Guild Wars 2

Ok, so it’s been going on in the thief forums for a while now and we know that something is going to happen to Heartseeker. While the players who have faced glass cannon thieves will attest to, Heartseeker is OP from their perspective (most who never played thieves would agree).

One thing though, Heartseeker was nerfed before, so many thief players wouldn’t want that again (especially a reduction in damage, enemy health thresholds, or increased resource cost).

In my opinion, a straight out damage nerf is crude and inelegant as is an increased resource cost. To me, simply reducing damage or increasing cost without looking at the picture as a whole seems to be just applying a temporary fix to an issue that will grow as time continues.

A threshold nerf seems out of the question because the numbers seem so odd already. Seriously, above 50%, below 50%, and below 25%?? That is some weird thresholds as opposed to thresholds such as below 75, below 50, and below 25.

Now to my point: Address Heartseeker in a smart way. If you two (I assume most already knows there are only two designers assigned to balance) want to make a decision to adjust Heartseeker in any way, how about adjusting the activation times instead of a straight out damage reduction, cost increase, or a threshold change?

Basically, the lower the enemy health (based on the thresholds already in place), the activation times would be shorter IE:

• Above 50% health = 1.75 second activation time
• Below 50% health = 1.25 second activation time
• Below 25% health = 0.75 (current activation time) time

Even better, (and this is just spitballing here) revert the thresholds back to their pre-nerf state and add the different activation times instead. Longer activation times makes players sitting ducks but allows a critical hit payoff to anyone who actually bold enough to stand there.