Guild Wars 2

a full crit thief with a condi/regen/bunker in wvw?

I began my engy a long time ago and have tried a lot of different specs and now settled on pistol shield bunker type build.
I usually run with medkit or turret toolkit rocket boots and elixir gun, its a decent support setup for zergy action and i thought i was tough enough to handle most thing until today.
I’m usually on about 1750 toughness with about 21k hp 600 ish condi damage and roughly 400 healing but today a thief hit me with a backstab for 6.5k and then proceeded to beat me down very quickly regardless of my knock backs (x2) blocks(x2) or evades.

so my question is, how do we beat them? is it even possible to compete with that kind of damage with more toughness or healing?
not whining or crying for nurfs i just wanna know how i can improve my toon to be able to do better

any tips would be appreciated

I’d just grab some more damage. Pistol/shield is a very light-hitting weapon set, toolkit only has two damaging condition skills, elixir gun only has two damaging condition skills. Landing your rocket kick could potentially be good, but if that’s your only burn at 600 condi damage the thief will basically just keep taking free hits on you. You could change this by using more condition damage gear, or by taking a higher-damage kit like bomb or grenade kit.

Another alternative would be to go rifle with soldier’s/cleric’s. You’ll have the same toughness, more hitpoints, more healing, and power instead of condition damage. Rifle 2 and 4 are both incredibly strong vs. thieves.

Net Turret, Throw Mine, and the Cloaking Device trait throw their tempo off like you wouldn’t believe.

You can’t win against any decent thief in wvw. The best you can do is force them to retreat into perma stealth and hope they don’t harass you until you’re dead.

I’ve seen good thieves harass and kill groups of 5 players that don’t know how to deal with them. If you want to live, just spam aoe damage on top of yourself and move on to a safe area or meet up with allies.

thanks, i’ll try the rifle since i already have one and a decent amount of soldiers already.
I took the burn on crits from bomber line too, but didnt take the kick for the burn took it for the knockback since it works when KD’d i boost out from under those pesky hammertime warriors
but the kick + burn + discharge isnt too shabby close up
maybe I’m spreading my points too thin, appreciate the suggestions guys thanks.

i get harrassed by thieves all the kittening time, if your running Elixir gun you can use acid bomb to quickly switch direction for an escape. And if you take kit refinement with it you can immob them at the same time. But yea I wouldn’t take them on solo, run to some NPC’s or some friendlys

Fight them without white or yellow mobs around.
(Good) Thieves use their environment to get stealths off of it or rally.
When you’re taking on thieves you want a clean environment, initiative drain them and cc.

Doesnt look like your set up dishes out enough damage , so killing you is like childs play. The little dmg you do do they will just muscle through it or stealth and regen it back since u pretty much a sitting duck with your stats all over the place like that. I’d recommend dropping the mediocre healing power and boosting that condition dmg with some food to balance yourself out.

Glad you are switching to rifle. Overcharged Shot > Net Shot > Supply Crate, and then (you really should have grenades instead of Rocket Boots), Grenade Barage. That’s how I deal with them, and I honestly worry the least of any class when I see a thief coming.

Crit thieves can be tough, but I think CC is your best bet. So rifle can help you out if you want to stray away from shield. Otherwise, try sticking with toolkit.

Bomb kit can be very useful as well since they will often need to be close to you for the big damage.

Also, throw mine can work surprisingly well. You can plop it at your feet and just stand there. As soon as the thief comes in, they’ll trip the mine.

Also, traits like protection injection and protective shield can really help you out too.

The tool kit really screws with a thief, you can block his burst than prybar him in the face (or vice versa). Don’t bother using magnet though, they will go into stealth before you can channel it.

Welswift.9813:

Glad you are switching to rifle. Overcharged Shot > Net Shot > Supply Crate, and then (you really should have grenades instead of Rocket Boots), Grenade Barage. That’s how I deal with them, and I honestly worry the least of any class when I see a thief coming.

Grenades are good, obviously, but you do want a stunbreaker to fight thieves. If they’re using basilisk venom, you’ll have to seriously outplay them to win without a stunbreak.

Specterryu Quipter.8412:

The tool kit really screws with a thief, you can block his burst than prybar him in the face (or vice versa). Don’t bother using magnet though, they will go into stealth before you can channel it.

Unless you time it right. You can rip them right out of their shadow refuge and send them scrambling around. It can also be useful for interrupting their heal.

But yeah, you can’t do that on reaction due to the wind up. You’d have to make a good read in order to do that with magnet.

Otherwise, it’s still useful as a pry bar setup. Even after the confusion nerf, it will still wear away at glass canon thieves fairly significantly.

Currently I’m playing with elixir gun, tool kit & elixir b in wvw (pistol/shield HGH variant). I’ve never had any real problem with crit thief’s so far in wvw 1v1, comes down to timing. 2 thief’s at once however are incredibly difficult. The lack of a stun breaker doesn’t help, but the idea I run with is to pop my defensive skills before they actually hit me (shield skills or toolkit shield). Supply crate is obviously useful to interrupt or for the net turret.

P/S #5 stun them if they melee, block what they are throwing at you. Supply crate for another stun, and also pop the shield bubble for an interrupt. The turrets from the supply crate will see the thief coming out of stealth before you will, and the net turret in there is excellent for CCing them. I have had thieves come out of stealth just to kill the net turret from the supply crate. That is an excellent time for Pistol #3, and Magnet>Prybar, get that confusion up, and follow up with pistol 2 at short range(because it might as well be a melee skill), making their heals less effective.

If they have you at like 50% health before you activate anything, pop elixir S and watch them blow through their initiative for nothing unless they are really competent.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Specterryu Quipter.8412:

The tool kit really screws with a thief, you can block his burst than prybar him in the face (or vice versa). Don’t bother using magnet though, they will go into stealth before you can channel it.

Unless you time it right. You can rip them right out of their shadow refuge and send them scrambling around. It can also be useful for interrupting their heal.

But yeah, you can’t do that on reaction due to the wind up. You’d have to make a good read in order to do that with magnet.

Otherwise, it’s still useful as a pry bar setup. Even after the confusion nerf, it will still wear away at glass canon thieves fairly significantly.

If you start the channel before the thief stealths, you still pull him although he is invisible.
Once the magnet channel ends, hit the air before you with prybar or anything really.
Of course this assumes magnet works correctly and doesn’t rubberband the enemy around or launches him into the air or whatever magic usually happens after magneting the enemy.
Attacking air… ANets idea of fun since release.

As bunker I’d take the traits that give u protection

High toughness and protection means backstabs hit for stuff all, and with enough regen you should be able to easily survive

Prob is then killing them.. If he traits in shadow arts for condi cleanse from stealth, you either need massive condition dmg or go for power

As a bunker, I’d try bombs