Fought a Thief in WvW, something feels fishy? Thief professionals needed!

Okay, hi everyone! So recently I myself have took up the Deadeye for roaming in WvW and am loving it, soloing camps and picking off enemy players (typically have an easy time 1v1 as long as I see them before the fight starts). Just the other night tho while playing for DB I encountered a thief at a camp that I controlled. This thief was constantly going back into stealth, healing to full when hitting 50% HP, and was capable of fighting off 2 of us at once not including our invulnerable supervisor. I saw they were running sword/pistol and rifle. They also did 3 blinks in a row (dunno how, I was running away using the SB one encounter with them and when I turned around I saw her blinking towards me as if she had the shortbow but as I explained I know she didn't). In all honestly, all of this put together... it felt fishy to me. So I decided after dying to this thief for about the fourth or fifth time I decided to take a screenshot of my combat log and get the opinion of other players. I want to know how this thief did what they did, and for the record all the moves you see in the combat log were completed within a complete 3 to 4 seconds (I was fighting a veteran when sh ganked me out of nowhere and I couldn't do anything I was dead so fast and stunned.)

tl;dr: How did this thief do this in 3 to 4 seconds? I don't want to think it's cheating but every fight ended with them always going back to full health, stealthing after every other attack, and blinking around. (also note the image does not reflect my wvw build)

edit: I can post more combat logs with this thief as well if people want to see more of the ability spam, there was a lot.

@Riranor.6315 said:

stealthing alot and healing up in it fast sounds just normal SA build , considering the amount of ports and a s/p build id say SA+trickery+DE build, he will probably run BQoBK if he is running s/p and then you precast binding shadows jump in it with infiltrator and pistolwhip ,it would be alot stronger if the short stun from pistolwhip wouldnt overwrite the knockdown from binding shadows. you were downed after the 3rd hit of pistolwhip so yeah that wasnt even a second till you were downed from the knockdown.what exactly do you need help understandiing? the ports are from standing rifle, stealth from silent scope, heal fron SA.

you also said it was your camp but you got hit by the scout..

@MUDse.7623 said:

In that particular fight she owned the campmy bad. I fought her 4 to 5 times trying to understand what was happening. I found them again and was just watching to see what she does. After they downed me they started harassing a blue team zerg and was just in and out of stealth a lot. So SA you say? I'm gonna check those traits out! I'm trying to understand thief better. How did they have enough intiative to use those pistol whips? Is there a trait that restores it other than the one that gives 7 malice max total?

@Riranor.6315 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

if she was running m7 then she probably took some quickness utility/trait at least i would do that. she only used 2 pistolwhips in that log so shouldnt be that much of an issue with ini and as you see then switched to AA at the end. you also gain ini from trickery on mark/steal but DE mostly uses mark at start so that wont be it.SA is for longer stealth but mainly more for regen and condi clease etc in stealth so you reset faster. the frequent stealth is from silent scope. if that is coupled with SA and vigor from bountiful theft then she could with right food and maybe rune or 1 utility permastealth with nearly just dodging.

@MUDse.7623 said:

Omg thanks. I just now realized pistol whip hits 4 times. I was reading that as seperate pistol whips (kinda new to thief and taking the game seriously so first time scrutinizing like this). I kinda understand now so I'm gonna mess around with it. Thanks a bunch!

actually it hits 5 times, one hit that stuns with pistol and then 4 hits during evade from sword. thats why you got 10 hits in your log. anyway good luck, i still prefer using d/p instead as using pistol whip during binding shadows..well you could just TRB from range staying on rifle for the same effect just safer and would then have with d/p a pretty good offset with our strongest execute skill, malicious backstab that you can use after such a TRB spamm if you opponent is not dead cause of passives or the like.

I use an s/p rifle DE build. My own preference is DE/CS/SA.

S/p has plenty of ports to and from that can be used until INI gone with #2. Some thieves will use a flurry of these in short order as it can really disorient an enemy and get them wasting skills. The log shows them being in s/p a lot but swapping to rifle will get the Silent scope stealth on heal.

SA will get Shadow REJUV with the GM trait, this an added heal while stealthed plus INI gain. (INI gain generally +1 per stealth)SA will get added stealth on the steal via Hidden thief this also adding +50 percent speed while in stealth.

For the INI.

If in TR 3 extra base with +2 on the steal. If you not getting stunned on the steal they might be using QP out of TR as well as I see more thieves using that as there more that readily switch off on weapons (rifle is very condusive to frequent weapon swaps).

If they have Mercy as a utility they could allow that to fill and reset for 14 INI.It hard to say if BqoBk in there over Mali 7 but Mali 7 is another 7 INI. I suspect BqobK used as that works so very well with a PW and that they use those other sources for INI add. Do remember that if they focus on S/p over the Rifle and DJ they might be willing to blow away their malice with an INI reset via Mercy as the Malice add for s/p is endurance when attacking from stealth which they might not see as big a payoff as using a mercy to get added INI and Pistolwhips.

Roll for Initiative is another option they might have in there. It a great skill given it also a stun break with an added Immob/chill criple cleanse. If they use THIS in Conjunction with reseting Malice via Mercy, they will have ooodles of INI.

This is normal, and a build I usually run. Shadow Arts and Acrobatics or Deadly arts. Shadow arts is the main suspect for this.

Shadow arts makes the thief very tanky when stralthing on top of being hard to hit. With healing power, the thief can use the regen produced by cloaking to heal very quickly.

When combined with acrobatics, you can. Dodge every five seconds. Deal more damage with sword. And get swiftness. With acrobatics you can heal for a small amount or each initiative spent. It's not a very good trait and it never makes a difference in the fight. But it's worth noting.

Deadly arts gives this build a massive damage boost for being revealed and you being low health. Not to mention a small damage boost for immobilizing you.

The 3 blinks should be shadowstep + infiltrator strike + infiltrator signet combo.