Guild Wars 2

@asmodean

whether it is or not

apparently anet doesnt quite agree

granted im really just waiting for them to fix stealth before i put up anything else. that should change there survivability noticeably.

i disagree that making 1v2 a harder fight as bad or “unwinnable” as you stated.

dont run alone!

im appreciative of the change as it was i feel the correct way to affect backstab specs. time will tell if it was enough or not.

thanks, i really wasnt sure how to title the thing

i see people post pictures constantly of matches with lots of thieves, warriors, guardians, mesmers, engineers, etc in one game, that is to say like 5 warriors, or thieves in a single match (or more sometimes), and they then use that as “proof” something is wrong with the class.

now, im not gonna split hairs here, this games early, im sure each one of thsoe calsses have things that need both nerfing and buffing and fixing.

but rather my argument is how valid that statement is. This game is unique in that its a mmo style fantasy rpg where you do not have to level to max to do max level pvp.

you create your char, got ot heart of mists, do the spec/stats you want, and go pvp.

vs having to level all the way to max level, then having to farm your gear, then doing “real” pvp.

i remember a month ago not that many warriors in spvp, now people are showing pics of as many as 8 warriors in one spvp match.

basically any little thing that is powerful/good or unbalanced about a class is exaggerated by how easy it is for someone to create the class and jump into pvp with it.

one little thing found that gives a calss a edge or something easy vs the reward, suddenly you see a influx of that class

pics are shown

accusations thrown, factual or not

suddenly the nerf bandwagons appear.

my point is, maybe these match pics show a underlying issue, but they do not accurately reflect the actual advantage or power of the class vs everyone else, for even if its a hair above the rest, people will flock to it for a “easier” win.

not saying there isnt problems with classes, not saying there isnt underpowered or overpwoered things, just saying these pics and the way pvp works in this game causes a exaggerated consensus.

Knyx.5926:

I like the Idea, my idea earlier in which I made a VERY long thread about was redesigning the thief to kind of move a little bit in comparison. To be more comparable to a necro then a warrior.

Just an example of the many changes in the rework I suggested:
For Dagger main hand:

Backstab::::
Front hit: Now does no front loaded damage, but does a Plethora of conditions on hit.
Back hit: Can still reach same damage potential as current but most of its damage is now based off a bonus. 10% damage per condition on the target and 5% per bleed stack. Base damage altered.

Heartseeker::::
Now is greyed out and unable to be activated until target reaches 40% hp.
This ability now works like backstabs back hit as well, most of its damage is based off the bonus of per condition on the target.

These changes alone, and this is only a sampler, would NOT ONLY mean the thief would have to spend a little more time in a fight to setup the big hits (even if it means backstabbing in the front, waiting for revealed to fall, stealth again, and backstab in the back) rather then relying on cooldowns. So this would be a shift from cooldown skill dependancy and allow for more player based skill on both ends. AT THE SAME TIME, this also opens more options up for more thief builds to be successful which is a win win if you ask me.

those conditions would need to last a while then, like…8 seconds at least

The Boz.2038:

100b is a channel.
PW is a stun.

PW has a stun, it isnt a stun, and the stun lasts less then one second, not even enough to get half the damage off

Very well, and based off of your other posts I think you and I both agree that in general… the thieves ability to off someone as fast as they do needs ot be addressed… and we can both agree that a blanket nerf (such as backstab needs reduction or all thief abilities need reduced) is unacceptable.

agreed entirely, whether the spec is truly competitive or not its silly and unfun.

However, I do disagree that pressing x repeatedly is easier than pressing yzx (cuz how do you know yzx will work in this situation?). Does it do all the things that pressing x does? no? does it take more time between x pressing then pressing yzx? no? That to me does indicate a problem.

it doesnt take more time to press 3 different buttons then it does to press the same button because of animation times.

ive not played a class where doing there damage “rotation” wouldnt work in a certain situation, you just press it, get the damage, press other buttons as needed.

However, contrary to what hte OP stated, there are things that are not really overpowered about the thief. I down and kill plenty of em. In fact, you could say I’ve grown a hatred of anyone with a thief’s signet in their buff window. They get targeted and dropped first, just cuz I can. And yes, my perspective isn’t tPvP. Frankly, I don’t care about tPvP and if game balance was all about tPvP, I wouldn’t play this game. Keep that in mind when you counter-point that balance in tPvP is the important factor.

the game is primarily balanced around tpvp, somewhat spvp, and hardly at all for WvWvW. so what you feel and what you care about, when in conflict with how it is…is pretty much a tough luck kinda situation. or as a more …insidious person would say, a QQ moar situation.

With all of that said, there is a very apparent issue when the easiest class to “master” is also the hardest hitting class. And I think that is what most players consider unbalanced. Why play anything else when you can win just as easily (or easier) with a 1 button class? But the OP did mention a huge issue… the thief does not have to sacrifice damage potential to gain a defensive edge. This gives the thief advantage.

so because thieves are easy to pick up and play they should be crap and high tier gameplay? now you may not see your comments pointing in that direction but thats where it would lead to. thief is easy to play, make its performance reflect the easy nature of the class…you wind up with a class that is “balanced” vs bad playres and is absolutly destroyed in high level gameplay, literally there would be no tthieves in real tournies anymore, lest some kind of niche gimmick build were to show up..and thats not fun.

And finally to relate back to “as advertised” which I know you don’t put much stock in… and frankly no one should. But the thief does fit the agile defensive style… the stealth mechanics and such. But because that style is so different than everything else in the game, should they also have the highest damage potential?

i dont deal in absolutes, highest, most, least, worst, best…i dont deal in them.

a thieves damage is supposed to be high, according to anet, what that means is largely up to there own interpretation, and with us not having access to there information and mindsets on it, we cannot accurately assess where the damage should be. you can argue you think its too high, and needs tuning, thats fine. I for one will simply maintain that anet said thieves are supposed to be hihgh damage….whethere there damage at this time is too high i also leave to anet, tho i do think backstab glass cannon is stupid.

Panties officially unbunched. But don’t tell my wife I wore em.

well played sir!

they are probably gonna go the wrong way and nerf backstab base damage rather then things like assassins signet.

then they will nerf death blossom

they will nerf stealth while never addressing its bugs until a year later and as a side affect make stealth incredibly useless.

they will nerf our autoattack daamge

get rid of our ini regen mechanics

nerf shortbow (this may happen sooner then later)

they will nerf thieves guild then they will nerf daggerstorm

they will get rid of hidden killer and nerf executioner.

this is all going to happen judging by the player community and the types and ways of nerfs they have done already.

@enochdagor, unbunch those panties and have a real debate other then accusations. i replied to your post. and in any mmo class definitions are more for flavor that accurate assessment of there strengths and weaknesses. i wish they were, but every mmo ive played the calss definition didnt accurately reflect ingame.

ill also take what anet says over there out of date class definitions

and i know some people mentioned that, thats why i came and and said..no, we are not meant to be “masters”. just high damage, and to take what you want from that.

your putting too much stock into what you consider advertismement.

as for how difficult at hief is compared to other classes. most classes ive had a very easy time playing, elementalist has a fine line between good and bad, and engineer i was overwhelmed for about 5 minutes figuring out the kits and such.

but when i got down to it, i have yet to play a class that feels difficult in this game.

the only difference between a thief and a other class is when i play thief and iw ant to do damage, i go for one button, when i play something else and i want to do damage, i press a pre-determined sequence of buttons.

despite what people would like you to belive, pressing x repeatedly isnt any harder or easier then pressing yzx.

so now not only is every aspect of thieves both overpowered and balanced, we are also responsible for the possible death of this game

im gonna come to this forum later today and find theives blamed for cancer…i just know it.

whats funny about that 100% chance to crit while in stealth skill..is its down our critical strikes line that gives us crit% lol.

Varyag.3751:

Ashanor.5319:

Our defensive builds are weaker than other classes defensive builds, doesn’t matter whether you accept it or not.

Stealth skills are among the best defensive skills in the game, doesn’t matter whether you accept it or not.

straight up false

first tis bugged

second it avoids no damage, just targetting

dodge>all

ConterK.3972:

well, being able to stack 10s stealth seems pretty OP,
lol u can just stack it, and follow some1 for a backstab instakill
xD!

first you have to stay inside shadow refuge for the duration to get that

second is enemies can see the outlind of shadow refuge, so they know where you are

@ehtom, addressing stealth stomp

both blind and stability stomps are more effective then stealth stomps, i hardly think they are out of line as they can be stopped.

but there is a lot of imbalanced with downed state atm

as long as they dont do what they did from cata to mists, i have active sub and a 90 rogue on it…they are absolutly horrible and no level of gear scaling is gonna save them in there current state.

they arent even rogues anymore

before ANY changes to stealth occur its bugs need fixing

right now a thief is supposed to be able to have 3-4 seconds of stealth (outside shadow refuge) and then be visible for 3 seconds.

the way it actually works because of bugs/lag is the thief is visible for effectively .1-1 second.

lets fix it before we nerf it, otherwise it could jsut become horribly UP.

ya i can see the argument, tho i imagine there are ways to fix it.

tho while reading your reply i kept thinking, and this is why i wish they kept the seperate pvp and pve abilities and formulas like it was in gw1 eventually.

you lower it too much…now they are crap in PVE

agreed yukishiro, very much so.

however if all they do is nerf backstab base damage, they hurt non glass specs a lot nad force thieves to keep speccing glass, if they nerf the damage stacking effects/traits/skills that cause this build to exist, i think it would be a better route

honestly Yukishiro, i dont exactly agree, im not saying your wrong, but i question the validity of your statement. saying its imbalanced and always will be by design, but nobody ever explains this in detail.

certainly there will be aspects of the thief class getting nerfed

@Burrid, its been a while since i did my shadow/acro/trick build i enjoyed, the damage seemed very subpar, not compared to athief, but low in general.

but we also have to realize taht 1/3 your spec is stats, then traits, then skills.

you can trait and lay out skills defensively, but if your stats arent, you can still hit hard (relatively at least)

not too mention i think you get like 30-35% crit chance just from stats on gear right? bah i have to go ingame and re-check. basically ya you can get a 5k crit, but your chance of it critting is much lower.

as for autoattack damage, it really depends on teh weapon/class…i know warriors can get 8k from there gs auto rotation, highest ive seen from my dagger mainhand is 4.5-6k (with self buffs, i assume same for warrior)

but again, unless anet decides otherwise, they said they wanted theives for damage/mobility.

but not having exact numbers that target numbers that anet has, i cannot accurately argue for or against the balance of our skills damage outside of a glass cannon spec.

generally

glass=fragile, not a lot in terms of defense/survivability…in GW2 this would be both stats and skills

cannon=kills something very fast

your not a glass cannon if you spec for damage but your skills are about survivability for example

if your spec for damage nad your skills augment that damage further, then yes

Mike.9185:

1 button class no matter the spec, (it just changes which button you spam) seems like a fun and legit class. probly why its the most played class in spvp. I thought people in 2012 would prefer a fun in depth playstyle. which can be found in most other classes. dont “nerf” the thief. just change it so it takes all your buttons like the rest of us

this is literally childish whining, barely above a 3 year old tantrum only cuz you can spell and use more adjectives.

and its human nature to take the path of least resistance, yes a thief is easier to pick up and play then say a elementalist. however it still has depth if you can put your love of HS spam away for a minute and actually use the initiative system for how it was intended, not just face value. having the ability to use your utility skills (which is 4/5th of the thieves skills per weapon out of stealth) back to back can be amazing and open a lot of fun gameplay. sadly most people never venture beyond press the damage move add infinty

lets go down the line shall we

@Proeliator, ty, i try to be unbiased even tho i main a thief

@EnochDagar, we are not supposed to be masters of damage, merely just high damage, you can take your own interpretation of what high damage should be. and it wasnt in the class description, it was a anet post about thieves strengths, which was supposed to be damage and mobility. i did find it odd they didnt mention stealth unless they consider it part of mobility or something. I dont recall anywhere in this thread people wanting to nerf or keep elemental damage down, so bringing it up is pure case of being unhappy about elementalist damage it seems. fair enough, tho no real place in this thread i think.

@Kijima, if you have shadowstep your not using hte exact glass cannon build most people are talking about. saying i spec backstab nad have survivability isnt the same as speccing that exact build and saying it. that specific backstab thief has 2 dodges and stealth, maybe shortbow for infiltrator arrows, thats it for mobility/survivability. if you have something else that adds to it, congrats, but your not using that specific build. tho people not knowing how to counter a thief in shadow refuge…im not sure how thats the thiefs problem :P. but i dont think your a pure glass spec, specially if you have shadowstep! but ya, hard to find good players to face sometimes.

@Kelhus, yes, when you take it down to bare bones, a glass cannon thief has stealth and 2 dodges while other glass cannons typically only have 2 dodges. but before we go nerf nerf nerf, we need to fix the few bugs stealth has, which all favor the thief. then we can properly adjust.

@burrid, well a thief will do one of two things in stealth, attack you, or run away. if we attack you and have a dagger, we are going for your back. if we are running away its most likely switching to shortbow and using infiltrator arrow, after the first arrow we are put out of stealth so you see where we are going…problem…stelath is bugged, we dont become visible right away, thus making it seem more OP then it is.

@barti, agreed they are annoying, far more annoying then stealth imo, key is to hit them in between evades, small window, but its there, combined with there pitiful hp they do die in seconds if they are not evading.

Burrid.4739:

I was surprised by a death blossom thief once. I was more surprised by the amount of condition damage he did. 15k bleed damage in a matter of seconds.
Sure I guess I could have cleaned the conditions, but with no other class is it necessary to do this fast. When a thief has better condition damage than a necromancer, it just isn’t funny anymore.
All of their builds are overpowered, and they are centered around 1 ability.

they are supposed to be centered around one ability (for damage) thats how thief is designed

as for OP or UP, i dont feel like debating that.

i can concede that if you compare a glass cannon (i mean, speced and selected no utility/defensive moves whatsoever) elementalist with a glass cannon thief the thief has one thing over the elementalist…and thats stealth.

but before we start hammering it with nerfs we need to fix its bugs.

id also not mind if you miss with a stealthed attack or if it was mitigated by a ability that you still pop out of stealth. rewards players for being defensive imo.

tho i wont ever agree to thieves bieng hit knocking them out of stealth, or thieves being hit creating a big obvious sign where they are in stealth.

ehtom.5047:

I have played alot of games. I have played several at very high levels of play.

I have NEVER seen something as broken as the Thief before. For PvP, the class is completely anti-fun:

1. Bleed stack builds are pretty much griefing.

do you mean leaping death blossom builds or pistol main hands builds? there are two, one revolves around a ton of ini regen and using one move, the other around stealth.

death blossom build is actually easily dealt with, if youd take your time to time your CC, a true LDB build has all its eggs in regenning ini for more LDB’s.

pistol main hand is actually harder cuz the bleeds only last a couple seconds, making removing the majority of hte damage via condition removal harder. ive played the spec, its fun, but a little too wonky for me. good at holding a point tho. but yes, im sure people will start whining about it soon until its nerfed. the fact that you didnt take the time to time your attacks when hes not in evasion frames means you werent learning tho.

2. Almost impossible to kill with the stealth spam.

stealth is bugged, resulting in less sight time then intended. you should be able to see him for 3 seconds before he can enter stealth again, because of the bugs its more like .1-1 second. its a problem that needs fixing i agree. tho i think theres hackers too, had a LDB thief doing this to me, couldnt NOT figure out what he was using to stealth as it didnt seem to be CnD or any skill i could make out.

3. Backstab instagib from stealth – No way this should be in the game imo.

agreed, they need to nerf that spec, that individual spec.

4. Stealth stomp – If this is a bug, then its just plain griefing and repeat offenders should be punished.

stealth stomp is weaker then stability stomp, and weaker then blind stomp as well. certain classes can interrupt it, but that just means other calsses probably should. the downed state is fun, but lets make no mistake there are some adjustments needing to be made to some classes.

5. Downed state – high damage & mobility. Compared to most other classes downed state its just plain ridiculous (all downed states should be like Guardian imo – give you a chance to survive for a while, but not continue to grief the other player).

thieves have one of the weakest downed states in the game in terms of damage actually. tho its survivability is too high too imo.

6. Some of their builds require no skill whatsoever. I rolled a thief, played pistol whip and within 15 mins I was owning people (I didnt even know what half the buttons were for and never weapon swapped)

thieves are a bit different then most classes if you havent noticed. they dont weapon swap to maximize damage, it just gives them a different set of utiltiies, that and 90% of thieves go shortbow for its mobility and aoe/comboing, since most thief specs dont have any aoe. however i can go into pvp untraited and kill people…with any class, know why? cuz a lot of people in spvp are truly bad. but i played PW too, and what i noticed is vs bads it worked great, vs anyone with some brains id die before the animation ended on it unhasted. but sorry we dont stance dance, weapon swap and hit CD’s, not how we were designed…you can say its a bad design thats fine, you have a right to.

Now, I am not good enough at the game to say if they are overpowered or not. However this is not my point. My point is that Thieves in their current state are not fun to play against at all and are ruining the fun potential of this game considerably.

when the bugs are fixed, and hte one shotting fixed…it will be different, however, look at the history of these types of games. people hate any thing slippery or stealthy, they will always label it as unfun. so unless anet gets rid of thieves or nerfs themt o the point where they are far and away the worst class in the game, your always gonna hate them.

true i think some of the issues in spvp format itself lend itself too well to a thiefs strengths, hence them being less prevalent in tpvp (not just the bunkers)

id love it to go down to 5v5, and have objectives be important enough that zerging is a frowned upon tactic for glory.

im sure some balancing will be done for sake of spvp, just not hte majority of it.

Merciless.5349:

When you look at your skill bar, unless you’re a Thief, you’ll notice that some of your pretty awesome skills are on a 30+ second CD. The Thief class does not have this problem.

Initiative regenerates at approximately 1 per 1.11 seconds, traited. They can literally spam any skill that they so choose, until they’re short of Init, and in less than 7 seconds, they can use that skill again (the largest Initiative cost for a skill is 6).

Combined with Stealth, a Thief does not have problems waiting for Initiative to regenerate so that he can return to spamming a skill.

So how do you balance a class mechanic such as Initiative + Stealth?

Decrease Init regen rate, increase init cost for certain skills, or do not allow init to regen while in Stealth.

Any 1 of those would bring a Thief more in line with the other classes’ cooldowns.

what about the affects of PVE? or is that unimportant?

im also hesitant to say it would balance anything. not too mention there are specific traitns that INCREASE ini regen while in stealth (a extra 1 ini over 3 seconds to be exact) and one that refunds ini on a move that gains you stealth (2 ini).

you have to look at what is individually unbalanced about thieves (and dont say all, you say all, your nothing but a troll, lets have a good discussion please) and balance accordingly.

once the glass cannon build is addressed, once stealth bugs are addressed, and im sure some other changes willb e littered in there as well, we can better assess the strengths and weaknesses of a thief and fix it better (Stealth being a big one)

some things that you will not see happent to a thief tho

cooldowns on weapon sets
ini system removal

not unless anet coms out and says, ok guys, we screwed up, we cant for hte life of us fix this, so we gonna scrap it. hey it could happen, tho i wouldnt hold my breath

Burrid.4739:

Seether.7285:

I’m not a thief, but my god the tears are never ending. Thieves are not OP, L2P.

Resetting the fight might be an effective strategy in SPvP where holding points means nothing to the participants but it is pretty useless in TPvP.

-I am in the process of getting better, and I see improvement vs other classes, only vs thieves it remains hard.

Thanks for reading, I did not mean to offend anyone and if I did, I’m sorry. Also this post was made to vent a bit of frustrations I keep having every match

Also: why is it that only tpvp has any importance? “Thieves are op, but hey, they are a bit less op in tournaments, so all is fine.” No, not everyone plays tournaments all the time..

Reminds me of world of warcraft arena. Everything must be balanced around arena, every other aspect of the game must be neglected, even if it ruins the game experience of other players. (not saying this is the case here, but people act like it.)

ill shed some light for you.

anet said their main focus for balance will be tourneys, somewhat for spvp, and little to none for wvwvw.

fact is there is a lot of problems with spvp right now (8v8, no incentive to play objectively, underwater imbalances, etc)

just by the act of making objectives important again nerfs the thief in terms of how effective the class is at winning.

ill address each point individually as unbiased as i can.

1-if we spec for damage we do damage, in this game your “damage” isnt entirely controlled by your weapon spec, so listing them is rather pointless. yous tack power and crit your gonna hit and crit hard. i imagine thieves might crit a bit harder since 30 points into critical strikes give +30% crit damage. not too mention thieves are supposed to be a high damage class. you can argue too much i dont care, im just saying they are supposed to be high damage.

2-uhm maybe you feel they dont but as a thief i def feel i need some defensive abilities. lets see…shadows rejuvination, longer stealths, shadow refuge, smoke screen, shadow step (its return is defensive) and even daggerstorm has a defensive quality (projectile immunity and stability). thats largely what i run with. as for running away, if they would get rid of our ability to chain stealths then you wouldnt see thieves slip away via stealth.

3-we do have one of the most annoying downed states, whether it gets nerfed or not i dont really care

4-we can? how do you figure? this isnt death match pvp or world pvp, this is S/Tpvp with objectives (tho they need to polisht hat a bit too). sure ill run away if its me vs a ton of people and i know i have no chance, but thieves arent the only ones that can do that. as for being able to get away while fighting, ive seen other classes do this as well, tho thieves may have it easier with shortbow infiltrator arrow i dunno. i can only use it twice if im at max initiative and have to wait a while before i can use it again. and i have no runspeed increases or swiftness effects of my own. to each there own i guess, i didnt spec to run away

5-thieves guild is cheese, but imo basilisk is UP ESPECIALLY since they nerfed it without compensation, and daggerstorm is fine, it can be dealt with fine. granted standing there ignoring it is gonna hurt tho!

6-what your talking about is a glass cannon backstab spec and im sure anet will address it, tho ive said it before, just nerfing backstab will create more problems then it will fix, better to nerf some of the damage stacking that causes such high damage. that way you can encourage more balanced thief builds rather then everyone always being glass cannon stuff.

7-everyone can spam abilities more then you can dodge, how is that a excuse?

8-how do we reset the fight? run away come back later? i for one cant reset a fight that simply, my stelath only lasts 4 seconds, not 12. perhaps something i dont know about?

9-my stunbreaker has a long Cd too, you have to choose when to use it, and rely on team/dodges/other defenses/other skills to avoid it. i remember using my stunbreaker vs a warriors bullcharge, only to have a thief try to HS spam me, i dodge…see he keeps pressing it so i lay down black powder so now hes whiffing. what class do you play? perhaps we can analyze abilities and come up with a setup that is more resilient?

-how do daggers make it so we never lose a fight? it has autoattack, heartseeker, deathblossom, dancing dagger, and CnD and backstab….nothing in there can be used to escape that well. shortbow yes, tho only certain specs can use it more then twice if at full initiative. nerf shortbow? /shrug, its our only good alternative weapon set sadly lol, but i probably wouldnt care either. ill probably do dagger/pistol+pistol/dagger and still be a menace.

things anet are not gonna do

1-give thief cooldowns on there weapon sets
2-get rid of initiative
3-unless they change there stance they will still be centered around damage adn mobility.

but i can tell from the body of your post your complaininga bout at least 3 specs, one spec doesnt do all that.

Pimpslapper.2047:

So, there are a lot of people not reading the three pages of thread, and I do not blame them. So let me paraphrase why I made this thread.

1. I do not die to HS spammers unless they jump me in the middle of another fight, see attachment. This is not a L2P issue, it is a valid gripe about a stupid, stupid skill.

so whats the problem? and its really not valid at all.

2. A finisher skill should not be spammable

ok people are getting REALLY hung up on this finisher crap. anet designed thieves to be able to press the same buttons back to back. hence they gave HS a adjustable damage scale. the only time it even qualifies as a finisher in terms of damage is below 25% hp

3. It needs to use double the initiative, have a 2 second cooldown, or only be usable at 15-25% opponents health to make it a real “finisher”.

first one ruins PVE, second one is against the design goals set by anet for the theif class, and third one is just dumb. lets just say it like it is, HS is not a conventional finisher, its a finisher when the target is below 25% hp, above it its really not.

So, is it working as intended when my necro goes from 57% health (27k life and to 0% from a HS train?

im sorry, HS train? like multiple thieves HS you? or a thief and a bunch of other classes training you? if its just the one thief, im gonna lay it out cuz this has gotten old, i can see a lot of specs reasons for being nerfed, original heartseeker, pistol whip, backstab, etc…but HS in its current form, if you lose to a thief spamming it, you suck. you can take that as a cop out if you want, but it wont change the truth no matter what you deny or no matter how many vacuum examples you give.

Is that REALLY a finisher? My necro can take on all classes, and beat them with skill, even good thieves, but dumb noob thieves who HS train…this is just stupid enough to kitten me off.

so tis stupid, get over it and kill them, spit on there corpse, teabag them, /dance, whisper hate to them on how much they suck and are a noob spec.

Again, this is coming from a thief main, who ONLY pvps. I have 334 matches on my thief and over 150 on my necro and nearly as many on my ranger. I know how to counter thieves, I know how to dodge roll, etc…but the HS spam is just kittening stupid kittening dumb. Period. Anyone who disagrees is just trying to defend the fact that they play a thief who spams it and is afraid they may have to start to learn how to play the class themselves.

actually i tend to forget to use HS >.<, especialy at the 25% hp mark or lower. a HS thief starts attackign me….i can auto it down faster then it will kill me. if its using haste, i pop a defensive move, just one, its all i need, watch as they qued up all there HS they could for that haste duration, and do nothing to me, and i kill them or they run away and i kill a higher priority target.

honestly, HS is a “soft” finisher, only word i can think for it. you can moan how oh now were contesting if HS is a real finisher or not, but look at it, you said yourself, doesnt behave exactly like one. yet maintains harmony with thieves initiative system (no CD).

however im for shortening the leap distance (i still want it to be a leap finisher tho, so dagger/pistol thieves have a way to get into stealth), and remove the autotarget (honestly dont agree with autotarget)

sorrow.2364:

Wolfe.3097:

Yukishiro.8792:

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

uhm no, the 450 jump is shortened when the thief is chilled. you can in fact run faster then it less the thief uses haste.

Nope.
Snares make no sense when you have skills that moves for you. It could have some sense in GW where there was no leap, but now snare is the counter of nothing.

you cant just say nope when its in fact true. yes HS has a “range” on it, but when its chilled taht range is shorted considerably (i dont know exactly how much by, the tooltip doesnt change to inform me lol). you can keep saying no, but thats how it works ingame right now.

Yukishiro.8792:

That’s not been my experience. In my experience unless you have range to begin with if you start in melee range with a HS spamming thief and apply a cripple or a chill they will still be able to keep distance with you unless you have swiftness.

I mean sure if you start at 200-300 units away from them you can stay ahead long enough to make them burn most of their ini. But that’s not what we’re talking about.

if your having such trouble, dodge, just once, and he wont catch you with HS so long as he is snared. yes i know dodge is great for everything, but this isnt even a case of having to dodge a lot, just once and keep running.

of course i still maintain that HS does such pitiful damage itself that worryinga bout it is ludicrous.

and ill say again im for hte autolock being removed, i dont see whats wrong with having to aim it.

Yukishiro.8792:

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

uhm no, the 450 jump is shortened when the thief is chilled. you can in fact run faster then it less the thief uses haste.

ens.9854:

Yukishiro.8792:

If you’re spamming HS it’s actually very hard for anyone to get distance on you. A chill or cripple isn’t enough on its own to be able to get distance against a HS spammer, you also need an immo or stun or a gap creator of your own.

Or, you know, they could literally just shadowstep ONCE and have FULL initiative to do whatever the hell they please with your bloody corpse. Not that i’m trying to turn this into a debate on whether teleports are OP (they are, but almost everyone has them).

yes, this i can concede to

Yukishiro.8792:

If you’re spamming HS it’s actually very hard for anyone to get distance on you. A chill or cripple isn’t enough on its own to be able to get distance against a HS spammer, you also need an immo or stun or a gap creator of your own.

your kidding right? the only way its not enough is if the thief applied something like devourer or ice venom before he started hitting you (as you would be immobilized/slowed)

im getting the impression people dont actually try things before they post about it.

snare a thief, then proceed to run away, so long as your not slowed or cc’d yourself (obviously id hope) you will outpace him as he wastes initiative trying to get to you.

lmao, now warrior is OP? mesmers get gutted and now warriors up to the plate!

feels sooooo good to be right about this community it hurts

around around we go, where will the nerfs stop? nobody knows!

@ Proeliator, proves how much you know. I say thieves are not AS bad as people complain, but they are indeed having issues that need addressing.

just to name a few

the lag/rendering issue with stealth

the glass cannon backstab build

revealed debuff not triggering all the time

pistol whip imo was handled poorly, nerfing its base damage didnt do much vs things like haste+PW and such.

no sir, i post to instill a bit of rationalization to the mass hysteria on these forums filled with people who dont want balance, just nerfs, and others who post entirely innacurate or untrue statements. ive seen people post that HS has evasion frames for example lol. do i have bias? entirely possible, but im at least certain i have far less then most, and bias goes both ways, the vocal bit on these forums are no less biased against thieves then there are for thieves.

as far as balancing the finishing move thusly, it is because it would undermine the very intention of the initiative system. a balance has to be met that doesnt undermine it, or anet needs to remove initiative all together (which many people on here would be for im sure). the suggestion is a bandaid fix that hampers the classes design goals. if we nerf it for this, the next thing WILL be our autoattack >.<

and yes its gap closing ability and target lock is probably more useful then its actual damage, however, one cripple completly negates its ability to close a gap shortening its leap length by a lot. it has no protection vs any CC in fact so spamming it is just inviting someone to lay you out, the fact that nobody has commented in reply to this (that ive seen) worries me, tells me nobody is running any form of CC and think thats ok. however im for removal of the auto target.

as far as best mobiltiy goes, we really ahve to trait and spec for it to be considered best, otehrwise we simply are not. but thats not really here nor there.

as far as your comment against snares/CC, i think you are not playing very well, not trying to be mean, but a single cripple affect really does negate HS, you can backpedal faster then hes gonna be closing with HS at that point. go try it, and any other CC will work, stopping it dead, not too mention hes doing less damage then he would autoattacking, why not just kill him? hes spamming a attack that is completly suceptable to CC and damage while doing subpar damage himself. get rid of the target lock fine, but keeping it as a leap finisher is nescessary for dagger/pistol builds to function.

there is no reaching, try it please

i said there are some similarities to the ability itself, but the fact that one is designed with CD’s and one isnt, means that comparing them like that is in fact comparing apples to oranges. im not writing it off.

if you tweak the cost you further nerf us in PVE, while i dont PVE much, and i know the way dungeons work damage isnt endall beall, at what point is it too much?

i have more hten once suggested an idea where if you use the same skill back to back its cost is increased by 1 ini point for every time you use it consecutively, this would essentially cut the number of times a thief can “spam” HS in half.

so lets recap, im all for the target lock being removed, personally i dont know why its there in the first place

im against straight up raising the cost cuz of PVE implications

Im against putting a Cd on it as it would undermine the very system anet created for thieves themselves, at that point id rather it be remade into a non execution move so dagger mainhand isnt running around neutered when out of stealth

im against removing the leap, its our only leap finisher, and is REQUIRED in dagger/pistol to enter stealth as they have no cloak and dagger.

and one last time, heartseeker is completly susceptible to any form of crowd control and will immediatly stop its usefulness.

does less damage then autoattack above 25%, no protection…how are people honestly going from 100% to 0% from this skill? do you not run any form of CC yourselves? do you ignore the thief while he hits you? it honestly baffles me.

sorrow.2364:

Guys, this thread is totally pointless. Why does thieves need to use heartseeker when they can pop out some ridiculous damage just with the autoattack?

http://i46.tinypic.com/2afncj7.jpg

Consider that the thieves’ autoattack just takes a bit more than a second to be fully chained.
Only noob thieves use heartseeker, pro thieves use autoattack.

agreed autoattack is better then HS above 25%

however this doesnt mean its OP, i mean, greatsword auto is capable of 8k chains easily enough on a warrior.

autoattack is a important part of the game

Psy.6153:

I came across a heartseeker thief in one of my very rare spvp outings last night.
It went basically Steal > heartseeker spam with haste. I was dead before i could even react.
I thought it was a 1 off, but nope, he did it repeatedly for the next hour killing anyone who he chose to kill.

Screw the 2 second cooldown, i want to see it on a 4 second cooldown like most other classes similar abilities.

what is your class and stats?

i ask because i cant see this as possible, now if he stole, CnD, backstabbed crit, then proceeded to spam HS maybe. But HS hits for very weak damage above 25% hp.

granted haste is dumb paired with anything, but even with that i dont see how

Yukishiro.8792:

The problem with HS spam isn’t that it’s good – it isn’t, you’ll get owned by anyone with a clue in a 1v1 – it’s that it’s too rewarding for spamming one ability mindlessly.

The problem with HS spam is it basically makes a completely awful player marginally competent simply by pressing one ability over and over because it does everything for them. There is a reason almost all bad players play thieves: because the class is basically set up to let even awful players succeed occasionally just by stacking damage increases and spamming 2 and hoping HS will do everything for you. No need to aim, no need to move, just spam 2!

i can see how a LDB thief could go about this (tho its slightly more involved then just spam 2) but HS? it has no protection, does low damage above 25% hp…most classes would be able to out dps the thief outright even if they spec glass cannon and spam HS hoping for crits.

BishopX.6453:

ya the fact that it is a teleporting, tracking high damage ability + gap closer is what makes it a 1 button wonder. you dont really need to aim and hit your target. other melee have to rely on geting in range and missing . hs tracks and still deals high damage which is why EVERYONE plays a hs spamming thief.
if you get in trouble as a thief and panic, you can press HS multiple times and roll the dice for crits. no other class can you really PANIC and press 1 button without aiming.

it doesnt teleport, wtf

it does track

it does NOT do high damage above 25% hp, again, my autoattack dps a enemy down faster then spamming HS above 25%

it is a partial gap closer, it has no evasion frames, no instant teleportation, breaks no snares/CC, and if affected by cripple its nullified as being a gap closer at all for the cripples duration

id be fine with the tracking being removed tho /shrug

but to say its high damage is only accurate if you somewhow play all the time at 25% hp or lower.

you do realize the only ones that use it as a stealth leap finisher are D/P thieves that do not have access to cloak and dagger yes? it costs them 7-9 initiative to enter stelath vs double daggers 4-6 for cloak and dagger. so dont start spouting nonsense.

adding a Cd would defeat the purpose of thieves resource design.

being engaged with another enemey is NO EXCUSE for lacking area awareness, i avoid big incoming damage from every class all the time while fighting 1 or more people, because i can avoid tunneling.

Eurosdown.6072:

Just remove the movement component from heartseeker and leave the damage where it is, problem solved. Good thieves will still be good, bad thieves will have to learn to work for their kills and maybe improve in the process.

no, i use hs for its leap combo finisher to gain stealth in my dagger/pistol build

that would destroy it

I don’t think anyone would complain about a finisher doing a decent amount of damage. It’s not really a finisher though when you can just keep clicking it until someone is dead. The way it works now even if a person is at say 40% life it still doesn’t hurt to start spamming it because you will stay auto locked on target and eventually they will be at 25% and dead. That’s not a finisher that’s like a “special” move you can always use.

again, above 25% my AUTOATTACK dps’s down a target faster then hitting HS. so if hes using it above 25% hes doing you a favor and making life easier on you. having any of the thieves weapon set skills have a Cd or be unable to be used until a condition is met (aside form our one stealth move per weapon) would be unbalanced.

as far as autolock and people complaining about its gap closing nature. it has no evasion frames, zero, the entire time during its animation you can CC/cripple, damage the thief. and if yo0u cripple him, it also shortens the length of the “leap” considerably to where its no longer a effective gap closer. this all is combined into it being completly avoidable, doing negligible damage outside of haste effects or above25% hp. literally the only thing your getting is you dont like hte thief doing the same animation over and over, in which case id say it doesnt matter, thieves are designed to use there damage move when they want to do damage, not cycle thru multiple damage moves, we dont have that. now admittedly this has to be one of the weakest thief specs available now and anyone who usees it or has trouble against it needs to pick there game up a bit.

[quote][quote]

its a rendering issue coupled with lag

ok, this is rediculous, heartseeker recieved a 20% damage reduction and its threshold schanged from 33/66 to 25/50%

im not kidding when i say i can kill someone faster by autoattacking then by spamming HS above 25% hp

and if it crit for 8k you were probably below 25% hp in which case cry me a freaking river its a execute ability its supposed to hit hard at that point.

and to the person in this thread that said cripple effects do not affect heartseekers gap closing abilities /FACEPALM, and thats your face not mine sir. just checked, it certainly does

what i think is laughable is people thinking that they should have more defense then the opponents have offense. if you had endless dodges people would just spam dodge and stack stunbreakers and never die.

thats why this is a team game people.