Guild Wars 2

Learn to dodge. Or, alternatively, increase the initiative cost. But really, if you’re spamming it over and over, you’re nuts. Good players will counter you and the skill is clearly meant as, for lack of a better term, the class’ “execute” option.

This heartseeker spam is definitely an issue. I feel like thieves are a little too strong at the moment. Definitely need some tweaks on some abilities. Or even initiative cost increases. Thief is my 2nd favorite class and I do believe they need some fixing. If you don’t realize they need some toning down , then I’m not really sure you’re looking at the big picture. I realize they’re squishy, and big damage should come out as a trade off.. BUT, it’s a little too big at the moment. And for the moment can dominate the squishier classes without a chance. It’s just not fair, because they can’t even react for the most part.

Dont know… thiefs in general aint a problem unless they use thekitten“elite” poison with as low of a cd as all others that lets him apply a npc only cc aka Petrify, then again i in general play a necro that essencially hard counters the thief and guardian in terms of how their toolkits work (who are considered to be op) and just mark around myself to reveal thiefs, Signet and Consume out of the conditions and cc unload, just morph and eat em.

Also HSS is only strong if you run, stand your ground, burst the thief and actually damage him back, instead of running like a wild chicken letting the second strongest glass cannon dps you.

Fine take my heartseeker, but please leave me my 17k pistol whip

i roll p/d in pvp now because HS spam bores me :/

Sharpclaw.7510:

Learn to dodge. Or, alternatively, increase the initiative cost. But really, if you’re spamming it over and over, you’re nuts. Good players will counter you and the skill is clearly meant as, for lack of a better term, the class’ “execute” option.

right but if I come up on a group fight and theres a target at 50% who blew his dodges surviving up to that point its mindless HS spam and he’s dead with zero effort required. No need to worry about gap closing, no need to worry about using any other CDs in conjunction, it’s boring.

I don’t ever get hit by Heartseeker. EVER.

EVER.

But then again I’m a thief lmao

I havent PVP alot but so far I’ve only met a HS thief once in pvp. Of course I was taken by surprise when my drops from full to 25% in matter of seconds, but thats when my elixir S automatically kicks in putting me invulnerable for a brief moment, all while the thief is still spamming HS.
Immediately I dropped my elite supply crate and heal skill to get myself back to 60%+. By then the thief ran out of initiatives and my basic rotation picked him off helplessly.

I’m a p/p condition damage engineer btw.

EDIT: I’m saying HS is extremely strong burst for single target, but when faced in extended, team or 2nd target fight, it’s limited.

Thief player here.

No offense to anyone but if you get owned by HS… you should play better. If you don`t have daze/blind/immobilze/knockdown/cripple/chill equiped on you ITS your fault.

For 1v1 HS is weak skill:
1. You don`t have control over your character during the animation.
2. You don`t have control where you are going to land.
3. You take dmg during the animation.

2v1? Any skill is OP. If you got targeted by 2+ thiefs you will die fast if they are running power/precision build and not using a bow.

HS is good ONLY when the other player is distracted fighting someone else and even then there are better thiefs skills if you ask me

When I see a thief doing HS towards me… it is the easiest kill ever

Pro tip cripple/chill makes the HS leap alot shorter in range.

OK ,i am lvl 80 thief,also i am rank 20 SPVP,so i guess i have a objective view on a thief
gameplay and pvp gameplay.My opinion is :HS is totally broken at this moment.
It has 3k average dmg,it is spammable beyond any playing skills requirement,it chase you TROUGH stealth without any target visible,it leaps too far and in combination with
Haste is a complete joke(PW is almost as laughable,but atleast once you brake the immobilize you can dodge away cuz its short range and kinda channeling mechanic,with HS the Thief-wannabe will just chase-spam-you down no matter what.
It has to be changed.
The fact that every one can make a lvl 2 char with any class and rush into full sPVP plus the fact that the valor is bound to the whole acount and not the character itself is something that i don’t approve at all.It generates FOTM easy riders that ruin the game(imo).But since it will not likely be changed,atleast fix those no-skill-required spamable builds that make thief(and possibly any other class) a joke.

ZLE, how many tournaments have you played? How many of the teams had HS spamming thiefs?

I played enough with moderate success,and the fact this gameplay doesn’t stand (how to say it) “organized enemy behavior”, doesn’t mean its not broken.

Now if you read my post above you will see why I think the skill is really bad against a player which knows what he is doing. Lets ignore the stealth mechanic as it is broken in many regards (pets still attack/follow you in stealth for example).

If HS is nerfed D/D thiefs will have backstab and nothing else. HS is burst skill that is EASY to avoid/prevent. As I said simple cripple/chill efects cuts the leap distance in half, where immobilez just makes you spammaing HS in the same spot thus loosing initiative.

This is the same as the hundred blades cry. What happened there was peolpe learned to avoid it/play better. Same thing will happen here no worries.

What are you basing this off of? Just straight-up 1v1s? Of course spamming HS in a 1v1 fight is going to wreck, but honestly a majority of pvp is GROUP FIGHTING.

Key word: GROUP.

Okay, so you get killed by a thief spamming HS. So what? What now? He’s killed one person. When you’re running around WvW in large-scale battles how much of a difference does ONE thief killing ONE other person make? And let us be honest here, by the time he kills you he’s probably dead himself. Whoop-dee-doo, a 1-to-1 trade.

If HS was multitarget then yeah, I would consider it OP. But it’s a single target high-damage MELEE ability.

If you don’t understand, this is one phrase that explains why I think it’s balanced: High Risk, High Reward.

Cal,HS is NOT by any means easy to prevent.First even wit half leap it has 200 range ,which is more that LDB and way more than any other DD attacks(130).I personaly have the trait for recovering endurance and even with that i find it very hard to escape the full HS unload on me.As for leaving the rogue with only Backstab,what about C&D.
LDB was nerfed exactly by the same spam reason,so it is clear that Anet don’t like this things.
Sentaul,while it is executed with daggers,you can hardly call a skill that have half of the range of Steal a melee ability.

Yes you can call it a melee ability.
It’s a gap-closer melee ability. It lets you close gaps, but it puts you in melee range.
If it’s in melee range, it’s a melee ability. This is why frost or cripple and just kiting easily destroys any thief trying to HS spam.

I repeat: It WILL be nerfed by the same reason Leaping Death Blossom was nerfed.
OK?
Now if you are developed some skills with thief meanwhile,you will be ok(and i hope you are ).
If you didn’t ,i will probably soon meet you playing the next-in-line easy FOTM build,some Illusionary Unload Mesmer or smtng.

Zle,
As a thief I press one button to stop any HS spam – Black Powder. Other proffesions have other means to prevent burst dmg for example Warrior – the 5 seconds invul thingy, stomp, immobilze, Guardian – aegis, block next three incoming attacks bubbles, walls, Mesmer – clones, invisibility, walls, daze, daze.

A skill is OP when it cannot be countered. Tell me which profession cannot counter HS?

Edit:
LDB was nerfed due to the crazy bleed condition stacking, not because people cannot learn to play. There is a huge difference. HS does not apply any condition by itself.

Cal.1985:

A skill is OP when it cannot be countered. Tell me which profession cannot counter HS?

I don’t know…. maybe engineers? How about rangers? Just guessing overhere. ^^

Spamming heartseeker is not the way to win against someone as a thief. This skill is not evasive when you cast it, so the other player can still hit you. Most players just run and do nothing when a thief spams heartseeker which is incorrect.

Also there are builds that put out more dmg than if you were going to just spam heartseeker which I am sure none does because it would make your playstyle boring and stupid.

VakarisJ,
Rangers – traps, chill, countre attack thingy, knockdown (slow,knockdown from pets), oh I almost forgot 1500 RANGE?
Engineers – daze, slow, chill, immobilze, knockback, elexir whatever that shrinks you and makes you invlurnable.

Why not go to guildwrs2 wiki and check each class and skills?

Cal,thank you very much for your advice,but i think you got the wrong impression that i get wrecked by HS spam,and i cannot counter it in any way.Actually i use Roll For initiative and Roll away far beyond the HS range.This however doesn’t mean that wasting 1 min CD is equal for someone’s 222222222 spamming,as long he has close to full initiative.

Cal.1985:

Why not go to guildwrs2 wiki and check each class and skills?

Coudn’t be bothered, just decided to ask here since you didn’t mention them. Call it… a test of your knowledge.

Again to conclude:it must be nerfed and it will be nerfed,no matter how much you defend it.
So you might just learn to play with some of the other high initiative cost skills that actually require initiative monitoring and proximity caution.
2222222 ,no more as soon Anet fix the hacked acounts nonsence.

ZLE.8293:

Again to conclude:it must be nerfed and it will be nerfed,no matter how much you defend it.
So you might just learn to play with some of the other high initiative cost skills that actually require initiative monitoring and proximity caution.
2222222 ,no more as soon Anet fix the hacked acounts nonsence.

Any posts to back this up? You know, from Anet?

No?

Didn’t think so.

Umad.

Sin.8174:

Any posts to back this up? You know, from Anet?

No?

Didn’t think so.

Umad.

Judging from what happened with Leaping Death Blossom,i am quite sure.You just keep on checking the forum,we will talk again…

ZLE,
I don`t use D/D or D/P anywhere but thanks for the advice anyway

Still you have not made any comments in regards to what I am saying – IT is easy to counter and this is a fact. Thief spamming 222222 will be without initiate pretty quick.

Cal it is POSSIBLE to counter it,but its nowhere as easier as spamming it itself and also includes some high CD skills,while the thief himself will regenerate the full initiative needed for next spamming for like 10 seconds.Can i ask you just for curiousity what are you using.Pistol Whip maybe?

ZLE,
And what you are saying is exactly the problem. People don`t know how to counter it properly yet thus they cry that is an OP skill where it is not.

Spamming PW is bad, so I would say no. I use all the skills. Hell the auto-attack on the sword is the best one. Will try tonight D/something for you.

OK so you are S/P.It explains a lot.The skill IS OP,i will explain again why.Countering a skill-sequence (222222) that requires 10 sec renewable resource and zero palying skills with a skill with 60 seconds CD,which is intended to counter another high CD skill(like bulls charge+frenzy100 blades) isn’t by any means balanced,and thats why it will be changed.Like Thief was able to apply infinitive bleed stacks with cheap LDB (with somehow limited capability of others to remove bleeds) and the skill was fixed,same way HS will be fixed.

Just because people don’t know how to counter it doesn’t make it OP.

And again I stress this point: IT IS SINGLE TARGET.
Killing ONE person by spamming HS is not overpowered.
A thief spamming all of his initiative on one person means he’s completely useless afterwards and an easy kill.
What are you basing your balancing off of? 1v1s? Almost every thief ability is single-target, I would assume they’re meant to be strong in 1v1’s. A pure glass cannon thief however is pretty much useless in any sort of group pvp fight.

And who cares if you use a 60s cooldown skill to counter HS spamming? If you’ve countered it, THEY’RE PROBABLY DEAD. Why do cooldowns matter if you’ve killed them?

Sentaul.2138:

Just because people don’t know how to counter it doesn’t make it OP.

And again I stress this point: IT IS SINGLE TARGET.
Killing ONE person by spamming HS is not overpowered.
A thief spamming all of his initiative on one person means he’s completely useless afterwards and an easy kill.
What are you basing your balancing off of? 1v1s? Almost every thief ability is single-target, I would assume they’re meant to be strong in 1v1’s. A pure glass cannon thief however is pretty much useless in any sort of group pvp fight.

And who cares if you use a 60s cooldown skill to counter HS spamming? If you’ve countered it, THEY’RE PROBABLY DEAD. Why do cooldowns matter if you’ve killed them?

Exactly, and basically still people want to nerf them. That’s why I said that people don’t know how to play properly yet.

I use heavy C&D+LDB+Caltrops high conditon ,in&out of stealth .If you have troubles imagine it,i will explain that it never includes 1 skill used more than once in a row…

Edit: And YES,i am D/D,i have HS,and i still insist that it have to be fixed.

Insist all you want. From what this thread says it looks like most people think it’s fine just the way it is. Majority rules.

Nope. ArenaNet rules.As for “majority”,only 2 bothered to explain(like i bother) their reasons.The other of you are like “everything is OK,umad,gtfo”

Edit: Backstab is not IMBA.Every thief who manages to land a BS to me,while im dodging like mad,knowing that he has only 3-4 seconds and limited range to deliver,and have to be from behind otherwise it suxx ,deserves to do a LOT damage to me.But skill with no position requirements,with tripple the range and worth so little,no thanks.

As a Thief (albeit not yet lev80) I think they should just do as suggested here and nerf the 33%+ damage (D/P might need fixing then too tho). This would at least cut the whine down a bit, and force the onebuttoner onetrickponies to actually learn to play. Of course many would reroll “because Thief got nerfed to ground” but I don’t personally care.

Ps. RoI gives you 6 init, Steal can be traited to give you 3(?) init. Do your combo until you are exhausted, RoI -> Steal -> keep on spamming.

Of course when/if they nerf HS next people will whine about Death Blossom giving you “perma-evade” and being able to stack tons of bleed ^^ Or the fact that with S/P you can initiate Pistol Whip and make it unavoidable with “Shadowstep” Signet. “omgz too OP!”, while of course forgetting that Thief isn’t only class (cough ele cough) that can do tricks like that.

One thing I’d personally like, and flame me if you like, is that Assassin’s Signet wouldn’t trigger on our #1 skill (except Backstab). I like keeping it on autoattack because it reduces the need to whack buttons and gives more time to observe surroundings for potential incoming adds, focus on casting animations etc.

Of course you can always take some range so #1 won’t hit, activate signet, then use Blossom or HS.

Round 12,Fight!!!
OK let me go back a months ago in the beta weekends and to track the history of Heartseeker.
Now GW2 is a game,quite different from the others mmorpgs(atleats from the other AAA rpg from which we all come) in some aspects:
1.It has NO global cooldown.
2.It has forced Skill queueing.
3.It has NO range skill prevention(in a way “you are out of range”,ergo nothing happens)
As a result of this and other things in the early beta’s,thousands of players,utterly commoned with button mashing and skill spamming,who was trying to play thief,instead of being the badkitten Ninjas who they expected to be all ended hitting the air and constantly w/o initiative(and getting fully destroyed by anyone).
The game just was designed to punish spammers.
As a result this same forum filled with thousands of whine posts(one or two by me),who were demanding for buff,fix,rework,tune or whatever.Some of this request were somehow reasonable,but most were gamebraking like Perma-stealth and such.
So i guess ANet chose the least evil and change one thief skill to be spam-friendly instead of being spam-punishing…
It was HeartSeeker,which back than had a range 170(the range of the present LDB)
What they did is they increased its range to a value that will ensure all blows will deliver if you just spam.
So this take us back at the present moment.ANet KNOWS this skill isn’t OK,because back then it was OK,and they change it to please all ninja-wannabies until they are satisfied and hopefully some of them develop some skills.And when they deal with the acount hacking HS will be tuned back again where it was before .It’s a fact that they don’t have problem with reverting things(they changed C&D from 5 to 6 and reverse several times).

remove initiative and put cooldowns on thief skills and problem solved

no more 1 button win

or rise the initiative cost and remove the leap from heartseeker

or nerf the damage by 50%

I am still learning other professions’ abilities, but I’m almost certain that I have been stomped by most of them with similar abilities. For example, a warrior stunned me and used an ability that took me from full to 0 in one move. If you tone one down, they all need some attention.

Notice how everyone who thinks it’s OP come up with the following situations:
I was fighting this guy and I was doing okay, and I was dodging all his skills and then
OMG A THIEF APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE SPAMMING HEARTSEEKER AND KILLS ME, CLEARLY OP.

No seriously, dodge heartseeker, slow the thief, blind the thief, daze the thief, immobilize the thief, run away. Heartseeker is countered by EVERYTHING.

There is nothing more frustrating than the droves of people who play X class/character and excuse anything that may be imbalanced with, “CC them, that’s the counter”.

Okay, you’ve all been saying this since the beginning of MMO PvP and it’s not getting any more of a viable excuse. If a class is so powerful that the only means of dealing with their incredible damage and ability to stick to targets is through CC then there’s an inherent balance problem with the class. If you’re going to try and defend your flavor of the month, then at least do it efficiently.

The game is brand new, and balance obviously isn’t perfect. Heartseeker is obviously one of those things that is just too powerful. All the thieves in both of my guilds fully admit to it and have already stopped using it as a main damage dealer because they KNOW it will be nerfed to only being useful as an execution ability.

Enjoy it while you can though.

Honestly guys I don’t think Heartseeker is broken. I think they need to nerf the trait that grants 20% more damage on a -50% HP target.

That grants MANY skills a lot of power but when used in conjunction with Heartseeker it turns combat into “Hey there’s a target, HeartseekerHeartseekerHeartseekerHeartseekerHeartseeker … Is he dead yet?”

Remember how everyone was crying “Nerf Hundred Blades!” on the warrior? Yeah, it turned out that Frenzy granted a ton of extra crit damage and that was what needed to be nerfed…and it was…

So what the problem essentially is, is that you refuse to move yourself away from a threat, Tom Chesterson.

I see where you’re coming from, I’d also say it’s stupid to lock down the thief who is wasting all his initiative and effectively wiping any chance of surviving that he has, by pressing 2 repeatedly.

Basically, you’re saying that you want to be able to tank the Heartseeker damage in melee, when running a glass cannon build (because heartseeker doesn’t kill anyone running toughness-vitality builds)

I don’t run heartseeker builds, because you won’t kill anyone competent.
Is that OP? Hm.

I really don’t understand what all the hassle is about since I play Thief as my main on PvP and HS is not OP at all unless you are under 33% of HP. Pistol Whip does way more damage and is rubble compared to Heartseeker. Mainly because when you Infiltrator Strike into someone, it immobilization them so the PW animation can continue, but still, there is a way to dodge PW. Everything depends on what you do in combat.

I play a thief as my main. I understand where some of you are coming from with the heartseeker spam. Its definitely annoying, but I think its just that. On my thief I can easily outplay a heartseeker spammer, and I actually enjoy seeing it because its an obvious sign that the person doesn’t understand how to fully use the class and I take advantage of this.

I also have 4 alts I like to play with. Ranger, Mesmer, Elelmentalist, and Guardian. I have solo’d HS spammers on my ranger and Guardian, but have not encounter any yet with my Ele and Mesmer as they are relatively new. But with Ranger and especially Guard they both have tools to combat HS spam. I have a Guard friend that I play with, and when we were previously shuffled I tried to HS spam him just to test it and I did not win the fight.

Having a thief as my main but also playing other classes I can’t support HS spam or a nerf when I know I can counter it. I think its fantastic that thieves have a gap closer as well as a finisher, where HS shines as a finisher. I think thieves need HS for the nature of the class, but as with hundred blades, if that is the only thing you rely on a skilled player will easily pick you apart.

Rika.7249:

So what the problem essentially is, is that you refuse to move yourself away from a threat, Tom Chesterson.

I see where you’re coming from, I’d also say it’s stupid to lock down the thief who is wasting all his initiative and effectively wiping any chance of surviving that he has, by pressing 2 repeatedly.

Basically, you’re saying that you want to be able to tank the Heartseeker damage in melee, when running a glass cannon build (because heartseeker doesn’t kill anyone running toughness-vitality builds)

I don’t run heartseeker builds, because you won’t kill anyone competent.
Is that OP? Hm.

Except I play a ranger with Natural Vigor and Lightning Reflexes and constantly use dodge against Thieves and they will still end up catching up to me. You’re grasping at straws with false information. There’s a reason every sPvP game has a minimum of 5 Thieves right now.

Tom Chesterson.6905:

Rika.7249:

So what the problem essentially is, is that you refuse to move yourself away from a threat, Tom Chesterson.

I see where you’re coming from, I’d also say it’s stupid to lock down the thief who is wasting all his initiative and effectively wiping any chance of surviving that he has, by pressing 2 repeatedly.

Basically, you’re saying that you want to be able to tank the Heartseeker damage in melee, when running a glass cannon build (because heartseeker doesn’t kill anyone running toughness-vitality builds)

I don’t run heartseeker builds, because you won’t kill anyone competent.
Is that OP? Hm.

Except I play a ranger with Natural Vigor, Lightning Reflexes, and Quick Shot and constantly use dodge against Thieves and they will still end up catching up to me. You’re grasping at straws with false information. There’s a reason every sPvP game has a minimum of 5 Thieves right now.

Tom Chesterson.6905:

Tom Chesterson.6905:

Rika.7249:

So what the problem essentially is, is that you refuse to move yourself away from a threat, Tom Chesterson.

I see where you’re coming from, I’d also say it’s stupid to lock down the thief who is wasting all his initiative and effectively wiping any chance of surviving that he has, by pressing 2 repeatedly.

Basically, you’re saying that you want to be able to tank the Heartseeker damage in melee, when running a glass cannon build (because heartseeker doesn’t kill anyone running toughness-vitality builds)

I don’t run heartseeker builds, because you won’t kill anyone competent.
Is that OP? Hm.

Except I play a ranger with Natural Vigor, Lightning Reflexes, and Quick Shot and constantly use dodge against Thieves and they will still end up catching up to me. You’re grasping at straws with false information. There’s a reason every sPvP game has a minimum of 5 Thieves right now.

Except there’s no thieves to be found anywhere. Literally.
I see Engineers and Guardians everywhere however. There’s a reason they’re OP, by your logic. (although they’re not?)

Also, they’re able to catch up with you. Boo hoo, so they catch you with a single heartseeker out of 5, and you lose 1k hp.
Oh, and the thief’s dead by then, against a ranger.

omg dont do it. my personal record of killing ranger is 4sec, wait pls i’ll do it for 3sec soon

Hi, I can’t evade a short range jump and attack. Plz nerf it, thief too stronk.