Guild Wars 2

The main culprit here for me is thieves. They think “oh, its a slow engineer with no long range skills, I’m gonna equip shortbow and kite to high hell”. Usually this leaves me chasing after them with pistols firing because my condition build leaves me with very few ranged options. I’ve considered slotting Elixir Gun and from my limited testing it appears to counter the kiting thieves nicely and is a stun break on toolbelt to boot but I wanted to know if you guys had any other suggestions/playstyle/build changes that could assist me.

I’m currently running a bombs condition build with bomb kit(obviously), tool kit and pistol/shield. Currently my trait setup is 30/10/0/20/10 and so far it has proved to work nicely but I wanted to ask other more experienced engineers since as it stands I don’t have any traits for elixir gun.

Uh…dont use bombs. ESPECIALLY if youre already 30 in explosives. Just drop bombs, grab grenades. Toolkit is really good for kiters, cripple and pull, and EG has a cripple. You don’t need to trait a kit(except grenades) for them to be good. Waste of a trait most of the time.

Somewhat unrelated, but the build in my sig is really good at kiting people around. Pretty similar play style to what you’re using too, except tons of healing.

Carpboy.7145:

Uh…dont use bombs. ESPECIALLY if youre already 30 in explosives. Just drop bombs, grab grenades. Toolkit is really good for kiters, cripple and pull, and EG has a cripple.

Somewhat unrelated, but the build in my sig is really good at kiting people around. Pretty similar play style to what you’re using too, except tons of healing.

I thought about grenades but when I tried them before it just felt like a lot of 1 spamming, but I suppose that could change since they updated the ground targeting options so that you can just hold and release to launch a ground targeted skill. I’ll try it out.

Always try to slow down enemies before bursting/pressuring them down. EG#2 helps alot, also grenade#4 or bomb#5 (but last one is obviously melee, try to combine with magnet).

If you try out grenades instead of bombs, think about going double pistols. Grenades work well with p/p.

I run P/S and bombs with a 30/30/0/010 build. I feel anyone suggesting you do not use bombs in this case is giving very bad advice. 99% of the time, thieves are simply like flies or mosquito’s to me. they are as annoying as all get out, but don’t really hurt me. The standard d/p and bow or d/d and bow thief will never stay at range. they will always approach (nearly 100% of the time) stealth. then use steal to close. I very very rarely see a skilled thief that is not predictable.

You often can see them nearing. If you do, and you see them invise, simply count to two, then use shield 5. do a screen 180, as they are generally always behind you, intending to back stab. throw your shield. This combo doesn’t do much damage, but I love to do the triple stun action here just to troll the thief. They deserve it. Then I use static shock for a blind, poison dart volley, rocket kick, and then shield 4. By this point the thief has hit me maybe twice. While I have put 6s of confusion, 10s of burn, 20s of poison, and 5-8 stacks of bleeds. so your doing between 1500 to 2000 damage a sec, just in burns, bleeds, and poison. They tend to try to disengage by this point.

Most re-engage after healing. Some of your skills will still be on CD. At this point once they come in and get that first hit, I like to go bomb #4 for pulsing blinds, bomb #5 for the now stacking mobilization, which does does 4 pulses of 2s immobilize to tack to 6s-8s + the same in cripple, then concussion bomb for the 10s confusion, then fir bomb for 4 pulses of 4s burn. the bombs all have a pulse on impact, then a pulse every second for 3 seconds.

Either of these two cycles will generally do the trick. I was in a border lands last night, working between keeping one of the south bloodlust nodes held and the south central supply camp. I had the same thief follow me and attack me 16 times in a row. I was in mumble laughing about it, because I was kicking his but, he would get to 25% health, cleanse, and run away. 60s later He would try to sneak up on me again. after the first 15, I decided by 16 that he was going to die this time. so I didn’t allow him to disengage the last time and killed him, he stopped coming back after that.

I love shortbow thieves. I just spam 1 on elixir gun until they realize they’re accomplishing nothing and slowly dying to bleeds and burn procs.

I do agree. With a condition duration build the bleeds stack very well, and the weakness negating a large portion of their damage, and they generally do not even realize it.