Guild Wars 2

For this particular patch using death blossom/sleight of hand buffs.

(unedited)

10/0/0/30/30

III
III, VIII (not tested yet) OR X, XII
III, VII, XII

Runes of warrior
Agony sigils + hydromancy.

This is the best build I came up (and I spent 7-8 hours on experimenting everything, including signet of malice which still sucked), and I had tested many armor runes sample to make sure that it’s done from a practical approach, amongst other weird stuff like going into the stealth line.

Silly, because you’re not using stealth.

Anyway, I tested out rabid amulet more than the shaman’s amulet (both jewels are knight), and I find it to be relatively satisfactory. As usual, stealth thieves are still much better than this build, and my conclusion is that the acrobatics line still need buffing in some of the traits. (In example, hard to catch and pain response should be 20 seconds.)

Necromancers are almost OP to the point that it’s impossible to play against them using this build. 5-6 conditions instantly dealt, daggerstorm doesn’t reflect the stuff they do (I keep getting bleed from something and it wasn’t even melee range), wth was Anet thinking, lol.

If there’s ANY other build that is better than this, I would like to know, because I don’t see how it can get any better than this.

p/d bleed is better. i run it as a bunkerish build in spvp and do great. do you mean a build to replace the s/d which got nerfed hard?

first time ive seen a thief call a necro OP… lol

the thing thats bleeding you while you dagger storm is scepter auto attack which has always been the same.

necro and ele blow this build up. i play a similar one with superior adventuere runes….50% energy sigils on 2 daggers superior hydro on the other 2 and 10 0 0 30 30 with carrion accs/armor. aoe on ground plus conditions seem to be its bane….fire and bleeding basically. the direct dmg really can be dealth with. just need a way of cleansing it. eles stack fire alot and also 8 stacks of instant bleed :P.

Lone,

I’ll capture and post some video at the weekend of a heavy variation that make necros pretty easy. They are the new popular sPvP toon, but you can still D/D condi them down safely with some changes. You really do need condi removal in stealth… so need to give up some of that heavy investment in trickery

D/D and D/D with one geomancy and agony on each… usual 2/2/2 runes.

10/0/30/30/0 rotation: pre-cast trops, wait half a second, steal, DBx4, change weapon (init regen and apply 3 more stacks of AE bleeds) DBx2… Blinding powder, refuge and HiS for stealth access on top of CnD. Dodges all over and all the evades anyway from DB – you’re only really taking condi damage so get that mitigated.

Finding it pretty easy to stack 20 bleeds on all in radius and shake off anything applied to me. Disengage when the numbers get too heavy and it’s just you stood there. Very nice for capping and holding far point or getting stuck into a mass of baddies.

Carrion of course. Ensure 2 extra init regen and init regen on weap swap. I could see the thieves who were trying the same thing to me without the condi removal and without so much init regen to keep bouncing up and down and they died pretty badly.

I just wrote a huge post (on my phone) explaining how a good condition necro should never lose to a d/d condition thief but it failed to post for some infuriating reason. ..

essentially condition necro has enough condition transfers and cleanses that if you beat them on a condi thief, they are bad/new to the class.

there are probably hundreds of new necros running around at the moment who dont know the skills well enough to effectively use them. I would imagine if you’re easily killing the necro… that is the case.

Faeyd.5094:

Lone,

I’ll capture and post some video at the weekend of a heavy variation that make necros pretty easy. They are the new popular sPvP toon, but you can still D/D condi them down safely with some changes. You really do need condi removal in stealth… so need to give up some of that heavy investment in trickery

D/D and D/D with one geomancy and agony on each… usual 2/2/2 runes.

10/0/30/30/0 rotation: pre-cast trops, wait half a second, steal, DBx4, change weapon (init regen and apply 3 more stacks of AE bleeds) DBx2… Blinding powder, refuge and HiS for stealth access on top of CnD. Dodges all over and all the evades anyway from DB – you’re only really taking condi damage so get that mitigated.

Finding it pretty easy to stack 20 bleeds on all in radius and shake off anything applied to me. Disengage when the numbers get too heavy and it’s just you stood there. Very nice for capping and holding far point or getting stuck into a mass of baddies.

Carrion of course. Ensure 2 extra init regen and init regen on weap swap. I could see the thieves who were trying the same thing to me without the condi removal and without so much init regen to keep bouncing up and down and they died pretty badly.

You see, you went into the stealth art lines (while I want to keep that sleight of hand buff.). The only possible way to remove the ridiculous amount of conditions (AOE, no less.), is to go into stealth, gain lots of init and cond. removal when you go into stealth.

If the buffs thieves got this patch doesn’t work, it makes it kind of pointless to even go into this area. I’m starting to think anet devs are thinking up of stuff like this.

Dev A: We need to buff some lines in thieves.
Dev B: But people will complain!
Dev A: Then let’s nerf some stuff like cluster bomb and underwater skills. That way people won’t complain as much.

One thing about this game, it doesn’t run on a matchmaking system. Every bad player can get paired up with the good ones, and the good necros right now are insanely OP. Thieves still beat the newbs up with the crit/stealth line ez, especially with that blind buff.

I really hope anet stop catering to the bad players, seriously. I got into a PUG matchup which ended up in 500:60 score, because the players don’t cap points and repeatedly die to the enemies. When I played against them the next round, this thief spammed heartseeker on me with full life. Sigh.

Anyway, I stated before I wanted to use the BUFFS anet devs gave us. Does it work? Well, it was pretty fanciful, but the necros just spammed AOE and I can’t evade that kitten. The end.

have you got an effective p/d build lonewolfe? thats what I play on my thief just to be annoying and have fun.

Bull Zooker.1672:

have you got an effective p/d build lonewolfe? thats what I play on my thief just to be annoying and have fun.

Nope. I haven’t try out a condition P/D build.

id recommend it iver d/d.

maybe personal preference though, but I find it more effective.

I have been playing Condition P/D exclusively for about a month now. Mostly it was to do something different (in sPvP), then it turned into (desperate) attempts to bridge the gap between direct damage and condition damage. Then it evolved into running mostly direct/critical damage with a side of light condition damage. Sure, my survivability was kitten, but Sneak Attacks were fun (especially with Runes of the Thief).

With the recent changes, I’m trying things all over again.

Some of the recent changes help slightly for P/D condition, but in the end, we all know Vital Shot needs a buff, and Body Shot as well (and not the one it received).

Updated Sleight of Hand + Hidden Thief can be useful (and more Poison cover if Serpent’s Touch is traited).

I was able to get up to a 7 second duration Torment (lots of +% Poison/Condition Duration) with Sigils of Doom on P/D + P/D as a method to have constant cover for bleeds. However, with that, you lose out on most of Shadow Arts.

And why do +% damage bonuses (traits, runes) no affect DoT damage? Too overpowered?

And I wish Condition Duration was moved to Trickery and Condition Damage was moved to Deadly Arts. xD

Bull Zooker.1672:

have you got an effective p/d build lonewolfe? thats what I play on my thief just to be annoying and have fun.

annoying and have fun? i challenge any warrior…ranger…. just these 2 alone i will bet 100g i beat them with 90% hp or more. the rest can be done too with p/d. the only nemesis is another thief running the same or p/d bc of the invis condi removal which makes for a draw at worst. p/d owns :P its not just fun and annoying. i kill d/d eles (of the best sort) even those annoying heal rangers/guardians go down everytime.

Travlane.5948:

Bull Zooker.1672:

have you got an effective p/d build lonewolfe? thats what I play on my thief just to be annoying and have fun.

annoying and have fun? i challenge any warrior…ranger…. just these 2 alone i will bet 100g i beat them with 90% hp or more. the rest can be done too with p/d. the only nemesis is another thief running the same or p/d bc of the invis condi removal which makes for a draw at worst. p/d owns :P its not just fun and annoying. i kill d/d eles (of the best sort) even those annoying heal rangers/guardians go down everytime.

I know it is effective, but I don’t play it often enough to play it to its full potential. I have won alot of 2v1’s etc and rarely die when playing it but I like my necro and engie too much to invest too much time in thief.

I play p/d in WvW and sPvP but not too much PvE

yeah we just reek of cheees in pve :P

Funny, I was playing around with this exact build yesterday. It did pretty well for the most part. Something I would consider is changing your runes to melandru to reduce the damage you’ll take from conditions. I found that with the passive healing from signet of malice I was able to outheal the condition damage for the most part as long as I wasn’t taking on more than one opponent focused on condition damage. I was tanking 2-3 players for longer periods of times, being able to keep a point contested, and often downing some of the players in the process. Unfortunately, mobility can be an issue, so this build is somewhat situational and it’s not very effective if you’re being kited. I would also consider using sigils of leeching for more staying power.

With that said, I found p/d to still be superior for conditions because you have more flexibility. I’m still playing around with builds, but the ricochet buff was actually really nice, particularly if used with signet of malice. Here’s a new p/d build I tried out in PVP today- was doing surprisingly quite well in 5-man hot join at least.
5-0-30(IV, VI-may be able to trade for other, XI)-15(II)-20(III, X)
signet of malice, caltrops, spider venom, and either shadow refuge, shadowstep or black powder, dagger storm
carrion gear, 2 krait, centaur, afflicted runes; sigil of leeching and corruption
I was surviving and killing 1v2 regularly, often with almost full HP still, being called a cheater and OP in the process. The passive healing is really good. Only problem is keeping those points contested while fighting. Because of this, I doubt it would be of much use in tPVP- as has always been a problem with p/d.