Guild Wars 2

HS is fine unless youre faceing a bs thief combined with the skill

This thread seems to be sidetracked a bit, but going back to those who call me a noob and a moron because of my post, I have a couple of things to add:

1. Did I say I cannot beat them?? No. I did not. Does the skill still need a nerf, YES, it does. A skill that can crit for 8k on a softie should not be spammable three or four or five times in a row. Period. It is a stupid, stupidly op skill that has no place in thief lore, and as I said this is coming from a thief main, see attached.

2. To those who assumed I do not know my way around PvP or the thief, you know the old adage…when you assume you make a kitten out of you. See attached, and keep the noob and moron comments to yourself. The second and third most played are necro (146 and counting and Ranger, 124 and not counting). I am not bragging because there are many higher levels, but I think after 324 games with my thief, I know what I am talking about. And to kitten with you noob HS spammers.

Pimpslapper.2047:

A skill that can crit for 8k on a softie should not be spammable three or four or five times in a row.

Technically it isn’t spammable three or four or five times in a row, because if you crit 8k with it, it means the target is in a glass cannon build and is below 25% life, meaning you just killed him.

I mean you can spam it 5 times on the corpse if you like, but i don’t think that’s very constructive.

Of course if your target is a glass cannon on no life you could just press pretty much anything else. Like…. Unload? A skill with no cooldown that homes in on your target and deals damage from range! Christ it’s just like a Heartseeker, better nerf that next.

Heartseeker is fine.

Pimpslapper.2047:

This thread seems to be sidetracked a bit, but going back to those who call me a noob and a moron because of my post, I have a couple of things to add:

1. Did I say I cannot beat them?? No. I did not. Does the skill still need a nerf, YES, it does. A skill that can crit for 8k on a softie should not be spammable three or four or five times in a row. Period. It is a stupid, stupidly op skill that has no place in thief lore, and as I said this is coming from a thief main, see attached.

2. To those who assumed I do not know my way around PvP or the thief, you know the old adage…when you assume you make a kitten out of you. See attached, and keep the noob and moron comments to yourself. The second and third most played are necro (146 and counting and Ranger, 124 and not counting). I am not bragging because there are many higher levels, but I think after 324 games with my thief, I know what I am talking about. And to kitten with you noob HS spammers.

A spammable ability that crits 8k? nope.

Show me a hearseeker that crits 8k when the target is above 50% hp. Heartseeker crits high when the target is below 25%, which means it doesn’t matter if it is spammable… 1 or 2 heartseekers finish the job, no need for the third or fourth.

If you knew the Thief profession as good as I know, you would know that Heartseeker is fine and no where near the strongest weapon in the Thieves arsenal.

ok, this is rediculous, heartseeker recieved a 20% damage reduction and its threshold schanged from 33/66 to 25/50%

im not kidding when i say i can kill someone faster by autoattacking then by spamming HS above 25% hp

and if it crit for 8k you were probably below 25% hp in which case cry me a freaking river its a execute ability its supposed to hit hard at that point.

and to the person in this thread that said cripple effects do not affect heartseekers gap closing abilities /FACEPALM, and thats your face not mine sir. just checked, it certainly does

Wolfe.3097:

and if it crit for 8k you were probably below 25% hp in which case cry me a freaking river its a execute ability its supposed to hit hard at that point.

I don’t think anyone would complain about a finisher doing a decent amount of damage. It’s not really a finisher though when you can just keep clicking it until someone is dead. The way it works now even if a person is at say 40% life it still doesn’t hurt to start spamming it because you will stay auto locked on target and eventually they will be at 25% and dead. That’s not a finisher that’s like a “special” move you can always use.

Lets compare that to say a warriors “eviscerate” which works very similarly to HS. Eviscerate requires adrenaline which you have to build up. It has a 10 second cooldown so even if you had unlimited adrenaline you couldn’t spam it. It acts as a gap closer which makes it extremely valuable. Basically you want to set it up vs just being able to spam it until it lands because if you miss you won’t be able to use it again for a bit.

Do you see the difference?

Problems in this thread:

1. Teoh ignores the entire aspect of positioning and infact related the Ele’s 15 second combo to “just hitting pre-determined buttons”. Of course, when your bar comes with an on demand gap closer, I’m sure it’s easy to forget about positioning.

2. Somehow, someone thought showing a post of two people using skills on a STATIONARY golem is a good comparison of heartseeker vs. any other skill….. (Do I need to elaborate further on this..? … gap closer….)

3. Thieves aren’t a problem. Just roll a mesmer or another bunker class. You see, when it comes to telling someone to L2P, it’s easy to point out their counter. Then, all these classes that just got countered come on to the forums to whine about how bunkers are ruining TPVP. This is the countering everyone told everyone else to do.

Thieves are a broken class and their damage output is being hard countered in tournies to the point that top players (who play predominantly tournies) don’t care about thieves anymore. Take away the layers of defense and they will die to good steal / cnd / backstab / heartseeker thieves by the hordes.

4. Heartseeker isn’t the only issue. I don’t know why people took this literally. But the steal, CnD, Bacsktab combo are insanely easy to land which put you immediately into “Woosh Woosh Woosh” territory. That is, the annoying sound you hear when an Assassin errr I mean Thief is trying to button 2 mash you into the ground.

5. Why do we pretend this game is all 5v5s? Let’s drop the act huh thieves? You don’t go in there with your daggers trying to get targets into the 50% and lower range. If you have your steal combo, you do it. If you don’t you engage in 2v2 fights and are on your bow until they drop lower enough. Stealth lets you pick only the battles you want to fight.

Honestly, the thief community disappoints me. Your class is broken and needs a fix. To counter, everyone runs bunkers and renders your class useless in TPVP. You can either pray that Anet goes insane and simply nerfs bunkers only to allow you to woosh woosh woosh again in tpvp, or push for real changes to your characters that make them viable in balanced team settings.

and here we go again

for all of u who thinks thiefs are only about 122222 … pls go with such build to tPvP and take a screenshot of all the wins on Kyhlo and post it here … but I doubt u will even get there

Just remove the movement component from heartseeker and leave the damage where it is, problem solved. Good thieves will still be good, bad thieves will have to learn to work for their kills and maybe improve in the process.

As an Engineer, Heartseeker is simply not an issue unless you are being attacked by 3 at once. The skill does absolutely no damage until you are below 50% health. Only does it become mildly threatening at that point, and only flat out dangerous at 25% health. Seeing as how you can use a healing skill to stay above 50% for quite an extended amount of time, dying to heartseeker spam implies that you were hit by a lot more then just heartseeker spam.

The only way they are going to get you that far is with a some powered up backstab combo. It’s easy to dodge or avoid. The heal can even bring you back out of the danger zone from that. Heck with just an ounce of tank in you, you won’t even be in danger after all of that anyway.

As for those pretending that extra button clicks require skill, that’s just simply not true. There is a lot more involved with the Elementalist and Engineer due to managing more cooldowns, but that’s not even what you all are talking about. That is the only place where the skill comes in, and that only happens in prolonged encounters. You can learn to shuffle in key combos via any profession and that takes very little practice. The vast majority of skill in this game comes beyond the practiced combos that are available to every class because in a good fight these combos simply do not work anymore.

I mean, I can tell you my basic combo. Freeze Grenades, Poison Grenades, Smoke Bomb, Incendiary Bomb, Confusion Bomb, Poison Volley, Static Shot, and Blowtorch. That’s actually not that complicated, due to muscle memory. It’s easy. That doesn’t require it to have skill. The point is, spamming skills to me is no different then a skill combo in other professions. Yes, the professions themselves are a bit harder due to other factors, but in no way shape or form is a skill combo difficult. .

If a thief is using heartseeker on targets above ~~50% then you should be able to own him , and if u can’t then the problem is actually in your own skills , build , pc preformance. Stop flooding the forums with thief QQ-in , they are far far far away from being the most problemable class. It’s just a butload of them on hotjoins. Start playing tournaments for pity sake god

Why has no one brought up the fact that the Ele brings an amazing amount of utility to the table, and a crazy amount of lasting power. You are comparing the opposites of the table, the Thief which is deemed a spammy class (Although not true in the slightest, my opinion, you guys are just butt hurt) to the Ele who has more skills than ANY class not just the Thief.

I roll P/D and D/D and I use all my skills, so stop judging every Thief by the minority YOU have played with, this thread is full of whining children just jumping on a band wagon, honestly spend a lil more time in PvP than you do on the forum moaning, maybe you’d improve.

Fenixz.7194:

If a thief is using heartseeker on targets above ~~50% then you should be able to own him , and if u can’t then the problem is actually in your own skills , build , pc preformance. Stop flooding the forums with thief QQ-in , they are far far far away from being the most problemable class. It’s just a butload of them on hotjoins. Start playing tournaments for pity sake god

…and that’s why you see the whining about bunkers. As someone said above, they are more or less the counter to thieves.

Especially in spvp you can do now either play a mesmer or a bunker or you get some of those nice backstabs builds shoven up your rectum.

The game has some deep design problems because of it. Nevermind, though, I just play 1-3 games per day and now I can play X-Com and have my fun. Win-win situation for me.

There are only two problems with thieves:

1) They are the only class that kept the Energy mechanic (called Initiative now) after Anet decided that they would remove it in GW2 so that they could balance through recharge alone. SOLUTION: remove initiative or make it so that repeated use of the same skill cost 1 more initiative each time so no single skill can be spammed. Otherwise spamming the highest DPS per initiative skill will be the most viable strategy for every single thief build that doesn’t rely on several cooldowns to perform a two hit kill.

2) Single attack boosts far beyond what is reasonable: the 150% damage signet and mainly quickness. If 33% IAS was so powerful in GW that it always had tradeoffs and was nerfed so much, I don’t understand how they thought 100% IAS would not get abused, especially in a game with no healers. Whoever thought this was a good idea after GW is incompetent. Quickness is mainly what people complain about when they complain about melee spikes although they don’t realise it. SOLUTION: rework skills and mechanics that boost damage from one or two attacks to unbalanced levels. Don’t nerf backstab, which is the obvious next Thief nerf. Instead, nerf quickness and the kitten signet, alongside reworking how initiative expenditure with repeated use of a single skill works.

An additional problem is thieves (and mesmers) abusing the server model culling bug for de facto >80% invis uptime: stealth —> client not loading model —> stealth —> client not loading model… so that you have to select them through target nearest, which is a pain with a lot of people around.

I don’t think anyone would complain about a finisher doing a decent amount of damage. It’s not really a finisher though when you can just keep clicking it until someone is dead. The way it works now even if a person is at say 40% life it still doesn’t hurt to start spamming it because you will stay auto locked on target and eventually they will be at 25% and dead. That’s not a finisher that’s like a “special” move you can always use.

again, above 25% my AUTOATTACK dps’s down a target faster then hitting HS. so if hes using it above 25% hes doing you a favor and making life easier on you. having any of the thieves weapon set skills have a Cd or be unable to be used until a condition is met (aside form our one stealth move per weapon) would be unbalanced.

as far as autolock and people complaining about its gap closing nature. it has no evasion frames, zero, the entire time during its animation you can CC/cripple, damage the thief. and if yo0u cripple him, it also shortens the length of the “leap” considerably to where its no longer a effective gap closer. this all is combined into it being completly avoidable, doing negligible damage outside of haste effects or above25% hp. literally the only thing your getting is you dont like hte thief doing the same animation over and over, in which case id say it doesnt matter, thieves are designed to use there damage move when they want to do damage, not cycle thru multiple damage moves, we dont have that. now admittedly this has to be one of the weakest thief specs available now and anyone who usees it or has trouble against it needs to pick there game up a bit.

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Eurosdown.6072:

Just remove the movement component from heartseeker and leave the damage where it is, problem solved. Good thieves will still be good, bad thieves will have to learn to work for their kills and maybe improve in the process.

no, i use hs for its leap combo finisher to gain stealth in my dagger/pistol build

that would destroy it

ya the fact that it is a teleporting, tracking high damage ability + gap closer is what makes it a 1 button wonder. you dont really need to aim and hit your target. other melee have to rely on geting in range and missing . hs tracks and still deals high damage which is why EVERYONE plays a hs spamming thief.
if you get in trouble as a thief and panic, you can press HS multiple times and roll the dice for crits. no other class can you really PANIC and press 1 button without aiming.

and its a LEAP finisher that can be spamed, thus giving MORE stealth to a class that already has too much.
Im all for raising the damage on hartseeker, adding a cooldown.

BishopX.6453:

ya the fact that it is a teleporting, tracking high damage ability + gap closer is what makes it a 1 button wonder. you dont really need to aim and hit your target. other melee have to rely on geting in range and missing . hs tracks and still deals high damage which is why EVERYONE plays a hs spamming thief.
if you get in trouble as a thief and panic, you can press HS multiple times and roll the dice for crits. no other class can you really PANIC and press 1 button without aiming.

it doesnt teleport, wtf

it does track

it does NOT do high damage above 25% hp, again, my autoattack dps a enemy down faster then spamming HS above 25%

it is a partial gap closer, it has no evasion frames, no instant teleportation, breaks no snares/CC, and if affected by cripple its nullified as being a gap closer at all for the cripples duration

id be fine with the tracking being removed tho /shrug

but to say its high damage is only accurate if you somewhow play all the time at 25% hp or lower.

you do realize the only ones that use it as a stealth leap finisher are D/P thieves that do not have access to cloak and dagger yes? it costs them 7-9 initiative to enter stelath vs double daggers 4-6 for cloak and dagger. so dont start spouting nonsense.

adding a Cd would defeat the purpose of thieves resource design.

The problem with HS spam isn’t that it’s good – it isn’t, you’ll get owned by anyone with a clue in a 1v1 – it’s that it’s too rewarding for spamming one ability mindlessly.

The problem with HS spam is it basically makes a completely awful player marginally competent simply by pressing one ability over and over because it does everything for them. There is a reason almost all bad players play thieves: because the class is basically set up to let even awful players succeed occasionally just by stacking damage increases and spamming 2 and hoping HS will do everything for you. No need to aim, no need to move, just spam 2!

Heart Seeker is NOT a problem anymore. The original nerf was needed so that it would be used for its intended purpose, but other than that it is fine. The most that could be done is have the range slightly lowered so it isn’t such an effective gap closer.

Yukishiro.8792:

The problem with HS spam isn’t that it’s good – it isn’t, you’ll get owned by anyone with a clue in a 1v1 – it’s that it’s too rewarding for spamming one ability mindlessly.

The problem with HS spam is it basically makes a completely awful player marginally competent simply by pressing one ability over and over because it does everything for them. There is a reason almost all bad players play thieves: because the class is basically set up to let even awful players succeed occasionally just by stacking damage increases and spamming 2 and hoping HS will do everything for you. No need to aim, no need to move, just spam 2!

i can see how a LDB thief could go about this (tho its slightly more involved then just spam 2) but HS? it has no protection, does low damage above 25% hp…most classes would be able to out dps the thief outright even if they spec glass cannon and spam HS hoping for crits.

Yukishiro.8792:

The problem with HS spam isn’t that it’s good – it isn’t, you’ll get owned by anyone with a clue in a 1v1 – it’s that it’s too rewarding for spamming one ability mindlessly.

The problem with HS spam is it basically makes a completely awful player marginally competent simply by pressing one ability over and over because it does everything for them. There is a reason almost all bad players play thieves: because the class is basically set up to let even awful players succeed occasionally just by stacking damage increases and spamming 2 and hoping HS will do everything for you. No need to aim, no need to move, just spam 2!

All bad players play Thieves? lol

Sorry, but I have met bad players from every single class in the game. If you really think a Thief can just press 2 and be successful, you don’t have any idea what you are talking about. The only way a Thief might be able to be moderately successful spamming nothing but Heartseeker is if everyone else was doing the work for him. That means he would have to be following around an assist train and anyone can follow around an assist train.

Guys, this thread is totally pointless. Why does thieves need to use heartseeker when they can pop out some ridiculous damage just with the autoattack?

http://i46.tinypic.com/2afncj7.jpg

Consider that the thieves’ autoattack just takes a bit more than a second to be fully chained.
Only noob thieves use heartseeker, pro thieves use autoattack.

I came across a heartseeker thief in one of my very rare spvp outings last night.
It went basically Steal > heartseeker spam with haste. I was dead before i could even react.
I thought it was a 1 off, but nope, he did it repeatedly for the next hour killing anyone who he chose to kill.

Screw the 2 second cooldown, i want to see it on a 4 second cooldown like most other classes similar abilities.

Psy.6153:

I came across a heartseeker thief in one of my very rare spvp outings last night.
It went basically Steal > heartseeker spam with haste. I was dead before i could even react.
I thought it was a 1 off, but nope, he did it repeatedly for the next hour killing anyone who he chose to kill.

Screw the 2 second cooldown, i want to see it on a 4 second cooldown like most other classes similar abilities.

what is your class and stats?

i ask because i cant see this as possible, now if he stole, CnD, backstabbed crit, then proceeded to spam HS maybe. But HS hits for very weak damage above 25% hp.

granted haste is dumb paired with anything, but even with that i dont see how

sorrow.2364:

Guys, this thread is totally pointless. Why does thieves need to use heartseeker when they can pop out some ridiculous damage just with the autoattack?

http://i46.tinypic.com/2afncj7.jpg

Consider that the thieves’ autoattack just takes a bit more than a second to be fully chained.
Only noob thieves use heartseeker, pro thieves use autoattack.

agreed autoattack is better then HS above 25%

however this doesnt mean its OP, i mean, greatsword auto is capable of 8k chains easily enough on a warrior.

autoattack is a important part of the game

heartseeker is not the problem. its backstab and steal (when mug is active). these two skills have their power ratios WAY off. anet needs to fix that. and also stealth is still broken. even after a person is out of stealth theres still a nice little lag where you still can’t see the player. it should be: stealth over > visible instantly. those are the only problems with thief/stealth.

Melee auto attacks are generally rather strong throughout all of the professions, this kind of connection has nothing to do with just a Thief. There are exceptions of course, but it’s a generic theme that melee does more damage then ranged, and it’s mostly the case in the auto attack chains. I don’t see anything wrong with this given how easy it is to kite.

+20% damage to foes under half health.

Nobody has mentioned this yet?
If a thief with this trait gets you low, OF COURSE they are going to have an advantage. It doesn’t matter what skill they use, it will seem OP.

Chill and cripple both effectively stop heartseeker gap closing. And if a thief gets on you with full initiative when you are low health, you will die! ANY burst with 100% health and cooldowns will be able to finish you just the same.

If you have ZERO awareness, YES the backstab combo will land, and your reaction time will be too slow to stop it. Part of being a skilled player is finding out your opponents builds during the game, and getting your reaction ready ahead of time. Use stability; be prepared to use a stunbreak when you see the thief go d/d; dodge if you have 0 other options.

@Ayestes: you say that it is easy to kite? That when heartseeker comes. Cheap leap and also some damage.

Ashanor.5319:

Yukishiro.8792:

The problem with HS spam isn’t that it’s good – it isn’t, you’ll get owned by anyone with a clue in a 1v1 – it’s that it’s too rewarding for spamming one ability mindlessly.

The problem with HS spam is it basically makes a completely awful player marginally competent simply by pressing one ability over and over because it does everything for them. There is a reason almost all bad players play thieves: because the class is basically set up to let even awful players succeed occasionally just by stacking damage increases and spamming 2 and hoping HS will do everything for you. No need to aim, no need to move, just spam 2!

All bad players play Thieves? lol

Sorry, but I have met bad players from every single class in the game. If you really think a Thief can just press 2 and be successful, you don’t have any idea what you are talking about. The only way a Thief might be able to be moderately successful spamming nothing but Heartseeker is if everyone else was doing the work for him. That means he would have to be following around an assist train and anyone can follow around an assist train.

Of course there are bad players playing every class. But there’s a reason that most of them play thieves, and it’s not hard to figure out why. You can be moderately successful on a thief even if you are an awful player because of abilities like HS that do a bunch of a different things at once. A spammable damage and gap closer rolled into one that also does a leap finish? It seems like it’s just DESIGNED to help out bad people.

You might want to read the first paragraph too, where I say HS spam itself is not very effective against good players in 1v1 situations. The problem isn’t that HS is overpowered it’s that it allows awful players to be more effective than they should be able to be.

@Wolfe

First of all not to completely invalidate your opinion or anything but you’ve been in every single thief thread out posting nearly everyone and consistently posting “thieves are fine.” Now I’m not saying you are completely biased but if looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…… Many people have made a lot of great points regarding why thieves are a bit too much and you always have something to say. It’s just that you’re kinda the vocal minority defending a lot of what’s a little too good about the profession and any suggestions on changes you seem to respond with “this will ruin us”

Wolfe.3097:

again, above 25% my AUTOATTACK dps’s down a target faster then hitting HS. so if hes using it above 25% hes doing you a favor and making life easier on you. having any of the thieves weapon set skills have a Cd or be unable to be used until a condition is met (aside form our one stealth move per weapon) would be unbalanced.

Wait why is balancing a “finishing move” in a way that you can’t spam it imbalanced? If what you say about auto attacks is true it changes nothing regarding how HS is being used. The strongest mechanic of the skill which I think you actually know is true is that it’s a gap closer/target lock. Many professions rely on out auto attacks for a large portion of damage the way I see HS being used is to reaquire or stay locked on if your target actually manages to put some distance down. Now in that sense the fact that is has no cooldown makes it extremely strong because essentially there is no getting away. Combine that with the best mobility in the game and highest damage and I think it’s a little too good.

as far as autolock and people complaining about its gap closing nature. it has no evasion frames, zero, the entire time during its animation you can CC/cripple, damage the thief. and if yo0u cripple him, it also shortens the length of the “leap” considerably to where its no longer a effective gap closer. this all is combined into it being completly avoidable, doing negligible damage outside of haste effects or above25% hp. literally the only thing your getting is you dont like hte thief doing the same animation over and over, in which case id say it doesnt matter, thieves are designed to use there damage move when they want to do damage, not cycle thru multiple damage moves, we dont have that. now admittedly this has to be one of the weakest thief specs available now and anyone who usees it or has trouble against it needs to pick there game up a bit.

The repeated animation has nothing to do with the complaints you’re hearing. If that were the only issue you wouldn’t be seeing countless threads, screen shots, and videos. I know it’s easy to write people off by simplifying the argument but it’s just inaccurate. The complaints are based on performance both in terms of cost, ability to spam, simplicity, target locking, gap closing, etc. Not just damage or animation.

No evasion is the defense you think justifies it? No profession gets anything like that. Come on….. You think that snares are the answer? I think you’re just reaching here it’s not like these are protracted engagements we’re talking about things happening in seconds where putting a little space between yourself and your attacker is the difference between life and death I don’t think the fact that snares still work actually changes anything at all.

yes warriors have CD’s on there weapon set abilties, thieves dont, while the ability itself may have similarities its still comparing apples to oranges, you could just say you dislike that thieves dont have real CD’s on there weapon set abilities.

No it’s not comparing apples to oranges that’s actually just a cliché people throw out there to dismiss a comparison out right without having to address it. The comparison is actually very valid because it has everything to do with how melee stays engaged and finishing moves which should both be managed so a player can’t simply spam it to stay auto locked until someone is dead. It’s just too easy when you can mix in HS to auto attacks and other skills for both good damage and to stay on a target. You’re correct most people don’t like that thieves have no cooldowns while the rest of us have to manage several different resource pools as well as cooldowns but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be any consequences to using it other than it doesn’t do as much damage as something else above 25%. This could easily be done using the initiative resource itself by tweaking cost while maintaining the integrity of the system itself.

@ Proeliator, proves how much you know. I say thieves are not AS bad as people complain, but they are indeed having issues that need addressing.

just to name a few

the lag/rendering issue with stealth

the glass cannon backstab build

revealed debuff not triggering all the time

pistol whip imo was handled poorly, nerfing its base damage didnt do much vs things like haste+PW and such.

no sir, i post to instill a bit of rationalization to the mass hysteria on these forums filled with people who dont want balance, just nerfs, and others who post entirely innacurate or untrue statements. ive seen people post that HS has evasion frames for example lol. do i have bias? entirely possible, but im at least certain i have far less then most, and bias goes both ways, the vocal bit on these forums are no less biased against thieves then there are for thieves.

as far as balancing the finishing move thusly, it is because it would undermine the very intention of the initiative system. a balance has to be met that doesnt undermine it, or anet needs to remove initiative all together (which many people on here would be for im sure). the suggestion is a bandaid fix that hampers the classes design goals. if we nerf it for this, the next thing WILL be our autoattack >.<

and yes its gap closing ability and target lock is probably more useful then its actual damage, however, one cripple completly negates its ability to close a gap shortening its leap length by a lot. it has no protection vs any CC in fact so spamming it is just inviting someone to lay you out, the fact that nobody has commented in reply to this (that ive seen) worries me, tells me nobody is running any form of CC and think thats ok. however im for removal of the auto target.

as far as best mobiltiy goes, we really ahve to trait and spec for it to be considered best, otehrwise we simply are not. but thats not really here nor there.

as far as your comment against snares/CC, i think you are not playing very well, not trying to be mean, but a single cripple affect really does negate HS, you can backpedal faster then hes gonna be closing with HS at that point. go try it, and any other CC will work, stopping it dead, not too mention hes doing less damage then he would autoattacking, why not just kill him? hes spamming a attack that is completly suceptable to CC and damage while doing subpar damage himself. get rid of the target lock fine, but keeping it as a leap finisher is nescessary for dagger/pistol builds to function.

there is no reaching, try it please

i said there are some similarities to the ability itself, but the fact that one is designed with CD’s and one isnt, means that comparing them like that is in fact comparing apples to oranges. im not writing it off.

if you tweak the cost you further nerf us in PVE, while i dont PVE much, and i know the way dungeons work damage isnt endall beall, at what point is it too much?

i have more hten once suggested an idea where if you use the same skill back to back its cost is increased by 1 ini point for every time you use it consecutively, this would essentially cut the number of times a thief can “spam” HS in half.

so lets recap, im all for the target lock being removed, personally i dont know why its there in the first place

im against straight up raising the cost cuz of PVE implications

Im against putting a Cd on it as it would undermine the very system anet created for thieves themselves, at that point id rather it be remade into a non execution move so dagger mainhand isnt running around neutered when out of stealth

im against removing the leap, its our only leap finisher, and is REQUIRED in dagger/pistol to enter stealth as they have no cloak and dagger.

and one last time, heartseeker is completly susceptible to any form of crowd control and will immediatly stop its usefulness.

does less damage then autoattack above 25%, no protection…how are people honestly going from 100% to 0% from this skill? do you not run any form of CC yourselves? do you ignore the thief while he hits you? it honestly baffles me.

ens.9854:

+20% damage to foes under half health.

Nobody has mentioned this yet?
If a thief with this trait gets you low, OF COURSE they are going to have an advantage. It doesn’t matter what skill they use, it will seem OP.

Chill and cripple both effectively stop heartseeker gap closing. And if a thief gets on you with full initiative when you are low health, you will die! ANY burst with 100% health and cooldowns will be able to finish you just the same.

If you have ZERO awareness, YES the backstab combo will land, and your reaction time will be too slow to stop it. Part of being a skilled player is finding out your opponents builds during the game, and getting your reaction ready ahead of time. Use stability; be prepared to use a stunbreak when you see the thief go d/d; dodge if you have 0 other options.

so now we are put in the conversation the traits thief has?
wow just to prove thief is op you can go OT???

it is sad: a player showed the damage hs does to full hp. then wrote some numbers. skill itself is fine. then you can say:“blablabla u autoattack, then at 50% hp you spam” lol.. and what does the opponent do meanwhile? ig you are playing a class with no cc, no armor, no hp…what are you playing???

stop come here and whine and start to play some tournaments to learn how the real game goes.

@Shukran
I have no idea what your post is saying because half of it is completely unintelligible. If you did not read my post past the first line, I was in fact DEFENDING thieves, not calling them OP

EDIT: Also I agree with Wolfe; gap closing is not in fact a problem. It has counters, and costs initiative. If the thief has full initiative and CAN spam it; he either used a utility or came late to the fight anyway.

Oni.6841:

1. Teoh ignores the entire aspect of positioning and infact related the Ele’s 15 second combo to “just hitting pre-determined buttons”. Of course, when your bar comes with an on demand gap closer, I’m sure it’s easy to forget about positioning.

2. Somehow, someone thought showing a post of two people using skills on a STATIONARY golem is a good comparison of heartseeker vs. any other skill….. (Do I need to elaborate further on this..? … gap closer….)

Oh this is good, my sarcastic quip about Elem auto attack hit the mark so well that you felt the need to leap to its defense and argue that glass Elems mashing 1 aren’t overpowered. Calm down champ, that’s not what the thread is about. The video does however happily demonstrate that HS damage above 50% is utterly appauling and that any complaints about it are made out of ignorance.

It’s a gap closer, yep. So that would make it similar to a 450r ranged attack, minus the advantage of actually staying at range, yes? Above 50% it actually deals less damage than the ranged auto attacks of classes like Ranger, which also follow you, and are also usable repeatedly. How are you still towing this line that trying to HS mash targets from 100% is anything other than appaulingly bad play?

4. Heartseeker isn’t the only issue. I don’t know why people took this literally.

People took that literally because that is literally what is claimed in this thread on the first page, go back and read it.

you can just keep clicking it until someone is dead. The way it works now even if a person is at say 40% life it still doesn’t hurt to start spamming it because you will stay auto locked on target and eventually they will be at 25% and dead. That’s not a finisher that’s like a “special” move you can always use.

You can keep pressing it untill the target is dead? Christ you’re right! Eventually if i keep pressing this button that deals damage, things will die! But wait, what is the other person doing during this time? I know, we’re playing the hilariously inaccurate example game so the other person must be backpedalling while doing nothing untill they fall over. I think i can beat that, lets keep pressing HS.

If you’re spamming HS it’s actually very hard for anyone to get distance on you. A chill or cripple isn’t enough on its own to be able to get distance against a HS spammer, you also need an immo or stun or a gap creator of your own.

Yukishiro.8792:

If you’re spamming HS it’s actually very hard for anyone to get distance on you. A chill or cripple isn’t enough on its own to be able to get distance against a HS spammer, you also need an immo or stun or a gap creator of your own.

Or, you know, they could literally just shadowstep ONCE and have FULL initiative to do whatever the hell they please with your bloody corpse. Not that i’m trying to turn this into a debate on whether teleports are OP (they are, but almost everyone has them).

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

Yukishiro.8792:

If you’re spamming HS it’s actually very hard for anyone to get distance on you. A chill or cripple isn’t enough on its own to be able to get distance against a HS spammer, you also need an immo or stun or a gap creator of your own.

your kidding right? the only way its not enough is if the thief applied something like devourer or ice venom before he started hitting you (as you would be immobilized/slowed)

im getting the impression people dont actually try things before they post about it.

snare a thief, then proceed to run away, so long as your not slowed or cc’d yourself (obviously id hope) you will outpace him as he wastes initiative trying to get to you.

The video does however happily demonstrate that HS damage above 50% is utterly appauling and that any complaints about it are made out of ignorance.

If thieves didn’t have a myriad of entry-level skills in order to get someone at that magic 49% mark, I don’t think it would be much of an issue. As it stands, you do.

At 49% and on, you get to spam that glorious 2 button until something goes down and stays down.

Hell, even a 1 second cd would help.

It’s not about the damage, it’s about how easy it is to attain.

ens.9854:

Yukishiro.8792:

If you’re spamming HS it’s actually very hard for anyone to get distance on you. A chill or cripple isn’t enough on its own to be able to get distance against a HS spammer, you also need an immo or stun or a gap creator of your own.

Or, you know, they could literally just shadowstep ONCE and have FULL initiative to do whatever the hell they please with your bloody corpse. Not that i’m trying to turn this into a debate on whether teleports are OP (they are, but almost everyone has them).

yes, this i can concede to

That’s not been my experience. In my experience unless you have range to begin with if you start in melee range with a HS spamming thief and apply a cripple or a chill they will still be able to keep distance with you unless you have swiftness.

I mean sure if you start at 200-300 units away from them you can stay ahead long enough to make them burn most of their ini. But that’s not what we’re talking about. And that’s obviously not even getting into the other 5ish skills a thief can use to close the gap if you somehow do get a little range.

Yukishiro.8792:

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

uhm no, the 450 jump is shortened when the thief is chilled. you can in fact run faster then it less the thief uses haste.

ens.9854:

Not that i’m trying to turn this into a debate on whether teleports are OP (they are, but almost everyone has them).

Indeed gap closers are absolutely not in short supply. Getting into melee range is not difficult for any class that wants to do so – but at the same time, every class also has access to a melee weapon loadout that they can switch to if they so wish. This isn’t a traditional MMO where certain classes have to stay at a distance.

Yea yea Elementalists whatever.

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Not actually true, the distance jumped varies with movement speed debuffs and animation speed. A crippled or chilled Thief does not jump as far, neither does a Thief using Quickness.

Wolfe.3097:

Yukishiro.8792:

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

uhm no, the 450 jump is shortened when the thief is chilled. you can in fact run faster then it less the thief uses haste.

Nope.
Snares make no sense when you have skills that moves for you. It could have some sense in GW where there was no leap, but now snare is the counter of nothing.

Yukishiro.8792:

That’s not been my experience. In my experience unless you have range to begin with if you start in melee range with a HS spamming thief and apply a cripple or a chill they will still be able to keep distance with you unless you have swiftness.

I mean sure if you start at 200-300 units away from them you can stay ahead long enough to make them burn most of their ini. But that’s not what we’re talking about.

if your having such trouble, dodge, just once, and he wont catch you with HS so long as he is snared. yes i know dodge is great for everything, but this isnt even a case of having to dodge a lot, just once and keep running.

of course i still maintain that HS does such pitiful damage itself that worryinga bout it is ludicrous.

and ill say again im for hte autolock being removed, i dont see whats wrong with having to aim it.

sorrow.2364:

Wolfe.3097:

Yukishiro.8792:

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

uhm no, the 450 jump is shortened when the thief is chilled. you can in fact run faster then it less the thief uses haste.

Nope.
Snares make no sense when you have skills that moves for you. It could have some sense in GW where there was no leap, but now snare is the counter of nothing.

you cant just say nope when its in fact true. yes HS has a “range” on it, but when its chilled taht range is shorted considerably (i dont know exactly how much by, the tooltip doesnt change to inform me lol). you can keep saying no, but thats how it works ingame right now.

Wolfe.3097:

Yukishiro.8792:

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

uhm no, the 450 jump is shortened when the thief is chilled. you can in fact run faster then it less the thief uses haste.

Of course the jump is shortened. If you’re spamming it it’s still as fast as running in the opposite direction is. With cripple Hs goes 225 units, with chill it goes 200. A character running goes about 200 units in the time it takes HS to go off. If you’re spamming it you can keep distance, although you don’t gain it. So if you can get an initial advantage (say by dodging or just by getting 200 units away before the bad thief hits HS again) you can stay ahead barely. At least until the thief takes 2-3 seconds to look down at their keyboard and find their dancing dagger skill and press it. Then you’re back to square one.

edit: If they lowered the leap range to 300 cripple and chill would be good counters. At 450, not so much without something else to open up a little range first.