Hi! I’ve been experimenting with creating a bunker thief to use in sPvP in the last weeks, and so far it have been really fun and challenging to play. I have died countless times trying to find the sweet spot and experimenting with a huge number of traits and skills to figure out what would work best in an sPvP environment. My goal is to use this build in a full thief team in tournaments.
This is what I’ve come up with so far.
The build is focused on weakening and blinding my enemy, regenerating HP and initiative and evading as much as possible while still keeping good pressure on my foe. I chose S/P since a thief in stealth won’t contest the node, therefore I need to stay out of stealth as much as possible – I only use blinding powder as an oh kitten to use my heal and reposition card, or to revive an ally.
I open every fight with my shortbow, damaging and crippling incoming enemies as much as possible before they reach the node, I then drop a Choking Gas on the node to gain weakness stacks. Then I quickly switch to S/P and drop black powder and start auto attacking to cripple and weaken my enemy. If I see a big burst incoming I use pistol whip to interrupt, damage and evade. Headshot is also great for interrupting.
If there’s some ranged enemies I’ll drop smoke screen and keep attacking with my short bow until it disappears, I then use scorpion wire to get my enemy where I want him – right in my face and then proceed to the usual melee rotation.
The biggest weakness of this build us the lack of condition removal and stun breakers. I did play around with shadow step, but figured it was nearly useless as a bunker. I can use infiltrator strike and shadow return, but I’ll have to watch my initiative carefully. Infiltrator strike is also redicolously fun to use if I’m seeing multiple enemies approach close to each other. Chain stunning them to keep them away is just awesome!
Remember that this build isn’t designed to kill anything. A bunkers main role is to keep the enemy busy trying to kill you until your roamers arrive to take them out. Working together is a crucial point here, because you won’t be able to hold it for too long against glass cannons due to the thief having a low health pool.
I experimented with traps and poisons a lot, but figured that blinding and blocking projectiles was a lot more powerful. Scorpion wire is something I rarely see, and it will surprise the enemy to suddenly be thrown around the map – so this can be really powerful! If you want to feel safer, you can go with thieves guild, but I use dagger storm as both a heal and for stability.
I posted this because I worked this out my self and I haven’t seen anything like it in the forums before. I would like to get feedback from other thieves and ideas that might improve my build. That’s what we got these forums for anyways, right?
(edited by Geiir.7603)