Guild Wars 2

Man, thieves are trying really, really hard not to get nerfed it seems. I know you’re having fun, but stop trying to justify it. In sPvP, players are in combat quite a lot, and it’s usually not 1v1. Therefore, players usually have to use their CC breakers and dodges a lot. What does that mean? Well, it means thieves get to run around and get free and easy kills on most people because they can’t do anything about it.

It’s getting frustrating to sPvP because of this. So far I’ve played necro, engineer, and elementalist and it simply isn’t fun. As those classes, you’re targeted by heavy burst classes and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I believe that’s just pretty typical in sPvP in general, at least in hotjoin matches where constant battle due to zerging is common. Thieves appear much more balanced in the tournament setting.

People will always believe they’re the most skilled at anything, it’s just basic human nature.

THE PVP TIER LIST

good players
———————————————
average players
———————————————
bad players who get destroyed by quickness and qq on forums

I think Dallas has said it clearly… Nothing more needed

SunAngel.7409:

I believe that’s just pretty typical in sPvP in general, at least in hotjoin matches where constant battle due to zerging is common. Thieves appear much more balanced in the tournament setting.

That’s a pretty interesting paradox, though. It’s interesting that they decided to change the number of players in tPvP and sPvP, because thieves are obviously too strong in pick up pvp and probably balanced in tournaments. The question is, will they attempt balance both or only balance tournament pvp and leave sPvP a mess?

Dallas.2536:

THE PVP TIER LIST

good players
———————————————
average players
———————————————
bad players who get destroyed by quickness and qq on forums

I love you forever.

I think if you limit the amount of crazy damage the low initiative attack Heartseeker does, then the thief is much more balanced. Pistol whip is much more expensive and requires the player to stand (float) in one place for the duration of the attack.

I play thief, and won’t play dagger dagger, because I don’t think it will make me a better player in the long run. That said, I agree with the poster above who said thief isn’t that imbalanced in tournaments…. most people can see and dodge a heartseeker thief.

The root of the problems is the 8v8 format rather than a particular profession to be honest.

Play tourneys if you dont like the zergy hotjoin matches. They wont balance as 8v8 but 5v5

lol even in tournaments you find HS spammers…but don’t worry the nerf will come that you like it or not

People explained to you why your thought process was wrong multiple times in the thread i started, so instead of admitting that hey, MAYBE you were wrong and re-examining things, you come to cry in another of your own creation. Honestly man, when 85% of players disagree with you, its time to at least re-examine your thought process.

And just to clarify, you could remove HS from the hotbar, and it wouldn’t affect me. I don’t use daggers, and I don’t foresee myself using them anytime soon. I’m not arguing that you’re wrong for my own personal benefit, but because you’re actually wrong.

D/D is insane in hotjoin cause for some reason people are fine with not evading thief attacks and then letting them run away.

In a 5v5 tPvP though, if you try D/D, you are so useless it’s not even funny.

A HS nerf isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it has to be done right. For a proper D/D thief it’s a great finisher, it just works for spammers right now which sucks.

Thief archetype chars have always been considered OP in every MMO I’ve played, simply because a beginner doesn’t understand how to deal with them. Their stealth based abilitieskitten people off, plus they tend to be bursty and also have stunners.

When I played a shaman in WoW, I hated Rogues, theykitten me off to no end and I always thought they were an OP class. However after understanding the game better and eventually rolling a Rogue, I realized how much they actually needed their abilities. A Rogue will always kill you 1v1, that’s what they are designed to do. A super glass cannon thief should also be able to kill you 1v1. But a thief who specs with survivability and CD will not kill you very quickly in a 1v1 but they will whittle you down and keep you busy in a 2v1 situation. They may not kill you, but they can keep you occupied long enough. If a glass cannon thief tries to take you on 2v1, he’s dead instantly. If a thief bursts down your friend and he’s glass cannon, simply interrupt his stomp, then revive your friend. He won’t have the initiative or the coolddowns to burst you down too and he’s in a terrible position all of a sudden. His only option is to run away and keep trying the same thing.

I’d agree with the OP in general, but I don’t think its a thief problem. I think its a problem with the fact that the game has some very high damaging abilities which demand evading, lots of stuns, and team battles where all of your defense needs to be used up eventually. On top of this, there’s no “real” damage mitigation like tanks in other games and nothing comes close to real healing like in other games, so that spike damage is especially powerful.

I really don’t understand why people even spam the forums with these threads. We have a gazillion topics about heartseeker thieves. And guess what: Anet knows about these things even if we don’t create these topics. They get statistics about everything in their game and if their statistics tell them thieves are getting an unusual amount of kills compared to other classes, they will do something about it. So when whatever nerf happens or doesn’t happen, it wasn’t because of all the QQ people had about it.

oh… another one of these? :-/

Gentso.1852:

Man, thieves are trying really, really hard not to get nerfed it seems. I know you’re having fun, but stop trying to justify it. In sPvP, players are in combat quite a lot, and it’s usually not 1v1. Therefore, players usually have to use their CC breakers and dodges a lot. What does that mean? Well, it means thieves get to run around and get free and easy kills on most people because they can’t do anything about it.

It’s getting frustrating to sPvP because of this. So far I’ve played necro, engineer, and elementalist and it simply isn’t fun. As those classes, you’re targeted by heavy burst classes and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Many people have quite a bit of success against Thieves. Learn the game, practice the basics, improve your gameplay, know your opponent, and master your profession. It’s still WAY to early to properly judge balance amongst professions.

KansasFF.9410:

I think if you limit the amount of crazy damage the low initiative attack Heartseeker does, then the thief is much more balanced. Pistol whip is much more expensive and requires the player to stand (float) in one place for the duration of the attack.

I play thief, and won’t play dagger dagger, because I don’t think it will make me a better player in the long run. That said, I agree with the poster above who said thief isn’t that imbalanced in tournaments…. most people can see and dodge a heartseeker thief.

The problem with sPvP is that since thieves are in a good place they have become FotM. In short, there are a lot of them running around in an average sPvP match. This makes having to deal with HS spam incredibly annoying.

Last night I had 3 thieves HS spam my poor, poor necro. It looked hilarious, but I didn’t get to enjoy it for too long. I was downed in seconds.

Well, ANet just pretty much said “L2P” in an official post while they give a second look.

QSpec.4298:

KansasFF.9410:

I think if you limit the amount of crazy damage the low initiative attack Heartseeker does, then the thief is much more balanced. Pistol whip is much more expensive and requires the player to stand (float) in one place for the duration of the attack.

I play thief, and won’t play dagger dagger, because I don’t think it will make me a better player in the long run. That said, I agree with the poster above who said thief isn’t that imbalanced in tournaments…. most people can see and dodge a heartseeker thief.

The problem with sPvP is that since thieves are in a good place they have become FotM. In short, there are a lot of them running around in an average sPvP match. This makes having to deal with HS spam incredibly annoying.

Last night I had 3 thieves HS spam my poor, poor necro. It looked hilarious, but I didn’t get to enjoy it for too long. I was downed in seconds.

Three of any profession should burst you down in seconds to be honest.

Dallas.2536:

THE PVP TIER LIST

good players
———————————————
average players
———————————————
bad players who get destroyed by quickness and qq on forums

This.

A rogue executing the heartseeker spam is invulnerable to any CC while the animation abounds, and since it can be spammed they basically have 6secs of immunity while killing you.

As a mesmer I have executed dodge rolls, illusions/clones/phantasms and stuns up the whazoo, and the thief never stopped.

As a ranger I layed down traps, used Lightning reflexesm dodges and the 3* skill, as well as stealth skills and other combo breakers, to no avail.

To simply defend the class saying: l2p means that you don’t quite understand the frustration that is heartseeker/PW/Unload or the troubles getting away from a thief edetermined to ‘! win’ button you to death.

Even ANet said L2P, what more could you possibly want?

If they tought any of the skills were as horribly broken as all you forum QQers make them out to be, they would’ve already nerfed them long ago.

Icelandica.6320:

In a 5v5 tPvP though, if you try D/D, you are so useless it’s not even funny.

Blossom builds and 20+ stack bleeds would like a word with you and your “useless” claim. And I’m not saying that pejoratively. There are thief builds that a excellent roamer builds for tournament play. Some of those even use D/D. They just don’t rely on Haste and HS.

I have completed Shadow achievement (200 matches won as a thief)
and almost done with Champion Shadow (over 70 tournaments won as a thief)

I can tell you thieves aren’t as unbalanced as some say. Though, the HS spam is overpowered due to the amount of effort needed to stop it vs. the amount of effort to execute the skill.

In a skill based games ONLY the hardest to execute combos and abilities should do the most damage. (eg. backstab) Making a 1 button auto target skill have the ability to kill someone by simply pressing it over and over is very wrong.

HS needs a dramatic nerf when players have more than 30% HP or a higher cost in initiative. It should be used as a finisher not an opener or skill to chase people down.

Theif is Defiantly the most OP classes in pvp right now its down right frustrating to be in a match and see the enemy team has 3-4 thieves. All they do is Quickness, Spam heartseeker or pistol wip, What skill is there in that? and on top of that they take forever to stomp in downed state cause they just go invis and move to a different spot a few times.

People in these OP/UP threads should definitely be sure to check this post.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Balancing-GW2/first#post92064

So much for the promise of different rules in pvp and pve.

RamzaBehoulve.5640:

Well, ANet just pretty much said “L2P” in an official post while they give a second look.

Are you talking about the post in which they basically said ‘it is too early to tell’ and ‘try new builds’?

That doesn’t equal l2p at all.

Narukami.2431:

Even ANet said L2P, what more could you possibly want?

If they tought any of the skills were as horribly broken as all you forum QQers make them out to be, they would’ve already nerfed them long ago.

They’ve had more pressing issues than PvP balance passes right now, but people have a legitimate claim that HS is way out of balance.

Between BWE1 and release, thieves never saw a balance pass in skills/damage. They were weak, and no matter the setup or build, a thief wasn’t very..effective.

Now, come release, with absolutely NO beta testing, they ramped up the damage, and gave the thives more initiative. With absolutely NO BETA TESTING. So, upon release, thieves are ungodly powerful for a minimal amount of skill. I have been blown up by a thief who didn’t even lay a finger on the HS key and I sent him a tell saying: “NICE!! WTG DUDE” Because I was honestly impressed. Not one ability listed was HS. The thief has skill, and clearly demonstrated with a 1.4sec kill (yes, it was that fast). But that was probably every CD he had.

Now, come HS, where the thief is immune to snare, stun, knockdown, knockback, root…any form of immobilization as they are executing the HS manouever. they have a small teleport to their target, so you can’t move or dodge to get away, since they can just port right to you. Tell me how this is a L2P issue??

And…if for some reason the HS spam doesn’t work, a thief just goes into stealth and regens his initiative and tries again.

Gee, not see any OP’ness there.

Icelandica.6320:

When I played a shaman in WoW, I hated Rogues, theykitten me off to no end and I always thought they were an OP class. However after understanding the game better and eventually rolling a Rogue, I realized how much they actually needed their abilities. A Rogue will always kill you 1v1, that’s what they are designed to do. A super glass cannon thief should also be able to kill you 1v1. But a thief who specs with survivability and CD will not kill you very quickly in a 1v1 but they will whittle you down and keep you busy in a 2v1 situation. They may not kill you, but they can keep you occupied long enough. If a glass cannon thief tries to take you on 2v1, he’s dead instantly. If a thief bursts down your friend and he’s glass cannon, simply interrupt his stomp, then revive your friend. He won’t have the initiative or the coolddowns to burst you down too and he’s in a terrible position all of a sudden. His only option is to run away and keep trying the same thing.

You seriously believe that a class should always win 1v1 because its labled rogue or thief? Its not even true, frostmages are the kings of 1v1 in WoW. In gw2 mesmers are the 1v1 champs, actually in every mmorpg I ever played the best 1v1 class was never a rogue/thief whatever.

Especially in a game like gw2 where you choose a profession because of the way how it does something and not because its good/can only do specific things you shouldnt have a “best” 1v1 class at all. Its basically against the design concept of the game.

teviko.6049:

As a mesmer I have executed dodge rolls, illusions/clones/phantasms and stuns up the whazoo, and the thief never stopped.

As a mesmer you have no excuse if you lose to a hs spamming thief. I normaly dont say L2P but if you lose on a mesmer against a thief that spams heart seeker you seriously need to look at your skills or start to use them.

Whoever doesn’t think this class isn’t OP are completely ignorant, includes the developers. Any class that can keep any other cc’d til death, is pure garbage and so is the game that allows it.

They are way too fast and have way too many outs during combat. Pure crap ezmode is all this is.

HS spammers are just noobs.

Kultas Sunstrider.9218:

HS spammers are just noobs.

yup and whiners gonna whine.

Zatria.5783:

Whoever doesn’t think this class isn’t OP are completely ignorant, includes the developers. Any class that can keep any other cc’d til death, is pure garbage and so is the game that allows it.

They are way too fast and have way too many outs during combat. Pure crap ezmode is all this is.

No class in this game can CC anyone to death.

Mayama.1854:

Zatria.5783:

Whoever doesn’t think this class isn’t OP are completely ignorant, includes the developers. Any class that can keep any other cc’d til death, is pure garbage and so is the game that allows it.

They are way too fast and have way too many outs during combat. Pure crap ezmode is all this is.

No class in this game can CC anyone to death.

Wrong.

Zatria.5783:

Mayama.1854:

Zatria.5783:

Whoever doesn’t think this class isn’t OP are completely ignorant, includes the developers. Any class that can keep any other cc’d til death, is pure garbage and so is the game that allows it.

They are way too fast and have way too many outs during combat. Pure crap ezmode is all this is.

No class in this game can CC anyone to death.

Wrong.

lol, 2nded

The joys of playing a Warrior. Bull’s Charge, Frenzy, Hundred Blades, Eviscerate. Dead Thief, everytime.

Ruhenation.8170:

The joys of playing a Warrior. Bull’s Charge, Frenzy, Hundred Blades, Eviscerate. Dead Thief, everytime.

As long as I don’t see you coming and neither one of my stun breaks is up, you may actually win.

Dallas.2536:

THE PVP TIER LIST

good players
———————————————
average players
———————————————
bad players who get destroyed by quickness and qq on forums

I love you so much this is my sig now

HS at least finally got nerfed. In the middle of fighting three other people today, a thief ran in and somewhere in the midst of so much fX I couldn’t see the screen, I died. Heartseeker was at the top, of course, but unlike the usual “10,000 damage, 2 attacks” it now said 3 attacks. Later something similar happened and it only listed 4 attacks. It was heart warming.

As someone else said, the main problem is that the game itself has no tanking or healing mechanism to act as a buffer for spikes, so the most irritating things in the game become giant spike moves, because there’s no counter to them other than five second skills with one minute cooldowns (so you are encouraged to never use them) or evasions you may again be discouraged from using because, hey, someone may try to HS you or Immobilize+HB you, etc.

It does surprise me that health is so low and damage so high in a game like this. Some fights DO last a good minute, as they should, but others can literally be over in two seconds if someone gets lucky with your cooldowns and has a build designed to do that and only that. You’d think even with the most extreme glass cannon build attacking the same kind of build, a single spike would still never be able to kill someone from full health, in a game without mitigations.

The PvP Tier List

thief/warrior
———————————————
the rest

fixed

edited by moderator: caps

The problem is, some classes actually require a good amount of player skill to pull off half-decent stuff while others can faceroll their progress through the match.
The only ones who ever contradict this ancient truth are those who are insecure enough to keep exploiting this match after match.

You are bad, I have no trouble against Thieves as a Necromancer. Make a Thief and understand the profession, then learn to counter them instead of QQ’ing on the forums.

Thief and Warrior above Mesmer? Hmm, I must be doing something wrong….or right?

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

You are bad, I have no trouble against Thieves as a Necromancer. Make a Thief and understand the profession, then learn to counter them instead of QQ’ing on the forums.

Wouldn’t expect any other reaction from a “professional Thief”. :-) “Dominating” might I add :-)

DaveK.1023:

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

You are bad, I have no trouble against Thieves as a Necromancer. Make a Thief and understand the profession, then learn to counter them instead of QQ’ing on the forums.

Wouldn’t expect any other reaction from a “professional Thief”. :-) “Dominating” might I add :-)

I play a Necromancer and a Thief, I prefer to put Thief in my signature for it is my favourite archetype in video games. I dominate on both my Thief and my Necromancer.

What if I would have put Necromancer instead of Thief? Would my statement be more valuable and honest to you? You see, the problem with bad players is that they always put the blame with the game and the profession, while 90% of the time they are the problem.

Those who think Thieves and Mesmers are over the top have no clue what they are talking about, every profession has a good build to play and is viable. If you think a certain profession is overpowered, make that profession and play it… it takes you less than 3 minuts to complete the intro and 5 minuts to get the correct build for your oh so overpowered Thief.

At the end of the day, good players dominate, the bad players cry on the forums about other professions.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

If you think a certain profession is overpowered, make that profession and play it… it takes you less than 3 minuts to complete the intro and 5 minuts to get the correct build for your oh so overpowered Thief.

Naaah, not going that way, look what it did to you.

DaveK.1023:

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

If you think a certain profession is overpowered, make that profession and play it… it takes you less than 3 minuts to complete the intro and 5 minuts to get the correct build for your oh so overpowered Thief.

Naaah, not going that way, look what it did to you.

Another bad PvP player with another false accusations. You have no evidence that I switched to a Thief, so why do you say something so dumb which makes it so easy for me to intellectually humiliate you in front of all the readers?

Thief was my first profession and will always remain my main, in ever game I play I play the Thief/Rogue/Assassin first and the Black Magic profession second. That would be the Necromancer in Guild Wars 2.

I like these archetypes, I don’t care if they are OP or UP! My personal skill will compensate and make it work regardless of the profession’s power

Also, why are you not going that road? Shall I tell you? You are afraid to face the truth, or perhaps you already did. I guarantee you that atleast 50% of the people who whine about Heartseeker Thieves would get 2 shotted if they played a Heartseeker Thief themselves! Melee glass cannon? Good Luck!

I played the Heartseeker build for 2-3 games pre-nerf and was shocked at how pathetic and weak it is, good thing I switched right away!

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

You are bad, I have no trouble against Thieves as a Necromancer. Make a Thief and understand the profession, then learn to counter them instead of QQ’ing on the forums.

I main a necro in PvP i also have a Thief ,warrior ranger and a elementalist and play all of them in pvp. On my thief you cant CC or dodge me once i pop and keep popping HS you can only hope to get a lucky dodge right before i do , simple as that.

my warrior i leveled to lvl 3 and took it into pvp witouth any practise or knowledge about its skills and i ended up as top player in my first 3 matches

I think that most here that say L2P in reaction to ppl who complain about thiefs and HS or other faceroll classes like the warrior that they themselves main one of those classes.

Just saying…