Guild Wars 2

I often use this in WvW, can honestly say its one of the better weapon sets that sadly gets overlooked.

Thanks, I’m glad I actually wrote something useful.
I hate it when people call a class overpowered because they don’t know how to counter it, so I felt the need to tell people the basics of countering us Mesmers.
When you fight one they seem overpowered, but I have to say its quiet the opposite when you play one.

A joy to read and a joy to think about.
I wish Mesmers were more like this.
I love the idea of sowing confusion and chaos on my enemies, and while I wasn’t disappointed with what I got I was left feeling a little empty. I felt more like a summoner than a Mesmer, especially with the way CTRL+T and the Map Completion Star work, pointing us out to the enemy instantly.
This is why I don’t want to complete the map, and as a result wont be getting a Legendary.

I am a Mesmer and only a Mesmer.

If you think something as trivial as a star doesn’t matter, you clearly don’t grasp how the class is meant to be played your own way, not a specific way.
A good mesmer can be hard to target in the first place, rendering Target Mark useless.
Not everyone uses it either.
The proof is in the pudding; I have a target reset (blink) and after using it, 9/10 times they struggle to kittenget me.
If you want to call the thief who just downed 4 of my team before being roflstomped by me a noob or a fail player for not Ctrl+T’ing me then you best go rethink your view on this game.

The star might not matter much, but it matters enough to prove to be an issue.
Say its not an issue all you want, Anet have confirmed the issue and are working to fix it.
Anet. Has confirmed this is an issue. And is working to fix it.
ArenaNet. Have said they are aware. Of this issue.

So there is an issue. Whether or not you want to accept it :P

I wont ever be able to catch that ele now.

Moa Form

And lastly, if you turn into a Moa, run. Run, Forest, Run!
You can’t do anything for 10 seconds, why are you even trying? JUST RUN! WADDLE! FLY! WHATEVER MOA’S DO TO ESCAPE, DO IT!

For Srsly!

Above all else, do NOT complain when you go to fight a Mesmer you’re not sure you can beat then complain about losing.
It drives us all mad. Thieves are the ones who can one shot you from stealth (at least until the 15th which is when Backstab gets nerfed — THERE IS A GOD), all we can do is spawn flimsy clones and turn people into birds.
They dont even stay as a bird long enough to be cooked, believe me, I tried. Been using clones to escape the police for the last week now. I WAS NEVER HERE, IT WAS A DECOY ALL ALONG!

Before I start, I want to say I fully supported the Nerfs we got a while back.
I don’t want to see any class overpower another based on class skills alone coughthiefcough.

Don’t fight a battle you can’t win then complain when you lose!

Also

You can’t win them all!

Greatsword

If you see a Mesmer with a Greatsword, it’s gonna try and burst you down. If you’re a glass cannon and you have no way to defend yourself from harm (like if all your cooldowns aren’t ready), turn tail and run. You will be shreded apart before your cooldowns reset. GS Mesmers will grind you to pieces.
If you think you can stand toe to toe with it, stay as close as humanly possible — his damage depends on staying far away from you. If you stay close you effectively reduce his damage by half.
Kill that Phantasmal Berserker as soon as you see it, it will shred you up pretty quickly if left unchecked.
NEVER, under ANY circumstances place yourself between a GS Mesmer and a Cliff. It will push you down to your death.

Staff

If you see a Mesmer with a Staff (like me), it’s gonna try to get in real close and get conditions all over you. If you’re a bunker without any ways to burst someone down, turn tail and run. Condition Mesmers will grate you like cheese. Burst it down.
If you think you can survive its conditional onslaught, get as far away as humanly possible. It’s condition spreading depends on distance, the closer it is the more damage and conditions it can dish out on you. Stay OUT of the Chaos Storm, it will rain down conditions all over you while buffing the Mesmer. Did I mention that it’s boons and conditions come from its autoattack?
It’s boons and conditions come from its autoattack!

Scepter

If you see a Mesmer with a Scepter, expect to be confused with 5 stacks of confusion.
Don’t have a condition remover? Run the KITTEN away! 5 stacks of confusion from a condition Mesmer will do 1.5-2k damage to you every time you do an action (attack, dodge roll, etc). It’s a giant purple beam, hard to miss.
If you think you can stand up to this confusing dood then nuke him down before he gets up 3 clones or expect that 5 stack confusion to be upped to 8-11 stacks (depending on traits).

Sword (main hand)

If you see a Mesmer with a sword, stay away from the 600 mark. Once you’re that close to him, he can and most likely WILL root you in place. He’ll then proceed to pull off a Pistol Whip Rip Off and be completely immune to all attacks when doing it. He can even reflect all attacks back at you while doing it if traited, as if it wasn’t bad enough. If you think you can take him on, just stay away from him and he can’t do jack kitten! Just watch out for the Autoattack which strips boons off you and applies vulnerability.

Focus

If you see a Mesmer with a focus in its offhand, NEVER, under ANY circumstances should you let the Mesmer get between you and a Cliff. It will pull you down to your death. Stay the kitten away from the Phantasmal Warden, it will destroy you in seconds. Luckily it doesn’t move. You can. SO MOVE!

Sword (off hand)

If you see a Mesmer with a sword in its offhand, laugh at it. Laugh until the cows come home. Then stop laughing when you see the Phantasmal Swordsman and kill it before it hits you, it will poke your eyes out. Don’t hit him if he holds the sword up, doing so will spawn a clone. Easy as eating cake (unless your a diabetic).

Pistol

If you see a Mesmer with a Pistol in its offhand, throw down your keyboard and mouse and sit back, you’re not getting away from this one alive. It’ll stun you can spawn a Phantasm that uses Unload, that cheap thief attack. That’s right, Mesmers are part thief! How do you think they go invisible?
If you’re stupid enough to think you can fight this one, kill the Phantasm and stay far away.
May the Pale Tree or whatever deity you trust save your soul if the Mesmer has a Scepter pared with this weapon.

Stealth

If you see a Mesmer go invisible then it’ll either be for 3, 4 or 5 seconds.
If you see a flash of powder, it’ll burn you when it reappears. Run for the hills or the nearest hill like object. If you see it go invisible then spawn a clone, it’s a decoy. Ignore the Decoy, wait for the real thing to appear. Both of these are 3 second stealths.
If you see a line on the floor and crossing makes the Mesmer poof, it’s a 4 second stealth. The line lasts more than 4 seconds, letting him stealth for 8 seconds if he times walking over it a second time well. If he raise an arm for a few seconds then sends out a white wave/line and disappears then he’s used Mass invisibility. It’s 5 seconds of no Mesmer. But guess what?
Mesmers can’t attack when invisible! That’s right, so a Mesmer will either use these to run away or to sneak up on you. Stay on your toes.

Yaos.4528:

Yes, mesmers are very overpowered. When one can stay invisible and kill you in about 10 seconds that’s pretty overpowered.

Decoy (utility) – 3 Second Stealth
Viel – 4 Second Stealth
Mass Invisibility – 5 Second Stealth
Decoy (trait) – 3 Second Stealth (no shared cooldown with Decoy (utility))
The Prestige – 3 Second Stealth, Blind and Burn on stealth and reveal.

Dealing damage breaks all of these.

Memser Clones do no~low damage (5 damage a crit at Lv80 on average).
Mesmer Phantasms do high spike damage on medium cooldowns as well as having LESS HP than Clones (regardless of what tooltips and guides say, Phantasms have less HP than Clones)

So what you just explained cannot happen, it’s not within the limitations of Mesmers.
If you died in 1v1 then you probably experienced a stealth bug in which the player fails to render on your client when leaving stealth.
If you died in Xv1 then you probably died to his allies and you mistook the clones for the Mesmer.

As a condition build Mesmer who relies on clones more than Phantasms (I only pop a Phant near the end of the battle to speed it up), my goal is to turn you into a pent house and invite every Condition in the neighborhood over. I’ll use Stealths to increase the amount of time you’re not hitting me — if I can get tons of conditions on you before you take a large chunk of my health then the battle is mine before you even touch me. This is the play style I choose, not the one that defines Memsers.
I have 3 Stealths on me tops at any given time;

• The Prestige
• Decoy
• Mass Invisibility

So if you see me, be absolutely sure you burst me down as soon as possible. Even if I can heal to full, I’ve wasted a healing cooldown which is vital to my survival in the long run.
If you can’t find the real me, leg it. Don’t fight a battle you can’t win.
If there’s something I hate, it’s people who go right up to and try to fight a Mesmer then complain when they lose.

That’s my advice to killing me and any condition based mesmer you might come across.

Nope.
This also applies to HP; Clones spawn at 100% HP, regardless of the Mesmer’s HP %

This isn’t as much of a bug as the map completion star.
I think clones should spawn with the same icons as the real mesmer but not give said icons boon.
It’d be easier for Clone-Heavy Mesmers to hide among their clones.

This is probably the worlds most civil WvW match.
Even the “grievers” apologize if you whisper them that you don’t like it.

- Lynnothia
Goodgame [GG]

More Sylvari-based armour would be nice. We only geet T1-3 and a dungeon set thats styled after the Sylvari :<

Considering by lore Sylvari are about “A HEAD” shorter than humans, I was very disappointed by their size.
I was hoping to be a short plant girl, not a medium plant lady. :I

I still love my Sylvari, but when a shorter race is made (between Human and Asura) I’ll probably reroll that race.

Phase Retreat cooldown is 5 seconds when traited with both Clone Spawning Skills and Staff skills cooling down faster.
This is a build used by Condition Mesmers, and the only real way to beat a condition mesmer is with burst.
Once we have up 3 illusions and a rack of conditions on you the game is ours. Anything from then on is just a futile struggle for survival.
Bunkers tend to be shredded by conditions as toughness doesn’t reduce condition damage.

I’m a Mesmer and we are by far an OP-Face Roll class.
A bad mesmer is easy to kill, and it takes a lot to be a good mesmer.

We come with portals, 10 seconds of quickness and a whole array of good weapons to pick from, so pick Mesmer if you want to be the cherry on top, but make sure you go in with the knowledge that we’re not an easy class to play.

Is it me or are there tons of Gunnar’s Hold bots?
I’m just enjoying picking off naked rangers who autoattack cannons on keeps and towers and completely ignore me as well as the attempt to not die with Downed Skill 2.
Maybe I enjoy it too much.

Make a Dynamic title that changes depending on your K/D and Takes/Defends?

“Without the orbs, Borderlands are just going to be seen as the annoying maps you have to put up with when Eternal Battlegrounds is full.”

That’s already how I view the borderlands, and it’s only day 1 of no orbs.
I just don’t bother with the BLs anymore. In fact, no one does. Every BL is its respective servers colour, no one can be bothered to go there and take anything. Everyine’s been piling into the EB since the change and the EB queues get insane (right after it was implemented the queue was FIVE HOURS! We’re a medium populated server.
A 5 hour queue has never happened before, not to mention it was the middle of the night/early morning.
_

Ring of Fire do this all the time, it’s rather cute.

Time Warp. 10 seconds of haste.
Wat?
I’m a Mesmer and even I dont use Time Warp. It’s just… a mess :|
Moa Morph for handling those tricky burst people <3

I’m a Condition Mesmer who melts glass cannons, and I support this message.

Thieves hit me for 900 tops on a crit from their bow.
Rangers hit me for 3.6k tops crit from their bow.

I’m a toughness built condition Mesmer.
Just sayin’

Theives.
I’m a Mesmer and they melt in seconds when they face me.
The problem is that thieves get too much of an advantage through backstab. You can see from the screenshot the OP posted that more than half his health was lost through the first attack. That already gives Heart Seeker a HUGE damage increase, which means a thief can down a player with just a Backstab and 1-2 Heat Seekers.

The only other class able to do such a thing is the Warrior, but you can see them coming and get a chance to dodge it. Thieves are meant to sacrifice damage for being able to skirt around and escape easily from combat.
It’s a trade off. Squishie glass cannons.
The issue is that they do TOO much damage with an attack that you can’t dodge (unless your psychic).

Anyone who doesn’t agree that something is wrong here is a thief who wants to feel holier than thou. The same type of player who chooses the cheap weapons or classes just to get easy wins.
ArenaNet, you have created a class that people only play for the sake of easy winning.

If that’s not a huge design flaw, what is?

It’s not Alt+F4.
Its Log Out.
You can log out regardless of the situation.

I want a system that keeps your character logged in for a short time when the client itself is closed without using Log Out/Exit to Desktop so as to prevent;

• Players from closing the client to prevent a death
• Players from being locked out of WvW maps that are full because of a disconnect

And then add in a system in which you can’t log out in combat.
This would fix everything, and it’s so simple. Even WoW does this.

So the WvW orbs are gone to stop cheaters and hackers, that’s fine.
But there was a far simpler solution suggested by the players many times.

The issue is that the Orb boons are far too desirable. Swapping the Orb boon with the Outmanned boon would make the orbs less desirable and not give the team with all 3 an actual advantage.
Meanwhile, the outnumber servers would get a buff to their stats, giving them a fighting chance.

Honestly, this was suggested so many times that I’m amazed Anet decided to outright remove the orbs yet keep in that shoddy, worthless OutManned boon.

Sylvari mesmer

So, ArenaNet.
Guild Wars 2 had 5 years in development and is reaching 2 months since its release.
Why is there STILL an issue with rendering players?

Yes, me and my 50 man guild just got destroyed by a mere 20 man zerg because not a single one loaded as they charged into us. We saw our health falling and had no idea what was attacking us until it was far too late.
They rendered after we had all died/been downed, at which point fighting back was impossible.

World of Warcraft, a game that is 8 years old and running a dated engine could handle things such as 40 vs 40 and 80 vs 80, Guild Wars 2 is a brand spanking new game running on a heavily modified and updated Guild Wars 1 engine and it can’t even handle 50 people before it decides to stop rendering.

It’s annoying enough that an entire week of WvW is decided in the first 3 days, it’s just kicking a man when he’s down when you wont even let us fight back thanks to a shoddy render engine.
And I say this as the WINNING server in WvW. Some of the guilds on my server purposely abuse this weak kitten render engine and get large groups to zerg around the map just to take down players who can’t see them.
When players start to exploit the ENGINE then clearly something is very wrong.

WvW is as close as you can get to endgame in Guild Wars 2, yet WvW is a broken, exploitable mess.

You have people who patrol these forums.
We want answers. When can we expect to see a fix for this?

Hi.
I’m on the winning server this week.
We have 3 orbs.

We’re currently defending SM from 2 other servers.

Newsflash: ORB BOONS ARE OP!
Give us the “outmanned” boon for having orbs and give the outmanned the Orb boons.
Swap them.
Cus really, dominating 2 servers is no fun. They can’t fight back, it’s no fun at all, just wake up in the morning, pop down to SM and siege the crap out of everything all day.
:|

Give other servers a chance.

grintar.1705:

QQ some more. all your post comes down to is you saying, “I WANT TO KEEP MY GOLD!” Instead of realizing that WvW is meant to be an endgame gold sink(hence gold costs for siege + upgrades). Also, your stating that your not a team player, because you would rather keep your precious gold than help out your team. way to be a team player.

Gold sink.
What is a Gold sink?
Its where you pour your earned money to in turn make a profit (in essence, it can also be used in its more literal sense to pour money so that you dont hit Gold cap).
The issue here is that pouring gold into this sink will result in having no more gold to pour.
You run out entirely because you are not making a profit.

Where, then, do you get your blueprints?
3 of the 4 puzzles are broken. And if you’re not good at puzzles or the enemy servers are camping them, your only option is to buy. But how can you buy when you spent every last copper on a gold sink that didn’t give you a profit?

This, little scrubling, is the issue the OP is referring to.

Staff + Bounce Trait + Skills 1 and 5 = Tag ALL the things!

Focus + Phantasmal Fury Trait + Skill 5 = Tag ALL the things!

I have a scepter with my Focus for 1v1ing things, I’m a condition build so scepter suits me better with its confuse.

Personally I’m a full on ranged mesmer.
Staff/ScepterPistol(focus for travelling).

It works amazingly well in PvP. I dont have the spike damage of GS Mesmers, but I sure as hell outlast them. The longer I can make a fight last, the higher the chance of me winning. Look up the Mesmer guide on YouTube (I think it was posted on these forums too) and use the “leveling” build as your base. Modify as per tastes, but 30 points in Chaos gives you toughness and boon duration, a nice thing to have in PvP.

Sounds like a speed hack. Seen a lot of them in WvW.

DPE is a newly formed guild dedicated to two major things in World vs World vs World.
We Scout and we Explore. So lets go over these two roles.

Scouts
Quick on their feet (and preferably fast typers), Scouts run around the various World vs World maps and relay information in team/map chats that could prove key to winning or losing a certain attack.
Enemy numbers, sieges and supplies are among the things a scout would be looking for. If a scout sees a battle mark on the map then its his duty to go find out if that mark is an actual threat or just some stupid enemy-allied hylek (Who would side with the enemy, I mean really?)

Explorers
Tough, Buff and Luff-able people who dedicate their time to guiding the weaker players through the various Puzzles that can be found in the World vs World maps (currently only the Eternal Battleground Puzzle is working).
Mesmers to portal players closer to the end or to the end of a difficult room, more beefy classes to escort other players to the end of the puzzle and ensure our server keeps on top of is siege supply.

The reason for starting this guild was simple; there’s a lack of commutation going on on Piken Square. People are giving last minute warnings (if any) to an incoming attack or no one wants to run away from the fray to find out if a battlemark elsewhere is a real threat.
I want to change that. I want to bring communication to our server.

If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, please contact me in-game;
IGN: Lynnothia
If I’m not online, just follow me or send me mail and I’ll get in touch as soon as possible.

Genius.
Why not just expand on Mini’s and give them this function?
Mabinogi did this with their pet system.

This is true. I only really play WvW, from Lv11 upwards.
And since release day I have earned a whopping 206 Honor Badges.
WHAO NELLY!
That can almost get me a single item!

I don’t want to be forced to kill players and NPCs for Honor Badges. Why do I only get honored when I kill? Why can’t I get honored when I defend a tower or take a camp?

I agree, give us a currency like Karma for WvW.

I’d like to see more strange races be playable.
Every MMO has the bogstandard humanoid races as playables, but I’ve yet to see one that has more animal like races.
And no, Popori from TERA don’t count.
I’m talking Skritt, Quaggan, etc.

Do want.
I wanna be a heavy armoured Mesmer. In appearances of course.
The intimidation factor when you see a bunch of plants shooting spells at you is a little lacking compared to 4 heavy armoured targets shooting you.
And that’s what WvW centers around.
Intimidation.
I’ve seen a small group of charr and norn scare away a huge enemy group.
They’re intimidation to see coming at you.

Us Mesmers need a rehaul on skill 3. Other than that, finishing us is kitten easy. There’s a giant arrow above the real mesmer’s head.

As for the down mechanic, I just stack up conditions on the downed player. They can’t see their conditions once downed and often end up killing themselves thanks to my confusions.
I can also stealth (while leaving behind a clone) and finish off a player. If all else fails, Time Warp > Decoy > Finish.

All I want to see changed is ressing “Finished” players. And be more fair with Rally.
If I attack a random guy and then 5 minutes later he falls to his death on the other side of the WvW map, it counts as my rally.
It shouldn’t.

And finally downing a guardian only for him to randomly rally because someone fell off a cliff or something is VERY annoying.

Swap Elementalists 2 and 3 abilities.
Give Engineers a reason to want to pull targets toward them (2 and 3 are meant to work together, but 3’s damage is very low and 9/10 times the enemy ends up closer than they were before being pulled.)
Fix warriors 3 ability (I see Warriors die despite killing players while using skill 3)
Give Mesmers a new skill 3 ability (That phant is weak as all hell, using skill 2 and then spamming skill 1 is enough to down most people thanks to the stacking confusion, rendering skill 3 weaker in comparison)
Thieves need some kind of mini cooldown on 3 if they use 2, as if they time it right they can’t ever be finished off (Seriously, my thief once lasted over 10 minutes against 3 people because of well timed skill usage, and then I rallyed cus one of them who ran off died to someone else)

Knyx.5926:

TheRamosOnline.2670:

I find it interesting that you knew the exact amount of HP an enemy target had without having access to third party software.
If you’re not being sarcastic, you can get struck by lightning which deals rather hefty damage when in WvW.
And if you are being sarcastic, I like how the cheapest class in the game always has people who blindly defend that class and insult anyone who dares speak bad of it.

I like how people come into a forum, have such low intelligence and self esteem they have to make up stories and super exaggerated numbers that only exist in the imagination of a small child. To add salt to the wound, these same players never provide data or actual evidence, and will BLINDLY defend their “Imagination” to the fullest extent possible.

And so from now on I shall have Fraps on when in WvW.
Especially if there’s a thief nearby.

I have some footage I took last WvW, but I don’t think I caught a HSthief in it. Let me skim the footage.
EDIT: Nope, no signs of a thief. They’re rare, I’ll give them that. Most thieves I see in WvW are doing the Puzzles, as its the only place in WvW where ranged isn’t king (depending on the part of the Puzzle they’re in)

Honestly, I think it was when I saw our own HSthief that I was the most shocked at its damage.
That ranger was at full health and when I blinked I saw a slither of health left. Maybe it was a lucky backstab followed by a HS finisher, I don’t know.
I blinked and I missed it.

I love warriors, but I feel that giving them a skill so strong that every warrior under the sun focuses on that one skill is… well broken.
The same applies to thieves and Heartseeker.

No other class focuses on a single attack, nor do any other single attacks end fights as quickly as HB/HS.

So I’m hoping HB gets nerfed, but nothing else. Warriors need some love.

In other news, I got hit with a 12k Bullcharge the other week, back on my condition damage engie, and it wasn’t a glass cannon.

Illusionary Leap doesn’t always spawn the clone, even when within the current 600 range limit.
Coupled with how it also sometimes fails to teleport you, this has cost me many repairs due to WvW deaths.
Blink also functions in a strange way in that it lets you teleport DOWN on some terrain (Such as blinking from a castle wall to the ground) but other times it doesn’t (some cliffs you try to blink down will blink you to the edge of the cliff, not down it).
Blinking up terrain doesn’t happen, period.

Engineers can rifle skill 5 their way to other platforms which helps them with Jump Puzzles, so I feel that Blink not letting us do the same is a bug or an oversight.

Backstab. I do not mind this.
It’s my own fault for leaving my back open if I get hit with this.

I would actually be upset if this was nerfed, as its the only thing that gives non-HS thieves a fighting chance against us Mesmies.

And then you get that one person (me) who actually does cast some AoE’s on the refuge then get greeted with a jolly “How do you do?” to the face. If “How do you do”s where cold, pointy and driven into your skull by a munchkin.
At which point I drag myself to the forums to ask “Is this right? I don’t think this is right. I’m not even a glass cannon. I’m a hidey hidey Mesmer, how was the thief still striking me when I was in stealth? Twice! Every strike hit without fail, how did he see me?”

Wraithforge.8710:

OP: You’re completely missing the point.

If HS really is killing people through pure HS spam, then the problem is absolutely NOT that it’s spamable. The problem is that it’s doing too much damage when people are at high health. It doesn’t scale right.

That said, your post is questionable at best. I’m going to pretend you’re not trolling.

If it’s meant to be a gap closer and fight starter… great. Let it do lower damage on higher health pools.

If it’s meant to be an execute at low health… great. Let it do so.

Problem solved.

It could be a scaling issue, I don’t have access to the numbers used to calculate the damage it does.
All I know is that I’ve seen thieves down people in 2 hits just through Heartseeker.
And this wasn’t an enemy theif, I was chasing down a ranger and then a thief joins in the case, uses HS 2 times to close in, the next 2 actually hit and the ranger is downed.

It could all be an issue in the numbers, like Mesmers with our Warden.

I find it interesting that you knew the exact amount of HP an enemy target had without having access to third party software.
If you’re not being sarcastic, you can get struck by lightning which deals rather hefty damage when in WvW.
And if you are being sarcastic, I like how the cheapest class in the game always has people who blindly defend that class and insult anyone who dares speak bad of it.

If the fall damage wasn’t 10% of our health, I’d agree that it would have given the thief an advantage.
If it was more than 1 thief, the second one must have vanished by the time the render engine decided now would be a good time to show me the face of the Asura who so eagerly turned my Sylvari into Salad.

On a serious note, yes they can.
Unless there’s a magical new attack I’ve not heard of that looks like HS, sounds like HS and shows up as “Heartseeker” on the combat window.

Blazer Hellsing, I really do wish it was.
The guardian in my guild whispered me to give him a hand with a thief who was grieving him in the EB puzzle, I went inside and almost as soon as I loaded, PHWOMP!
I’m pulled down, locked down, dead.
Didn’t even get to see him, the render engine wasn’t having it.
So after a respawn, I get some guildies together and give it another whirl; we wanted to clear the puzzle anyway.
The 4 of us go inside, coast is clear.
We jump down, phwamp. Guardian at 50%. Guardian at 10%. Guardian down.
Still can’t see what’s doing it. Engie down. Didn’t even notice his HP falling. Now I’m getting attacked. Still can’t see the thief. I pop every field I have ready, thief finally visible but I’m downed. Ele has no idea what he’s doing and hardly fights back before getting downed.
All the while he made sure to melee us to stop us from healing between HS.

So this wasn’t a bogstandard thief, this guy knew what he was doing, but that didn’t make it any less annoying.
:v

Except this is one that’s going to address the issue, not cry about how it’s “OP AND NEEDS TO BE REMOVED”.
I like the idea behind it; it’s meant to be a gapcloser to start the fight but as the target reaches low health the power of Heartseeker increases, turning it into a finisher.
On paper it works well.
And even in practice, it works like a charm. Until talents get involved.

For the fun of it, I rolled a Thief, finished the intro and hit the sPvP. A google search found me a build thats got all the kids in an “I am holier than thou” mood so I slap the points as shown and enter some matches.
I did not die. I did not ever drop past 50% HP.

I did not level the thief past this, as I can assume that such a build is pretty worthless in WvW, were range is king.
However there was clearly an issue with Heartseeker, even after its apparent nerf.
Talented, Heartseeker simply does far too much damage, even on tanky builds.
I’ve seen a single thief take down a full defensive guardian, myself (Mesmer), an engineer and an elementalist without taking a break. I had Nullfield out, Chaos Storm (and armour on myself), I had 3 normal clones I was trying to blend in with, I was stacking conditions on him, and that’s just me. Then there’s a guardian trying to control him, an Elementalist laying down some burst and an engineer ranking up more conditions.
He did not drop past 50% HP.

Has there been a newly discovered exploit? Are we simply all “bads” and need to uninstall the game?
Or is there actually something wrong with this single skill.
Thieves have a wide range of weapons to choose from, wider than some other classes, yet I’ve never seen a thief who DOESN’T have dd/dp.

As a WvWer, it becomes very frustrating when a single thief can keep a few of us at bay, especially when we need to get to point C, but to get there we need to pass point B which is where a thief is camping. Should a single class really have the power to destroy entire groups through a single skill?

So what is the issue in my opinion?
Heartseeker has no cooldown. That’s it. That’s all I can see wrong with it.
It’s design is to be an opener and a finisher in one neat package, but no fight will be over that quickly unless you spam Heartseeker itself, completely ruining the concept of the attack.
It needs a cooldown or it needs an increased Initiative cost.

And now for our simple minded readers;
QQ THIEF NEEDS NERF PLZ

Yes there is. A thief that stacks power and precision, takes all talents that boost those states as well as Heartseeker itself and additional initiative/faster initiative recharge then spam Heartseeker.

And I’ve seen Heartseeker thieves mow down a purely defensive Guardian and still have enough initiative left over to take down myself (Mesmer with 4 disengage abilities), an Elementalist and an Engineer.
I might make another “NERF DA HARTZEEKAH” thread, because I think people need to take notice of the issues of such a build.