The trick to fighting a thief, as an engineer, is you have to realize strictly speaking, they’re mechanically superior. They can put you in situations where you are going to lose and lose badly. However that superiority is fully contingent upon the thief’s player executing those mechanics correctly.
It takes a while to develop it, but eventually you will pick up on certain cues that the thief is about to make a big play. In other words, you have to outwit the other player.
If you know they’re about to come out of stealth and rock you, you do something like:
Drop your Big Old Bomb to interrupt their burst.
Pop Elixir S right before (that’s key) they open up on you, then immediately hit them with say Rifle 4 or your moa elixir immediately after coming out of it. You want them to waste those first 2-3 attacks.
Pop Flamethrower 5 at the last possible second.
In this particular example, shield 4 would be your best weapon. You’d probably have to hit your stun break and then shield 4 immediately to get any use out of it against most thieves but them’s the breaks.
Stealth yourself right before he hits, so he comes out of stealth while you’re still stealthed.
A more general tactic against nearly any kind of thief is realizing that engineers can fight opponents without having to “stand and deliver”. Ironically, the untraited bomb kit is actually one of the greatest anti thief weapons, though it wouldn’t be as good against a P/P thief, it would still work. The reason it’s good is there’s a delay between placing the bomb and having it explode, and since it covers an area, you don’t have to be completely precise, but basically use your Vigor and Adrenal implant etc. to keep dodging around and dropping bombs that will attack him indirectly.
Confusion stacking works great, fwiw.
Finally, Lock On is your friend.
A good thief player who has learned to be unpredictable is just a real terror. However if you play and play and play you’ll eventually learn to spot typical behaviors, and you’ll start to anticipate these things. Once you get that sixth sense of when you’re about to get rekt, thieves… don’t become easy, but it becomes much more even is a good way to put it.
It’s really more about the situational awareness of the player than anything. Engineers are challenging to play because you have to mash a lot of buttons in very particular sequences. You’re so busy playing the interface, it’s hard to have good situational awareness. Once you get used to it somewhat though, your ability to pay attention to other things will improve. It’ll develop, but it’s going to suck for a while.
Also realize that if the thief sets you up right and executes his setup perfectly, well usually he probably deserves to win. There’s just going to be times the thief is going to eat your lunch. Engineer vs. thief really is often a matter of who catches who first. I’ve had matches where a thief and I just obliterated each other brutally, depending entirely on who saw who first.
