton.1053

panicbutton.1053

Take some time to go out into the wild or pvp to practice on some mobs before you throw yourself out there. Also remember that thieves utilize combo fields A LOT, so try googling that and see all the different skill combinations that you can use.

As a thief you’ll need to understand stealth mechanics first and foremost. Experiment with what you can and cannot do with it. Play some games in town like see how long you can keep stealth up total. Use blinding powder, shadow refuge, and use a shortbow’s cluster bomb in a smoke field to produce more stealth.

Next, the attacks. Cloak and dagger(CnD) has a delay time of actually casting when you press it — know that cloak and dagger is not instant. Mess around with cloak and dagger and try to hit monsters with it in all scenarios. It’s not straight forward, and can take a little practice. I would practice using cloak and dagger without actually targeting the monster, you will find that useful in any sort of WvW situation.

Now the main combination. Because Cloak and dagger has a delay in cast time, normally thieves press CnD, then steal half a second afterwards. This teleports them to the enemy and instantaneously hits them with CnD. Here is a solid rotation to practice, and you will be mainly using this rotation:

CnD -> Steal -> Sneak Attack -> Shadow Strike

After your shadow strike you will stack a lot of conditions on your enemy. After that combination of moves, it up to you to keep your distance with Shadow Strike whenever your enemy approaches, or to use CnD -> Sneak Attack -> Shadow Strike again. When steal is up, do the main rotation again. If you’re in trouble, throw up a shadow refuge.

Those are the basic mechanics. Make sure you have a full dire set with perplexity runes — or something similar. Also use the 2/0/6/0/6 build. You want to use steal as much as possible, and heal within stealth.

:)

Hàrlèy Quínn – Power S/D / D/P – Northern Shiverpeaks

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQPIPT2aTjJOBRcAWmlhUkw

(edited by panicbutton.1053)

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Posted by: FinalPatriot.8034

FinalPatriot.8034

Thanks for this response Harley! I subscribed to your channel BTW. Your info really makes a ton of sense as I was so confused on how thieves were able to pull off some of those tricks that when I tried, I never got to work. I’m going to test this out some tonight and see how it goes.

Thanks again!

Laura Seranus – Mesmer –
“Shatter Me!”
“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

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Posted by: panicbutton.1053

panicbutton.1053

Thank you, and anytime! See you out there!

Hàrlèy Quínn – Power S/D / D/P – Northern Shiverpeaks

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQPIPT2aTjJOBRcAWmlhUkw

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Posted by: Saturn.6591

Saturn.6591

Hm, I’ve decided to (once more) give P/D condition a try as well. Now today I’ve fought that S/F-ele, and while he couldn’t really kill me because I usually could go and hide in stealth, I also couldn’t kill him. Somehow he almost always managed to run in a way that my CnD wouldn’t hit, and if he didn’t, he surely blinded me. He also seemed to dodge or go invulnerable on my sneak-attack most of the time. Whenever I got him a bit lower, he would hide inside his Swirling Winds and heal up. Not to mention he often had 20+ stacks of might, although some of those might have been from me shooting at him with Fire Aura on. Meh… I just couldn’t really harm him. Eventually, a Thief from his server showed up and CnD’d-steal-ed on me for like 5,5k followed by a 9,5k Backstab… the fight was over quickly after this.

Now I wonder… how do you fight such an opponent?

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Posted by: panicbutton.1053

panicbutton.1053

It may seem like a simple task but learning to land CnD is not straight forward — absolutely takes practice. Unlike other skills in guildwars where you press a button and expect an auto target to happen, CnD does not work like this. You HAVE to face the opponent the split second that the CnD animation swings, and this is not auto targeted for you. Since it’s not instant you have to plan a second ahead of time before you press it and make sure you’re facing the opponent. If it doesn’t land then recovering for it may vary… But just keep practicing and try watching a few P/D related videos on youtube. Any video would do, but pay attention to how they all use CnD.

Elementalists are not a straight forward fight for a thief! They can be very tricky and are on par with thieves when it comes to zipping around and dodging attacks. I always have trouble with a good elementalist

The thief situation may be a matter of proper gear. You shouldn’t have been hit with such high numbers unless you’re under leveled, or do not have toughness. I recommend dire gear and a 2/0/6/0/6 build for maximum defense. Regardless of gear, when fighting another thief, it comes down to whom has the element of surprise, and how fast the players react to that surprise. You’ll build stronger innate reactions over time A good counter to thieves opening up on you is to use Blinding Powder or withdraw.

Remember: The awesome part about being P/D is your positioning can really confuse your opponent. When you’re stealth, try and pop up from really unintuitive positions. This makes the player have to re-adjust themselves and give you control over the fight.

Hàrlèy Quínn – Power S/D / D/P – Northern Shiverpeaks

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQPIPT2aTjJOBRcAWmlhUkw

(edited by panicbutton.1053)

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Posted by: ryan.6217

ryan.6217

Everything stated above is perfectly awesome for a beginner in p/d. Just a few things I’d like to add. First the 2/0/6/0/6 build with perplexity is a great place to start with p/d! It allows for a lot of mistakes, and lets you recover very well. however, a p/d build can be a lot more than that! if you play it long enough you’ll want to start experimenting with your own p/d playstyle, and even dropping the perplexity runes! Remember that this game allows for a lot of ‘build diversity’ and if you think you can find a better way to play p/d then go right ahead and do it!

The alst thing i’d like to add is have fun!! p/d gets a lot of flack, remember that the people who are going to be yelling at you are he people you totally just facerolled. It’s a strong set, and very hard to counter if the opponent doesn’t come prepared! At the end of the day it’s all about how you want to play and, even though some people will tell you otherwise, its a pretty fun set to play!

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Posted by: Shinjo.6092

Shinjo.6092

Has anyone ran into a Diamond Skin ele with this build? I’ve ran into a few and usually it’s almost impossible to get enough damage into them to bring them below the 90% threshold.

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Posted by: Fade.7658

Fade.7658

Has anyone ran into a Diamond Skin ele with this build? I’ve ran into a few and usually it’s almost impossible to get enough damage into them to bring them below the 90% threshold.

There are some things you can do to punch through that diamond skin. Let’s assume that the Ele has 20K health, for an even number. (I haven’t really run into many with this much health though).

1. Sigil of Leeching – weapon swap for 975 damage and healing.
2. Mug – Even as a cond. user, this does ~400-600 damage.
3. Thieves Guild
4. Leeching Venoms – I’m not sure if this will work. It does ~400 per venom chanrge used. The condition might not apply, but the damage and health leech might still punch through.

If you have enough crit chance (via rabid gear etc.), consider Sigil of Air or some other damaging proc.

A steal —> Shadow Strike combo (with mug) deals around 1200 total for me for my condi build. Combine that with something else, then apply your bleeds and such fast. They will stay if they go above 90%, and help with the next push to get them below 90%.

(edited by Fade.7658)

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Posted by: Shinjo.6092

Shinjo.6092

Has anyone ran into a Diamond Skin ele with this build? I’ve ran into a few and usually it’s almost impossible to get enough damage into them to bring them below the 90% threshold.

There are some things you can do to punch through that diamond skin. Let’s assume that the Ele has 20K health, for an even number. (I haven’t really run into many with this much health though).

1. Sigil of Leeching – weapon swap for 975 damage and healing.
2. Mug – Even as a cond. user, this does ~400-600 damage.
3. Thieves Guild
4. Leeching Venoms – I’m not sure if this will work. It does ~400 per venom chanrge used. The condition might not apply, but the damage and health leech might still punch through.

If you have enough crit chance (via rabid gear etc.), consider Sigil of Air or some other damaging proc.

A steal —> Shadow Strike combo (with mug) deals around 1200 total for me for my condi build. Combine that with something else, then apply your bleeds and such fast. They will stay if they go above 90%, and help with the next push to get them below 90%.

My problem was that they usually had regen to keep their health topped up. On top of that, Diamond Skin means they maxed out on Earth which is their toughness traitline, making it that much harder to get them below 90%. However, If I get lucky and somehow get them below 90%, they usually drop within the next 10 seconds with this build.

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Posted by: frans.8092

frans.8092

And what if you carried some Carrion / Rabid stuff around for when you run into one of these? Get away, swap gear, return and hit them with a more hybrid setup.

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Posted by: Kincaidia.3192

Kincaidia.3192

… Somehow he almost always managed to run in a way that my CnD wouldn’t hit

I am 100% convinced that there is a positioning bug every single time elementalists use some specific abilities – I steal/shadowstep/etc to them and they aren’t there. Swing and a miss.

It has happened way too often to attribute to lag or the like. The same thing happens after their vaporform or whatever downed ability.

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Posted by: Fade.7658

Fade.7658

Sigil of Leeching deals 974 fixed damage at lvl 80. Toughness won’t mitigate this, so all you really need to find is another source of damage that does up to 1K damage roughly.

Mug, CnD + Shadow Strike should get you the rest, even with high toughness.

I don’t run into many Diamond skin eles really. I flip flop between a power and condi p/d build, so it’s possible those times I did, I was using a power build.