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Daredevil - Condi Daredevil

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

Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: Open World and Open World General

Expansions required: Heart of Thorns builds

Difficulty:
Normal
This build was last updated on August 29, 2025 and is up to date for the August 19, 2025 patch.

Overview

Condition Daredevil employs its damaging evades Impaling Lotus and Death Blossom to bleed and torment their enemies to death. Albeit lacking in burst damage, its evasiveness and general thief mobility make it a decent build for open world, though its unavoidable forced movement can be disorienting at first.


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Skill Bar

Dagger/Dagger
Shortbow
Utility


Weapon Variants

  • This build purely uses daggers. Although not required, for your second weapon set you can consider shortbow shortbow for mobility and tagging with the autoattack, or axe axe for ranged damage. Access to axe requires Expanded Weapon Proficiency.


Skill Variants

Heal skill

  • Hide in Shadows - defensive heal skill, but Channeled Vigor works better with this build.

Utility skills

You have several options to consider. Caltrops and Prepare Thousand Needles are recommended for their high damage, but require the enemy to stay inside their area of effect. If the enemy moves too much, or you want to try other other options, here are some alternatives:

  • Impairing Daggers - some ranged damage and soft cc
  • Skale Venom - good when soloing to inflict vulnerability
  • Smoke Screen - blocks projectiles and provides a smoke field for stealth
  • Shadowstep - teleport + stunbreak
  • Shadow Refuge - group stealth
  • Scorpion Wire - significant breakbar damage

Elite skill

Thieves Guild is great for soloing. If you need CC; you can use:

  • Basilisk Venom - works best when shared with nearby allies.


Specializations

Variants
  • Escapist's Fortitude - condition cleanse


Equipment

Ascended gear and stat infusions are not required; you can use exotic gear with the same stats.

This set uses gear similar to Build:Daredevil_-_Condi_DPS, making it a good choice for general PVE

Head
Viper
Shoulders
Viper
Chest
Viper
Hands
Viper
Legs
Viper
Feet
Viper
Backpiece
Viper
Accessory
Viper
Accessory
Viper
Amulet
Viper
Ring
Viper
Ring
Viper
Dagger
Viper
Dagger
Viper
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6


Relic

If you are gearing this character from zero, start with exotic quality gear. Search the trading post for "Viper's Abomination" weapons. Viper exotic armor is very expensive, so we recommend a budget alternative called Carrion (search the trading post for "Shiro" armor) until you can get Viper gear such as by farming Bladed armor or by acquiring ascended armor. Upgrade to Viper and ascended gear as you progress. See also: Guide:How to Gear a Character.

  • If you don't have access to Relic of the Fractal, consider Relic of the Cavalier or Relic of the Krait.
  • This build purely uses daggers. Although not required, for your second weapon set you can consider shortbow shortbow for mobility and tagging with the autoattack, or axe axe for ranged damage.
  • For defense, equip the highest tier Jade Core you can afford. Trailblazer Trailblazer is never necessary but can be considered.


Consumables

Budget consumables are acceptable for use in open world.

DPS

  • Prioritize Flatbread Ascended food.
  • /
  • /

Defense

  • - this food is nearly no DPS loss when solo

Farming

  • Prioritize Flatbread Ascended food.
  • /
  • (and variants)


Usage

Damage

With this build, damage and defense are intrinsically tied together via Death Blossom and Impaling Lotus. Everytime you evade, you will also damage nearby enemies.

Your dodge, Impaling Lotus, provides the buff Lotus Training which increases your damage for a few seconds. Your main goal is to space your dodges to maintain high uptime of this buff. While under the effects of this buff, use Death Blossom for damage. Fill the gaps when endurance and/or intiative are low with basic attacks, but try not to interrupt your auto-attack chains as the 3rd deals significantly higher damage.

IF ranged damage is required, use Dancing Dagger or Axe Axe (requires https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Expanded_Weapon_Proficiency Expanded Weapon Proficiency])

Both Death Blossom and Impaling Lotus are whirl finishers (See: Guide:What are Combo Fields), try to whirl through fields to create various damaging bolts.

Opening

You can start fights following this general idea:

  1. Prepare Thousand Needles
  2. Thieves Guild
  3. Spider Venom (it will be shared with your nearby Thieves Guild allies)
  4. Caltrops
  5. Impaling Lotus
  6. Death Blossom X3

Remember to change your utility skills to fit the situation at hand. Caltrops and Prepare Thousand Needles deal great damage, but require the enemy to stand in its area of effect. Consider Skale Venom and Impairing Daggers if Caltrops and Prepare Thousand Needles would be suboptimal.

Fill empty space with basic attacks and cast your utility skills and Steal off cooldown. Due to your traits, stealing deals damage and recovers endurance and initiative.

You can control the direction of the dodge Impaling Lotus with your movement keys, but keep in mind that Death Blossom cannot be controlled and will always whirl through the target. Alternatively, you can disable auto targetting, and unselect your target to manually control Death Blossom.

Defense

  • The best defense is to dodge attacks, and this build has numerous evades. Learn to recognize dangerous attacks and respond to them.
  • Stealing gives you back a dodge thanks to Endurance Thief and initiative due to Kleptomaniac.
  • Thief and Daredevil offer various stunbreaks, such as Haste, Bandit's Defense, and Shadowstep. It is advised to take one of these, as CC is what will usually kill you.
  • You can go into stealth via Cloak and Dagger to remove threat, break enemy targeting, and reposition yourself.

Crowd Control

  • Basilisk Venom
  • Choking Gas
  • Prepare Thousand Needles


Ratings

This build has a rating of 5 stars based on 1 votes.
Log in or register to rate this build.
5 stars
Onlywrin gave this build 5 stars • May 2021
Condi thief is a ridiculously fun build that sees high effectiveness in open world. With some of the recent changes, it now has considerable damage in open world, and the possibility of running Viper or Cele gear while maintaining crit-healing via IP makes it hard to kill.

Comments

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