Guild Wars 2

<3 HS in it’s current state. Makes people join games as a Thief thinking they will dominate. Making it much easier for my Thief to play cleanup.

sorrow.2364:

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

Unless they are also using Dancing Dagger to cripple you, it’s still easy to kite in terms of distance. Besides, if they are spending whatever amount of initiative to cripple and also to leap, then they aren’t going to have much left to execute you with. Positional mitigation in Guild Wars 2 is easy due to the way you can miss with melee attacks by simply facing the wrong way. You can practically “kite” someone in melee range while running circles around them, although that somewhat messes with the definition of what most would view as traditional kiting. All I’d really say is it’s rather easy to mitigate the melee damage output done to you with just positioning. Creating distance is the easy one to do, and is most certainly still possible with people using Heartseeker as a distance closer. Since, if they are using it that way when you are above 50% they are effectively doing next to nothing for damage. The only exception is when Heartseeker does actually damage under 50% health, in which case Heartseeker spam is actually justified.

It’s important to note that the conditions Chill, Cripple, and Immobilize also cut the range on leaps. I explicitly said it was only more difficult, not impossible to kite. These can really help you out, especially when paired with Swiftness.

This takes on multiple topics really. Melee auto attacks deal with positional mitigation and distance kiting as mechanics that reduce their damage output. A D/D Thief and particular can use Heartseeker and Dancing Dagger to alleviate these issues, but that initiative spent weakens their execution phase. In my experience it’s rather easy to mitigate the damage output of a D/D Thief to nothing more then Dancing Dagger and 50+% hp Heartseekers. The exception being caught by a high powered Backstab, but that requires a lack of awareness on my part.

I mean the sheer amount of thieves in hot join lately have been making it enjoyable for me to play honestly. It’s absolute domination with people incorrectly performing their Backstab combos, being unable to recover after missing Heartseeker or Pistol Whip spam, not comprehending how to use the Shortbow properly, or those spamming Unload only finding themselves unsure of what to do after. To be specific, I mean I’m dominating these poor souls as they do next to nothing to me and I take them down flawlessly. People say it’s difficult to 1vX opponents, well when they are all garbage melee Thieves I beg to differ as I kite them to death.

The sole problem with this thread, and many like it, is that you call for changes to the Thief yet provide no facts supported by proof. You can say that Ele’s rotation will pull less damage in 15s than a Thief can do in 5s but you provide no numbers, no facts, just quite litterally opinions. Almost nobody here provides solid facts or numbers and that translates into one of two things:
1. A bad balance choice which will either nerf HS (or utilities that help it) to the point of uselessness
2. It won’t get changed

You have to hope for the best, plan for the worst. I absolutely believe that everyone here is just trying to make the game more balanced by inputting their own opinion and that is outstanding, but is there anyway we could get solid numbers on this? Spec comparison, videos, and more importantly solid numbers. These will help ANet (and the forum community) get to the right solution to fix things like HS, PW, 100b, guardian bunker, ele’s super boon kite, and similar “op” builds/abilities.

Proeliator.8740:

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?

you make a very valid point. and have done it in a very well explained argument.

As an elementalist my POWER MOVE is dragon tooth. its a power aoe damaeg + dot and can crit for 4k , but its on a 10 sec cooldown as well.

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.

The gap closer is effectively nullified with a snare , meaning the distance they travel is far less and you CAN run away, this isn’t opinion it’s game mechanics.

Even snared a thief still HS spams at the same speed a player runs. The difference is they don’t HS spam FASTER than a player can run. If you have range to begin with you can stay ranged from a snared HS spammer. If you’re in melee to begin with you won’t get out of melee, at least not for several HSes.

You are right, in that a Crippled Thief can keep up with you. In my experience, Swiftness and Chill can change this, as well as your own forms of leaps or teleports which many professions have access to. The damage output is still laughably low until you drop below 50% though, which considering we all have access to a Healing skill can be prolonged for the majority of a fight.

Once i had thoughtnes (2800ish)/healing necro with 21k hp, thief droped me within fear ability to 30% (he initiaded the fight-didnt cast any spell pre fear). Op dmg is op.
Otherwise i think op is just too much gapclosing and stealth mechanic and quickness in general.

BishopX.6453:

which is why EVERYONE plays a hs spamming thief.

I dont, But maybe thats because I realize good players can kill you if you spam HS?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=taXRLuFkyXo

HS spamming thief
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByB7_QhIxws&feature=related

do note that he drops his opponent in less than 10 seconds using only HS. He is also getting well over 3k crits with HS. Which can be used 5+ times in a row, and the thief doesn’t even have to use his movement keys to make sure they land. The thief can then regenerate all of his initiative with a vanish and do it again, once you’ve used your CDs to avoid the first spamfest. Dodge roll? I only get 2 of those. What happens when those are gone? I just get to eat the next 3-6 HS (5-20k damage), or do I have to waste my utilities on what is APPARENTLY equivalent to someone spamming their auto-attack?

Alright, well, I guess I’ll use my 30+ second CD utilities to prevent this thief from gibbing me within the first 8 seconds of the fight (keep in mind the thief was completely invisible for the first 3sec, so I only get 5 seconds to decide whether or not it’s worth it to waste every CD on my bar to avoid his damage this time around. So, lets pretend I pop my CDs, get away from the thief, but he vanishes.

Well, 5-10 seconds later, He re-opens on me, and this time he’s got quickness. 2 Cooldowns from the thief vs. every ability I have, and I didn’t even get a chance to attack him yet (since, while the thief is simultaneously dealing unhealable damage and being almost completely unpeelable, he is also evading all my attacks. Sounds like balance to me.)

Verisuvalise.3615:

HS spamming thief
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByB7_QhIxws&feature=related

You just showed us a video of a guy standing still with his back turned whilst he happily welcomed the damage

Your argument is invalid

Also how is he evading all your attacks when doing a Leap attack? As it is not a dodge.

This is just QQ

Heres a video of how terrible it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTSlULPN768&feature=related

Thieves aren’t getting it.

Bunkers counter thieves. You are not WINNING this war, the fact that thieves burst is broken means that you are hard countered in the meta.

You are “defending” your class to point of relegating it into king of spvp.

So uh, cool?

Also, why are we still talking about this 50% nonsense?

Spec mug. Hit 5, then hit your profession skill. Voila. 50%.

Oh wait, you should have “pre-dodged” that right?

(If you aren’t below 50%, its because a bunker and thieves want you nerfed.)

TeoH.2098

Your “damage rotation” is achieved by pressing numbers on the keyboard in a predefined sequence.
Please explain why you believe the act of moving your fingers over several different buttons in a preset order requires some degree of skill that you should be praised for.
GW2 has zero executional requirement, pressing 1234 is as simple and mindless as pressing 2222. Your performance in the game hinges on the choices you make – how appropriate your decision is and how quickly you respond to the situation. What seperates players are the decisions they make outside of that sequence of damage dealing abilities.

Then you won’t mind if the choices you make require the equivalent amount of button presses as the rest of the classes to achieve the results thief is putting out now. Am I right? It’s so trivial the way you make it sound and you have succinctly put it into the most basic of terms. You shouldn’t have a problem with a few more button presses added to your rotation. Easy right?

EASY FIX:

Diminishing returns on heartseeker.

Every consecutive heartseeker after the first gets a cumulative -20% damage.

Lmao. People still dying to HS-Spam? It’s so terrible. It’s only usable as finisher after the nerf. If you die to HS-spam, use dodge and get some defensive traits. Sure, if you go into the fight with a berserker-amulet, zero points in defensive traits and no defensive stuff on the utility bar, then yes, you will die to HS spam. But guess what, everything kills you. You will die to a ranger pet, you will die to random AE-spells (like whirlwind from a warrior).

How are people still talking about this? Heartseeker is a non-issue. Pistol Whip is almost a non-issue. Backstab is avoidable. Quickness is the problem not Heartseeker. And I don’t know how you can’t just evade roll out of it, seriously.

Let me get this straight from all of you thieves…. you don’t see how button mashing one or two keys is an advantage to having to use 4-5+ keys to do the same thing? I know some of you are having a huge problem with critical thinking but let me see if I can break out my big crayons:

This isn’t some WOW raid where you’re standing in the back doing a standard dps rotation and don’t have to worry about moving, dodging, thinking, etc. Hitting one or two keys is akin to auto attacking and completely frees your mind to focus on…. wait for it…….. what you’re going to do next and react to what your opponent is going to do. Guess what happens when a complex or multi step dps rotation gets disrupted? The player has to think fast and reset it or do something else. Either way that requires attention and is most likely a dps loss. In PVP you will have tons of disruptions because players are doing everything they can to not allow you do get off your full dps rotation. Yeah I know this is a crazy concept but the less complicated your dps delivery is the more you can focus on things not related to delivering that dps like defense and tactics. I know I just blew some of your minds.

I’m not speaking specifically about balance here because I don’t know all the classes inside and out but for the thieves saying button mashing 2 to do the same thing as pushing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 isn’t an advanage are in pure straight up denial.

So, there are a lot of people not reading the three pages of thread, and I do not blame them. So let me paraphrase why I made this thread.

1. I do not die to HS spammers unless they jump me in the middle of another fight, see attachment. This is not a L2P issue, it is a valid gripe about a stupid, stupid skill.
2. A finisher skill should not be spammable
3. It needs to use double the initiative, have a 2 second cooldown, or only be usable at 15-25% opponents health to make it a real “finisher”.

So, is it working as intended when my necro goes from 57% health (27k life and to 0% from a HS train?

Is that REALLY a finisher? My necro can take on all classes, and beat them with skill, even good thieves, but dumb noob thieves who HS train…this is just stupid enough to kitten me off.

Again, this is coming from a thief main, who ONLY pvps. I have 334 matches on my thief and over 150 on my necro and nearly as many on my ranger. I know how to counter thieves, I know how to dodge roll, etc…but the HS spam is just kittening stupid kittening dumb. Period. Anyone who disagrees is just trying to defend the fact that they play a thief who spams it and is afraid they may have to start to learn how to play the class themselves.

Lol if you’re getting beat by an HS spamming Thief you have a lot more issues than the amount of dmg HS is doing or the amount of initiative it costs the thief.

Good lord, I can’t believe these posts are still being made.

Oh come on. HS is spammed? Yeah ok, it’s a good gap closer but most thieves go for the backstab spec these days. That’s on the next complain list, right? Anyway, if you lose to a HS spammer you should probably not tell anyone if you want them to regard you as a skilled PVP-er.

But yeah, much like Pistol Whip nerf, we need to have the wrong abilities nerfed, right?

This thread is no longer about HS it is about thieves kit as a whole being a bit to simple to use to great effect. Heck even their downed state could use toning down. Ive had thiefs on their kitten take off 10k hp off my warrior because it takes 3 stomp attempts to kill them between the tele and smoke and maybe another teammate kicking around. I enjoy thief and I take one into Spvp from time to time but you guys need to admit this is unfair how much utility this class gets and how simple it is to pull off.

Pimpslapper.2047:

So, there are a lot of people not reading the three pages of thread, and I do not blame them. So let me paraphrase why I made this thread.

1. I do not die to HS spammers unless they jump me in the middle of another fight, see attachment. This is not a L2P issue, it is a valid gripe about a stupid, stupid skill.

so whats the problem? and its really not valid at all.

2. A finisher skill should not be spammable

ok people are getting REALLY hung up on this finisher crap. anet designed thieves to be able to press the same buttons back to back. hence they gave HS a adjustable damage scale. the only time it even qualifies as a finisher in terms of damage is below 25% hp

3. It needs to use double the initiative, have a 2 second cooldown, or only be usable at 15-25% opponents health to make it a real “finisher”.

first one ruins PVE, second one is against the design goals set by anet for the theif class, and third one is just dumb. lets just say it like it is, HS is not a conventional finisher, its a finisher when the target is below 25% hp, above it its really not.

So, is it working as intended when my necro goes from 57% health (27k life and to 0% from a HS train?

im sorry, HS train? like multiple thieves HS you? or a thief and a bunch of other classes training you? if its just the one thief, im gonna lay it out cuz this has gotten old, i can see a lot of specs reasons for being nerfed, original heartseeker, pistol whip, backstab, etc…but HS in its current form, if you lose to a thief spamming it, you suck. you can take that as a cop out if you want, but it wont change the truth no matter what you deny or no matter how many vacuum examples you give.

Is that REALLY a finisher? My necro can take on all classes, and beat them with skill, even good thieves, but dumb noob thieves who HS train…this is just stupid enough to kitten me off.

so tis stupid, get over it and kill them, spit on there corpse, teabag them, /dance, whisper hate to them on how much they suck and are a noob spec.

Again, this is coming from a thief main, who ONLY pvps. I have 334 matches on my thief and over 150 on my necro and nearly as many on my ranger. I know how to counter thieves, I know how to dodge roll, etc…but the HS spam is just kittening stupid kittening dumb. Period. Anyone who disagrees is just trying to defend the fact that they play a thief who spams it and is afraid they may have to start to learn how to play the class themselves.

actually i tend to forget to use HS >.<, especialy at the 25% hp mark or lower. a HS thief starts attackign me….i can auto it down faster then it will kill me. if its using haste, i pop a defensive move, just one, its all i need, watch as they qued up all there HS they could for that haste duration, and do nothing to me, and i kill them or they run away and i kill a higher priority target.

honestly, HS is a “soft” finisher, only word i can think for it. you can moan how oh now were contesting if HS is a real finisher or not, but look at it, you said yourself, doesnt behave exactly like one. yet maintains harmony with thieves initiative system (no CD).

however im for shortening the leap distance (i still want it to be a leap finisher tho, so dagger/pistol thieves have a way to get into stealth), and remove the autotarget (honestly dont agree with autotarget)

Proeliator.8740:

Webley.1295:

The 3 pages of QQ’ers are just terrible players that need a place to cry

Wow what a refreshing, unbiased, well thought out post. /end sarcasm

I bet you’re the type of player that could have a spammable one shot ability and think you’re really good and somehow skillful. I bet if you had said ability you would come to the forums and post L2P and QQ lulz when other players say they think it’s a little too strong.

Seriously I wish I could play games with the 10% of humanity that’s actually worth a kitten instead of………… this

Im a thief, but let me get one thing straight. I dont even use daggers!! I found more effective skills than HS when it got balanced.

You lot complaining about a skill that isnt even the best makes me laugh. I own dagger thiefs if im not caught off guard or if one decides to join in a fight when im at 50%

Seriously. the community of babies lets this game down.

TL;DR I play a backstab thief.

Among other characters, yes i have a backstab Thief, thus making me a better authority on their real damage numbers than anyone who doesn’t. How about that?

Here let me help you move on to the next step of your post where you call me a scrub who relies on Heartseeker spam to kill unskilled lowbies in WvW, and would be incapable of performing if my number 2 button had a cooldown. Critique away:

Then you won’t mind if the choices you make require the equivalent amount of button presses as the rest of the classes to achieve the results thief is putting out now. Am I right? It’s so trivial the way you make it sound and you have succinctly put it into the most basic of terms. You shouldn’t have a problem with a few more button presses added to your rotation. Easy right?

I have absolutely no issue with pressing more buttons, i come from a background of games which require dramatically more complicated execution than this. Even for an MMO, GW2 requires the absolute bare minimum of control dexterity. The number of different buttons you use in a fight has precious little to do with how difficult the game is to play, but since you seem to be hung up on that, let me point out that GW2 isn’t even on the level of WoW Arena in that regard.

However, how you go from the concept of making Thieves press more buttons (which i can see no sensible argument for) to actual Thief changes is something you didn’t attempt to tackle. The current Thief abilities are designed from the ground up on the premise that nothing has a cooldown, because the initiative system is an intended unique feature of the class.

For that reason, most Thief weapon loadouts only have 1 or 2 buttons that deal any significant damage, with the rest of them being utility skills that don’t have any damage on them. The design allows for this because a lack of cooldowns lets you choose to use the 1 damage skill repeatedly when you want to simply do damage, and other abilities when you want the utility of interupts/snares/evasion/AoE/whatever.

That design allows the Thief access to utility when it is required, rather than rolling utility into abilities that are just going to be pressed anyway as part of a cooldown driven damage rotation. Moving to a cooldown system and putting damage onto the other buttons, apart from removing the unique mechanics of the Thief (never happen) would break this system by requiring you to use your currently situational utility simply to kill people. If using those abilities in rotation then became the most effective way to kill things, then you have just simplified the class by removing the choice of when to use your situational buttons.

You suck at game design.

the screen shot is funny to me…
the BIG 2handed skill with a cooldown (mighty blow) hits for 2k, but the hartseeker which is spammed off a 1handed weapon 5 times.. hit for an average of 3.8k
almost DOUBLE the damage ? ouch seriously?

I will bottom line it for you,

PEOPLE PLAY WHAT IS MOST POWERFUL.

the more powerful the more peopel play it. go into any pub game and mark down the classes you see over the next hour as 2handed mezmer and dagger thief appear all over and over again.
draw conclusion

if it was balanced we would see as many dagger thieves as dagger necros.

People play what they perceive as most powerful. Not necessarily what is most powerful. There were a ton of 100B Warriors earlier on as well, and very few of those now. Does it need changes? Maybe. Is it counter-able? Yeah. Does it stomp the lower skill spectrum? Yes.

BishopX.6453:

PEOPLE PLAY WHAT IS MOST POWERFUL.

People play what they percieve as most powerful…. in genuine competitive matches.

In free for all hotjoin scrubfests people play whatever they fancy playing at the time for whatever reason they like. In WvW people play whatever class they levelled first, chosen by pre-concieved ideas of how MMO archetypes play.

You want to use player statistics to determine class balance? You need to look at the top end of tourney play. I’ll give you a clue, it’s not Thieves v Thieves.

Look 1 person above said, thief weapeons arent based on combos like other weapeons. Rly simple look. Lets say Sword and dagger that i use. Basic attack mediocre damage can get hight with haste, but packs daze out of invis. 2nd attack is gap closer. third attack is good dmg boon removal, 4th is ranged criple 5th is invisibility. WTF do u expect me to use on u ? criple ? spam invis ? infinite gap close ? ofc i use only 1 or 3 for dps if u dont need utility as all other skills got leser damage. Look at Dagger/pistol 1=basic attack 2 leap finisher 3 gap closer 4 low damage interrupt with daze 5 is blind field. You imagine me spaming using wha to take away your hp ? you use 3 to near 1 to take u to 50% or 5 and 2 to go invis then backstab and then 2=HS as finisher as it does best damage. or maybe weapeon swap if its hard to keep up with you. The System promotes skill spam, and nerfing only dps skills in weapeons ruins the whole weapeon set. Look at Pistol whip now, it does less damage then basic attack. Bloody broken weapeon. Flame more, till thiefs unplayable

Stin you’re absolutely right and it’s been said before. Thieves have been disigned in such a way that promotes spamming. I completely rest the blame for that on the shoulders of the designers.

I see nothing wrong with having a profession designed like this, and I don’t play one. If they use all their initiative for damage, they lose their utility options. There are times for damage and times for their utility. The good ones utilize both, and to me that makes a unique experience because it brings a lot of choice to the user. If you get destroyed by someone who simply spams one button, the fault isn’t the design or the user of that, it’s on the defender.

As for complaining that you got caught at low health when a Thief walked up to you with full initiative…. that’s no different then any other profession coming up to you with low health and all thier cooldowns up. If you lack the cooldowns to defend against a little Heartseeker spam, you lack the cooldowns to defend against other burst combos as well.

It may be designed for spamming but abuse of it is the problem
there are so any options for thief but so many players resort to heart seeker spam
regardless of tournys or spvp

Hammerheart.1426:

Play a class that has to actually WORK for burst damage (Elementalist for example), and then play a Thief, you’ll see how stupid easy it is to burst as a thief. They don’t need a damage nerf, they need their playstyle difficulty increased.

Typical D/D Elementalist “damage rotation”
Start in Air
Ride the Lightning (4)
Updraft (5)
Signet of Earth (Util)
Shocking Aura (3)

Swap to Fire

Fire
Burning Speed (3)
Ring of fire (4)
Drake’s Breath (2)
Fire Grab (5)

Swap to Water

Water
Frost Aura (4)
Frozen Burst (3)
Cleansing Wave (5)
Cone of Cold (2)

Swap to Earth

Earth
Magnetic Grasp (Or Signet of Earth if its back up) (3)
Earthquake (4)
Armor of Earth (Util)
Churning Earth (5)

After that it takes an on-the-fly assessment on what to switch to next.

Thief
Assassin Signet
Steal
Haste
Heartseeker Heartseeker Heartseeker

I guarantee you just did more damage than my Elementalist.

Nerf the damage? Maybe its not neccessary, just nerf how kitten easy it is to achieve it.

First of all you are bursting wrong on ele LOL.

2nd of all, no thief does that. The popular is dancing dagger, pistol whip or backstab. Anyone who used assassin signet with steal is a moron.
Thief right now is like this:
Devourer venom or Basilisk Venom
Steal
Cloak and Dagger
Assassin Signet
Backstab
Heartseeker

And fyi, in my guild we always say an ele who needs earth signet to land damage is a bad ele. If you are bursting start out in water and do frost aura for fury, swap wind and do ride, updraft, swap fire, (arcane power if you chose it over survive), burning speed, arcane wave(traited burn for fire grab), ring of fire, fire grab (god dont drakes breath), swap earth, earth 2, earth 4, swap water, cone of cold. If its not dead swap air and shocking aura/whip to death as it should be at like 10%.

BishopX.6453:

I will bottom line it for you,

PEOPLE PLAY WHAT IS MOST POWERFUL.

the more powerful the more peopel play it. go into any pub game and mark down the classes you see over the next hour as 2handed mezmer and dagger thief appear all over and over again.
draw conclusion

if it was balanced we would see as many dagger thieves as dagger necros.

Going into the average TF2 server, you usually see 3 spies, and 3 snipers. on each team. If you’ve ever played TF2 in your life, you’d know off by heart that this is not effective in the slightest, and the only reason people do it is because they like the arch-type of the classes.

Conclusion: What people play most often in random, public, matches has little to no effect on balance.

Heartseeker isn’t a problem for me anymore ever since I learned there’s other abilities I can use besides damaging abilities. It’s the sword/pistol that gets me every time. Being able to shadowstep, immobilize, and blind continuously while critting for 3k every hit with the ¹ skill is hard to deal with.

I came into sPvP for the first time since I started playing today and i’ve been playing since release.

I have an 80 Necro/Ele/Thief and decided to take my necro into sPvP to play with a friend of mine. I’ve never really had much of a problem with thieves in WvW, sure sometimes they might get the jump on you but for the most part I could handle myself.

I’ve been pvping in mmo’s since Asheron’s Call and DaoC so I am not new to the general mechanics of how pvp works.

But today in the 10 matches I played in this sPvP stuff forced me to log off.
Every death was to Thieves spamming Heart Seeker over… and over… and over… sometimes two thieves doing the same thing. In fact in the 10 matches I played 95%-99% of the time I was killed by a Thief using this ability. Never killed by a ranger, or ele, warrior or engineer…. (come to think of it I dont think I saw a warrior once) The only time I died was to this ability being mashed on someone’s keyboard.

A gap closer that you can’t outrun that deals this kind of damage is silly. And I’ve read a few pages of this post and I’m sure people will say “Learn to Dodge” but you get 2 dodges… and a thief will get more then 2 Heart Seekers on you and if they Roll for Initiative to refill their initiative well there are even more.

I was staying away from sPvP because I didnt really like the idea/concept of it but playing for a few I was really having fun.

Until the frustration of the sheer number of single ability spamming thieves forced me and my friend to try 2 other boards in hopes of finding a map that had fewer thieves…. nope, the trend continued.

Doubt I will go back in.

I played a game today that was a team that had 1 guardian, 1 warrior, 2 eles, a mesmer, a couple of thieves and a ranger. The other team? All thieves.

The work to reward ratio for thieves is borked, and I’m seeing less and less of other classes in sPVP and more and more thieves, with a dash of warriors and mesmers.

I wonder if, say rangers, got an attack that had no cd, did 4-5k damage per hit and jumped them back out of melee range thieves would consider this fair and balanced?

HAHAHAH people play what " is cool" ? seriously? I have been playing online pvp mmos for 19 years i have heard all this before and seen it disproved over scores of games.

Played modernwarfare 1. M16 was more damage than a shotgun up close and more deadly than a sniper at range, so everyone used an m16 and the claim was “I like burst weapons” or “my dad was in the army!!!”
then mw3 came out and the m16 was one of the weakest weapons… guess what? nobody uses it.

DAoC comes out and everyone picks up the thane!! it is the 2nd COOLEST toon class of all time. Its a chain wearing avatar of thunder and lightning. so think of thor thay could buff his own STR and cast lightning bolts. Well thane looked cool and sounded cool but wasnt a great class…. nobody played it. the best classes were the archers.
so everyone played an archer and ran around and shot people. and archers were the band of assassin classes (eveything was the band of 2/3 assassin classes cuz they were not very good)

then wow comes out, everyone goes to wow and makes…ROGUES! yes dispite nobody playing them in DAoC because of how weak they were (in mid and hib) and people rolled Hunter to continue their “we love archers” motif

then warhammer online came out. and guess what ? you had a guy in a trench coat, a wide brim hat with a gun in 1 hand and a sword in the other as your stealther class. the THIRD most awesome looking class in mmo history the witch hunter. Wanna know how many people played it? lots tried… none stayed. for most of the games uptime it was one of the bottom 5 classes. wanna know what the TOP class was? ZOMG THE HEALERS!!! yes the warrior priest and Deciple could deal great damage and heal themselves for the amount of damage they delt +300%
wanna know what class NOBODY played? Imagine Strider Hiryu with a bow. so you had a Ninja/archer complete with the half cape, ninja mask hood and everything… the #1 most COOL toon in mmorpg history…. ya nobody played it. it was one of the most inneffective low damage low survivability and HARDEST TO USE classes I have ever seen.
so the new motif is… I LOVE DPS MELEE HEALERZ AND DOT CASTERS when we left warhammer

so we go to rift!
everyone jumped to the DoT caster and the melee healer first because of the last game.. well melee justicar and warlock were weak classes. Wanna know what EVERYONE rolled? 2handed warriors (worst than 100 bladez could ever be) and rogue/mages. yes thats right, they had a stealther who used magic flames and daggers and everyone played that spec over the poision+backstab type assassin.

now I come here and its “OMG I ALWAYS LOVED THIEF I DONT CARE HOW BAD IT IS” but i have now seen two games where the stealther with the daggers is weak and nobody played it.

There is a reason why everyone plays Ryu and Akuma in streetfighter and not DAN.

tagnut.8621:

I wonder if, say rangers, got an attack that had no cd, did 4-5k damage per hit and jumped them back out of melee range thieves would consider this fair and balanced?

facepalm Heartseeker doesn’t do that much damage above 50% first of all. And secondly, an ability like that for a ranger would only hurt them from range, and all the abilities the longbow has are already good and work together well.

If you’re still having trouble with HS after the nerf, that’s just sad.

Play a class that has to actually WORK for burst damage (Elementalist for example), and then play a Thief, you’ll see how stupid easy it is to burst as a thief. They don’t need a damage nerf, they need their playstyle difficulty increased.
I guarantee you just did more damage than my Elementalist.

Nerf the damage? Maybe its not neccessary, just nerf how kitten easy it is to achieve it.

When will people stop asking to nerf classes because THEY DO MORE DAMAGE THAN ME QQ. How about they fix and buff your classes up to the level of Thief/Guardian/Mesmer/insertclass. Thieves and Heartseeker have been changed enough for now, and they already allow you to faceroll your keyboard by lowering retaliation duration so you won’t die doing your “Damage Rotation” instead of bursting and managing your cds with theirs.

People are complaining about classes that synergize with their skills and traits. The other classes are just lacking and need to be brought up to such a state. As it is right now, ele needs work (in regards to damage/burst, not support/bunker)

No echra you don’t bring 2-3 professions up to match 1 you bring 1 down to match 3.

It’s not even about synergy it’s about the fact you can do more damage than a ele or necro with one hand while drinking fruit punch out of a cup with a bendy straw.

FYI i play
Necro>Thief>ele in pve
Ele>thief,Necro in pvp

Dodge a bunch of thief attacks because all they do is spam 2/3, get hit by two of them. What does the thief have left? cooldowns? Oh wait they have to regen initiative until they do anything ever. I’m talking about the so called one handed everyday thief. Dodging elementalist things is completely different. Unfortunately for the ele, their skills suck for any sort of respectable damage output.

Buff ele, stop complaining about thieves to get it done.
The synergy thing was in regards to the options elementalists have. They just don’t have skills that go together that do enough damage. It feels like their things are all over the place. You can make some kitten good builds for ele, but none of them are really viable as damage.

TeoH is trying so hard to defend the Thief with so invalid arguments, presented nicely.

HS deals joke damage above 50% health, I can’t see any decent thief using it unless it’s for gap closing.

Also keep in mind HS is kind of buggy, many times the game will cast it another time when if you pressed the button once.

one backstab will usually bring cloth down to 50 percent life if your unlucky enough to get blind sighted which usually opens the heart seeker spam
its just a poor play move and people can try and defend it all they like but it happens all to often