Guild Wars 2

I wanna use and abuse condis since that’s what everyone is doing but I have an issue:

Which weapon sets should I use?

P/P and P/D are the obvious choice but is it okay to give up on short bow’s mobility? For all the condi thieves out there, what do you do about your limited mobility in combat / chasing ability?

Traits would be 2/0/4/2/6

I use P/D with D/D. D/D gives you similar mobility to SB when you wanna run away/chase them down. D/D is also good for condi builds because DB has an overwhelming bleed duration and the poison from the #1 skill chain combined with sigil of doom makes sure you have posion on your foe pretty often and for a long time which helps a lot against players with high regen(warriors). The upgraded steal with the new GM trait Bewildering Ambush woks pretty well as a makeshift burst when they’ve used up their cleanses and it’s time to go in for the kill as well. Shadow Strike is also really nice for avoiding some melee damage

The extra 5% dagger damage was chosen almost exclusively for Eles who traited diamond skin so I could actually do enough damage to get them below the 90% mark and start doing real damage.

Learn how to Steal like a boss;

I necessarily must use p/p though otherwise how am I gonna interrupt them? (#4)

You can use d/p p/d, d/x for mobility and poison application (take at least 3 points into DA line and use it to keep weakness up, which is good damage mitigation as well as a good cover condi)

edit: You also still have access to pistol#4, along with mobility and poison app to replace those functions with SB. Other than pistol #4, you have sleight of hand obviously, for interrupts, if you’re going perplex.

3/0/3/2/6. Or even 3/0/5/0/6 for might stacks.

You don’t need Headshot to interrupt people. A well-timed Basilisk hit or Scorpion Wire will do the trick in a pinch.

Interceptor.2653:

You don’t need Headshot to interrupt people. A well-timed Basilisk hit or Scorpion Wire will do the trick in a pinch.

Headshot is more preferable though. Basilisk takes some build up and Scorpion Wire is unreliable. Both take up a slot and can be easily wasted.

If you play the meta p/d dire build, you really won’t need p/p or d/p to interrupt. Sleight of hand is more than enough for interrupting your opponent, and the 20% chance of applying 3 stacks of confusion is entirely sufficient (keep in mind that a single sneak attack is already five hits).

Think about it this way. By taking offhand pistol, not only are you giving up shortbow, but you’re also giving up cloak and dagger, sneak attack, and shadow strike. All of those tick more reliably, have no internal cooldown, and do more damage.

Azure Prower.8701:

Headshot is more preferable though. Basilisk takes some build up and Scorpion Wire is unreliable. Both take up a slot and can be easily wasted.

Headshot is preferable from a convenience standpoint; BV and SW are preferable from a power standpoint, because you can throw more stacks of Confusion out there. Yes, it takes skill to make Perplexity #6 work without SoH, but the payoff is better as well, and that’s the way it should be.

mango.9267:

If you play the meta p/d dire build, you really won’t need p/p or d/p to interrupt. Sleight of hand is more than enough for interrupting your opponent, and the 20% chance of applying 3 stacks of confusion is entirely sufficient (keep in mind that a single sneak attack is already five hits).

Perplexity #4 is “when struck” now, not “on hit”. Usually that’s not a big deal because people run Dire and deep Shadow Arts anyway, but FYI you actually need to get smacked around to activate this.

I plan to use bewildering ambush instead of sleight of hand tho T_T

I guess I’ll have to drop it if I want to keep sb

I wouldn’t go with Perplexity Runes when running P/D. The weapon-set just doesn’t mesh all that well with the rune set. Bewildering Ambush should give you a comparable amount of Confusion for much less investment.

Runes of Balthazar should be much better. If meshes well with Withdraw and gives you reliable access to Burn, an incredibly powerful condition that P/D Thieves otherwise lack.

It’s also a very cheap rune-set.

Dee Jay.2460:

Runes of Balthazar should be much better. If meshes well with Withdraw and gives you reliable access to Burn, an incredibly powerful condition that P/D Thieves otherwise lack.

I wouldn’t say it meshes well, I’d say it’s hilariously awkward. The fact that the AOE procs at the end of the Withdraw dodge roll makes it really clunky to use in real-world situations. You either have to create space and back-turn roll into someone, or cancel the roll with a weapon swap.

Signet of Malice is better for it, but SoM has a casting time and isn’t generally something you want to put on cooldown.

Picking a heal for Balth is sort of like deciding whether you want to be kicked in the kitten or punched in the face.

It’s also a very cheap rune-set.

Cheap for a reason, in my estimation.

Yeah I know withdraw is very bad for those on heal procs. I learned that with runes of grenth a few weeks ago.

The chill would proc at the end of my dodge, making it useless.

If you want burning in your kit, try running Superior Rune of the Forge. You gain the burning ability, as well as the proc for protection. Not only does it proc off health % (most reliable proc), it gives you protection. This gives thief 2 things in your kit that we sorely need, and you gain a hell of a lot of survivability with this rune set. You also open up that heal slot to run a more appropriate skill.

Other option too is Superior Runes of The Undead. If you are running Dire or Rabid and you need to polish you build of with solid runes, these are IMO the best budget runes in the game. They give you good survivability and condi damage, while helping give you that last little kick.

I ran Runes of The Undead and Preplexity and would rotate on and off. When I had Undead equipped, I would be running about 2.5k condition damage and 3.2k armor. Beefy Cake is all I have to say! :P

Razor.6392:

I necessarily must use p/p though otherwise how am I gonna interrupt them? (#4)

Why the hell do you need to interrupt them? Keep them at a distance with well-timed shadow-strike/Body shot combos and also L2Dodge. The whole idea of Thieves is to stay away from the action until you’re ready to burst, hence the stealth/blind tactics. Play how you want but if you’re just going to be daze spamming like all the other baddies than you might as well switch to sword/pistol and spam you’re heart out like all the others.

kitten it Mulder, pay attention when I’m speakin’.

>why interrupt

Because of perplexity runes.

None of these mentioned, go 1-0-3-0-3 pick up mug, cloaked in shadows, shadows embrace and shadows rejevenution. Fot trickery uncatchable, bountyful theft and sleigt of hand.
With this setup ur steal will heal u, poison ur target, interupting ur target applying confusion, remove 2 boos and gain vigor and that on a 20s cooldown while u regen 300 healt per second in stealth, removes condis in stealth and blind foes when entering stealth.