WvW - Trailblazer Condi roamer...?
I used to run a viper/carrion mix, and swapped to trailblazer for the exact reasons above. This is what I’m running atm:
Duration is important for me as what I’m aiming to do is overload someone’s cleanses through multiple sources. I have 100% extra duration on poison and 90% on bleed, so any condis left on the enemy after they’ve cleansed will tick for a good long while.
My standard engage is to precast impairing daggers and steal in so all three daggers hit, then heal and immediately weapon swap. This puts your heal on a 4s cooldown from self cancelling the skill, and places the on heal needle trap under the enemy which means it will land just before the immob from impairing daggers wears off. This will one shot most things if left to tick, and leaves you free to apply additional condis via choking gas or P/D.
I have absorption sigil mostly to test for zergs and so I have some boon rip (no bountiful theft), but generally geomancy works really well as well. Draining is more valuable for the sustain if you have to make a choice.
Have fun!
Critical Kit, Thief.
Don’t follow me, unless you enjoy being chased by angry men with sticks.
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running withdraw on a TB condi thief is pretty weak, only good if you don’t know how to manage your condition cleansing with shadow step and escapist’s. Channeled Vigor a way better alternative for all variants of condi thief builds.
edit I can see withdraw optimal in a vipers build since you would need to remove a solid condi burst quickly or else you’d die very fast due to the low hp pool.
You can also run what I do for additional condition cleanse.
The reasons you take duration in a p/d build is to leverage your #2 pistol Immobs and to squeeze more bleed stacks out of the AA and sneak attack.
The base duration of bleeds is 4 seconds on that attack. My own rule of thumb is with cleanses once durations get over 7 seconds likelihood of cleanses jumps meaning diminishing returns.
With P/d high duration those bleeds last much longer and you can get very high Immobs that allow you to switch to SB for the poison field. The Vuln and weakness off lotus poison also add up and the uncatchable trait can add on yet more longer lasting bleeds.
Given you are p/d I would not take dagger training. You just do not have enough dagger skills to make it worth your while. Trappers respite is superior IMHO and is easy to “camoflauge” when cast with your heal. Just one strike of it can more then wipe out the poison of dagger training, (A lot of this of course depends on style and how often you use CnD crippling dagger and Shadowstrike as compared to the AA sneak attack and #2)
Added to this if you are in SB , dagger training does little for the build and SB is something you can really use for the field.
One trick I like to do is precast heal and steal to the enemy, this dropping a trap on top. Shadowstrike away, swap and SB with gas on top of him. If you use trappers runes or HIS as heal you can also get a sneak attack off from stealth before the Shadowstrike.
I have been toying with devourer venom of late given it now adds a poison to each cast and the results are interesting.This can get you some very long duration immobs. Sure they can break them but you can apply more right after and some classes have to use generic cleanses to get rid of immobs. (a needl e trap trigger with a devourer stack up gets an added poison AND close to 2 more secons immob to the ~6 I already get. Use after he has removed immobs from your #2 and have some fun)
(edited by babazhook.6805)
This is the build i tend to use it has plenty dodges and good condi duration and you can cover a lot of ground but you can go button spamming it works well for roaming and fighting on the peripheries.
You can also run what I do for additional condition cleanse.
Can’t say I’ve had many problems with condis on my build tbh, the combination of escapist’s absolution, signet of agility and shadowstep seems to be enough.
That, and most good condi necros seem to have left the game or something recently, it’s been a good while since I’ve had a condi spike transferred back to me. Might be a combination of things that though, since I’ve started engaging with shadowstep, spiking with poison and immobilise, laying choking gas to interrupt the heal then porting back out of their range to avoid the transfer.
Critical Kit, Thief.
Don’t follow me, unless you enjoy being chased by angry men with sticks.
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P/D condi (trailblazer/viper) is pretty strong. Had the opportunity to fight two of these thieves who roamed on piken square the last few nights.
Got destroyed on my power reaper (trailblazer + mobility = just stupid), but destroyed them on my staff+SB thief (SB3 kiting works pretty well against them).
Nevertheless people around me died like flies to their condi pressure. So I think P/D counters a lot of builds in WvW.
I skip the signet but I love it for other builds. The extra dodges and cleanse are super useful.
I also don’t have many condi issues. I’ve fought condi transfer reapers who are strong…but you can usually avoid a lot of the risk with stealth, dodge and kiting (all of which are strong on the set).
Given I play Core on my own (added damage and significantly so with a DA , SA ,TR build) in conjunction with being heavy on boon theft, the only real cleanses I have on my own build is SE along with weapon sigils. If I am encountering more condition build on a given night I might slot in Shadowstep.
The big thing I have to watch is the condition reaper and a transfer. Mesmers are more manageable due to stealth and the traps I use (which helps to prevent shatters and for stealth and outright funnels out the clones via trap) and the fact I can steal resistance via the plasma which can be useful .
As to fellow thieves I actually found those using Staff not all the difficult kitten many of them trait EA and little else on cleanse. It relatively easy to time a bomb for when they in the vault animation. Obviously this harder against Staff users that know there something other then Vault in their build. I have in fact Imobbed thief Staff users that use Bounding for significant seconds as some do not seem to know they have an immob break in their weapon.
P/D condi (trailblazer/viper) is pretty strong. Had the opportunity to fight two of these thieves who roamed on piken square the last few nights.
Got destroyed on my power reaper (trailblazer + mobility = just stupid), but destroyed them on my staff+SB thief (SB3 kiting works pretty well against them).
Nevertheless people around me died like flies to their condi pressure. So I think P/D counters a lot of builds in WvW.
There’s a good chance I was one of those thieves, been roaming with it every night on Piken since Monday. A good condi necro or thief are problems, but most other things are destroyed by the daze lock once you work through resistance and stab cooldowns. It’s a very solid build for solo roaming atm.
Critical Kit, Thief.
Don’t follow me, unless you enjoy being chased by angry men with sticks.
Power Build Condi Build
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I run Viper armor and Trailblazer weapons/accessories. I run a blow up build though and isn’t meant to stick around. I used to run Dire instead of Viper but find the extra punch on Steal, Impacting and Draining is more fun than the survival. Watching LB Rangers fall over in 2s is pretty fun.
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