Guild Wars 2

LetoII.3782:

FUNFACTS:

There’s 70 players on TW’s roster. Some are legacy members who don’t actually play.
Our record online at one time is 34.
TW’s Perceived presence:

Don’t you mean 15?

Burl.9567:

Either way, I could say a lot more but I’m done on the topic. I say all this with the best intentions and I don’t mean to belittle how anything is done by anyone or any server.

I completely understand, more than you’d know. I had to cover for Kurthos on SoS telling JQ how to better their server every other day, making sure JQ knew he had best intentions in mind. I just want you guys to know how silly it can be to say these things when there’s no 100% proven plan to be the best server. There’s a number of things that can factor in, like you mentioned, and no amount of forum preaching is going to help JQ.

Burl.9567:

As someone who was on JQ recently, the level of TS participation/coordination on JQ is rather low. It was rather eye opening actually.

Yes but you are saying that as somebody in a large guild (TW/TWL). What you see on TS will be vastly different to a server without a presence like that on every map. BG probably has a similar situation since we do not have as many large guilds. The turnout is pretty good, but it is fractured into a bunch of medium guilds. From what I saw when I played, JQ is similar. Not a lot of large guilds. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I personally did not like running with the zergs at all, I stayed on my guilds teamspeak 95% of the time where we did small ops. That isn’t to say we didn’t have a representative in the TS to hear/relay things, but we didn’t have the entire guild in there because there was no point.

TL;DR: A server consisting mainly of large guilds is going to have more TS turnout than a server consisting mainly of small/medium.

Jahn.7019:

That was a JQ person not a SoR person that you are referring to, just fyi. They were giving feedback to their own server.

My post was spurred by pixelninja on this page, he’s from SoR. Then I quoted you and Burl which, correct me if I’m wrong, are both SoR as well.

Jahn.7019:

SoR is historically an underdog server, if any server knows, they do.

It has far more losses under its belt than wins, which is why no one cares about winning.

These “problems” you guys keep bringing up are highly subjective. If you’re not on JQ then you do not know why they are having “problems.” Want to know what other #1 servers have said the same lines you guys are spouting? All of them. You need more coordination! Get your server in TS! Want to know what fixed their “problem?” Recruiting. Which SoR also has all the solutions for apparently.

I just find it hilarious you guys can make these assumptions.

I’m going to sound a bit hypocritical here, as somebody who was on SoS… but I find it funny every time SoR tries to tell JQ why they are having “problems,” like they know.

Burl.9567:

celeron.3469:

I remember a couple pages back, Burl I believe, said nobody ever complained “like this” about BG’s EU.

Good times

Uhhhh….I did? Not saying I didn’t. I just don’t remember half the crap I type anymore.

Oh nope, sorry it was Jahn. There’s so many of you guys its hard to keep up. Had to look at my post history to make sure.

I remember a couple pages back, Burl I believeJahn, said nobody ever complained “like this” about BG’s EU.

Good times

Kathy K.6812:

I personally haven’t seen them, but I would very much love to meet them

Hello, I’m part of VI. I don’t know if my previous post in this thread is still up, but I quit GW2 about 2 months ago. The rest of VI has done the same (around the same time). We are/were part of AoI, and only 5-12 strong (12 only on fridays), so it makes me proud to see us named outside AoI. We didn’t like running with the zergs, unless Orc or Smokee was leading it, so you usually found us attacking/defending camps and yaks and such. Also surgically attatched to Dragon Riders, if you saw us DR was usually pretty close by waiting to flank.

You might’ve met us just haven’t realized it. Churchill, Papaj, Shivan, Punch Clock Villain, and myself (Cee Jay) were some of the ones who were out there every day.

Jahn.7019:

Before IRON, BG was the only server with EU with RK and HB, just fyi. For almost 4-5 months, if not longer.

You didn’t hear any of the whining from any other server that BG is putting up now.

Let me stop you there. You obviously do not read anything on these forums. BG’s EU has been a point of complaint since the moment they announced they would transfer here. I was on DB at the time… we most certainly complained about it. DB was up by about 25k after a lot of overtiming from its SEA and NA crews, then BG got its EU alliance (it was 3 guilds at the time, right?), they then won by 40k or something. Ask anybody in HB or RK what the response was.

Lets fast forward to when BG first went to T1, what did JQ and SBI say about BG’s coverage? When they weren’t talking about hackers they were talking about BG having the only EU coverage on NA servers, they ticked 400+ppt for a bit, and then got double teamed for 3 weeks.

Then lets fast-forward again to when BG’s oceanic and SEA were putting in overtime (+RK) to get 500PPT during the week. Did you forget about that? I mean you guys are still complaining about it.

I don’t play this game anymore, but I still read the forums, and that response made me log in because of how dumb it was.

Danielle.3152:

Trolling aside, the setups were different, if not in terms of classes then it terms of specs for sure, a lot of focus on rezing from TW that we did not have. We certainly also didn’t have a rifle warrior ^^. Same went for the playstyle, both groups tried to achieve something different with their movement. The US moving in a circle meta while nuking with ranged and trying to lure enemy to go over stacked AoE certainly isn’t something we ever used or that would be regularly used in EU GvG’s.

I think TW would be pleasantly surprised if they transferred to EU at how much higher the competition level is there in GvG’s. They were not pushovers but we certainly had GvG’s in Europe where we lost rounds and more pressure was put on us (as a group, not me) by guilds that are nowhere near their US status/ranking. I am sure they would have a lot of good and close matches there, that is if they wouldn’t have delay due to the server locations. For me personally US servers are borderline unplayable at some hours due to warping lag. Using VPN is a must and even then the connection still suffers.

As much as I dislike the TW forum trolls, I’m glad that there’s this difference in playstyle. I play fighting games so I can appreciate a keepaway fighter and a rushdown fighter. If I was to make a comparison, from the sound of it, TW would be Guile and RG would be Cammy. Maybe TW will level up into UMvC3 Morrigan/Doom.

Gellor.6497:

I"m not sure when NNK came but it was right after TSYM left but I do apologize since I forgot BP and TG weren’t always on DB

NNK has always been on DB. They were a smaller 10-15man force in the beginning. LLB spearheaded DB’s asian WvW with about 20-30 people, after having split off from TWin. TWin made up most of DB’s pug forces during that time.

source: I’m one of those original transfers off of DB, always had a mancrush on NNK.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemories…. T_T

more memories, from “that match” lol, those were good times, I don’t remember getting the PPT in the last pic but apparently we did.

edit: added a special one for JQ

Robot Chocken.7012:

You know you can send them a guild invite and then you see what server they are in right?

Did you know it also shows that same text when they guest? If I guest to JQ right now, my guild list will say I’m on JQ. That is in no way proof of where somebody is from.

The only problem with the supposed taunting in LA after JQ lost, you cannot immediately link that to another server unless you actually know the person doing the taunting. BG and SoR aren’t the only servers who would like to see JQ lose, SoS would certainly like to see it, and I’m sure you can find players with similar wishes from all the other servers as well.

Same as everyone is saying about the 2v1 can be applied here: stop with the propaganda or show some proof. Otherwise you’re trying to name and shame a group of people to save your own reputation.

Israel.7056:

You get new titles as you rank up. I think assaulter was rank 5 I dunno what 10 is yet.

10 is Raider

Burl.9567:

celeron.3469:

Burl.9567:

celeron.3469:

even numbers

15char

Probably closer in numbers than you think after counting all those green dots. People just see a sea of red and instantly think they have a 9000 man zerg.

Of coarse, you guys only had 40. That’s what I said.

I’m not on JQ…

Then that explains why I had to reply, they had 2x our numbers. That’s normal for JQ, just we can finally take screenshots of it to prove it. They apparently “need SEA” still.

Burl.9567:

celeron.3469:

even numbers

15char

Probably closer in numbers than you think after counting all those green dots. People just see a sea of red and instantly think they have a 9000 man zerg.

Of coarse, you guys only had 40. That’s what I said.

even numbers

15char

Eurlin.4256:

I log into a borderland, my guild is in queue. I look at map and we’re outmanned. That’s as black and white as it gets. outmanned buff is a 1:3 player buff. means if they have 30..we have 10. and there’s a queue. we have 30-45 they have 150. That’s as black and white as it gets.

My guild jumps to another borderland..they’re all queued, but my map is still outmanned.. I fail to see the part where it’s not a problem?

There has never been 150 per server on a map. At most it was something like 90-100. Yes, there are quotes about 500 for all servers, no it was never proven. You could figure out the map populations just by looking around though. I’ve never been in a 150 man zerg, or even close to that, have you?. I’ve been in a 60 man zerg, with maybe 20 others roaming around doing random things.

covenn.7165:

celeron.3469:

And yeah that bug has been around forever, which is why I think the map populations themselves were actually lowered. Not the bug itself was made worse, it’s just more apparent now.

So how do you rationalize this with the people reporting queues for zones where they have the outmanned buff?

The bug has been doing this forever, outmanned buff, as far as we know, is percentage related. Lower the cap and the percentage is also a much lower number (compared to before), but it’s also probably much less spread apart. Combine this with queue bug and it doesn’t take a lot of queue bugged people to cause it. There are of coarse much easier to create reasons somebody would queue into outmanned, like a guild on the map suddenly logs. Not everything is black and white.

Proumbro.1376:

I also wouldn’t mind long queues personally if the they were consistent, but I still had a friend last night that queued after me and got in within 20 minutes while I waited for hours. It has literally become a job to watch my screen to make sure the queue doesn’t pop and when a game becomes a job, something is incredibly wrong. It means I need to find another game (which I don’t want to do) or the admitted bug (the one A-Net admitted to months ago about sporadic queues) needs to be fixed and the UI for the queue in general needs to be rethought.

I also have a friend just like you. Though when he gets in finally he gets sound bug then crashes and quits for the night. And yeah that bug has been around forever, which is why I think the map populations themselves were actually lowered. Not the bug itself was made worse, it’s just more apparent now. There needs to be a ding or something (system wide so you don’t have to change options every time you afk) when your queue finally pops, I know this has been in other games so it’s not like it is a new idea.

covenn.7165:

You put quotes on the queue bug thread because you don’t understand what the actual problem is. Then you failed to respond to everyone that called you out.

Nobody understands what the actual problem is, including you, again, get over yourself.

Proumbro.1376:

Ignoring the obvious trolling part of this post, you have completely missed his point so I highlighted it for you. I have had WvW pretty much eliminated for me this week due to queues because my guild and friends have been running in EB. I only have about 3-4 hours to play a day, and 2-3 are spent in the queue to play with my friends and guild, which is then immediately negated by the DC that I get 30 minutes later.

It’s not about numbers, it’s not even about the score, it’s all about playing the game and I haven’t been able to do so thus far in the match-up.

Btw, did you ever think for once that maybe the servers themselves are causing the close match-up? You know, that they may be of similar strength? To solely attribute this (thus far) close match-up to a “queue bug” is a bit shortsighted, that is unless you have some data that we don’t?

I read the bolded bit and rather than make it obvious I insinuated that you could just transfer to another server. I’m on SoS, the “stacked server.” Our queues are nothing like the complaints JQ and SoR have been giving. I’m not saying you guys are stacked, but we both know you (SoR) have a huge NA population and nobody can deny that. SoS does not have a gigantic NA population nor does it have a gigantic oceanic population (in comparison to others in the oceanic timezone it is yeah, but its not that large in the overall scale).

So why does SoS not have as many problems with the current situation? Partly because it benefits us (even match) and partly because we don’t have a huge enough population to be hindered too badly by it.

Also to the last question: JQ would be rolling both of our servers by about 30k right about now, if it wasn’t for the queue bug.

I’m not trying to be a jerk or trash anybody, if it comes off that way then sorry.

Burl.9567:

You guys get 50-60 on a map?!?! We are clearly doing something wrong as we don’t get numbers that high on a map with a queue usually…

I know you’re joking, but this is from counting the enemy and attempting to keep track of allies. If I know there’s 30 ND running around, and about 15 standing around at hills, I can estimate there’s about another15 somewhere on the map.

Same can be said for when FoO rolls in, and you can instantly count about 40 at the gate, you can assume there’s 20 others somewhere else trying to help their server somehow.

covenn.7165:

You are dead wrong and being selfish. There is nothing better about anybody waiting in a queue for hours due to bugs. It makes it difficult for friends and guilds to play together, people to change characters, or for people that crash to get back in the game.

Go to a different map. SoS only has queues on 2 maps usually, during both of our primetimes. Sometimes a 3rd depending on who’s there (tsym under the current system could probably fill a map by themselves – never play with them so cant verify).

This current system is creating the closest match T1 has seen in a really long time. Maybe it is you who should get over themselves.

Also to make it perfectly clear, I put quotes on “queue bug” for a reason. It’s limiting the maps to about 50-60 players each server. This is helping the match immensely. Now go cry somewhere else that you can’t outnumber a server to win.

It would be wonderful if the scores stayed this close all week, we all know it wont, but it would be wonderful.

Also have to say, the “queue bug” makes WvW better, hope it doesn’t get fixed.

crewthief.8649:

I really think all you need to know about Jedah can be found reading his wall of text regarding his Guilds’ “Holiday Leave Policy”, LMAO. Seriously bro.

Say all you want, MERC is probably one of the biggest guilds left in the game. Just last Friday they had 200 members online at the same time (it might even be nightly idk). That may not have even been the only guild they have considering they are at member cap. Given that, I can almost guarantee your replies are overreaction out of frustration.

Cover Girl.2580:

Churchill.8714:

SBI,

Stay in Ogrewatch Cut/SBI Overlook.

Panglos is off limits to you.

Challenge… Accepted. Point me to Panglos. “_”

We logged off at about 12:30am EST last night, missed us. Pangloss is the eastern red supply camp in EB. That supply camp is about the only thing I enjoy about EB (and it fits my guild’s small group).

Even if we know we are going to die eventually, it’s a lot of fun seeing how long we can last versus vastly superior numbers (95% of SoS was on JQ’s side).

Necro does beat melee thief, p/d is another story though.

The best thing to do, when you get knocked down (skelks in AC for example), is DS then hit #3 immediately. The skelks will get stunned instead of feared, not sure why, but it breaks their channeled knockdown allowing you to get up again. In PvE you don’t really need any stunbreakers as long as you have life force.

Best part about it is you can use it every 20s.

Edit: Minus jade maw, but it’s not like you’ll be using wells for anything during that boss fight.

lettucemode.3789:

Okay, who’s the bunker elementalist from SoS? Norn, looks like the Citadel of Flame set. He participated in the large attack on Stonemist Castle last night while we (SoR) held on for dear life.

This guy is unkillable. All he does is run around in the front lines absorbing huge amounts of damage, and everyone (including me) falls for it and focuses him. Also he gains boons constantly. At one point he gained like 6 including stability, I corrupted them all into conditions, then 3 seconds later he has 4 more. We managed to kill him once in like an hour, crazy stuff.

Whoever you are, my hat is off to you, sir. Keep on keepin’ on.

Does SoR still have the castle? I went to bed before the siege ended.

His name is papaj, and I’m sure he will be thrilled to reply when I mention your post. haha

Edit: crap, i didnt even notice i was too late in replying.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I’m assuming this is a troll post because…just lol. If you say necro> thief, either you’re doing something wrong as a thief, or you’re playing as a necro against horrible thieves.
Life force or no, necro damage will never (in the current state of the game) compare to thief damage, and necro survivability against a proper thief is a joke, as is most classes. Now if you’re soley talking about the condition thief vs a necro, then yeah I’d say sometimes the necro has advantage but thats because not only do we deal with tons of conditions, we also have tons of way of getting rid of them or benefiting from having them on us.

Necro doesn’t need good damage to beat a thief. You just have to outlast them. D/D is much easier to outlast than you think: chillx3, fearx2, a couple dodge rolls, thieves don’t have infinite initiative. They have damage yeah, but only if you get hit by it. This will become more apparent whenever ANet fixes culling. A necro can pretty easily survive their quickness burst through interrupts. In WvW, a necro has a ton of survivability. I don’t sPvP so I can’t speak for that.

If you want an example of how hard it is for a pistol whip build to kill me is: it takes about 42 pistol whips to down me when I don’t have any cooldowns to break out of it. That guy got so lucky with his procs. Now compare that to what I said about the matchup for a D/D thief.

Also you’re reading what I said backwards about P/D thief, those wreck a necro. The other builds aren’t really worth all the crying they get (though pistol whip is pretty kitten .

If you want to talk about it more, my account name is right over there, just hit me up in game. I assume you’re a necro as well, I’m willing to help you out if you want.

MysticoN.5068:

Just wondering if anyone is running a con/power hybrid build. Im aiming for bleed doing 100 pr tick and find a balance between crit/power and toughness or vit.

In WvW? Definitely. Probably the best setup imo.

Power/Toughness/Vit gear, Undead runes, Power/Vit/Cond weapons (for scepter/warhorn or dagger at least), and a mixture of emerald, chrysocola and pvp accessories (and mixture of upgrades in those accessories).

You’ll have around 1700 power, 1500 precision, 1600-1700 toughness, I think 1400ish vit, and around 1100 condition damage with food with the typical condition build. I think my crit is around 30%.

Marks (#4 hits for 2500), wells, and life blast (up to 3k crits) do impressive damage thanks to power. Your bleeds will tick for about 95 so that’s nothing to sneeze at.

I’ll tell you a class that really has problems with that build: Necro. If I were to put it into fighting game terms, it would probably be a 7-3 matchup.

d/d thief is probably 3-7, the opposite way, and the pistol whip build is probably 4.5-5.5 in favor of the Necro… mainly relying on whether the necro has life force and/or cooldowns.

I’m objecting to it because I’m on one of the other BLs, I’ve been there all week, and I know what you’re saying isn’t true for my BL and there is never a reason for them to send help to TSym/FoE. The only BL I could see PRX moving to is IoJ BL. Now if you had said “I saw PRX on IoJ BL as well as SoR BL” I wouldn’t have responded. There is no reason to make up things to make an excuse sound valid.

You may have seen a few players on every bg, but the guild itself only organizes on a single BL. If they, as a guild, move to another it’s to provide assistance and that hasn’t happened at all, to my knowledge, during NA prime time. Which is their and my prime time. They are a gigantic guild, what you probably see are players waiting in queue to get into SoR BL.

AoI (Work, ATac, DR, OnS, Nexus, and VI) have been on SoS BL the whole match and we have never needed assistance from PRX when we play. TSym, Sexy, DoP, and FoE have been in EB the entire time (afaik) and they also do not need assistance from PRX. RMA goes where they can make progress, as we do not have enough players to put queues on IoJ they usually go to SoS BL during NA primetime.

So again, I’m sorry you see it that way.

Kanji Maki.1695:

but mostly PRX just carried.

It is a shame you think that. PRX has been on a single BL this entire match.

@RiversOnFire: It’s actually EU time that SoR got +400 on us. I can’t think of a single time SoR went over 300 during NA primetime (it starts right around now). It was generally us NA guys logging on to SoR having most of the map and we’d have to fight back through that till about 10pm.

zastari.1730:

Hey SoS,

All of us who fought against you from Maguuma and Dragonbrand last week predicted that there would be a schism between your NA and Oceanic presence that would slowly devolve into mudslinging and ultimately a server split. While we would like to enjoy some schadenfreude watching this play out over the next week, for the sake of every server’s WvW balance, please don’t act like PRX did in their post a few pages back. We don’t want to encourage another server split that is just going to jumble up the rankings yet again.

Thanks.

Unfortunately for you, you’re getting way ahead of yourself. Take your grudge elsewhere.

Spacedad.2841:

We only have a limited view of the scene in SoS, but [Goon] actually has players on the SoS server who aren’t a part of the maguuma community, and have been there since launch. (No these are not spies – this is just an extension of how large the community we of [Goon] originally came from.) I’m going partly by the things they have shared with me. If you would like to clarify anything that is incorrect please feel free to do so.

There are 1 or 2 commanders that have done their own thing the entire time, even before we came here. Somebody apparently ran into them, but they were told not to worry about it, because it has always been that way with them. I can’t really name any names here and I’m not going to talk about the AoI side since that isn’t my place.

But I will say it’s been pretty smooth and SoS’s existing alliance (whatever one [MERC] is in) has been working with us to try and bring the entire server together as one, instead of NA population and Oceanic population. There are differences in opinions, that is expected, nobody even knows/trust each other yet, but it is nowhere near as bad as you were making it out to be.

Given time SoS is going to become a great server as a whole and I personally look forward to it.

Spacedad, I would like to kindly as you to stop spreading misinformation regarding the interrelations of another server. I know what post you are talking about, it’s on guru, it is talking about a couple SoS commanders being uncooperative. Commanders that SoS themselves don’t even acknowledge. Thanks.

Probably a necro.

1) Siege does not crit, it has set damage values that varies depending on the target’s armor value/toughness.
2) Walls of keeps/towers are made specifically so that you cannot make siege out of range of AoE. Yes places exist but these places have huge blind spots.
3) Arrow Carts are extremely weak, if you feel like you have to get out of an Arrow Cart’s AoE then you’re running a bad spec, probably glass cannon. Cripple and Bleed (or just Arrow Carts in general) is nothing but a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things.
4) You are way too focused on my example of 12 vs 30 with tons of siege on the wall. We lost a keep many times last week to a guild balling up on the door, taking hits from our catapults (2 of them) and arrow carts, as well as AoE from 15+ people, and they just healed through it. A balled up zerg is taking advantage of an exploit that makes almost impossible to damage them.
5) Nobody ever watches a team bleed a tower/keep of supply, get over yourself. You quite obviously have no clue how easy this is to do. You can bleed just about every keep of supply with just 4 people with unhittable trebs.
6) nice job saying its ludicrous and then saying its easily done. I’ve been on both sides many times and I can say its definitely way easier to attack than it is to defend. That is the reason this game snowballs so quickly, there is no real defense, just offense.

I’m guessing you didn’t see the part where I said they can stand in AoE and not care. I even stand in Arrow Cart AoE, it really doesn’t do enough to deter anybody. It’s what, 500 damage max? I can heal through that by myself.

I completely disagree though that 30 should take a defended keep with siege (manned) literally lining the wall.

The opposite of what you’re saying is basically: 30 people should be able to take a keep from defenders using siege and AoE properly. That’s like asking to be able to defend a keep.

It has nothing to do with a turtle fest. You cannot defend against a large zerg determined to take what you have, especially if its a tower. They will wear down your supply and tower/keep health. If anything this game is way too offensive based for something that lasts 1 week. Just read any of ET’s posts about their strategy (its not exclusive to them, but they are a top 4), they intentionally attack fully upgraded towers/keeps then leave. Why? because you now have to waste time and money reupgrading it.

There has been plenty of times where my server has had to defend an Orb keep from a zerg of 30+, with like 12 people. We’ve never held it, between the constant AoE on the walls destroying our 2hrs worth of siege placings (there are very very few safe spots for siege) and having no way of pushing the zerg back with so few people in comparison. The issue is compounded when the zerg balls up on the door and just autoattacks it. Any damage you do them them is healed through and AoE’s tend to miss randomly, not to mention aegis spam blocking every attack.

This is all on a fully upgraded keep with like 10 arrow carts on the walls (that they are attacking), some catapults, maybe a ballista or 2. You just can’t defend it unless you have enough people to push them away from the wall.

I honestly don’t see siege as a way for the few to fight the many, on the contrary it mostly gets you run over because you’re sitting in one spot instead of pushing them away. It’s more a way for the organized to fight slightly larger numbers. At max siege will buy you 5mins, once that time is up siege is usually destroyed by then and they’ll just take the thing you’re defending without much hassle.

Our daytime crew puts in more work than anybody else. They’ve been dedicated since the beginning, but now they are taking a break because no matter what progress they make, hackers can just come in and take it back.

Today they even got creative and duped the orb, so there was 2 orbs on TC BL.

before:
http://postimage.org/image/ljg47o53h/full/

after:
http://postimage.org/image/6hzv4uy81/full/

This isn’t really complaining about hackers, they somehow duped the orb, so this is also a bug that needs looking into. I wasn’t on at the time to report it but the guys who were, asked if somebody could bring it to your attention.

Scorpio Shirica.1286:

The demoralize tactics by Anet’s inviso-patch have hurt TC more than anything done by any one server.

That hit both you and DB (not like we needed help there), don’t worry. I was still pretty enthusiastic about playing but now I’m kind of on the fence. At least during NA primetime, it seems manageable during the day.

The reason you haven’t seen much out of DB since Saturday morning is because we’ve been running outmanned buff since then. No clue why but we barely even have people in lion’s arch. Whenever we get enough people to feel comfortable attacking, in EB at least, we tend to pressure CD. I don’t think we’ve ever considered attacking TC in EB (during the day anyway, I don’t play there at night), so you guys are unnecessarily worried there.

It’s exactly what you’d imagine, a backhand type thing. It’s kind of slow without haste but when they pop it with haste its practically impossible to not be hit by it.

You will probably have to eat about one heartseeker before you can counter them, that’s generally how it goes. When they start their heartseeker train they wont stop till you die. What I did was equip runes of hydromancy, and as soon as I see them I start crippling/chilling them till they move at a snail’s pace. When they heartseeker to gain ground I start dodge rolling and then they either run or I finish them off. Usually anyway.

Pistol Whip thieves are another story, at least ones specced to kill you before the stun ends. I have no idea to counter them except survive their initial nonsense. I have 2800 armor, 23k hp, and I still get instagibbed by them sometimes.