Thief - Core P/D Roamer

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Overview

A condition Thief build for WvW roaming with excellent single target burst damage and plenty of stealth. Also usable by F2P players.

Skillbar

Pistol/DaggerHealingUtilityElite

Short bow

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

If you're struggling against condition specs take .

Equipment

6x

Superior Rune of Thorns

18x

Malign WvW Infusion

Consumables

Food

Optimal:
Budget:

Utility

Optimal:
Budget: (found in Canned Food Crates looted from WvW Skirmish Chests)

Usage

General

Swap to shortbow when you're about to finish off a downed target in order to build stacks. You could also just kill mobs during downtime to build some stacks.

Stealing

is going to be used more freely here compared to other builds as it's not an interrupt in this build. Steal applies various cover conditions such as Vulnerability from or Bleeding from , fitting nicely into your burst combos.

Steal grants you Stealth via which could be useful for a couple of things. One, this means you have an instant access to AND it teleports you into melee range so you can follow that up with Shadow Strike and Repeater. Or you could just use the instant stealth defensively to disappear for a few seconds and reposition yourself.
- Note: stealing without a target still grants you stealth, so in rare emergency situations you could do this if you don't want to be teleproted into melee range.

Pistol/Dagger

Most of the damage in this build comes from the ⇒ chain and the occasional . You should spend most of your initiative on these skills.
- Once you have access to it's possible to use this skill twice in a row without having to refresh with Shadow Strike.

is more of a niche skill. It could be useful for rooting targets in place, making it easier to land Shadow Strike, but you should try to do it without Bola Shot to save initiative whenever possible. Another thing you could do is root targets in place to make sure your brust doesn't miss, or that they don't catch up to you while spamming Repeater.

is okay for some ranged poking vs multiple targets if you can't get in range for Shadow Strike and don't want to switch to bow just yet.

provides relatively easy stealth access which could be followed up with . However doing ⇒ is generally better as it's more damage and SS has a way shorter cast time than CnD, making it easier to pull off (especially under pressure). This is more of a niche defensive/utility skill, allowing you to catch a break while under attack or safestomp downed enemies.

Short bow

Utility weapon, secondary set

This is generally the weapon you use for running away from fights or cleaving downed enemies if they are being revived. Otherwise just stay on Pistol/Dagger the whole fight.

is a bit of a weak filler skill in this build that you can spam when weapon swap is on CD and you're out of initiative.

being a spammable blast finisher has high value in group roaming when it comes to blasting fields.
- Its chain skill is a solid source of downed cleave.

provides access to some evasion in case you're being focused by the enemy team and your defensive skills are on CD. Remains usable even while Immobilized, but it's somewhat expensive.

Use on downed enemies especially if they are being revived - Poison decreases healing received by 33% which affects resurrecting speed and the initial strike interrupts foes.

is the #1 skill for disengaging from a fight in case you start losing.

Related Builds

Thief - Core P/D Condition - sPvP version.