User:Masel/Builds/Daredevil

Dual Daggers Condition Daredevil

Build Rating (Subjective)

Criterion	Rating
Burst Damage	3/5
Sustained Damage	5/5
Utility Options	3/5
Survivability	4/5
Difficulty	2/5

Condition Daredevil has a very simple-to-learn rotation and is lots of fun to play in open world. It excels when you can precast   Prepare Thousand Needles, and the access to nearly permanent dodges allows it to power through high incoming damage where other builds might have to play more defensively.

Link to the DPS Build in the Build Editor:

Build

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
Steal & Good Stolen Skills
Dual Daggers
Pistol + Dagger
Pistol + Dagger
Utility

Thieves are – together with Revenants – the only profession in the game with a resource bar that determines how often you can use skills. On this profession, skills have different Initiative costs, but no internal cooldown. You regenerate 1 Initiative per second, but there are other ways to increase the inflow. Since skills have no internal cooldown, this often means that the skill that does the most damage per cast and initiative spent is repeated (like   Death Blossom on this build), making most rotations on Thief relatively simple to understand.

Dodges

• Daredevil changes how Dodges work, and the effects gained on dodging change with the grandmaster trait choice. For the condition variant, only  Lotus Training and  Unhindered Combatant are of interest to us.
• On Daredevil, you also gain access to another Endurance bar, allowing you to dodge up to three times in quick succession.

Required trait	Skill			Description
Lotus Training	Impaling Lotus			Evade attacks and hurl damaging daggers, dealing multiple conditions to enemies.
Unhindered Combatant	Dash	0.75¾		Remove conditions and gain swiftness, then rush forward and evade attacks.

•  Lotus Training is a really strong choice for condition damage, as it applies  Bleeding and  Torment three times per cast, to up to three targets. But not only that: it will also grant you the buff   Lotus Training for 4 seconds, increasing all condition damage by 10%.
•  Unhindered Combatant is excellent for ranged gameplay, defense and mobility, as it will give you   Unhindered Combatant for 4 seconds, reducing all damage you tkae by 10%. It will further remove  Crippled,  Chilled and  Immobile on you. But careful: this will stop Endurance regeneration for up to 4 seconds!

Skill Usage & Choices

Dual Daggers

•   Double Strike,   Wild Strike and   Lotus Strike make a strong auto attack chain that applies both  Bleeding and  Poisoned. The damage ramps up towards the final hit, making it ideal to finish the chain.
•   Heartseeker is a Leap finisher that canbe used to cover ground, but is not great for damage on a condition build.
•   Death Blossom is by far the strongest skill for damage on this build and the skill you should try to spent all your initiative on. The  Bleeding from this lasts very long with a lowe number of stacks, leading to a noticeable damage ramp-up over time. This is also an Evade and includes multiple Whirl finishers. Through the Whirl finishers, it benefits from existing Combo fields (especially Fire fields for  Burning, Poison field for  Poisoned and Ethereal fields for  Confusion). By alternating between this and Dodge with  Lotus Training, you will permanently make use of existing Combo fields placed by other players.
•   Dancing Dagger is a ranged Projectile finisher that applies  Torment and bounces to up to 3 targets. Not really great for damage, can be used when you are in range and unable to swap to pistol.
•   Cloak and Dagger gives you Stealth on demand and applies a bit of  Vulnerability. Not really useful on the condition variant, only if you want to try to escape or run past mobs.

Pistol + Dagger

• Pistol is used whenever you cannot be in melee range and as a general tagging weapon for open world events.
•   Vital Shot is a ranged auto attack that applies a bit of  Bleeding with a 20% chance to be a Projectile finisher.
•   Bola Shot is a guaranteed Projectile finisher that applies both  Vulnerability and  Immobile. At first glance, this might seem bad for damage, but through  Panic Strike, it applies a good amount of  Poisoned too!
•   Shadow Strike is what makes using pistol so much fun. When used in melee range, it will apply  Poisoned and  Torment, teleport you backwards and give you access to   Repeater. Repeater applies nice amounts of  Bleeding. In general open world gameplay, that allows you to teleport into melee range via   Repeater or   Infiltrator's Signet, use   Shadow Strike to port away and then use   Repeater from range.

Utility Skills

Utility Skills (Kalla)

Skill Choice	Notes
Channeled Vigor	Cheap and strong heal that also gives you half of you Endurance back, so that you can regain Dodges. For a more pasive inflow of healing, you can use   Signet of Malice.
Prepare Thousand Needles	This skill is strong damage via  Immobile,  Bleeding and  Poisoned on the secondary cast   Thousand Needles. You can precast this up to 5 minutes prior to combat starting, allowing you to reset the cooldown (the cooldown ticks down after the first cast). Unfortunately, this also means that losing the precast will decrease the burst damage of this build noticeably on some encounters. On highly mobile encounters, using   Impairing Daggers or   Skale Venom are two very strong options.
Spider Venom	Like the next two skills, this is a Venom skill that applies  Poisoned for each stack of its effect. The venom effects are applied to yourself and up to 4 nearby allies. The conditions applied by allies count for your damage and use your stats! This leads to a massive difference in damage dealt per cast between solo and group gameplay. You can use any kind of friendly NPC to apply more stacks in solo gameplay, including summons like the thieves from   Thieves Guild.
Devourer Venom	This applies two stacks of  Immobile per ally it is applied to and thus triggers  Panic Strike up to 10 times, leading to massive burst damage when used in groups, especially when combined with   Spider Venom.
Basilisk Venom	Applies a Stun on cast. Since it is a Venom skill, this gets shared with 4 nearby allies too, making it one of the strongest CC skills in the game.

CC Skills for Breakbar Damage:

•   Basilisk Venom
• A lot of Immobilized via  Panic Strike,   Devourer Venom

Gear

Important Stats (descending in Importance):

1. 100%  Bleeding Duration
2. 100%  Poisoned Duration
3. Maximize Condition Damage

Since the vast majority of damage comes from  Bleeding and  Poisoned, it is important to reach 100% condition duration on them.

Gear

Armor	Prefix	Rune
Head	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Krait
Shoulders	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Krait
Chest	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Krait
Gloves	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Krait
Legs	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Krait
Boots	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Krait
Trinket	Prefix
Amulet	Viper's
Ring 1	Viper's
Ring 2	Viper's
Accessory 1	Viper's
Accessory 2	Viper's
Backpack	Viper's
Weapon	Prefix	Sigil
Dagger (Main Hand)	Viper's	Superior Sigil of Earth
Dagger (Off Hand)	Viper's	Superior Sigil of Bursting
Pistol (Main Hand)	Viper's	Superior Sigil of Earth
Purpose	Item Type	Source
Damage	Ascended Food	Cilantro and Cured Meat Flatbread
Damage	Non-Ascended Food	Bowl of Kimchi Tofu Stew
Survivability	Ascended Food	Peppered Cured Meat Flatbread
Survivability	Non-Ascended Food	Oysters Gnashblade
Damage	Utility	Toxic Focusing Crystal
Survivability	Utility	Potion Of Karka Toughness
Damage	Relic	Relic of the Fractal

• For a budget variant, simply replace all armor pieces of Viper's with rare/exotic Ritualist's. For the backpack, you can use a Crafter's backpack of the highest tier and select either Celestial or Rabid.
• Ascended gear is always ideal, but exotic gear is fine for everything aside from higher-tier fractals.

Traits

Deadly Arts
Trickery
Daredevil

Deadly Arts

• The default specializations for damage are  Deadly Arts,  Trickery and of course  Daredevil.
• Deadly Arts massively increases the damage you deal via  Poisoned. It grants 180 condition damage and 33% longer duration and damage on  Poisoned.
• Through  Panic Strike, you apply  Poisoned every time you apply  Immobile. The cooldown pertains to the application of  Immobile against foe below 50% health.
• You deal 2% more strike damage for each unique Condition on enemies, but on a condition build, this only has a small impact. The same applies to  Lotus Poison.
•  Deadly Ambition will make   Death Blossom and   Shadow Strike apply additional  Poisoned.

Trickery

• The second specialization for group content is Trickery.
• It increases the damage applied from  Bleeding by 25% and enhances   Steal by reducing its cooldown and adding  Bleeding and Initiative to it.
• It gives higher damage for each point of Initiative you spend via  Lead Attacks. That is why you want to keep spending Initiative.
•  Uncatchable leaves behind   Lesser Caltrops when you Dodge. This has a small radius, which is why you want to try to dodge as close as possible to the target.
•  Bountiful Theft helps with coverage of  Vigor, enabling you to dodge more frequently.

Daredevil

• Daredevil increase your  Bleeding duration by 25% while you have  Fury, grant you  Fury when you strike low-health enemies, increase your  Bleeding damage by 25% and make your shortbow skills pierce so that they can hit multiple targets.
• If you intend to use   Impairing Daggers, make use of  Brawler's Tenacity for additional endurance recovery.
• On the grandmaster level,  Lotus Training is the standard choice because it increases condition damage and applies condition on dodging (explanations above).

DPS Rotation Showcase

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.

• Note that the DPS of the build increased since the last rotation showcase due to the availability of Relic of the Fractal.

Open World Build

You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.

Increasing Survivability

For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.

• The first major step to increase survivability versus bosses is to stay on pistol + dagger. Use dual daggers for general mobs, as pistol has no cleave damage.
• That allows you to deal damage from range so you can kite dangerous enemies instead of facetanking their damage.
•   Shadow Strike has to be used in melee range, but it teleports you backwards and give you access to   Repeater. Repeater applies nice amounts of  Bleeding from range. In general open world gameplay, that allows you to teleport into melee range via   Steal or   Infiltrator's Signet, use   Shadow Strike to port away and then use   Repeater from range.
•  Unhindered Combatant in  Daredevil reduces damage you take by 10% for 4 seconds after dodging. This is great for mobility and ranged gameplay.
• Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew stacks with  Vigor and increases you endurance regeneration by 40% (leads to a total 90% when  Vigor is up). It also grants you  Might for 5 seconds on dodging. Using this will allow you to dodge even more.
•   Channeled Vigor
• You can also decide to change your amulet and helmet to Celestial or Trailblazer, as you can get them cheap via Ice Golem's Maw Box and Candy Corn Orichalcum Amulet, respectively. Make sure to put a Black Diamond or Chunk of Petrified Echovald Resin on the amulet, as it natively includes Berserker's on the upgrade.
• Use the survivability food and utility item listed above for -10% damage taken and 150 Toughness! It's usually more effective to use Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew though.

Utility Skills (Open World)

Skill Choice	Notes
Channeled Vigor	Restores up to 50% of your total endurance on cast. While   Signet of Malice provides stronger passive healing,   Channeled Vigor is by far the stronger defensive tool.
Infiltrator's Signet	Great mobility tool to combo with   Shadow Strike and a Stun break.
Impairing Daggers	Strong ranged application of  Poisoned,  Weakness,  Slow and  Immobile with a short cooldown.
Haste	Increases coverage of  Quickness,  Fury and  Swiftness on yourself and is a second Stun break. Can be replaced by any skill you desire, e.g.   Spider Venom or   Thousand Needles for damage or   Signet of Agility for condition cleanse and additional endureance recovery on demand.
Dagger Storm	Long-lasting Evade that applies lots of  Bleeding. Great emergency button versus groups of enemies, especially when paired with   Signet of Malice.

Boon Coverage

•  Thrill of the Crime in  Trickery can help covering  Might,  Fury and  Swiftness on yourself.
• Condition Daredevil has no useful source of  Protection and generally low boon coverage on itself. Therefore, using   Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and   Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge will massively increase your strength in solo gameplay.
• These give for 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from  Stability,  Resistance and  Resolution on entering combat. These effects can be pre-stacked by using an Enchanted Snow Diamond Tonic repeatedly when out of combat. They will fully cover  Protection in general roaming, where you enter and exit combat frequently!
• In story instances (or if you don't want the hassle of reapplying protocols), you can abuse the synergy between Relic of the Cavalier and   Blast from the Skyscale to apply lots of  Aegis,  Resistance,  Might and  Quickness to yourself. It does not have an internal cooldown and applies the boons on every hit of   Blast.

Dealing with Incoming Conditions and Control effects

•  Escapist's Fortitude in  Daredevil removes a condition and heals you whenever you evade an attack. I recommend using this in open world, as it takes care of conditions and provides decent passive healing.
•   Signet of Agility cleanses conditions and restores a lot of Endurance.
•   Infiltrator's Signet and   Haste are both Stun breaks that you can use on demand.