Guild Wars 2

I mostly play WvW, but I assume that sPvP experience is highly useful here.

For a relatively new engie…what skills, traits, gear is the best for dealing with thieves? I used overshot (rifle 4) to stop a thief from killing a yak, and it worked great (rest of group got him). I’m still deciding on my ultimate build, though, so I’m wondering what other good choices are out there.

Thieves tend to lack good condition removal, so overloading them with conditions is usually a great way to kill them. Movement impairing skills are also great: Glue shot, box of nails, freeze nades, etc. always suck to get hit with. I like to run tool kit, so gear shield is a great way to stop HS spam. Also note that channeled skills will continue to hit them after they’ve entered stealth, provided you target them before hand.

When they get low, they usually pop shadow refuge. If you have grenades, at this point it’s likely a free kill for you. Get close and throw everything into the circle, they likely won’t survive.

I find that they will use stealth almost immediately after being netted. So, with my build I met them with the rifle and the net turret tool belt skill at the same time for an extra long net. They stealth, I just walk up, rifle skill 3, rifle skill 5 right on top of where they are stealthed, then step back and rifle skill 4 to knock them on their butts as they come out of stealth. They will be mostly dead by then.

Step 1. Net Turret
Step 2. Throw Mine
Step 3. Collect Thief Tears

Pro tip (shield users only): When you see Shadow Refuge drop, rush in and pop Magnetic Inversion. Then refer to steps 1-3.

I rarely run into a thief I can’t beat 1v1. However, that’s not where they shine. I personally think that they are best played as a finisher using hit and run tactics. Look for the player that’s below 50%, jump in and kill them, and then either move on or stealth and wait for the next opportunity.

Shield #4 in the middle of a refuge pushes them out most of the time too.
And if you see them use their stealth heal, interrupt it with everything you got (chain cc)

I fight thieves all the time, the best build to beat them with has been partially nerfed, but it is still good. I’ve recently swapped to P/P and it’s working better for me. I run with a mix of Rabid/Carrion gear (mostly rabid), use medkit for my heal, use Toolkit, Elixir C (for condition removal), Elixir S and Supply Kit as my Elite. Toolkit is really good against thieves, mainly for the block (which you can use to negate backstab), Magnet pull to yank them in and of course prybar. Oh and I rarely use box of nails, it’s cast time is way too long (needs adjusting aNet) by the time you have cast it, thief is gone.

If I get my combo right Mr Thief is dead, if I don’t get my combo right, Mr Thief is normally dead anyway :P Against a really, really good thief (they aren’t that many) it’s a tough close fight. I had 3 thieves trying to kill me last night and they couldn’t but I think they were using some kind of comedy stealth build and they were pretty bad!!!

They usually stealth to close the distance and I will drop a healing turret with accelerant packed trait and wait for them to attack. They pop out, I detonate to interrupt and cleanse. Then drop a supply crate on them. Once netted, I throw all my conditions, glue shot to keep them still a little longer and acid bomb. If they shadow refuge, I will drop my healing turret and detonate or use personal battering ram to knock them out.

I run P/P with rabid armor and weapons with carrion trinkets. Utilities are elixir gun, personal battering ram, and elixir c.

My best setup for dealing with thieves so far is

P/S, Flamethrower, Tool kit, Elixir S, Supply Crate. I won’t go into detail into all the stats and such but these kits and weapons provide the skills to really avoid a LOT of their damage while setting them up to dish out yours.

Shield 4 is amazing for reflecting on unload or ranged thieves and does a good job of helping take out thieves guild.

Shield 5 is great, when you know they are coming in for a hit get it ready. When they try they will end up stunned, then you are free to easily apply your static shot for blind so their next attack misses as well, start unloading on them a bit.

Tool kit block is amazing and on a fairly short CD, use this wisely to block big unloads of damage.

Box of nails is even great here, drop it on the floor and run around if you’re fighting a melee burst thief.

Ranged thief? Now the pull into pry bar combo becomes awesome.

Flamethrower, now you can AOE blind them instantly, that attack misses. Honestly by now most thieves are struggling to be alive still.

Don’t forget at any time you could have supply dropped on them if you want to blow your ult.

When they try to shadow refuge, flamethrower AOE knockback pushes them out every time. Finish them off.

Rifle and grenades are great fun for fighting Thieves.

Hit them with Rifle 2 to net them. Swap to Grenades and spam barrage, shrapnel and grenade while running towards them (If you do it right, they should land at the same time. Learn this trick, it does great spike damage). When you get in range, switch to Rifle, and use skill 4 to knock them on their kitten Close the gap with Rifle 1, Rifle 3 when in range, and then Rifle 5 when you reach them as they go in to stealth.

The following traits work wonders on crit Thieves:
Inventions [I]: Protective Shield – 3s protection upon crit [20s CD]
Alchemy [VI]: Protection Injection – 3s protection when diabled [5s CD]

Stealth hopping condition pistol thieves though are a PITA.

I had a great confusion build. I could just stand there place a concussion bomb down and they would kill themselves. Try it….OHHHH wait….it was NERFED

In sPvP I use bombs so they are still hit while they are stealthed. AoE skills are your friend

Engies are naturally good at dealing with Thieves, they’re pretty much their worst nightmare. The Tool Kit and Net Turret has everything you need.

Check out my “How to: Theif” here, where I give out some basic tips on how to fight them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B4mbYlRiJw

in your How to:thief you use special builds which only you can play.

And on some examples (with the net turret) you get a lot of damage and you have the luck that the thief does not switch to shortbow to finish you as you had <1k life.

So thief are always hard and they should be like this.

How would this apply to a static discharge? Besides knock back the the thief cloaks?

The Net Turret part is before the Quickness nerf btw, and I was a bit slow on the movement! if he had went shortbow I had just meleed him, and I did keep him CC’ed most of the time (also most Thiefs do spam 22222 all the time when low, because the kill is so close, so it also to show how you can abuse that)

Also, anyway can play my builds =p I don’t see them being that complicated, and it’s more a general overview where I show some of the many tools we have acces to! But yeah, it’s hard to show every Engineer build, and it’s mostly the basics on how to counter I wanted to show =p

As of this patch, theif will be the number 1 killer of engis which rely on boons.. So that’s hgh might stacking and bunkers who need protection and regen

I haven’t fought many yet, but how is everyone else going at fighting sd thieves?

It’s quite the obvious animation, because they first do a long jump aroubd you animation on the first attack, and then they can do the boon steal attack, so you can dodge it quite easy! also you gotta keep in mind it’s only Sword MH Dagger OH Thief, that cna do it

Hey amadeus
I actually play theif and engi, and was trying out the new theif move most of last night. I didn’t face a sd when I was on my engi so I wasn’t sure of the engis p-o-v

Agree it’s very easy to dodge, however keep in mind thieves haven’t mastered it yet, so they will get better at delaying the second strike to make it harder to dodge.. I also watched some of jumpers twitch stream, he ran sd both weapon sets with crazy ini regen so he could spam it almost constantly, and we only get a couple dodges so eventually it’ll hit and steal our boons

For most classes this is ok as they will get the usual fury, swiftness, etc nothing too major.. But if they fight a hgh engi and get a 20s stack of 20 might wow, that will hurt

All the posts above are generally referring to bs builds so just wanted to make a note that sd can be potentially devastating to might stacking

Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong! I think we will see a lot more S/D players now, because it’s quite the awesome combo! :O And you are for sure right about they are a hardcounter to HGH Engineers! Got a Thief m8 running around and testing it as well, and so far his feedback been quite good on it! But from what I have seen it looks quite balanced (ofc, my build dosn’t get hurt from it at all, because I pretty much only have my 5sec Swiftness and Vigor!)

pre apr 30, i just use a sorta tankcat build but bombs instead of pry bar. I dont know if its still viable after confusion/retaliation nerf but my strat againts thieves is dont look for them. let them chase you and just leave bombs while youre pretending to run away.

Prenerf they go down in 5sec coz those greedy idiots like to spam 222222222222 even with confusion on them to try to chase you down. PVT gear tho…dont face them like this with anything else coz their crits will hurt more than your confusion/retaliation.

bare in mind that most thieves now run in pairs or more for easy perma stealth. so yeah anticipate a tag team all the time. My strat works because you have unlimited condition removal and speed. If they really want you they will chase i prefer to call it as making them play my game instead of me playing their game. or in DAoC, overextend

Vargaz.1957:

pre apr 30, i just use a sorta tankcat build but bombs instead of pry bar. I dont know if its still viable after confusion/retaliation nerf but my strat againts thieves is dont look for them. let them chase you and just leave bombs while youre pretending to run away.

Prenerf they go down in 5sec coz those greedy idiots like to spam 222222222222 even with confusion on them to try to chase you down. PVT gear tho…dont face them like this with anything else coz their crits will hurt more than your confusion/retaliation.

Will probably still work, thieves kill themselves in spvp ALL the time to confusion spamming 2222222 and its the same damage there.

Amadeus.5687:

Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong! I think we will see a lot more S/D players now, because it’s quite the awesome combo! :O And you are for sure right about they are a hardcounter to HGH Engineers! Got a Thief m8 running around and testing it as well, and so far his feedback been quite good on it! But from what I have seen it looks quite balanced (ofc, my build dosn’t get hurt from it at all, because I pretty much only have my 5sec Swiftness and Vigor!)

Haha I am with you there, I’ve purposely avoided the elixir builds bc I found the play style boring compared to a kit heavy build. Now all the anti boon build stuff being added doesn’t affect me hardly at all, I too only have the swiftness and vigor 5s buffs.

(also, watched a roaming vid of yours – awesome stuff)