Thief - Condition Preparation Roamer

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Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

TBD

Overview

A condition Thief build for WvW. Made to set a trap at objectives controlled by your team (such as sentry points) then wait patiently in stealth to spring it on unsuspecting roamers.

Archival note: sigil stacking nerfs killed the damage

Skill Bar

Dagger/Pistol

Shortbow

Utility

Slot Changes

Utility

• Grasping Vines over Skale Venom - this is an option only for Sylvari players. Grasping Vines has great synergy with Panic Strike if you can move in range and use it in your burst combo.

Template Code

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Equipment

Head
Trailblazer

Shoulders
Trailblazer

Chest
Trailblazer

Hands
Trailblazer

Legs
Trailblazer

Feet
Trailblazer

Backpiece
Rabid

Accessory
Rabid

Accessory
Rabid

Amulet
Rabid

Ring
Rabid

Ring
Trailblazer

Dagger
Trailblazer

Pistol
Trailblazer

Sigil

Sigil

Shortbow
Trailblazer

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Consumables

Food

• Condition diversity: - this adds 2 new conditions to your arsenal, Chill and Burning. To make sure this procs, take Thrill of the Crime on Trickery for the Fury and Steal right before doing your burst combo. Ideally you'd steal on the target, but it's also fine to steal without a target just for the boons.

• Best stats:

• Budget option:

Utility

• Optimal: or

• Budget: or

Usage

General

• The premise of the build is simple. You want to camp a location while permanently stealthed, set up preparations, and wait for someone to walk into them. Unfortunately mounts made gimmicks like this a bit harder to pull off, but we just have to adapt to them. The ideal camping spot is a place that attracts roamers and forces them to dismount at a very specific location - such as a Sentry controlled by your realm!

Making Preparations

• Get into combat and proc both of your Doom sigils and Sigil of Leeching. Just get into combat but do NOT hit anything, then swap weapons twice and leave. These sigils have no set durations and remain active until consumed, boosting your spike damage. Major and Superior sigil of Doom can be active at the same time, while two Superiors would override each other.

• Once you've picked your spot, set up Thousand Needles and Pitfall.

• Leave the spot and hide somewhere where you can maintain vision of it. Do your permastealth rotation and wait.

• While stealthed, you're passively accumulating charges of Spider Venom through Leeching Venoms.

Stealthing

1. Black Powder next to a wall, preferably in a corner
2. Steal without a target to proc Hidden Thief
3. Heartseeker x4 while holding the right mouse button to make sure you keep facing the wall while doing the leaps
4. Hide in Shadows
5. Repeat whenever you're near the initiative cap
   1. Note: once you get ahead in Stealth duration, you no longer have to incorporate stealing into the rotation

Killing

• Once the target is where you want them to be, AND they've dismounted, spring the trap! Apply Skale Venom then activate Thousand Needles and Pitfall.
  • Swap to short bow once your sigils went off to proc them again.
  • Steal to gain Fury and Might. If you are not in range, deselect the target first.
  • Optional: start spamming any weapon skill to stack Lead Attacks.

• Sometimes this is enough to get the kill, but if you want to make sure.. Reapply your preparations in the area then spam Choking Gas. Spring the preparations for a second burst the moment they are ready.
  • Optional: Dagger Storm should be used defensively most of the time as the build doesn't really have much else for sustain, but it could also be used in Choking Gas to stack dozens of stacks of Poison in AoE for more burst.

Videos

{{#evu:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIc7bC5YdcA&ab_channel=okbuddykormir |alignment= }}

Counters

• Revealed - being denied stealth access is a death sentence most of the time.

• Mounted players could easily survive your burst.

• Mass condition cleansing, can't do much against it.