Guild Wars 2

Hearing lots of complaints about this. So far best defence is to walk backwards does great for me. what I would like to gather thou is builds that counter this for every class… anyone got any?

Well timed dodges, well timed blocks, condition removals, knockbacks, interruptions, force the Thief to burn all his initiative, don’t get under 50% life

The latter is the most important.

People who spam heartseeker when you’re 100% won’t damage you a lot.

This is a reaction game, and a knowledge one as well. Know your enemy, what will he do and when will he’ll do, and you’ll win.

Doesn’t matter, even if you survive to an OP button spamming spec, you will never -EVER- catch up to a thief who is running away from you, even if you manage to kill him with DoTs, it takes about 1 minute to finish a thief in downed state …. horrible system needs a complete revamp.

Qtin you realize that instead of trying to deathblow thieves you can just attack them to death on the ground right?
On topic, currently I think the p.whip/heartseeker thieves and the 2 axe/GS warrior are OP. there is a reason these two classes are >50% of any sPvP match.

displacedTitan.6897:

Qtin you realize that instead of trying to deathblow thieves you can just attack them to death on the ground right?

This. And, thieves have 25% ms and guardians? How can I catch a runner?

prophet.3461:

displacedTitan.6897:

Qtin you realize that instead of trying to deathblow thieves you can just attack them to death on the ground right?

This. And, thieves have 25% ms and guardians? How can I catch a runner?

Do you mean how does a guardian catch a running thief?

Pretty sure you got some nice ports, like Judge’s intervention?

If a thief is only spamming heartseeker, you dont have to worry. But a thief using heartseeker amongst his other abilities, especially when he got an immobilize off… (thieves guild, haste, poisons, etc), you dont have many options as a ranged player. There is simply no way to kite a thief, the only option you have is a long duration root/immobilize such as entangle on ranger. You can not use snare or knockback, as they have 4-5 heartseekers worth of initiative to use, and even then their initiative regens during the fight. Combine that with the fact their ranged abilities will hit just as hard as anything else (and probably harder *cough unload *cough ).

If you don’t land this though, a good thief will certainly kill you, and if you manage to somehow turn things around, he will simply stealth out and hit you again with full health.

I turn on my deathshroud, then thiefs that are not so good (usually 90% of the ones that spam HS) use all their initiative on it, after I put marks, fear them, if they try to run away – spectral grasp and axe to death : )

I’m currently playing with Thief and I think Heartseeking is not much of a problem compared to imobilized + quickness. But then again, Warriors can also stumble and burst all my hp with greatsword before I could get up, and there’s nothing I can do about stumbles, unlike imobilized.

displacedTitan.6897:

Qtin you realize that instead of trying to deathblow thieves you can just attack them to death on the ground right?

I know that, now let me ask you something : Why would you create a special Finish Off Button only for PVP, and render it completly useless against 1 class in the game ?

This is how my 1v1 against thieves end up every single time, there is that dude i just owned on the floor, I can’t use the F button so i just auto attack him to death, but WAIT, he teleports behind objects and stealth, I spend 30+ sec to kill someone who is supposed to be dead already. Time that i could have used to tag a base, or help my team mates. And now i’m standing there, between bases, useless, most of the time with low HP, and another thief comes from behind and finish me off.

Qtin.6940:

displacedTitan.6897:

Qtin you realize that instead of trying to deathblow thieves you can just attack them to death on the ground right?

I know that, now let me ask you something : Why would you create a special Finish Off Button only for PVP, and render it completly useless against 1 class in the game ?

This is how my 1v1 against thieves end up every single time, there is that dude i just owned on the floor, I can’t use the F button so i just auto attack him to death, but WAIT, he teleports behind objects and stealth, I spend 30+ sec to kill someone who is supposed to be dead already. Time that i could have used to tag a base, or help my team mates. And now i’m standing there, between bases, useless, most of the time with low HP, and another thief comes from behind and finish me off.

You are looking at the F-inisher in entirely the wrong way.

First of all, they aren’t supposed to already be dead, so get that out of your head right now. That’s not the way this game works and you need to accept that right now. They are in a downed state, which is only halfway to dead. They still have a bunch of options. Don’t tell yourself that they shouldn’t have those options because regardless of how you feel about it, they do and you need to accept that.

F-inisher is an option in your arsenal, not THE thing to do after you down your opponent. Against thieves, it’s a bad option. Just like any number of bad options you can be presented with, like charging headfirst into 3 opponents or using a 3 second charge skill when you’re getting focus fired. Why do they give you an option that isn’t good against 1 whole class? Because it isn’t useless against that class and it still works just fine against the other four classes (some classes better than others). Play the game the way it IS designed, not the way you think it SHOULD BE designed. I usually F-inish thieves, but I expect them to use both their teleport and their stealth and I account for that. If there are other players around, I focus fire the thief instead of F-inishing them. It’s all about making decisions and not just having a canned go-to response.

Qtin.6940:

displacedTitan.6897:

Qtin you realize that instead of trying to deathblow thieves you can just attack them to death on the ground right?

I know that, now let me ask you something : Why would you create a special Finish Off Button only for PVP, and render it completly useless against 1 class in the game ?

This is how my 1v1 against thieves end up every single time, there is that dude i just owned on the floor, I can’t use the F button so i just auto attack him to death, but WAIT, he teleports behind objects and stealth, I spend 30+ sec to kill someone who is supposed to be dead already. Time that i could have used to tag a base, or help my team mates. And now i’m standing there, between bases, useless, most of the time with low HP, and another thief comes from behind and finish me off.

Without disagreeing with your points on how frustrating it is and that there needs to be some balance, in regard to your contention that they are “someone who is supposed to be dead already,” I can only say:

“Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your [thief] here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do. […] Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”

In this game, like the similar mechanic SWG used to have, you are not dead until someone comes and actually performs a death blow. Until then, you are not dead. You are only “mostly dead.” In this game (unlike SWG where you were completely helpless but could recover in time), you are allowed to fight on with greatly diminished capacity with the hopes of being revived or of rallying. It is a perfectly valid mechanic, and just like PvE, you can keep attacking them until they actually do die, with the added ability to do an actual finish-them-off move. That means that it is fitting within the overall game mechanics.

Thus, I don’t disagree with the need to balance the downed mechanics. I am not going to comment one way or the other because I don’t know enough about how each class’ downed mechanics work. However, you are simply factually incorrect. Just because you got them to a downed state does not mean that you have already killed them.

Kind of depends on your circumstances.
I generally agree with any strategy that centers around ‘burning his initiative’.

To add another option to what RJ said.
The thing with thieves’ initiative system and the skill queue system is that it’s incredibly easy to accidentally spam yourself into a corner, and a Heartseeker strategy encourages exactly that. So while your kneejerk reaction might be to try and use an invulnerability state or stunbreaker when you first start the engagement to keep your health above the ‘burst zone’, there’s something to be said for waiting until the fight has progressed a bit and then activating your plan letting the thief accidentally spam themselves into helplessness.

While some skills outright say they provide invulnerability, also look for anything in your arsenal that says ‘evade’, ‘block’ or ‘distortion’. That’s effectively short-term Invulnerability under different names and depending on the skill can work while Immobilized and facing the wrong way.

Also, it may not top the death recap charts, but be mindful of the other stuff. Backstab is another attack on the same weapon that does alot of damage from behind and is only available while a thief is invisible. Assassin’s signet multiplies an attack by alot and is good for ‘softening you up’ or ‘finishing you off’, but it’s used up if the attack misses and has a long cooldown. Invisibility isn’t invulnerability so keep manually swinging.

Dodge, block, invuln, immobilize, blind, stun, knockdown, launch, LoS, invisibility and weakness all inhibit or prevent Heartseeker.

Do any of these things and you can beat them.

99/100 thieves in sPvP just stand there like a possum in the headlights when you do anything to them. Quite funny.