Guild Wars 2

Alright, I’ve been playing a lot of tPvP lately and noticed that 99% of thieves I’ve came across are complete noobs to be honest.

They’re all playing dagger/pistol and all they do through out all fights is push 5 and then spam 2 (smokefield -> heartseak spam). The combo is really a no skill, annoyance to other players and kinda OP towards most light classes (necro DS insta kill, ele insta kill).

I’m not saying this as a non-thief player. I’m saying this because I, as a thief player, am sick and tired of seeing the HS-spammers and not just because they “burst people down” but because they die like flies. I hate getting them on my team because it’s a lost match in most cases.

It’s really disappointing to see the whole class be so “monotone” single-button masher where there are SO MANY good builds with which you can easily do 1vsX (For example, sword/dagger shadowstep master).

Therefore, I would suggest few solutions to this issue:
Make a change with the heartseeker skill instead of the trait-chain for once

- Making heartseeker require like 2 more initiative so that a thief would be unable to spam it like 4 times in a row

- Switching dancing dagger (Skill n°4 on dagger) with heartseeker would not only make dancing dagger being used more (due to it being the second skill) but would also fix the perma-stealth issue that’s been bothering a lot of WvW players.

If they keep dieing like flies, there is no need for a change. Bad players die. This is as it should be.

But they are barely perma stealthing now and even when they do they have to sacrifice their utility skills now. Nerfing heartseeker will also affect d/d and doing the black powder+heartseeker spam already eats a lot of initiative.

More importantly d/p users are the easiest thief builds to predict, you(OP) yourself said what they do all the time….knowing is half the battle, other players who can’t, deserve to lose.

That’s true but I look at GW2 as a dynamic game which doesn’t have 100 skill lines as typical MMOs but has 10 skills and those 10 skills need to be used correctly to make the game exciting. In this case, it’s 2 skills that make the game look stupid and on top of that, when I play, say, my nuke necro, a thief just spams skill 2 for 5 times and kills me, doing 6-8k hits every time, how’s that “balanced” or exciting?

My point is, make thief builds more variable and open to other skills and weapons rather than this small op set that has been going on since the release.

So they die like flies or they spam 2 for a kill?

That’s what happens when you cry for nerfs so much that the profession gets cornered to the point where the veteran thief community shelves their thieves so much that the only people who are playing are newbies.

And you didn’t expect this kitten to happen??

There was a nice solution for thiefs who dont want to Play with stealth in another thread, its very simple,
add a trait wich give buffs 5 sec on a evade( nice buffs like Regeneration/protection/ and other different one) but you also get reveal 5 sec ….. so p/p sh/s/p thiefs would get a nice buff as non stealth thiefs (risk and reward)

klemen.8439:

Alright, I’ve been playing a lot of tPvP lately and noticed that 99% of thieves I’ve came across are complete noobs to be honest.

They’re all playing dagger/pistol and all they do through out all fights is push 5 and then spam 2 (smokefield -> heartseak spam). The combo is really a no skill, annoyance to other players and kinda OP towards most light classes (necro DS insta kill, ele insta kill).

I’m not saying this as a non-thief player. I’m saying this because I, as a thief player, am sick and tired of seeing the HS-spammers and not just because they “burst people down” but because they die like flies. I hate getting them on my team because it’s a lost match in most cases.

It’s really disappointing to see the whole class be so “monotone” single-button masher where there are SO MANY good builds with which you can easily do 1vsX (For example, sword/dagger shadowstep master).

Therefore, I would suggest few solutions to this issue:
Make a change with the heartseeker skill instead of the trait-chain for once

- Making heartseeker require like 2 more initiative so that a thief would be unable to spam it like 4 times in a row

- Switching dancing dagger (Skill n°4 on dagger) with heartseeker would not only make dancing dagger being used more (due to it being the second skill) but would also fix the perma-stealth issue that’s been bothering a lot of WvW players.

There is no Perma-stealth anymore via BP and HS. I am unsure how you could be unaware of that while feeling you’re qualified to suggest changes to D/X, especially as a thief player.

Let bad thieves spam 2 – there are bad players of every class – the solution isn’t to fix what isn’t broke.

Posts like this remind me of side scroll fighting games. new players spam moves like “low kick”. Other new players get mad saying that it is cheesy and ‘cheating’ and OP. Until they learn how to low block. Then it isn’t OP anymore. Becasue knowing the one move someone is going to continuously use is an easy strategy to counter.

Bad players spam lowkick and bad player die to low kick spamming. Same with HS spam.

evilapprentice.6379:

There is no Perma-stealth anymore via BP and HS. I am unsure how you could be unaware of that while feeling you’re qualified to suggest changes to D/P, especially as a thief player.

Let bad thieves spam 2 – there are bad players of every class – the solution isn’t to fix what isn’t broke.

You can still perma-stealth but with combination of utilities and traits that you have to risk. Only thing you can’t do now is spam HS 4 times in an open field through one smoke field but you can still do it many times while facing a wall. The perma-stealth still remains WvW issue if used by a good thief.

And my point is not just saying that HS is somewhat OP. My main point I’m trying to get through is that Guild Wars should be about skill chains and diversity among weapons and utilities, not this monotone 99% bullkitten.

Those bad spammers will be forced to learn dynamic play as people learn how to easily counter one trick ponies.

Dustfinger.9510:

If they keep dieing like flies, there is no need for a change. Bad players die. This is as it should be.

Pretty much this right here.

If there is 1 thing I have learned as a thief player, it is that we are a liability. If we are bad, we hurt the team a lot. We are fragile little souls that are capable of incredible damage and mobility. If we are good, we can help the team a lot. The definition of high risk/high reward.

There are button mashers in every class. Spirit rangers spam 1 and etc. but if you’re mad you will still die. End of story.

Alright, I’ve been playing a lot of tPvP lately and noticed that 99% of thieves I’ve came across are complete noobs to be honest.
They’re all playing dagger/pistol

It’s really disappointing to see the whole class be so “monotone” single-button masher where there are SO MANY good builds with which you can easily do 1vsX (For example, sword/dagger shadowstep master).

Not really, S/D is dead now as you can see and was predicted by most thieves before the patch came out.

klemen.8439:

evilapprentice.6379:

There is no Perma-stealth anymore via BP and HS. I am unsure how you could be unaware of that while feeling you’re qualified to suggest changes to D/P, especially as a thief player.

Let bad thieves spam 2 – there are bad players of every class – the solution isn’t to fix what isn’t broke.

You can still perma-stealth but with combination of utilities and traits that you have to risk. Only thing you can’t do now is spam HS 4 times in an open field through one smoke field but you can still do it many times while facing a wall. The perma-stealth still remains WvW issue if used by a good thief.

4 HS’s + BP = 18 Init – with Infusion and 15 points in trickery, this is probably possible once from full init. Using all of your init for 8 – 10 effective seconds of stealth seems fine to me, and mathematically is not permanent stealth (since you’ll only have regenerated as many init as you spent seconds in stealth). Using utilities to have a long period of stealth is acceptable, and in no way “Perma-stealth” in the manner the term was being used before the infusion change.

And my point is not just saying that HS is somewhat OP. My main point I’m trying to get through is that Guild Wars should be about skill chains and diversity among weapons and utilities, not this monotone 99% bullkitten.

And that’s fine if that’s your point. Your suggestion is still awful however – HS isn’t good enough to warrant the increased init cost you suggested. Furthermore, the basic design of thief means bad players will spam when it’s unwarranted – there’s no cure for that that doesn’t unnecessarily penalize good players with higher costs/other negative effects.

Whatever you tried to suggest here would break the weaponset and skill-ceiling of it even more, and make thieves die even more, forcing even more of the remaining good thieves to play warrior, mesmer or engineer.

Heartseeker grants the Dagger mainhand thief mobility. Perma swiftness is a huge sacrifice on a thief, even 25% movement speed is a huge sacrifice. And a spammable leap finisher, it can keep you alive in tight situation spamming it in a water field.

Sure I get annoyed while playing PU mesmer, when I’m having some relaxing 1v3, and actually have cds, and some rank 5 thief who just bought the game comes out of nowhere and spams 5 heartseekers in a row and I die. Same way as I’m annoyed when I get a random signet of spite out of nowhere from some rank 2 necro when I have all condition cleanse on cd. But well, all classes have something to carry them and an “I win-button”.
But Guardians and Warriors are currently easy to play once you set up a good build, took me a while to get the grip of a casual shatter build on my mesmer, but didn’t even take me 2 hours to learn Hambow as good as someone who have mained warrior for 1000+ hours, sure I’ve played a lot and my past experience contributed.

But the skill and effort required for a D/P thief to kill a good hambow warrior is far beyond what’s needed for a good hambow warrior to kill a D/P thief, if the thief does a single mistake he gets locked down and it takes about 4 hits from the hammer to down the thief, though if he’s specced into shadow arts it takes an additional hit but it wont land because of Last Refuge, only time it actually saves thieves. ^^
But well, Shadow Arts and tPvP.. Even PU mesmer is more useful in that case.

Beating a dead horse..

BUT since I can’t resist, I will elaborate…

1.) “Perma-stealth” as it is so irritatingly called, already got nerfed.
2.) “Revealed” debuff lasts longer in sPvP and you can not pull off the BP + HS combo while IN combat as often as you can in something like WvW.
3.) Black Powder + HS combo is not Heartseeker spam.
4.) Getting hit by 2 heartseekers in a row is not Hearseeker spam.
5.) Heartseeker spam is not difficult to counter.
6.) Heartseeker spam works on people who don’t counter it.
7.) So does power/deathshroud lifeblast necro.
8.) Dancing Dagger isn’t used because it sucks, not because we have to press 4 instead of 2.

There was already a thread about this recently, and many thieves (myself included) just don’t use the “spam HS tactic” because we find it largely ineffective.

Arguments can be made from both sides.. In sPvP before, I literally got called a “heartseeker spammer” because I used heartseeker ONCE to finish a guy off who tried running at 20% HP..

I mean no offense to you whatsoever. I see what you are saying but the fact is thieves do not need more nerfs. Heartseeker spamming is a lame tactic that works but USUALLY only “works” if you let it. There are so many counters: Fear/Knockback/Immob/Blind/Chill<-ESPECIALLY chill that you can utilize to prevent getting killed by it. Then once the spammer is out of initiative they’re pretty EZ kills.

Well, countering hs spammer is one thing but not all classes are capable of doing that to the extent where their counter attacks would actually make a life-saving difference like the combination of guardian’s blocks and cc would make.

It’s not really about so called “nerfing” the thief but making it more enjoyable to those who can’t see it.

The sword/dagger combination is epic imho. It’s a weapon combination I’ve and I still play the most on my thief, especially in tPvP since you can smoothly shadowstep in a battle, burst someone down with use of evasive attacks and then port away and you’re already doing your next task. It allows me to hold a point, capture buffs and nuke players with 0 time wasted for moving around the map and on top of that, it allows me to get out of AOE and to heal/buff up whenever I want during any battle, unlike the typical d/p build which requires you to either spam 2, gain stealth or switch to sb to port away but all of that usually ends in getting CCed and being bursted before being able to port away¸.

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

There are so many counters: Fear/Knockback/Immob/Blind/Chill<-ESPECIALLY chill that you can utilize to prevent getting killed by it. Then once the spammer is out of initiative they’re pretty EZ kills.

Allow me to add:

Fear, Knockback, Knockdown, Stun, Daze, Blind, Immobilize, Cripple, Chill, Teleport, Aegis, Various Blocks, Invulnerability, Barriers, Dodge or Skills With Evasion, Stealth, High Armor + Protection, Barkskin, Various PvE elements (like minions, clones and pets), Death Shroud, Plague Form, Tornado.

klemen.8439:

…… unlike the typical d/p build which requires you to either spam 2, gain stealth or switch to sb to port away but all of that usually ends in getting CCed and being bursted before being able to port away¸.

Then why are you proposing nerfs to that set?

D/P and S/D or 2 completely different playstyles with completely different counters, D/P is a chaser while S/D is exactly what you described. Blackpowder, Headshot and Shadowshot allows the thief to effectively engage in combat without having to dodge around or stealth, and there are situations when you don’t go in with that weaponset and effectively use the SB from outside the cluster for the poison field and clusterbombs and auto attack.

Must just be interpretation/different techniques we have of the playstyle of D/P. Personally I use my autoattack in combat more often than heartseeker. I use the BP+HS to set up backstab as an opener and a finisher mostly. Shadow shot is saved for gap closing, and Headshot is saved for interrupting heals/mez mass invis/etc. I rarely switch to shortbow for porting away because it doesn’t ever work for me. Doesn’t go far enough, fast enough and you really have to have full initiative to make the most of it otherwise you’re still in range anyways.

That said, I ALWAYS have Shadowstep on my utility bar playing as 0/30/30/10/0 D/P thief. Really saves your butt when you DO get stuck in the CC lockdowns. Pretty much the only counter to CC that the build has.

Let the HS spammers spam, i too noticed the HUGE amount of d/p thiefs joined a server last night with at least 6 or 7 total in a 15 man server at the time. And they HS spam allot constantly try to stay stealthed ect. Which is fine by me cause we learned a long time ago how to deal with it i thought….. lol they will reroll soon or actually learn the class, in the mean time i love eatin them all up with my d/d build while they desperatly attempt to apply blinds and backstabs to me. We probably all HS spammed a lil when we started

As a full time P/P thief, I have always scoffed at the flavor of the month builds, sure I have tried it, but I realize with my play style I can win a lot easier and help out my team with my build. It is condition based (of course) and heavy on Toughness. I may not have burst damage but I can stay away from my targets and bleed them hard, with traited Steal I can get to them when they run and it’s always nice to have when you need to escape, stealth on steal.
I love when I get jumped by a HS thief, just Withdraw for a quick heal and pew pew away with my dots while they try to catch back up with me, usually by the time they stealth again they are bleeding out and it’s just a waiting game for stealth to break.

:\ Man, and I created the nerf wish list for these kind of threads…
Fear not! I will add your idea to it (in 5 minutes…).

D/P was already nerfed on Dec. 10, which they mainly touched on init regen from re-entering stealth. This time they should increase init costs.

I only press 5 and 2 and I can kill anything.

Too op.
pliz nerf.

OP is a typical “i have lvl 80 thief, thieves are op and cheeeeezy, plz moar nerfs”.

I agree that Black Powder/Heartseeker is a ridiculous counter against melee-orientated professions. It can shut down these entire characters, forcing them to have something capable of either countering the Blind area (e.g. the lovechild’s Berserker’s Stance) or a ranged skill forcing the thief out (e.g. a guardian’s Binding Blade/Pull). Oh, wait! Wasn’t learning and countering the whole point of this game?

Also, nerfing something because idiots do idiotic things with them? Nerf everything, then.

OP is clearly a necro main with barely any experience on a Thief, lol. You’re not fooling anyone buddy, sorry.

Lol kudos to the poster above that’s the point of the game is to counter, its d/p nothing much they do is unexpected or shocking 5, 2 backstab even as a thief I have no issue with the blinds they produce

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

Beating a dead horse..

BUT since I can’t resist, I will elaborate…

1.) “Perma-stealth” as it is so irritatingly called, already got nerfed.
2.) “Revealed” debuff lasts longer in sPvP and you can not pull off the BP + HS combo while IN combat as often as you can in something like WvW.
3.) Black Powder + HS combo is not Heartseeker spam.
4.) Getting hit by 2 heartseekers in a row is not Hearseeker spam.
5.) Heartseeker spam is not difficult to counter.
6.) Heartseeker spam works on people who don’t counter it.
7.) So does power/deathshroud lifeblast necro.
8.) Dancing Dagger isn’t used because it sucks, not because we have to press 4 instead of 2.

There was already a thread about this recently, and many thieves (myself included) just don’t use the “spam HS tactic” because we find it largely ineffective.

Arguments can be made from both sides.. In sPvP before, I literally got called a “heartseeker spammer” because I used heartseeker ONCE to finish a guy off who tried running at 20% HP..

I mean no offense to you whatsoever. I see what you are saying but the fact is thieves do not need more nerfs. Heartseeker spamming is a lame tactic that works but USUALLY only “works” if you let it. There are so many counters: Fear/Knockback/Immob/Blind/Chill<-ESPECIALLY chill that you can utilize to prevent getting killed by it. Then once the spammer is out of initiative they’re pretty EZ kills.

Lol, as someone who has used it, perma stealth is alive and well, trust me. It’s even easier now with improved initiative regeneration.

Sanduskel.1850:

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

Beating a dead horse..

BUT since I can’t resist, I will elaborate…

1.) “Perma-stealth” as it is so irritatingly called, already got nerfed.
2.) “Revealed” debuff lasts longer in sPvP and you can not pull off the BP + HS combo while IN combat as often as you can in something like WvW.
3.) Black Powder + HS combo is not Heartseeker spam.
4.) Getting hit by 2 heartseekers in a row is not Hearseeker spam.
5.) Heartseeker spam is not difficult to counter.
6.) Heartseeker spam works on people who don’t counter it.
7.) So does power/deathshroud lifeblast necro.
8.) Dancing Dagger isn’t used because it sucks, not because we have to press 4 instead of 2.

There was already a thread about this recently, and many thieves (myself included) just don’t use the “spam HS tactic” because we find it largely ineffective.

Arguments can be made from both sides.. In sPvP before, I literally got called a “heartseeker spammer” because I used heartseeker ONCE to finish a guy off who tried running at 20% HP..

I mean no offense to you whatsoever. I see what you are saying but the fact is thieves do not need more nerfs. Heartseeker spamming is a lame tactic that works but USUALLY only “works” if you let it. There are so many counters: Fear/Knockback/Immob/Blind/Chill<-ESPECIALLY chill that you can utilize to prevent getting killed by it. Then once the spammer is out of initiative they’re pretty EZ kills.

Lol, as someone who has used it, perma stealth is alive and well, trust me. It’s even easier now with improved initiative regeneration.

It is alive and well, i see it often. That said it is not “easier” but it still is accessible.

Sadly people still die to hs spamming. Even on my zerker thief I can turn around, and kill them and continue on my duel. If they manage to escape (5 minor trait in SA) they SR and wait to heal up. Its a shame, but I don’t know if increasing the base cost is reasonable, as hs has its true uses other than a spam button.

Maybe for each consecutive cast, it cost 1 initiative more, and this counter resets if HS isn’t casted for 4 seconds or something. Maintain it’s intended purpose as a leap finisher/gap closer/finisher, while dealing with the fools who think they are actually doing good when they spam #2 on a ele who is 20% health.

This is why I run S/P and excel at it. You’ve got to distinguish yourself somehow, because 99% of people will judge you before the match starts.

Sanduskel.1850:

Lol, as someone who has used it, perma stealth is alive and well, trust me. It’s even easier now with improved initiative regeneration.

Definitely not easier. If you do not trait any init regen other than infusion of shadows, you now absolutely MUST have all your utility skills rotated in to maintain “perma-stealth” which I believe was ANET’s desire.

NinjaEd.3946:

Maybe for each consecutive cast, it cost 1 initiative more, and this counter resets if HS isn’t casted for 4 seconds or something. Maintain it’s intended purpose as a leap finisher/gap closer/finisher, while dealing with the fools who think they are actually doing good when they spam #2 on a ele who is 20% health.

First of all, an ele with 20% health would require probably 1 heartseeker to down, which is not spam.

Secondly your last sentence is why I have a problem with people saying to change heartseeker because it is OP. It isn’t a question of whether the person spamming the heartseeker is bad. If you get heartseeker spammed and you’re the one that goes down, not only did you not win, but you, technically are the one who is “not good”. It’s been discussed before. There are plenty of counters to HS spam. Don’t panic, just keep your hands on the keyboard.

Hell, I’ve had guys HS spam me before WHILE using Quickness and still not take me down even below half HP..

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

It isn’t a question of whether the person spamming the heartseeker is bad. If you get heartseeker spammed and you’re the one that goes down, not only did you not win, but you, technically are the one who is “not good”.

See, this is where we disagree.

You’re saying that if you can’t counter HS, it’s you who’s not good. Well, not every class can do that as I said before. For example, when I roll my fresh air burst ele with a tank team to support with aoe bursts, yes, it’s a risky build to play but even if I used mist form on it, it has 75 seconds cooldown where as most other classes with a skill that makes them invulnerable have 60 second cooldown with traitable reduced cooldowns (eg. Warrior, Guardian, Engineer, Mesmer, Ranger). Now, I don’t understand how you can call someone a “baddie” if the dodge recharge and invul cooldown along with the skillrotation (Ele’s attunment recharge rate) simply don’t give you an oportunity to counter HS spammer effectively. The initiative required for HS spam would fully recharge for about 4 times in the time of Ele’s cooldowns during the encounter… And on top of that, the HS acts like an aimbot. Wherever you move/dodge/blink/etc., HS will follow you as long as they got you targeted and towards Ele and Necro, the 6-8k hits are simply OP if you ask me. Light class, low base toughness, ineffective class if played with wrong build, too few counter skills, so what now? Should all Eles and Necros roll to a tanky role and play for themselves rather than for the team, just because another class has an “aimbotlike” skill that requires no effort to aim/use and deals INSANE damage? I suppose that would only reduce build diversity amongst other classes, just because HS is so spammable.

I really like the idea of someone who said that initiative cost would increase with each HS you land – letting you close the gap with same initiative cost but if you do hit the target, the initiative cost would increase by one or two.

First, and most importantly, none of us really know if you’re truly running into a mass scourge of perma-stealth thieves in tpvp (I can tell you, from my experience, they are a rarity – and for good reason). Secondly, most people who play other classes see blackpowder + heartseeker once and automatically assume the thief is spamming heartseeker through blackpowder. Most thieves actually don’t do this, at least to any effective extent, in spvp – much less tpvp. Thirdly, you’re all over the board OP. Heartseeker, at best, does about 5 to 6 k on a target with less than 33% health in spvp; at worst, it does around 2-2.5k on crit and on a target with 100% health. Also, are we talking about open heartseeker spam, or heartseeker spam through blind fields? Open heartseeker spam is easily countered by cripple, chill, immob then ranging the thief and laugh as he wildly flails about in mid-air.

I get it, you’re mad and want to vent on the forums. You have to realize, though, that heartseeker spam in spvp isn’t something that most people have a hard time dealing with – especially in tpvp and moreover with the dec 10th nerf to infusion of shadow. In fact, among “good” players, it is commonly known that shadowshot outpreforms heartseeker in every way possible. Even recognizing that heartseeker itself is a pretty terrible skill because it’s so easily countered and is a heavy drain on initiative if spammed.

just to make it clear… you complain about 5 → 2222? if you really do i highly doubt you actually do any tpvp as any half decent thief wouldn’t run “perma stealth” in pvp…. it is pointless

and trying to mask it under “oh hey i get such noobs on my team”, well guess what… i get bunch of “noobs” warriors, necros and what not fighting mid road, mindlessly mashing hammer etc. should we ask to nerf all of other classes because ppl playing it are “noobs”?

Cynz.9437:

just to make it clear… you complain about 5 -> 2222? if you really do i highly doubt you actually do any tpvp as any half decent thief wouldn’t run “perma stealth” in pvp…. it is pointless

and trying to mask it under “oh hey i get such noobs on my team”, well guess what… i get bunch of “noobs” warriors, necros and what not fighting mid road, mindlessly mashing hammer etc. should we ask to nerf all of other classes because ppl playing it are “noobs”?

I pointed perma stealth as a known WvW issue and not a tPvP issue so I doubt you actually read any of the replies. I do however get bothered when a class can spam a skill 3+ times a skill that acts as an aimbot and hits you 6-8k each time and I also am bothered about how 99% of thieves I come across daily in tPvP are running d/p and I always see them spamming heartseeker, whether be it versus me in an open field or in my team in the middle of the aoe.

klemen.8439:

See, this is where we disagree.

You’re saying that if you can’t counter HS, it’s you who’s not good. Well, not every class can do that as I said before. For example, when I roll my fresh air burst ele

class =/= build. You give an example of one build and then claim the while class (every build for that class) is affected?

spam a skill 3+ times a skill that acts as an aimbot and hits you 6-8k each time

That never happened, heartseeker will not hit 3 times in a row for 6-8k. Heartseeker > 50% will not hit for 6k and 3 × 6-8k = 18-24k, usually quite a bit more then 50% health.

To be honest talking about thief spam in this ccaoespam meta is quite silly.
Asking day after day for thief nerfs doesn’t help the class to become better, but i can understand that for people (speaking in a general way) is easier spam 1111111 in zerg for tagging people and get some loot then try to understand (how to fight) a class.

Overall i’d like to know how HS spam can kill people like flies.
Maybe dodge button is broken? Who knows..

I play thief in sPvP (yes, I’m noob, started sPvPing not so long ago) and I dont use 5-2 with D/P to spam heartseeker but mostly to break out from the fight/gain stealth for backstab. I really found this 22222 spam uneffective – you loose your initiative fast and for barely any profit.

BTW:
Let’s nerf every single class/build/skill/weapon w/e and make the skill bar consists of 10 skills – only autoattacks, so people don’t need to think about what they are doing, just spam random buttons which do exactly the same thing.

Also, remove dodges, buffs, conditions etc.

That’s pretty much how I see most of nerfing threads. It’s not only for GW2 it’s for most of the games with any kind of PvP I’ve played. But I must admit, some people tried to back their arguments, and not only “geez nerf that kittene”.

The point is heartseeker spamming actually winning fights is the minority, not the majority. Sure it might be effective against some squishy builds but you can’t blame heartseeker for that. Squishy builds are called squishy for a reason. Heartseeker isn’t the only thing that can blow them away. As said, not every hit will be 6k either especially not the first couple of hits.

I run half zerk armor and half soldier’s armor on my thief 0/30/30/10/0, with everything else zerk and like I said, I still don’t often go down to HS spammers (perhaps due to the extra toughness I have) plus I save shadowstep for defensive usage which allows me to get out if I have a spammer on my butt.

I know I’ve got killed by HS spammers a couple of times, (twice in the last 6 months of WvW that I can remember) but it’s always been a full glass signet/might backstab thief that takes 40-50% of my HP in one backstab sequence and then HS’s me down the rest of the way (about 2-3 hits downs me after that but you can see them repeatedly mash HS even after I’m downed lol). But it’s because those thief builds just open with the initial BACKSTAB hit so fast if you aren’t paying attention you have a very small window to react. The reason I got downed was because I sat there going “what the hell just hit me” instead of knowing it was a thief that used the steal/CND/stealth/BS combo. Now I know so it happens less often.

BUT that type of thief build can get obliterated by a couple good hits from me, not running full glass. I don’t see a lot of people running it because it’s so squishy.

In all honestly I won’t touch my thief in spvp. It isn’t OP but generally it really isn’t that effective. Given the current balance in Spvp thief isn’t particularity a threat unless the person at the wheel is very good. Stealth will not contest a point and in a game like this where you have PU (not complaining so hold your horses) or any stealth mesmer build that simply does the stealth annoyance better. Even in that case as you enter tourney it just isn’t that useful to play heavy stealth.

Without an organized group burst simply doesn’t not have the place it used to and stealth remains an annoyance rather than a threat. Truth is people trying to play thief are literally resisting the urge to play one of the top meta builds and still get kitten on for doing so. Last time I fought a thief with my thief in the randoms I got called a newb and bad lots of curse words despite the fact I downed him.

The reality of the situation is that thief as it is right now is not in a spot to be nerfed anymore than it already is.

TheGuy.3568:

…
The reality of the situation is that thief as it is right now is not in a spot to be nerfed anymore than it already is.

Some people think otherwise… OP and the “Devourer venom needs a nerf” thread…
The class still exists, so it’s still possible to nerf it.

Teef too OP, must nerf more!

klemen.8439:

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

It isn’t a question of whether the person spamming the heartseeker is bad. If you get heartseeker spammed and you’re the one that goes down, not only did you not win, but you, technically are the one who is “not good”.

See, this is where we disagree.

You’re saying that if you can’t counter HS, it’s you who’s not good. Well, not every class can do that as I said before. For example, when I roll my fresh air burst ele with a tank team to support with aoe bursts, yes, it’s a risky build to play but even if I used mist form on it, it has 75 seconds cooldown where as most other classes with a skill that makes them invulnerable have 60 second cooldown with traitable reduced cooldowns (eg. Warrior, Guardian, Engineer, Mesmer, Ranger). Now, I don’t understand how you can call someone a “baddie” if the dodge recharge and invul cooldown along with the skillrotation (Ele’s attunment recharge rate) simply don’t give you an oportunity to counter HS spammer effectively. The initiative required for HS spam would fully recharge for about 4 times in the time of Ele’s cooldowns during the encounter… And on top of that, the HS acts like an aimbot. Wherever you move/dodge/blink/etc., HS will follow you as long as they got you targeted and towards Ele and Necro, the 6-8k hits are simply OP if you ask me. Light class, low base toughness, ineffective class if played with wrong build, too few counter skills, so what now? Should all Eles and Necros roll to a tanky role and play for themselves rather than for the team, just because another class has an “aimbotlike” skill that requires no effort to aim/use and deals INSANE damage? I suppose that would only reduce build diversity amongst other classes, just because HS is so spammable.

I really like the idea of someone who said that initiative cost would increase with each HS you land – letting you close the gap with same initiative cost but if you do hit the target, the initiative cost would increase by one or two.

The class has the counters. Your glass build might not but the class definitely does. As you said, your build is risky. At 20% health, any combination of two strong damage moves may kill a low survivability build. Any two strong moves from any class. But a-net shouldn’t balance an entire class around one build. What you’re trying to do is create classes with hard counters agaianst other classes.

If you want survivabilty don’t play glass burst builds. If you want high damage burst, accept that you may get killed by other high damage builds. Don’t try to nerf other high damage builds just so that your high damage burst build can feel tanky.

Dustfinger.9510:

…
edit: and really, your burst build is no diffrent that that the thiefs. Should theives have to roll a ‘tank build’ just becasue you want to be the glass burst on the battlefield?

They should stand still and not attack because only I want to win and receive loot bags!
Why can’t Anet implement that when you’re near a thief you press F to loot and the thief dies/disappears/game exits. A serious feature that’s lacking in this game.

Agree with the OP. I see plenty of thieves playing but they are just feeding other folks glory – Set yourself a goal of only attacking thieves for a few rounds and you’ll see what I mean.

Also, a nice way to unwind is to run a signet burn D/D build and 2/2/2 them as much as they do you. You should see some of the whispers you get.

last time i checked heartseeker did not include evade, block or invulnerability. You can just stand in your own aoe as ele and thief will be down by the time first heartseeker lands since thieves do not have block (you do), invulnerability (you do), protection (you do) or, as a matter of fact, any proper OWSHEEP trait (you still do).

If you are at 20% health, heartseeker WILL be used on you. If you survive one heartseeker – it will be used AGAIN. And again. Since there are no other options. At all. Repeated usage of best available option is not equal to mindless spam.

Zero Day.2594:

Dustfinger.9510:

…
edit: and really, your burst build is no diffrent that that the thiefs. Should theives have to roll a ‘tank build’ just becasue you want to be the glass burst on the battlefield?

They should stand still and not attack because only I want to win and receive loot bags!
Why can’t Anet implement that when you’re near a thief you press F to loot and the thief dies/disappears/game exits. A serious feature that’s lacking in this game.

exactlly. I edited that out so the focus on the thief class could be seen for how rediculous this is when compared to other classesbasically but this is what is being called for in all these threads. People need to learn the diffrence between mmo’s and one player games where your supposed to be the hero that can kill everybody with one build.

Dustfinger.9510:

Why can’t Anet implement that when you’re near a thief you press F to loot and the thief dies/disappears/game exits. A serious feature that’s lacking in this game.

This made me lol.

Faeyd.5094:

Also, a nice way to unwind is to run a signet burn D/D build and 2/2/2 them as much as they do you. You should see some of the whispers you get.

yes! Show bads why they need to learn to play. This is the answer. Not calling for nerfs to whole classes. This just proves that the ability to bad-spam one skill isn’t just for theives.