Thief - Core P/D Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on February 15, 2025 and is up to date for the April 15, 2025 patch.

Overview

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

Skill Bar

Pistol/Dagger

Shortbow

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

Viable choices for the optional slot:

• Shadow Refuge - great sustain tool that adds another Stealth access to the build. Lets you reset fights or heal yourself back up a bit, even has combo potential with Sneak Attack for health siphoning.

• Signet of Shadows - the active could either serve as an instant cast source of cover conditions for your burst or as a defensive skill with damage mitigation.

• Scorpion Wire - adds much needed CC to the build and perfectly sets up melee skills like Shadow Strike or Cloak and Dagger.

• Prepare Thousand Needles - strong burst skill but it could be difficult to make ranged enemies get in position for it. It's great at flipping camps however, if you can get all the NPCs to ball up.

• Grasping Vines - Sylvari players could also take this skill along with Panic Strike on Deadly Arts to keep targets in place for burst combos while applying Poison stacks via trait synergy.

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Specializations

Variants

• Sleight of Hand lowers your damage but adds an instant interrupt to the build that goes through Stability. This could be a lifesaver in many situations.

Equipment

Head
Trailblazer

Shoulders
Trailblazer

Chest
Trailblazer

Hands
Trailblazer

Legs
Trailblazer

Feet
Trailblazer

Backpiece
Dire

Accessory
Dire

Accessory
Dire

Amulet
Dire

Ring
Dire

Ring
Trailblazer

Pistol
Trailblazer

Dagger
Trailblazer

Sigil

Sigil

Shortbow
Trailblazer

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Equipment Variants

Stats

• A full set of Celestial gear would also work, but it's not optimal.

• Replacing a few Dire pieces with Rabid to bump up your crit chance allows you to play with slightly better sigils but lowers your sustain.

Sigils

• Replace the Pistol/Dagger sigils with Sigil of Superior Sigil of Generosity and Sigil of Superior Sigil of Torment when playing with Celestial or Rabid stats. These could work with the current setup too to some extent, but their effectiveness would be tied to Fury uptime and various map bonuses that are out of your control.

• Take Sigil of Superior Sigil of Energy if you don't want to bother with building Sigil of Superior Sigil of Corruption stacks.

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Necromancer - easier to obtain than Trapper and retains all of the condition damage stats.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Thief - worse damage but quite a large crit chance upgrade, much like Rabid gear this could also allow you to run better sigils.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Sunless - cheap option with great stats.

Relics

• Relic of the Blightbringer - frequent condi procs with great variety to act as cover conditions.

• Relic of the Wayfinder - better mobility.

• Relic of the Demon Queen - the extra healing reduction could help you wear down tanky Celestial specs.

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 Sigil of Superior Sigil of Corruption stacks. You could also just kill mobs during downtime to build some stacks.

• Use shortbow when taking camps, not just because of the Corruption sigil but also due to the AoE skills. Try to ball up enemies behind a pillar and spam Choking Gas + Cluster Bomb ⇒ Detonate Cluster.

Stealing

• Steal 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 Even the Odds or Bleeding from Deadly Ambush, fitting nicely into your burst combos.

Pistol/Dagger

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

• Bola Shot is more of a niche skill. It could be useful for rooting targets in place, making it easier to land important skills or kite enemies, but it costs too much for what it does so usually your initiative is better spent on other skills.

• Dancing Dagger 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.

• Cloak and Dagger provides relatively easy stealth access which could be followed up with Sneak Attack. While this combo does less damage than the skill #3 spam, it costs next to nothing because of Shadow's Rejuvenation and could heal you for quite a significant amount through various Shadow Arts synergies.

• Using Steal in the middle of Shadow Strike or Cloak and Dagger makes these melee skills easier to land by improving their reach.

Burst combo example

1. Precast Cloak and Dagger
2. Steal just before CnD is about to go off
3. Sneak Attack
4. Shadow Strike
5. Repeater x2

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.

• Trick Shot 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.

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

• Disabling Shot (thief short bow) 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 Choking Gas 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.

• Infiltrator's Arrow is the #1 skill for disengaging from a fight in case you start losing.

Related Builds

Thief - Core P/D Condition - sPvP version.