Thieves really aren’t hard to counter, at least 90% of them aren’t. The good ones can really be a pain in the butt.
If you are running PVT (most likely you are), you won’t kill anyone at all so don’t be surprised if even a glass thief can outheal you easily. I play glass and I have no issues with thieves mostly.
Protips:
1. If you see a thief come to you, check if he has Basilisk venom up (or devourer venom). If he does then get ready to dodge. Steal / shadowstep signet have 900 range.
2. If you couldn’t dodge, or maybe if they approached to you with a 1200 gap closer (shadowstep utility / traited steal) then INSTANTLY stun break. (Mist form is recommended).
3. I use the glyph heal, personally, so it’s easier for me to use it as soon as I stun break in case I fail to dodge, but signet heal users might have trouble regenerating it all back to full.
4. Once you dodge / avoid / survive their steal+backstab combo, d/d thieves don’t have a lot of ways to close the gap on you to backstab you again, take this chance to damage them as much as you can. (d/p thieves can be painfully annoying to face, good thing not many people run that)
5. Updraft, earthquake, mist form, arcane shield and shocking aura are your friends. If all of those are down then you’re extremely vulnerable, I wouldn’t face a thief with my utilities down. (I don’t use armor of earth, but it can also help).
6. Back to the 1v1 situation, once the thief wasted steal+backstab he will attempt to heal (stealth), blinding powder (stealth) or shadow refuge (long stealth). And anyone with a brain knows that they WILL try to backstab you after going in steath (If they decide to use stealth with a ranged weapon, it can actually be harder for you to counter them). So what you do is: Wait for them. Most cloaking spells only last 3-4 seconds, so you know when to dodge (or arcane shield to troll them hardcore). If they use shadow refuge you can aoe damage that area (because shadow refuge stealths longer if you stay in that area, if they move away, it lasts less) forcing them to be stealthed for less time, or you can just RtL away or if you’re kitteny you can wait for them while spamming autoattack all over the place (while having arcane shield or other “oh kitten” button ready).
Anyway, these strats are certainly more advanced than you’ll need for facing your average HS spamming bad thief so it might be a little overkill, but still, with that should be enough to survive.
I gotta say that I have an easier time with thieves because of being glass. If you do little damage they can escape at will and reset the fight whenever they want. But if I’m doing 5k / 2k / 2.5k with an updraft / burning speed / ring of fire combo… it becomes kinda hard for them to run away.
