Guild Wars 2

Sup guys,

Ppl are complaining so bad about this skill its not even funny. I dont like to throw around that something is OP or not, cause not everybody really understand the definition of something being OP.

Instead I will say this. Heartseek makes Theif class very easy to play and delivers with one skill high results compared to what other professions need to pull off to match it.

I think the problem with Heartseek is poorly designed. That skill is gap closer, has no CD, you can use up to what 5 in a row? and the lower your target is on HP the more damage it does.

There are multiple ways to fix this but I am thinking about one particular that would fix this whole issue.

This game has always been about choice. Do I pop this skill? yes or no..if I do, i might be able to block the next attack but i risk it going on CD and I wont have it available for blocking next attack, which might be even bigger than the previous one. As Elementalist, if I jump from Earth Attunement to Fire attunement, I need to be aware of the fact that by doing so I am loosing a lot of toughness but gaining some power. Its a risk…and I need to make risk assessment if its worth it or not in the particular situation.

Problem with Heartseek is that it has no risk. You can use it multiple times without anything to loose. Eventually you run out of innitiative but thats usually not a problem because by then the target is dead.

FIX:

Ok, the fix I would propose would be to increase the damage of this skill. Now you are sayin..are you serious? Why increase? Get the hell outta here… Just listen. Increase the damage of Heartseek, BUT make it cost total innitiative. (There are some builds that give you more innitiative, so thats why I say total innitiative instead of strict amount..)

If you do this, you are giving Thief a choice. A risk he needs to assess. Do I use this skill that will do big damage and close the gap between me and my target…BUT it will consume all my innitiative, or do I not use it and use the innitiative on some different skills.

This will bring more “depth” into Thiefs gameplay, potentially making the class more enjoyable to play rather than just heartseek spam until im out of innitiative, and it will certainly silence the whiners.

This is just one of the many ideas how to fix the issue with Heartseek. Please use this thread to give specific “CONSTRUCTIVE” feedback how to change/modify/redesign Heartseek rather than just “buff this” and “nerf that”

EDIT: Oh and I would just like to add one thing. The reason why we even have issues like this imo is by giving all classes CD based skills and have one professions where spells have no CD but cost some energy.

There isnt single profession that can use one skill twice in a row except autoattack nr1 skill. If Thief had CD based skills like every other profession and had no innitiative, most certainly we wouldnt be facing this issue.

Regards,
Looria

it would be great if the damage increase will be proportional to the cost … i think maybe a 45k dmg if specced correctly should be fine. so thieves don’t have to spam HS but they can do it just once.

Dae, yes I was thinking about this too. It would be all about how much damage would it do with 1 innitiative and with full innitiative. It would have to be in the way so unless it costs high amount of innitiative, it wouldnt be really effective.

However with this even with 1 innitiative with low damage it would still be gap closer. So maybe making it that you can use it lets say from 5 innitiative and the more innitiative you have the more damage does it do.

Ofc you cant have one skill doing 45k damage because that would just break the game. It needs to be reasonable. Also because its high damage you need to make sure that players have the opportunity to dodge it. So Heartseeker would not be usable from stealth so players can see the incoming animation.

so a skill that leaves the thief useless, with 450range, not usable from stealth…
we have to change a lot of other skills, like warriors’ Aimed shot that should incapacitate the warrior to perform any other skill for the next 30 sec and immobilize it for 15.

seriously, your changes will just take 1 skill away from thieves’ bar.

the only thing they have to do with HS is fix it so it wuoldn’t miss so much with no reason.

Warriors aimed shot is very easily dodgable or even worse reflectable back at him. And he can only use it when he has enough Adrenaline which he again gains only by attacking you. This is something completely different.

If some skill does high amount of damage you need to give players the chance to avoid them. Take Dragons Tooth for example. Big damage, 2,5s to land. So much time to avoid.

This wouldnt take 1 skill away from Thieves bar. It would just cause Thief to think carefully if they dare risk using the skill or not. If they do, and time it so the target cant avoid it, then it hugely pays off. If they do but target avoids it, well thats what is skill based game about.

Or we could leave it alone and let people who run full berserk gear die for it.

Melphina.9035:

Or we could leave it alone and let people who run full berserk gear die for it.

I asked for constructive feedback and suggestions.
Your comment is neither of these so please if You dont have anything better to say, dont say anything.

Full berserker gear should be as viable for thief as any other gear for certain gameplay. Anyway armor is not not the point of this thread.

Heart Seeker spam has been done away with from a damage perspective short of people who run berserker gear as they have no health and no toughness. So if we remove that because it should be viable as a burst build (which it is) we come down to the idea that Heartseeker should be changed to have more risk and thus more reward. The focus of course being damage and usage of resources to apply such damage.

If the idea is to have more damage based on our resource , build that generate more initiative will become common place as people will HSS followed by using everything to get it back up (making it MORE powerful) then HSS again. Most targets should be low allowing the thief to melee them down. Using Berserker gear this should be easy for anyone to 2 shot someone with said gear. The draw back is you have to get in range of that person. Not a complicated thing to do unless your plan it to 1v1 people and even then you can pop stealth to get a decent gap closer.

Or we could leave it the way it is since its NOT bad as it currently is. I enjoy watching people spam that ability like its the be all end all of D/D spec from 40% and down.

Melphina.9035:

I enjoy watching people spam that ability like its the be all end all of D/D spec from 40% and down.

This is what concerns me.

Can you say about any other profession that they can “spam” with one skill anyone down from 40%? No. This isnt good design and you should not be able to do that. The fact that you enjoy it is for me sad, but also confirms that majority of ppl just spam heartseek until they are dry on innitiative, go stealth, wait for innitiative to get up and do the same thing over and over.

Which again leads to the class delivering high results with one or two skills and thus the class is very shallow compared to other professions.

Looria.8019:

Melphina.9035:

I enjoy watching people spam that ability like its the be all end all of D/D spec from 40% and down.

This is what concerns me.

Can you say about any other profession that they can “spam” with one skill anyone down from 40%? No. This isnt good design and you should not be able to do that. The fact that you enjoy it is for me sad, but also confirms that majority of ppl just spam heartseek until they are dry on innitiative, go stealth, wait for innitiative to get up and do the same thing over and over.

Which again leads to the class delivering high results with one or two skills and thus the class is very shallow compared to other professions.

What im saying is people spam the ability because it offers a lot with the berserker gear. However, these people are playing maybe 10% of the true effectiveness of a thief in any pvp(wvw or sPvP) situation. There are far more effective builds for killing people than HSS spam (see Haste+Pistol Whip or backstab build).

Now using HSS when they see players reach sub 30% hp to put them into the lowest level isnt a bad thing. Its when they start out using HSS when the player the person attacking is at 100% and thats just a matter of they will have to learn the hard way that we have 4 other abilities.

You actually have 13 other abilities, but yea.

Problem comes when 90% of ppl use 10% of the true efectivness of thief, becuase its just enough to do enough damage to defeat the enemy. And thats the whole problem at the moment.

I will just add that what I am describing right now is mostly caused by sPVP and tPVP. I suppose it doesnt effect PvE that much. Thing is that same principles are in PvP and PvE in this game. And you cant do one thing in PvP and other thing in PvE. Which is exactly another reason why having one class standing out with different game mechanic is a bad idea and will never cause any good in the game.

You need to stop trying to make thieves work like every other class. They designed them differently on purpose. Being able to spam one skill is fine, because there’s already a risk involved. Using heartseeker at the wrong time does less damage and waste initiative you could use at other points.

Furthermore, what else do you expect them to use? You’ve got Heartseeker on #2. #3 is Death Blossom, which isn’t effective on single targets in most cases. Dancing dagger on #4, similarly, is intended for groups. It does the same damage per target as heartseeker does over 50% health. #5 is a stealth.

Using Dancing dagger or Death Blossom on single targets is a waste of initiative. They will do the same (DD) or less (DB) damage, and cost more initiative. There is literally no reason to do this.

I’m not even sure who you’ve heard complaining about the skill, because I’ve not heard anybody doing so. It’s not that strong, compared to a lot of the alternatives. If you look at effectiveness of the skills (base, tooltip values. They change, but they all change together), using damage for initiative ratios, heartseeker is pretty bad before 50% health. It only does 112 points of damage for each initiative it uses. Comparatively, Pistol Whip with a sword and pistol does 205.2. That’s higher than heartseeker even under 50%, which is only 168.

Even using cloak and dagger to stealth and then backstabbing an enemy does more damage at 134.33 per initative, than using heartseeker above 50% health.

Anybody who’s spamming heartseeker when the enemy is above 50% health is wasting their initative. The first tap of your #1 skill does more total damage with it’s two quick stabs than heartseeker does above 50% health. Heartseeker inherently needs to be used properly, or you’re wasting your initiative and your time, and doing lower damage.

It effects all pvp including wvw though the issues there are a bit different since we have more open spaces to get across. I dont play high level tPvP but i couldnt imagine it being as effective against a coordinated group of players. At the lower ends i have seen thiefs just HSS until the bar is empty and start to auto in the hope they are dead by then.

The problem then becomes to we change how a skill works based on the lower end of game play or the higher. Personally, i like the middle ground that they choose. It still has the power but it takes longer to get there.

I didn’t scroll through all posts and read them, this is in direct response to the original poster.

Heart Seeker is awful to spam. Honestly yesterday I saw 4 HS thieves, some in tourneys, and it made me cry tears of pain. Not because I died so fast, but because they couldn’t burst my thief down as fast I I was killing them with Infiltrator’s Strike and sword auto attacks.

The skill is entirely useless until 50%, where it is decently useful, but a CnD → Backstab will do greater damage still. It’s finally at 25% it’s worth using, and you may need 1 or 2 to finish the person off. The skill is only useful as a finisher. If you’re spamming it from full health and getting kills after the nerf, you’re either fighting people who are just learning the game, or you’re going to be unsuccessful in the long run.