Guild Wars 2

For most of my time on GW2, I’ve been playing a Warrior. Out of all weapons on a Warrior, I fell in love with Sword. Power-based Sword, to be exact. Eventually, after a lot of thinking, that lead to me making an Ascended Sword, as I figured I could use it on my Thief as well.

For me, Thief has always been a profession that I really wanted to play, but simply sucked at. D/P ended with doublecasting Blinding Powder on accident, D/D was boring (as I found myself rarely using #3 and #4) and S/D had me evading myself off of bridges to an untimely and uncool demise.

Well, as it turns out, I love the spec that I dreaded the most: the completely stealthless S/P Steal build. However, looking at that, I don’t see that much condi clearing. I doubt that Shadow Return and Infiltrator’s Return are enough to deal with heavy condis. So the question is:

• Am I missing something? Is there some useable condi clearing available that I am just not seeing?
• Is using Runes of Melandru and Lemongrass Poultry Soup really enough to handle condis?
• Am I just supposed to not be able to handle condis?

Infiltrates return is usually pretty good for the oodd poison or chill. I take pain response whenever I run sword. I big parts of th if though is not getting the conditions put on you in the first place. I highly recommend the feline grace and pain response traits. One to avoid conditions, and one to mitigate their impact.

signet of agility or put 10 in SA for the clense. Sacrifices must be made my friend…

Oh and the signet of agility gives you higher crit chance anyway … as well as 2 more dodges- so its a decent pick up

Lyssa’s Runes are still a viable condi clear.

Don’t fret spammy condi builds. They are likely bunkers anyway and you should just move on. Sorry for weak advice but I wouldn’t try to cram too much condi removal in.

That being said:
Sigils:
Purity for on hit, removes
Generosity on crit, transfers (expensive as hell)
Cleansing on swap, removes (account bound)

After looking over the suggested build I’d say 3 condi removal skills is enough but you could remove the force/accuracy sigil for a purity one easy enough and/or put a cleansing one in place of fire sigil on bow.

I use non stealth p/p build and have the potential for the following.

Condi cleanse on weapon swap PLUS sigil generoisty one set.
Condi cleanse weapon swap plus sigil purity alternate set.
Condi cleanse using shadowstep.
Condi cleanse using SOA
Condi cleanse using prayer to kormir.

The built in Condi cleanses of the heal and RFI.

But there no way you need them all. I tend to use shadowstep and one sigil each weapon set. I sort of like cleanse sigil as you gain more control over just when you swap weapons. A Purity or generosity can fire when you deal with something like cripple which can be cleared by other means. You really do not want that to fire on cripple then have stacks of confusion or a burning to deal with. If I run into situations where I am short I tend towards Kormir but it very rare I need to go that route.

I personally do not like Pain response a lot. The CD just too long and it can trigger when there no condition to clear. Dropping to 75 percent health and having it trigger and go on a cooldown and then get bleed/poison/burn thrown your way gets you nothing off the trait but regen followed by 30 seconds cooldown.

I tend not to take traits that have long cooldowns as they are off more often then not and when it comes to Condition cleanse, the more you can get them to cleanse on YOUR terms the better.

Hmm, your stats are good, I would just try and get more vitality since it will help with condis. Unless you have guard stacks. You have good -condition duration, and you also want to have a purity sigil on one of your weapons to help with the condis.

The build looks great on paper. If you want extra condi clear you could also run Hide in Shadows, but withdraw works great too, however it can be poisoned.

I would put two points in SA and grab Shadows Embrace

You can then carry Shadow Refuge for a semi full condi clear
Hide in Shadows will clear lots of condis as well as the damaging ones
You have access to stealth by laying down a black powder and blasting it with your shortbow which should be your offhand set

Infiltrator’s Return won’t always be an effective condi cleanse since cover condis will make you waste your own time.

A fun way to go about the S/P roaming is to just use a Panic strike PW burst build with Improvisation, Infiltrator’s Signet, Devourer Venom, SR. You might be surprised how many people you can catch. lol

If you’re going to put 2 points in SA for condi cleanse you might as well just run S/D instead. At least you’ll also be harder to kite. >_>

Glad to see more s/p thieves! This is the build i run when there is to much condi in wvw, the dmg is still great and its usually more then enough!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl0Mp7pVOx0J8PNBNhs9kGR8O83yaFA-TF0EABQ8AAYTHwM7P42RAIUlgMpExJlCLpkIgTAAHaCSSZUKq7ohWAJOEAAYCaFVCIFwSKjA-w

Jesse.4631:

Glad to see more s/p thieves! This is the build i run when there is to much condi in wvw, the dmg is still great and its usually more then enough!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl0Mp7pVOx0J8PNBNhs9kGR8O83yaFA-TF0EABQ8AAYTHwM7P42RAIUlgMpExJlCLpkIgTAAHaCSSZUKq7ohWAJOEAAYCaFVCIFwSKjA-w

This guy’s build is bad, use my build.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl0Mp7pVOx0J8PNBNhs9kGR8O83yaFA-TF0EABQ8AAYTHwM7P42RAIUlgMpExJlCLpkIgTAAHaCSSZUKq7ohWAJOEAAYCaFVCIFwSKjA-w

Brick Tamland.6507:

This guy’s build is bad, use my build.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl0Mp7pVOx0J8PNBNhs9kGR8O83yaFA-TF0EABQ8AAYTHwM7P42RAIUlgMpExJlCLpkIgTAAHaCSSZUKq7ohWAJOEAAYCaFVCIFwSKjA-w

Your build so much better!

Jesse.4631:

Brick Tamland.6507:

This guy’s build is bad, use my build.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl0Mp7pVOx0J8PNBNhs9kGR8O83yaFA-TF0EABQ8AAYTHwM7P42RAIUlgMpExJlCLpkIgTAAHaCSSZUKq7ohWAJOEAAYCaFVCIFwSKjA-w

Your build so much better!

Thank you. We all don’t have the creative genius to come up with builds such as these.

I’d look into HiS. The lack of removal of DoT conditions is probably what’s killing you and that’s our single best outlet. It’ll let you remove excess torment on IR as well which other non-stealth builds cannot do.

Like Menzies says, Lyssa’s and basi go together perfectly and are great for the big condi bombs that shadow return can’t keep up with.

Other than that, shadowstep and agility signet also work well with the build if you want to keep focus on damage through traits.

You need to go acro, not crit if you want to be able to deal with condis

inneedoflife.5092:

You need to go acro, not crit if you want to be able to deal with condis

Can’t say that I love the idea of Pain Response as a way to deal with condis. Not that it’s any worse than a lot of the other suggestions. Just that something like Pain Response is very easy to force on cooldown if you know it’s there.

And considering all of the options here, if you pay attention, a condi spec can easily decipher just what means of condi cleanse a S/P carries:

• Pain Response has the obvious tell of granting Regeneration (something that Thieves rarely get)
• Hide in Shadows has the animation
• Sigil of Generosity can be spotted via condis that an S/P won’t have access to (bleeds, vulnerability, burning, possibly Torment)
• Sigil of Cleansing can be spotted via weapon swapping

And heck, even if you don’t put this much thought into it, Pain Response and Hide in Shadows (the two best options) are on lengthy cooldowns.

sigil of generosity is so kitten expensive

For a non-stealth build, where you are specifically trying to mitigate condi’s as much as possible, I would recommend these, in order:

*Shadow Step (vs people with condi food buff, don’t be afraid to open with forward shadow step, then return at their first burst, or just double tap)
*Signet of Agility
*Sigil of Cleansing & Sigil of Purity (on off-set)
*Lyssa Runes
*Pain Response
*More Evades
*More Initiative (for more Infil Returns)
*More HP
*Food

edit: For an easy anti-condiburst “combo”- Shadowstep In, do your damage. At this point conditions applied Shadow Return (-3 condi), weapon swap to shortbow (-1 condi), auto attack (-1 condi). Kite/dodge, lay down poison, dodge, dodge (if need be, agil sig -1 condi and refill endurance). Now swap back to sword, Infil Strike in, damage, Infil Return if need be. Rinse repeat.

For S/P, i feel like IS/IR for 5 ini is too expensive in every case except when you have confusion applied or they have Retaliation up. For every other situation, it’s better to use that ini+1 for a PW. Otherwise just run, you’re not going to do enough damage before their condi burst rotation comes back around.