Guild Wars 2

This heartseeker spam is getting really old. When 2 thiefs or even 1 just spams 2222222222 it takes the skill completely out of the game. Meanwhile I have to press 12 different buttons to get the same damage out. Same thing with the “homing and bouncing” short bow 1 attack. There is zero skill in having arrows homing in on someone and bouncing back at them to hit them twice with 1 arrow. Zero skill in homing and spamming nature of heatseeker.

Just give the thief cooldowns already. So they have to pick a rotation skillfully. Like the rest of us. Or let us all have no CDs and just initiative. I would love to spam blurred frenzy/ Fire Grab/ whirlwind/ etc…

If you’re dying to HS spam then you need to look at your gameplay, now. Thieves are not the problem here, nor are they a problem frankly.

They can spam heartseeker probably 5ish times before their initiative runs out. They cannot keep spamming it. They have to think their skills out carefully so they do not waste their initiative. Thief was my first character and just because we don’t have cooldowns does not mean we can just spam everything. Thief is fine as it is. This is as stupid as telling a guardian to stop using their second skill.

I’d say its more that some professions that have CDs, shouldn’t.

Necromancer has this green bar that fills up as their signature mechanic. Yet, all their abilities simply cool down, when they should be spending that green stuff to spawn minions.

Engineers in other games, like the TF2 Engineer, or LoL’s Heimerdinger, are about attrition. If they run out of a resource (scrap, or mana, respectively), they have to retreat until they can resupply. Our engineers don’t have any sort of strategy like that. Just more numbers ticking downwards.

Is it annoying that thieves spam #2 for the win? Yes
although those players are the bad players, the good player going against this will realize this and stop it. There are many things you can do to stop this.

• CC
• Slow/ cripple
• knock back
• Knock down
• teleport
• Block
• immune to damage
• gap closer

All those will rend their HS spam useless and you can decimate them, then simply say in “SAY”
" Noob and their HS spam, l2P noob." This usually kitten es them off and cause them to head hunt you and lose rational thought. I go with the theory that the more you beat them and the more you make their Valued Heart Seeker useless they will either quit or start using something else. It is Usually the former but sometimes you get the latter

I of all people understand everything that you guys are saying yet it does not matter. The fact that they can spam a more 5ish times is BS and not skillful. The thing that frustrates me is that they can do 20k damage in 5 hits or less. I have been hit by a 10k heartseeker a couple time and 6-8ks all the time. They do not need heartseeker spam do be good so get rid of the ability to spam it.

Also in team fights you have a lot to deal with and its not realistic to be able to withstand a thief spamming heartseeker and if not that the homing and bouncing shortbow 1. These are not skillful moves.

I played thief a LOT and I hate when I catch myself spamming 2 because it is just as easy to kill someone with it as anything else. Same thing with shortbow 1. I just stand up on a ledge and afk while the arrows home in on people and bouncing 3 times able to hit the same person twice.

You guys didnt even touch on the short bow so I assume you feel the same way as I.

Read your other thread. seems like you don’t know much about thieves, but instead just complain about them. if thieves had CD you may as well make it a completely different class. Thieves are VERY easy to counter, its the main class i play. most thieves run Pure damage glass cannon build and die ALOT, basically the reason i don’t run that build is because i value living over maximum damage. Its not hard to deal with since they are squishier than paper.

Personally I would like to see some debuff/reduced damage if they constantly spam one skill. I just don’t like the cooldown idea. In my opinion skill is doing something other than HS, HS, HS, HS, & HS. So my idea would be that the effectiveness of a skills is reduced by 20% everytime they use it in succession. That means that they still can use it, but they will be deterred from spamming it. This might cause them to use a different skill in between. I know it seems just like a cooldown, but it’s not, it’s giving them the option. Personally I think this would make this class much better and more fun to play.

Apollo, the problem with what you are suggesting is that if you take away their Initiative system. you take away the only thing that class has unique to it. That is unless you want to count Steal. Which is pretty poor, so I’m going to ignore it for the sake of this discussion.
If the Thief’s Initiative system is touched, then the whole class has to be redesigned.
Ive played a Thief since the first of the Beta events, and I can honestly say that the thief is already struggling to stay with the other classes. Yea there are some good thieves out there that can still PVP, but for the most part, they are pretty specialized, and struggle to play PVE anymore because of it. For a bit of perspective, lets look at the Warrior. Ive got a lvl 30 Warrior, Ive leveled him from 15 to 30 in WvW. In that time, I found my self repeatedly tanking 3-4 level 80’s. in the time my War stayed alive in one fight, my thief would have died 10 times over. The thief doesnt need more nerfing.
I hate to be a kitten, but this isn’t a OP Thief issue, its a case of you not knowing what to do with a noob spammer.

Goloith.6349:

Personally I would like to see some debuff/reduced damage if they constantly spam one skill. I just don’t like the cooldown idea. In my opinion skill is doing something other than HS, HS, HS, HS, & HS. So my idea would be that the effectiveness of a skills is reduced by 20% everytime they use it in succession. That means that they still can use it, but they will be deterred from spamming it. This might cause them to use a different skill in between. I know it seems just like a cooldown, but it’s not, it’s giving them the option. Personally I think this would make this class much better and more fun to play.

A far better solution would be after the second consecutive skill use, the Init cost goes up.

Kallist.5917:

Goloith.6349:

Personally I would like to see some debuff/reduced damage if they constantly spam one skill. I just don’t like the cooldown idea. In my opinion skill is doing something other than HS, HS, HS, HS, & HS. So my idea would be that the effectiveness of a skills is reduced by 20% everytime they use it in succession. That means that they still can use it, but they will be deterred from spamming it. This might cause them to use a different skill in between. I know it seems just like a cooldown, but it’s not, it’s giving them the option. Personally I think this would make this class much better and more fun to play.

A far better solution would be after the second consecutive skill use, the Init cost goes up.

Actually a better solution would for people to realize unless your low health already that HS spamming thief is doing less damage than if they just auto attacked while also locking every single non auto attack skill from both his weapons out.

If your dieing to “HS spam” your either a) at low health already b) a potato c) in desperate need of some actual defense

Pugsnotdrugs.2718:

This is as stupid as telling a guardian to stop using their second skill.

No its more akin to asking the devs to remove a guardians virtues cause essentially what the OP is asking for is to remove initiative. A more logical request by the OP would be to increase the cost of HS so it couldn’t be spammed as much .

lern2dodge
If you’re dying to heart seeker spam its your game play that stinks not theirs.

A thief traited for max int can only spam it 6 times before being completely vunerable for 5 seconds, more than enough time to kill them.

Rizzy.8293:

lern2dodge
If you’re dying to heart seeker spam its your game play that stinks not theirs.

A thief traited for max int can only spam it 6 times before being completely vunerable for 5 seconds, more than enough time to kill them.

Hi Rizzy,

Have to agree with you. Theives do burst damage. Its not long before they are sitting there with no initiative. If you can survive their initial onslaught, they are sitting ducks for a long time.

It gets quite annoying in PVE.

Apollo.7389:

This heartseeker spam is getting really old. When 2 thiefs or even 1 just spams 2222222222 it takes the skill completely out of the game. Meanwhile I have to press 12 different buttons to get the same damage out. Same thing with the “homing and bouncing” short bow 1 attack. There is zero skill in having arrows homing in on someone and bouncing back at them to hit them twice with 1 arrow. Zero skill in homing and spamming nature of heatseeker.

Just give the thief cooldowns already. So they have to pick a rotation skillfully. Like the rest of us. Or let us all have no CDs and just initiative. I would love to spam blurred frenzy/ Fire Grab/ whirlwind/ etc…

Ok, so thieves get a cd and their skills cost initiative. How about we give elementalists 5 mp and every 1 of their skills costs 1 mp. Make them use 1 skill set and render them useless. Or necormancer uses 5% of their health pool per skill with cd. L2P before you think anything you’re saying makes sense. SB basic attack is weak, there is a dodge button, hs is too easy to deal with, you’re just unwilling to learn anything.

And yeah, spamming hs takes no skill. It also takes no skill to counter this kitten. Want to really see what a good thief can do? Enter a team fight with low hp and get ready to blink in the downed state.

I’ll throw my two cents in here. But first let me assure you that I am a PvE player, so your PvP strategy and comments mean pretty much nothing to me one way or another. I don’t like PvP so I really couldn’t care less if the thief is gimmicky or over/underpowered in that context.

My problem with the thief is the rush to kill, “all or nothing” playstyle initiative encourages in PvE. Every other profession has separate cool downs on their offensive and defensive weapon skills, allowing them to make tactical choices in combat, and providing the comfort of knowing that they have the skills they need, when they need them. For example, with my engineer I know that no matter how often I use flame blast with my flamethrower kit, I’ll still be able to pull off an air blast or smoke vent when my foes get too close. With a thief I can’t do that.

I use things like Infiltrator’s Strike and Pistol whip to damage my foes, and suddenly because they are both tied to the same resource I can’t use headshot of black powder when the situation changes and I need some defense. In PvP you can just spike down a lone target and run off while you regenerate, but you can’t do that in PvE, and certainly not dungeons wherein lone targets are few and far between, and those you do see have tons more health than even the greatest PvP tank spec. So you can’t spike and run there. This results in a situation where you’re either blowing all your initiative to try to kill a single target, and then getting destroyed by the others around you, or standing around spamming the auto-attack because you need to horde your imitative for defensive skills. Either way it is not fun. And I suspect why you see thieves everywhere you look in the PvP lobby, yet hardly ever in PvE.

I cast my vote to remove initiative simply because it does break the class in PvE.

The whole stealth mechanic in this game is broken as kitten.
The only one defending it are thief players, obviously. It has been kitten from the start.

Arekai.5698:

The whole stealth mechanic in this game is broken as kitten.
The only one defending it are thief players, obviously. It has been kitten from the start.

Elementalist here

My advice to you, go reroll a thief and experience their “OP” first hand

Apollo.7389:

I of all people understand everything that you guys are saying yet it does not matter. The fact that they can spam a more 5ish times is BS and not skillful. The thing that frustrates me is that they can do 20k damage in 5 hits or less. I have been hit by a 10k heartseeker a couple time and 6-8ks all the time. They do not need heartseeker spam do be good so get rid of the ability to spam it.

Also in team fights you have a lot to deal with and its not realistic to be able to withstand a thief spamming heartseeker and if not that the homing and bouncing shortbow 1. These are not skillful moves.

I played thief a LOT and I hate when I catch myself spamming 2 because it is just as easy to kill someone with it as anything else. Same thing with shortbow 1. I just stand up on a ledge and afk while the arrows home in on people and bouncing 3 times able to hit the same person twice.

You guys didnt even touch on the short bow so I assume you feel the same way as I.

The fact that you dont seem to understand that initiative is a depletable resource is your own fault.

You have skills the channel multiple hits, D/D thieves dont, Leaping death blossom is used an evasion or AOE.

Rizzy.8293:

Arekai.5698:

The whole stealth mechanic in this game is broken as kitten.
The only one defending it are thief players, obviously. It has been kitten from the start.

Elementalist here

My advice to you, go reroll a thief and experience their “OP” first hand

The fact that your class can aoe the kitten out of them doesn’t mean the stealth mechanic isnt broken.
You go into stealth for 90% of the time without ANY drawbacks. If you look at other games, with competent developers, you notice that stealth comes with drawbacks like slow movement speed, reveal on hit and so on so you actually have to have a brain when to use it and not just spam stealth and then 222222 for 1337 frags.

Arekai.5698:

Rizzy.8293:

Arekai.5698:

The whole stealth mechanic in this game is broken as kitten.
The only one defending it are thief players, obviously. It has been kitten from the start.

Elementalist here

My advice to you, go reroll a thief and experience their “OP” first hand

The fact that your class can aoe the kitten out of them doesn’t mean the stealth mechanic isnt broken.
You go into stealth for 90% of the time without ANY drawbacks. If you look at other games, with competent developers, you notice that stealth comes with drawbacks like slow movement speed, reveal on hit and so on so you actually have to have a brain when to use it and not just spam stealth and then 222222 for 1337 frags.

Stealth just had a nerf, you can’t sit in stealth that long.

Secondly the draw back was short stealth timers.

Sounds like someone needs to play a thief and do everything he is claiming a thief does and see how well it works aginst competant players. you will quickly find out that you die more than you suceed with a 2222 spam.

Also the reason why other games ( WoW ) had slower movement speed while under stealth is because stealth was permanet

Arekai.5698:

Rizzy.8293:

Arekai.5698:

The whole stealth mechanic in this game is broken as kitten.
The only one defending it are thief players, obviously. It has been kitten from the start.

Elementalist here

My advice to you, go reroll a thief and experience their “OP” first hand

The fact that your class can aoe the kitten out of them doesn’t mean the stealth mechanic isnt broken.
You go into stealth for 90% of the time without ANY drawbacks. If you look at other games, with competent developers, you notice that stealth comes with drawbacks like slow movement speed, reveal on hit and so on so you actually have to have a brain when to use it and not just spam stealth and then 222222 for 1337 frags.

Doesn’t have to be AoE, if you fire any attack in their direction it will most likely hit them.

And you can’t sit in stealth for 90% of the time, if you DO try permastealth that thief is doing next to nothing to any enemy while still being totally vulnerable themselves.

It also has plenty of drawbacks, with limited utility slots and initiative any stealthing is going to use up something finite and limited, it also doesn’t last long at all, it doesn’t prevent any sort of damage and while in stealth the thief is doing no attacking.

Stealth already DOES reveal on hit… you can’t just spam 22222 while stealthed and get kills.

Heck if it comes down to it unless your targets below 50% hp already all spamming heartseeker will do is burn the thieves entire set of weapon skills while doing less damage over the short period where they can fire off those skills (afterwards they gotta wait on the cooldown) than if they had just auto attacked.

You simply have no idea about the things your complaining about.

How did this become about stealth? I though, based on the title and opening post, that this thread was about initiative.

Arkham Creed.7358:

How did this become about stealth? I though, based on the title and opening post, that this thread was about initiative.

This happens with every Thief thread ever.

Auesis.7301:

Arkham Creed.7358:

How did this become about stealth? I though, based on the title and opening post, that this thread was about initiative.

This happens with every Thief thread ever.

I guess because stealth is just stupid. Not saying it is over powered or anything; I haven’t used it enough in any context to comment on that. But in my opinion, due it its execution, it is just stupid. As I like to say “waving your hands and turning invisible is a tool for cowardly mages, not stealthy rogues. Calling that stealth is an insult to anyone who enjoys stealth based gameplay.”

Hench why when I play my thief I go out of my way to not use stealth.

Well problem is its near impossible to do proper stealth based gameplay in a multiplayer game let alone a multiplayer rpg game like this.

That said the stealth in this game is more geared towards the “slipping away momentarily into the shadows/confusion” rather than most other games of “vanish from sight for as long as you like”

The reason it always comes up in a thief complaint thread is because after their first complaint with no founding in actual fact or reality gets shot down they try to bolster their imaginary mechanics with further imaginary mechanics to try and “win” the argument.

Arekai.5698:

Rizzy.8293:

Arekai.5698:

The whole stealth mechanic in this game is broken as kitten.
The only one defending it are thief players, obviously. It has been kitten from the start.

Elementalist here

My advice to you, go reroll a thief and experience their “OP” first hand

The fact that your class can aoe the kitten out of them doesn’t mean the stealth mechanic isnt broken.
You go into stealth for 90% of the time without ANY drawbacks. If you look at other games, with competent developers, you notice that stealth comes with drawbacks like slow movement speed, reveal on hit and so on so you actually have to have a brain when to use it and not just spam stealth and then 222222 for 1337 frags.

LMAO

Has nothing to do with AOE.

Sure it helps, but its the fact that I MOVE AROUND and continue to spam 1 is what makes it hard for a THIEF to backstab.

Really you can go into stealth for 90 percent of the time WITHOUT ANY DRAWBACK?

Can you do damage in Stealth?
Just curious.

Seriously, go reroll and thief

Dasorine.1964:

The reason it always comes up in a thief complaint thread is because after their first complaint with no founding in actual fact or reality gets shot down they try to bolster their imaginary mechanics with further imaginary mechanics to try and “win” the argument.

I’d have to disagree with that one. Personally, for reasons I’ve outlined above, I think there is a very real problem with the initiative mechanic. And while I do not deny that a lot of very skilled and dedicated players have created some very powerful and effective thief builds, I believe that is a case of skilled players succeeding in spite of the mechanics, rather than with the mechanics.

I won’t go into much detail just yet, but as I once said on guru “every thief build I’ve ever seen has been little more than an attempt to compensate for a weakness, rather than capitalize on a strength.” There is no denying that the thief has some incredible burst, but the price of that burst is hugely out of balance and creates a profession defined by polar extremes much more than any other profession in the game. I guess, relatively speaking, the thief pays a higher price for its specialty than any of its peers. At least that is how I see it.

yes well any issues with the initiative system its not because its “overpowered” as 99% of people and this thread seem to think.

People often use heartseeker spam as proof that initiative is overpowered but thats 4 attacks (with a 1 second wait 5) after which the thief cannot do anything and unless they are against someone thats already low health those 5 hits over the 5 seconds will do less (not by much I admit but still) damage than auto attacks.

That said I also disagree thief is limited to polar extremes, there is actually a lot of flexibility, its just that people always want to be the “best” at something rather than just good which is why the extremes that people see thief as best at get used more to the point where other builds are not given much look in.

Thieves pay a lot and require a lot of thought if you want to do anything more than ineffectual spamming or one trick pony builds, maybe pay a bit too much, but they still can do lots more.

But on the topic of this thread the ability to burn all weapon cooldown on one skill is far FAR from overly powerful.

Dasorine.1964:

yes well any issues with the initiative system its not because its “overpowered” as 99% of people and this thread seem to think.

Hardly overpowered. In fact I see it as a handicap.

Dasorine.1964:

yes well any issues with the initiative system its not because its “overpowered” as 99% of people and this thread seem to think.

these people seem to be under the impression that initiative is an infinite resource.

@rizzy indeed, which is why they see it as overpowered but will they actually put in the effort to learn? probably not.

@Arkham indeed in many many cases it is a massive handicap, it CAN be used well but requires much more thought than most peoples 8 cooldowns for no thought and of course you can do work arounds as well which require a bit less thought but comes down to your whole building to cover a weakness rather than build on a strength.

Initiative is a resource that must be managed. You wana sit there and spam hs over and over? Fine, after 1 dodge you wasted 6 initiative and a dodge/block/invuln/retreat they waste all their effort and initiative to take me down. Then whats left you ask? A useless thief because hs spamming only kills kittens. Really, l2p OP if you honestly think hs spamming is at all effective to a skilled player. Dealing direct damage breaks stealth, being knocked out of Shadow refuge breaks stealth, and after 3-4 seconds you lose stealth. Stealth is very short, and the only defence it provides is you can’t target them with tab or a mouse click. It doesn’t make them invulnerable and it certainly doesn’t allow perma-invis.

The bad thieves are the ones who go stealth and continue running forward, quite funny actually and then next thing you notice is they’re downed. I swear no body who complains about thief being op has played a thief for a minute in their life but because they cannot ask for ways to counter them, it must be impossible to kill. Ele can keep auras up almost 24/7 and protection for like 14 seconds at a time, go invulnerable twice, remove conditions and heal just for clicking a button every 9 or w/e seconds and kill with the burst of a thief once mastered. Not saying d/d or s/d ele is easy to play, but once mastered it is near impossible to 1v1. Any finger’s being pointed at ele recently? nope.. Guess we forgot about them

Arkham Creed.7358:

I cast my vote to remove initiative simply because it does break the class in PvE.

They’ll never do it. The thief would be near invincible in PVP. I don’t pvp either.

I use my thier in PVE with dual pistols. Trickery trait maxed will give you incredible condition damage.

For AOE: Set a couple of traps and pull a mob in and they lose half their hp. On a single target you can pull it in to traps and finish off target with high damage.

A major sigil of fire or a supior sigil of fire will cause an AOE fire blast 20% or 30% respectively when you critical: so get your critical as high as you can. Hitting multiple targets also refills some of your initiative.

(BTW I did this set up because myt guardian with a staff and warrior with a hammer were were able to hit about 10 with a single shot. Single damage for loot and XP stinks!)

Its can be frustrating to run out of attacks in PVE in protracted fights. It is what it is. It’s just how the class plays. Anyway with this set up I can take out a small mob by self with tanky armor and some strafing.

Hope that helps a little bit

PS- I fi could use my thief skills nonstop in PVE. the thief might become the funnest character in GW2. Imagine hitting a boss no stop with unload, hea shot, etc. what a thought!

At OP if your fighting a HS spamming thief just run!Everytime i try HS to close gap or finish off someone thats running all i get is MISS MISS MISS,if your standing still with low health or cc’ed well thats a diffrent story.

Balance has nothing to do with it – initiative is a bad design that leads to boring play.

I like initiative, I’d actually perfer if they kept the adrenaline/energy resources they had in gw1. Ele can burst as good if not better than a thief because of attunements and the fact that they only work off of cd. Adrenaline was nice because it lead to various trade offs you had to make during a fight although it wasn’t horribly incorporated into gw2 with burst skills.

With initiative, if you don’t use it wisely you will be defenceless. Smart thieves manage this bad thieves just hit 2 with a blindfold hoping their futile efforts lead to success and on occasion they kill a kitten. Poor, poor kittens..

As long as they remove initiative and improve damage of all skills by 100-200%.

I’m sorry L2P is a terrible excuse for how overpowered HS is. There is absolutely no reason that a Thief can come out of cloak and before you can spam any abilities you’re down to 25% health. Yes you can counter Thief if you see them cloak since you know it’s incoming, but if you don’t see them and get jumped there is no winning or slim chance. I really think that Thief needs a serious buff in other aspects, but most professions can do nothing about this. Usually what happens on my Engineer is I instantly get hit to 25% then Elixir S kicks in and it’s a race to get back to health. If I can spot them before they cloak I actually have a chance. Also dodging can only do so much because HS you leap at your foe repeatedly. Like mentioned above, you can get 6 HS spams and 4 can kill so there goes dodging. I think if they removed leap from this skill it would actually take some player skill to land it.

I’m really curious. I should go record some video of my thief doing nothing but heartseeker and see how well it turns out.

I’m fairly sure my success rate will be less than 20%.

L2P isn’t the problem. It’s that only certain builds work against them. IF you don’t like those builds, melee mostly, you’ll forever be killed by thiefs. That’s a balancing problem.

Another balancing problem is having Backstab easily doing between 6-8k and then Heartseeker doing between 2-4k. Those numbers are quite oppressive. 3-4 quick and easy shots for them and you’re about to be downed already. Of course you could run but, oh wait, Thieves have the fastest combat speed by far. Good luck turning your back to them and running.

Maybe if Backstab wasn’t broken and the target zone was actually much smaller it would be different. You can Backstab from just about anywhere and it’ll do the full double damage.

Let’s all face it, someone high in the company thinks frustration is fun. That’s why they made the scumbag class the most powerful and annoying in WvW. I call the class that because, well, you’re a THIEF! :-) Eventually, (hopefully) someone above the amoralist will take more control of the game. Making a thief a high risk class with actual consequences.

Heartseeker is supposed to be a highly skillful attack…to that end I think the homing quality of it should be gotten rid of, if you want to hit with it, then you have to manually face your target, if they sidestep (not dodge, just sidestep) then you miss. That would up the skill requirement for what should be a skillful manuever.

Also, as many thieves that have seen me post before…I dual pistols in pvp with my thief and regularly out survive and out kill the d/d thieves that are seen everywhere. Seriously…the class wasn’t well designed for assassin playstyles. You will die over and over again.

Oh wow this profession is already dead lol, you want to add salt to the wound as well? I can take out any thief out there even if I were to be in greens and they had full blown ascended I could still even give them a run for their money. This profession in my honest opinion needs to be revamped. It isn’t skill, it isn’t a learn to play problem, it’s a broken class problem along with engineers & rangers.

learn to play

/thread

I wish my heartseeker did all this ridiculous damage people keep talking about, 4 heartseekers killing from full health? Perhaps if someone forgot to actually equip their armour.

Thieves taking you to low health in a burst because you didn’t see them coming? Isn’t that true for any profession that specs burst damage and gets the drop on you?!

Backstab being ridiculous damage? Its one of the lowest damage “big hitters” in the game, while its the thieves biggest damage in one skill almost every profession has skills that do more damage and they don’t have positional and pre-move requisites…

As for heartseeker homing being removed…. why? it does less damage than auto attacking unless the targets already more or less dead and there are farm more damaging skills that aren’t exactly long cooldown that home in and such.

And thieves having the highest combat speed? HAH movement speed wise we can at best occasionally travel at swiftness speed, outside of that we have a couple of teleports that either have long cooldowns, cost our weapon skills or only work in certain directions, even the devs acknowledge that we aren’t as mobile as say Elementalists.

Problem is people are running full zerker builds, getting hit at less than 25% health with heartseekers from glass cannon thieves and thinking thats the damage it always does, coupled with this imaginary 90% stealth up time and such people have somehow got into their heads exists and you have a very overpowered situation yes. However almost all of that is either very situational or plain false.

1 thing that amases me is that people assume thieves are “unkillable” because they can burst them down immediatly.

In order for a thief to burst someone down “in 3-4 hits” they need to get berserker’s set because without it their crit chance isn’t high enough which is what they rely on for good burst (and the little crit dmg helps. Remember crit is 50% more damage. If you’re not critting often, crit dmg means next to nothing). With that chuck full of info said, think about how weak their defences are? Thieves don’t get protection, they don’t get good regen, they don’t get retaliation, they only have stealth which just removes targeting them. Pop an aoe or a channel skill like rapid fire and watch them die slowly and laugh. Same with condition builds because good condition builds will destroy thieves that think they can just run away in stealth.

Thieves are extremely easy to counter, and if you’re kitten enough to run berserker’s on a low hp pool or light armor profession then thats the risk you take for going up against 1 of the best burst profesions. HS thieves? They can try, I mean I run rampager’s ranger and I killed 1 without him even hitting me for more than 4k because I know my profession. I’m not even spec’ed to survive burst with a immunity skill or anything, I just know how to avoid generic bursts like HS. You should seriously ask people how to counter things, or practice some more. Don’t think for a second thieves are “too strong” when the majority of the community is aware of how weak they are (I say major because people in game shout out and in forums they are constantly shutting posts like these down with “L2p, signed”. It isn’t an opinion, many people know thief is weak)

The only build thief can run that can’t really be countered is s/p but they don’t kill you. They just annoy the kitten out of you. If they can’t kill you then what have the accomplished? Nothing. Just move on or await an ally to join in and kill them in a couple seconds. They won’t do any damage to you, they just pretend that pistol whi kitten trong and laugh as they hop around doing 1-2k.