Guild Wars 2

Thief

Heartseeker: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%. Damage thresholds changed. Old: 100%-66%, 66%-33%, 33%-0%. New: 100%-50%, 50%-25%, 25%-0%.

At least they didn’t nerf the damage. This is reasonable but still unnecessary. This is coming from a bias Thief though

I’m alright with it. The only qualm I have with the threshold change is I don’t know of a way to show Percentages on the UI for convenience since I’m used to what I already eyeball, but it’s not a big deal.

It still hits hard as an execute, right? This was the fix that was asked for, if I recall: it was a spammable all-the-time move, a gap closer, and execute. One part of that got dropped, and it’s the part that doesn’t affect those who use it a bit more strategically.

I don’t think that this “nerf” is that much of a big deal, you can engage your opponent from ranged first to lower their Health and then switch and take them down when they are below 50%.

Heartseeker builds are weak and fragile, I don’t like them and this nerf doesn’t affect me that much.

It was an adjustment, not a nerf. A nerf would be to the damage numbers. <—- to clarify for those who didn’t read the OP.

Also, I’m glad they went this route rather than the numbers. Numbers are more difficult to adjust.

Ennarian.4620:

It was an adjustment, not a nerf. A nerf would be to the damage numbers. <—- to clarify for those who didn’t read the OP.

Also, I’m glad they went this route rather than the numbers. Numbers are more difficult to adjust.

I disagree, A nerf reduces the power of an ability. The power of Heartseeker was reduced, this was a nerf.

Do we really have to make 8 threads about this?

Didn’t they adjust the damage on 100%-50%? That’d be a damage number tweak.

Ennarian.4620:

It was an adjustment, not a nerf. A nerf would be to the damage numbers. <—- to clarify for those who didn’t read the OP.

Also, I’m glad they went this route rather than the numbers. Numbers are more difficult to adjust.

The damage IS reduced by 20%, but only at 100-50% life. So it’s a nerf, but I don’t mind, it’s an executer, it should be weak when enemy has high life and hit like a truck with low life.

Don’t worry. The guys who said it was overpowered will be back. The changes do very little to a competent thief anyway.

I totally agree with you Lyralei, I love the change made to HS, I think it was totally warranted. I do however think that people blew it way out of proportion and pulled a WoW knee jerk reaction move and begged for nerfs. Anet’s fix in my eyes was perfect. People will complain just to complain. I can tell you one thing, if they didn’t like HS spam, they sure never ran into a S/P Thief with haste. Which most likely be the discussion of many nerf threads to come.

Ouzhyr.2175:

Do we really have to make 8 threads about this?

This is the only thread I see. I created it literally when the server message went up saying a new build was on the way.

Dirty maybe he thought it was another QQ thread.

Vytal.7942:

I totally agree with you Lyralei, I love the change made to HS, I think it was totally warranted. I do however think that people blew it way out of proportion and pulled a WoW knee jerk reaction move and begged for nerfs. Anet’s fix in my eyes was perfect. People will complain just to complain. I can tell you one thing, if they didn’t like HS spam, they sure never ran into a S/P Thief with haste. Which most likely be the discussion of many nerf threads to come.

No the problem was that thieves could just sit down on the heartseeker button and rack up the same score as a average player just by hitting that one button repeatedly thus passing themselves off as a competent player when in reality, they had 1 ability that would carry them across the board.

This does not apply to all thieves obviously and quite frankly pistolwhip is a far more annoying skill in PvP than HS, but HS definitly needed something like this.

Lue.6538:

…quite frankly pistolwhip is a far more annoying skill in PvP than HS, but HS definitly needed something like this.

The difference being that PW self roots and has some pretty easy counters. HS had some too but it’s a faster and generally more dangerous skill. Or, rather, much easier to use effectively. PW isn’t complicated but it has enough general downsides and a risk factor attached to it that HS doesn’t.

I was about to create a furious post about this nerf, not because it’s a big nerf but that it’s a nerf balanced because of PvP and not PvE. This is the first step in ArenaNet slipping control over the whiners, because people whined about HS and it got changed.

I don’t use HS often in both PvE and PvP but there are people that do and just because 9/10 Thieves in PvP use HS doesn’t mean we all do, and it’s the easiest skill to counter by just dodge rolling or stunning them.

BTW if HS get’s a nerf then 100b/Evis and Kill Shot all deserved to be nerfed too.

Great job everyone who complained about HS, now I almost died to a DOE, trying to spam HS to show that it wasn’t overpowered at all…

Too bad a lot of people don’t understand the game.
What I didn’t like is how ArenaNet got such a quick decision about this because of people whining. This tells a lot about class balance in the future but hopefuly they won’t become Blizzard.

This is really unfortunate, it scares me to think ANet is making decisions based on the communities crying, I’d bet that most people here have no idea what they’re talking about in terms of balance. I really hope they know what they’re doing…. but making horrible design decisions because of community outcries isn’t new (see:Blizzard)

The problem with thief was large damage output by spamming a button. This directly addresses that. Now thieves will need to play as intended, utilizing stealth transitions, rear attacks, and timing large blows before enemies can use heals.

Skilled thieves shouldn’t feel affected by this.

When an entire combat style is based around 1 ability it needs to be changed, IMHO this forces more skill into the thief class and less Flavor of the month.

I play a thief as my main and couldn’t be happier with this.Seing thievesin spvp mindlessly spamming HS,from stealth,on a full health player made me want to pop blinding powder and hide away in shame.

It wasn’t even effective against competent players,it was just about effective enough to give thieves a bad name.

Glad it was changed.

while i didnt use heartseeker for more then a gap closer or execution, it bothers me that anet made such a kneejerk reaction based on (bad) player outcries.

this also makes me less likely to use dagger mainhand in pve as its already brittle and lacks decent utility there.

but if anet keeps doing things like this, eventually all the calsses will be crap cuz everyone will have cried about something.

WereDragon.6083:

When an entire combat style is based around 1 ability it needs to be changed, IMHO this forces more skill into the thief class and less Flavor of the month.

which means all dagger mainhand thieves are going to be abusing stealtha nd backstabbing more now /shrug

incoming nerf on stealth/backstab

The funiest part of this post is that now we can clearly see who are the unskilled thieves and who aren’t.

HS was one of the cheapest skills out there. I can’t help but laugh to thieves who come here and say “easiest to counter” lol you make my day, every day.

I can easly kill anyone 1×1 with my D/D + P/P build mostly because of this skill alone. If I feel like being lazy, all I need is to drop a bit of their health first, with pistols and it is completely GG for them. Heck I don’t even need to use pistols at all, if I play smart and use my utilities. While they will need a lot just to stay alive, I will be using my utilities to counter whatever CC they manage to pull off and keep hurting them. Its not hard really. Even you people crying here, showing to everyone how bad you are with your class can pull it off.

Now the best comments are from those who say: “ok I killed that guy, but now their friends came and killed me”… So you think your thief should be able to handle multiple opponents with ease? Ok, sure…

To all the baddies out there. Please, our class is still very good. There are many great builds other than this HS spam bullkitten. Go try them out.

Wolfe.3097:

WereDragon.6083:

When an entire combat style is based around 1 ability it needs to be changed, IMHO this forces more skill into the thief class and less Flavor of the month.

which means all dagger mainhand thieves are going to be abusing stealtha nd backstabbing more now /shrug

incoming nerf on stealth/backstab

Except stealth/backstab has actual setup time and skill involved as opposed to lock-teleporting to your victim 5-6 times from stealth.

Except stealth/backstab has actual setup time and skill involved as opposed to lock-teleporting to your victim 5-6 times from stealth.

im just saying, when the masses start crying about something, they rarely stop just cuz they have been given a bone. whatever tho, ill keep playing my thief. the build i use is effective for me and hopefully doesnt see enough play for people to whine about it.

Wolfe.3097:

WereDragon.6083:

When an entire combat style is based around 1 ability it needs to be changed, IMHO this forces more skill into the thief class and less Flavor of the month.

which means all dagger mainhand thieves are going to be abusing stealtha nd backstabbing more now /shrug

incoming nerf on stealth/backstab

I don’t think it will happen, mostly because it involves more than one skill/action and positioning while HS spam don’t.

DirtyHoudini.2917:

Thief

Heartseeker: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%. Damage thresholds changed. Old: 100%-66%, 66%-33%, 33%-0%. New: 100%-50%, 50%-25%, 25%-0%.

At least they didn’t nerf the damage. This is reasonable but still unnecessary. This is coming from a bias Thief though

Op you obviously havent read the snippet you posted.. I’ll pull out the important part..

Heartseeker: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%

That there is a damage reduction…

Fugly.5287:

The problem with thief was large damage output by spamming a button. This directly addresses that. Now thieves will need to play as intended, utilizing stealth transitions, rear attacks, and timing large blows before enemies can use heals.

Skilled thieves shouldn’t feel affected by this.

I agree. I also don’t think this nerf had anything to do with any community outcry, considering Heartseeker was buffed not long before release.

I’m perfectly happy with the nerf and glad they didn’t so something like increase the initiative cost or change the damage to conditional.

I don’t have a problem with the changes to HS damage and threshold. My main problem is after the changes was made HS seem to misses 20% of the time I uses it and just for laughs I tried spamming it and wow 5 misses in a row? no this is not in pvp just regular pve farming mob. Totally lame.

I just hope that this doesn’t become a trend. In certain other MMO’s, the masses whined about pretty much every ability that could qualify as decent. The result? Years of questionable design/balance decisions that left certain classes under-performing.

I’ll admit that this is a good compromise and it could have been worse, though I’ll remain wary about future changes.

Allow me to chime in with one thing that I believe is worth noting. Before this change, HS’s “improved damage to weakened targets” kicked in at 66% HP, while as far as I know, every other effect against weakened targets (+20% damage from Executioner, 4s immobilize from Panic Strike, and so on) kicks in at 50% HP. After this change, unless I’m mistaken, every such skill or effect will trigger under half HP: HS is consistent with the rest then.

Besides, if you’re looking at a bar, it’s easier to approximate more precisely where 50% is than where 66% is.

This change is perfect.

Typical the stealth class is the first one to nerf because people cant take the time to learn how to counter it…

Where I understand why the change was made the issue still has yet to be fixed.

In order to be a thief that people want we HAVE to either go super glass cannon or the extremely boring ranged poison share spec. As a thief why the hell would I want to wield a bow or 2 pistols? I think I can safely say that if you are rolling a thief you want to melee and be in peoples faces. If not roll akittenranger.

I would like to see warriors 100 blades nerfed please, seeing that does 3 time more damage then a HS spam, oh not to mention they can have 24kHP in their “glass cannon” build, hell the mesmer even has 21k HP in glass cannon and they where light armor.

I swear if the thief turns into ever other rogue/assassin class that just gets contently nerfed because of the scrubs crying I am going to punch you arena net. During the beta events you have told people basically to shove off and learn the game. Please keep doing this.

Again the HS spam was in need a change and this was the best way to go about this but maybe HS needs a complete rework.

Ouzhyr.2175:

Do we really have to make 8 threads about this?

Well we had 5 million trying to get it nerfed and that got it nerfed, so we’re only just getting started.

bwillb.2165:

Ouzhyr.2175:

Do we really have to make 8 threads about this?

Well we had 5 million trying to get it nerfed and that got it nerfed, so we’re only just getting started.

And rightfully so.

You should be happy though. Now good thieves will be distanced from bad thieves which they weren’t really before.

If you were good before you will be good now. If you punched one button for your kills, the realities of GW2 pvp might catch up with you.

bloodymarx.9052:

Allow me to chime in with one thing that I believe is worth noting. Before this change, HS’s “improved damage to weakened targets” kicked in at 66% HP, while as far as I know, every other effect against weakened targets (+20% damage from Executioner, 4s immobilize from Panic Strike, and so on) kicks in at 50% HP. After this change, unless I’m mistaken, every such skill or effect will trigger under half HP: HS is consistent with the rest then.

Besides, if you’re looking at a bar, it’s easier to approximate more precisely where 50% is than where 66% is.

Maybe ArenaNet knew that it would be considered overpowered regardless, but knew it was perfectly balanced at 50%. So at release, they made it overpowered, so when they nerfed it to their balanced state as it stands now, they could say, “Look, we nerfed it! Just become more skilled and deal with it!”

I wouldn’t put it past them, they think of everything.

Pvpwise it wasn’t too bad of a nerf. PvE wise... *twitch*

I just noticed it today. I’m not level 80 yet, and am doing the 35-40 zones. Normally I just use 1 for mmost damage and time c/d for a big hit. Whenever I’m waiting for the immunuty from c/d to wear off the mob, I’d HS for the added oomph. Now it barely dusts a mob unless you’re about to finish it off.

Lame. >_<
Oh well, guess I’ll up my strat a bit.

It IS kind of bad they made 1/5th of our D/D skills completely useless 50% of the time.

I would have agreed with the damage benefit happening at 50% instead of 66%, but reducing the initial damage makes it a no-no to push that key half of the time we are playing. It is actually counter to their game design. Pretty bad, hope they don’t spiral out of control on this kind of crap within 20 days of release. 20 days and start ‘balancing’ stuff? Come on. The meta game hasn’t even begun to develop.

i actually am happy with this change.

Heartseeker is intended to finish off low health players. It still does. It is just as effective at what it is legitimately supposed to be used for.

The fact that (bad) players were using Heartseeker against full health targets before was evidence that the game needed an adjustment to prevent (bad) players from playing badly but doing ok anyway.

A design tweak that reinforces the legitimate and useful aspects of a skill while further discouraging the illegitimate and inefficient uses of a skill is a good change.

I’m disappointed that Anet is listening to forum complaints and already starting to nerf abilities. However, the change was necessary and they did a good job fixing heartseeker. It was spammable, good damage, a gab closer, and an execute all for a low initiative cost. Good players had no problem with it, but mediocre ones were getting destroyed by it since they weren’t able to counter thieves at all. Since the majority of the playerbase is either bad or mediocre, heartseeker was simply too easy to use and negatively affected a lot of players.

I’m glad that heartseeker is now the execute it was always supposed to be. It’s not worth using except as a gap closer above 50%, it does the same damage below 50% HP, and it only does max damage at 25%. 33% was too high for an execute and people shouldn’t be using it above 50% HP anyway. We’ll still be able to find low HP targets and heartseeker spam them to death, as was the original intent.

I just don’t get it with some of you.

In one sentence you say you’re disappointed Anet is listening to “whiny” posters, and then in the next sentence you say this was a necessary adjustment?

First off, there were legitimate claims about HS being a bit too cheeser friendly. Anet did a perfect job adjusting and it definiately “could have” been worse.

Secondly, Anet created these forums to allow us to give feedback and discuss what seems to work and what doesn’t work. Anet took a look, evaluated what would be a good compromise, and then adjusted accordingly.

I give Anet props on this because it wasn’t so much of a spontaneous reaction, but rather to bring out better gameplay from a good profession.

I couldn’t care less about the HS nerf. I played with HS around 2 games, sure I killed a lot of people but it was so amazingly boring that I just had to stop it.
Right now I am playing with 2 different builds which don’t even include HS in it.
Hope people will start to theorycraft around a bit and stop using those cookie-cutter builds.

This was a perfect fix, i only use it to finish people off as it was intented. If you are complaing about the change you need to realize there is better abilities to use on your target when he is above 50% or 66% old. Even your auto attack combo does more damage AND inflics conditions. HS only needs to be used once to get on your target but spamming it on a target above 66% life was actually making you alot less effective than you could have been with other abilities

I still think it hits too hard at lower percentages, but i’ll take this above nothing.

The nerf isn’t terrible, all things considered. But it does leave a non death blossom thief with limited options. I’d prefer that they just increase the initiative cost of heartseeker and move it to the 4 or 5 slot. But that may be difficult given the main hand/offhand distinction.

Alternately, heartseeker could activate after 2 or 3 initial attacks — in other words, activate it only when initative is low (as a finisher)

Anet is good about making changes. They made changes to GW1 for years. They care about balance.

Expansive.3716:

I just don’t get it with some of you.

In one sentence you say you’re disappointed Anet is listening to “whiny” posters, and then in the next sentence you say this was a necessary adjustment?

First off, there were legitimate claims about HS being a bit too cheeser friendly. Anet did a perfect job adjusting and it definiately “could have” been worse.

Secondly, Anet created these forums to allow us to give feedback and discuss what seems to work and what doesn’t work. Anet took a look, evaluated what would be a good compromise, and then adjusted accordingly.

I give Anet props on this because it wasn’t so much of a spontaneous reaction, but rather to bring out better gameplay from a good profession.

from a pve perspective its just plain bad damage nerf with absolutly no compensation to a spec thats already hard pressed to perform well in dungeons.

from a pvp perspective its fine.

so its 50% bad

and in the name of balance, that means its 100% bad

Wolfe.3097:

from a pve perspective its just plain bad damage nerf with absolutly no compensation to a spec thats already hard pressed to perform well in dungeons.

how is this a PvE damage nerf at all? auto-attacks have ALWAYS done more damage than Heartseeker a mob > 50% health. they did before the change. Anyone Heartseeker spamming a mob at any point before getting the enhanced damage tier (33% before nerf, 25% after) was doing it wrong and actually spending initiative to do less damage then auto-attack.

If they “nerfed” HS because some players were spamming it, then they should do the same with any other sort of spammable skill the other classes were using. Like greatsword AoE’s guardians and warriors uses all the time during sieges or the annoying clones mesmers keep summoning. The change on HS was rather silly and unnecessary.