Guild Wars 2

Hi there Thieves! So since launch I’ve only ever played Necromancer and Engineer as my main characters. I’ve toyed around with every profession to learn how certain builds work and how to counter them, but I’ve never played them in depth.

So for the longest time, despite being obsolete everywhere but WvW, I’ve stuck with my Necromancer as my main profession and thoroughly enjoyed it. Looking forward to the Reaper spec to try new builds, but until the Reaper is available, I’m getting kinda bored.

So I thought about what I should try playing. I like playing a variety of build types, but right now I’m in the mood for stealth and poison. So I figured Thief might be perfect.

So quick question, since the new update, how effective is a condi thief in sPvP? I toyed around with the build below in hotjoin for a few matches last night before I had to log off.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=Vg33R3;0RwVa06-FOVd0;9;4IKM;0036247058;4WwG7U;1isXAisXA1y
Having never really played Thief it’s probably a pretty choppy build. I didn’t even get much of a chance to try it either due to going into an outnumbered match where they were camping the spawn.

So I’m curious, is there a similar build with the same idea of dealing damage with poison, bleed, and torment that is somewhat effective? If so, how does one effectively play this build? Are there any good videos I should check out?

Thanks in advance for any help.

You’ll probably catch hell for running a P/D build. Some people hate the build with a passion.

Do what you want man, don’t let others keep you from having fun. I love thief, even in this state I have fun!

Try it out, i does not cost you anything ….

But i think you will have a hard time coming from NG / Nec – current state of the thief requires a lot of proactiveness + knowledge what you can do and what not.

You have not even a second when you are in a bad spot .

Looks interesting enough to try. Only thing is the torment on interrupt trait in trickery. You’ll probably be a lot better off with bountiful, plus not sure how you’d be interrupting with this set up. If you wanna mess with torment, you could try changing the trickery GM to slight of hand for the daze as well as having a steal cd reduction. if you manage to get it right, you’d have an initiation that’ll slap torment on them with the daze and a get a stealthed pistol auto immediately from hidden thief. You could P/D 3 out for another short stack but you’d probably want to swap to D/D and keep them trying to dodge out the way letting torment work in your favor. GL and have fun!

I’m still trying to recreate a proper PvP condition thief build the WvW/PvP differences gets so annoying that I spent most of thief in WvW. Torment on interrupt seems it woul fit a (WvW) trapper p/p spec I don’t find it worth giving up over BT, you can try condition thief but I haven’t found the hidden PvP spark yet.

Pressure strike needs a lot of interrupts. (I went p/p in one condition build for this reason) .

I would take basi venom over Daggerstorm. This will give two more interrupts.

Next if you want to keep pressure strike I would do one of two things if not both. I would trait IMPROV over the Poison mastery. Right now poison mastery is not enough a benefit IMHO. Improv will allow a double steal and reset one of your skills.

If you are fighting a Necro or Guardian that steal can now net you 2 more fears or two more dazes for two more potential interrupts to trigger Pressure strike.

BA is a good choice in your build but the lower steal cooldown will trigger improv more often if you take sleight of hand. It also has a built in daze which is another interrupt you can trigger for pressure strikes.

You can still get confusion in such a build loaded on an enemy albeit it predicated on what class you fight. From an Engie you can steal gunk. With Improv you will get two uses. This makes it much more likely you can get that gunk on him and then use a the AA (sneak attack great here if you can pull the sequence off of Gunk stealth sneak attack) so as to apply confusion.

I like to save a gunk until my steal almost off cooldown, throw it and do a steal this stealthing me and then sneak attack pulling back with two more gunks (you can use your own number three skill here for more torment). The steal will load torment and poison and weakness if timed right , the sneak attack bleeds and confusion. It takes timing and a bit of luck. It would work good if he Imobbed first in that trap.

That all said trappers with p/p works better for a pressure strike build as you get even more dazes on demand. ( I had initially thought I would have little use for unload in a condition build using P/P but it actually works very well if firing through a combo field and dependent on the nature of said field can load more conditions. Sneak Attack is cheaper INI wise but has less shots and sometimes you have no stealths.

You can try it out but I urge you to not get used to it. Condi Thief builds are generally very low risk/high reward, and really don’t help you to improve at all in the long run.

Stay with new masterrace Engis tbh.

Thanks for advice. I actually completely forgot about this thread. Gonna apply some changes to the build, test them out, then come back for more advice based on my findings.

lvis.3824:

Try it out, i does not cost you anything ....

But i think you will have a hard time coming from NG / Nec - current state of the thief requires a lot of proactiveness + knowledge what you can do and what not.

You have not even a second when you are in a bad spot .

^This. No joke. Especially for WvW/PvP. GL in whatever decision you make, though.

As much as thief has been messed up, it is still my favorite.

I honestly don’t recommend playing thief in this patch. I’ve mained thief since pre-launch betas and I’ve seen a lot of changes and toughed it out.

This patch though … build diversity down even further and we’re very niche in SPvP which makes it quite boring to play IMO. This patch is so boring / bad to me as a thief that I’ve finally for the first time since launch switched to another class, that class being Mesmer.

As much as I would rather stick with thief, mesmer is a superior class, has stronger burst / sustain with AI and plenty of stealth. I mean kitten you can force Celestial ele’s to run away instead of them being able to easily out sustain your damage as a thief.

Unless you plan to PvE, don’t pick thief IMHO. It’s not worth it now.