Guild Wars 2

To you thats the same as knights gear doesn’t do damage? You gotta be kidding me right lol.

I never said that knights gear makes you better at keeping people in place than zerker gear.

Seriously, what are you reading what you want? Some one else read it right (outside opinon) but you read it wrong now your trying make claims that you read it right. Rofl.

Go try it with S/P pistol if you find it amusing. Tell me how it goes for you as you mix it up with warriors, guardians, ele’s in melee range duking it out old fashion style with S/P that blackpowder is really going to save you there!

Sebrent.3625:

Here’s the thing, Cynical, everyone can get those bonuses, food, oils, etc.

It isn’t just duels that Thieves are pulling off crazy crap, it’s in skirmishes as well in on the periphery of large fights.

I have not asked for every class to have everything other classes do. I simply think the Thief should adhere to some of the basic tenets of the game that others have to.

I also think that the Thief provides far too easy rewards for very little skill or risk (depending on what level you’re playing at).

As I’ve said before, Thieves are not a problem for me personally.

They are a problem in the game in that they alone force the meta (see: taking toughness/vitality).

They are a problem in that they have high damage attacks that have no visual or audio cues to give people even a 0.5 sec to react; instead forcing people to guess when to do so.

They are a problem in that they are “supposed to spam” (as stated in your post), which is just bad gameplay in a game that is supposed to be esport quality.

They are a problem in the fact that a good thief can continue to lose a fight while continuing to threaten your character (reset, come back, reset, come back, etc.)

These are not problems with any of the 7 other classes. They are a problem with Thieves alone.

WvW is suppose to be a esport? I thought that was mentioned for sPvP where thieves are not top of the food chain.

How do they force the meta of taking toughness and vitality? Necro’s and mesmers forcing me to take condition removal I think they need a nerf! The burst from p/d condition thieves is definitely a problem.

Sebrent.3625:

Except he did say those things, magicthighs … which makes it not a Straw man argument.

oZii.2864:

A thief is squishy because its squishy. I can roll p/d in full carrion but I am still squishy. Just because I have 20k hp doesn’t mean I am not squishy. If you roll p/d full apothecary your not as squishy you just have like 12khp and dont do alot with your condition damage but you heal good. Then your basically a troll build.

Just roll sword/pistol and pistol/pistol or shortbow and take no stealth abilities all knights gear. See how well that plays out for you. Can you do it yes but you pretty much became a warrior with crappy damage who has to go sit in the back when your cooldowns arent up

A thief is squishy because they are wearing squishy gear … works the same for all classes (imagine that!).

You can do very good damage wearing all Knight’s gear (several people out there do this with several classes, including Thief).

He claims otherwise. Since there is evidence in several videos out there that contradicts his claims, his claims are fallacy.

Since he did make those claims, this isn’t a straw man argument.

Nice try but failed execution.

l2R I hate to say but seriously. I never said you can’t do damage in knights gear. I said if you roll S/P and P/P and shortbow in all knight gear you would become a warrior with crappy damage.

Where did I say knights gear does no damage?

In order to do damage with S/P you have to keep the target in place to spam pistol whip.

What difference does it make if knights gear does the same damage as beserker gear if you don’t have a target to hit?

Ok look Sebrent in your imaginary world of duels, and balancing based of 1v1’s and 1v2’s with no boundaries, no ring outs, and no food buffs, etc thief is one of the best dueling classes. I don’t think many would argue against that. Good thing there is no dueling in this game. So maybe you should find a game with dueling or something. This balance you seek with every class is capable of every type of role is not guild wars 2. Might be time to look for a new MMO coming out.

Sebrent.3625:

Hey Cynical, I’m well-aware of how toughness works. I’m also aware that Mesmers (light armor) are doing quite well in Knight’s armor … as I previously posted. Watch some of SevenMirror’s stuff.

There are also Engineers and Rangers that are wearing +toughness gear.

If you actually know what the differences are between light, medium, and heavy armor it’s a ~14% difference between light and heavy. ~7% difference between medium and heavy. So what’s the issue here? for every 100 damage you’d take, a warrior takes 93. 1,000 to you is 930 to the warrior. Oh no, he took 70 less damage than you. I guess that warrants you being stealth for a majority of the fight while he has to stay visible and dodge roll attacks from people that can actually see him, lol. Just like Rangers, Engineers, Necros, Elementalists, etc. do.

But yeah … If you could backstab a Thief for 10,000 damage, you’d only backstab the warrior in the same set of gear for 9,300. Lol! You sure told me! :-p

Well if you know the difference don’t make a blanket statement that armor doesn’t change how it works just because I am a thief then I wouldn’t think you are you know uninformed.

That warrior also (assuming full zerkers) would have about 11,700 hp left over the thief would have 1k hp left. [insert 12 year old smiley face thing.]

Laika.8795:

You rolled a warrior?

Im guess thief in full clerics zerg slaying!!

LordByron.8369:

oZii.2864:

A thief is squishy because its squishy. I can roll p/d in full carrion but I am still squishy. Just because I have 20k hp doesn’t mean I am not squishy. If you roll p/d full apothecary your not as squishy you just have like 12khp and dont do alot with your condition damage but you heal good. Then your basically a troll build.

Just roll sword/pistol and pistol/pistol or shortbow and take no stealth abilities all knights gear. See how well that plays out for you. Can you do it yes but you pretty much became a warrior with crappy damage who has to go sit in the back when your cooldowns arent up.

no need there are actually a lot of good thieves that plays balanced and tanky builds…

Nobody gaves credit to them because if ther is actually a build ith no risk and huge rewards, less OP builds becomes worthless.

I saw those on this forum, on youtube and in action in www and fotm last weekend…..

So no i don t buy it….

Why not its not hard take a thief run S/P and P/P build tanky/balanced and go play. No stealth skills. What I am proposing is not impossible. There is a reason alot of people will tell you that S/P and P/P are the weakest weapon sets.

I havent seen alot of tanky/balanced builds for S/P and P/P that don’t have a stealth skill in utility bar or the heal. I fought 1 decent S/P thief before and its the same as with all the thief weapon sets.

Run in Dump your load with pistol whip or unload add haste either move to the back of your group/zerg or stealth to get away. If you want to do that style just roll d/d full glass.

Sebrent.3625:

The argument that all the skills that are on cooldowns are so much more powerful than thief skills that use initiative is absurd. Go take a look at the various skills out there. You’ll find both good, average, and bad skills on the various weapon sets all with cooldowns.

As far as being tanky in Knights … plenty of those Thief vs Zerg videos show Thieves in Knight’s gear doing great damage. Heck, in the Mesmer forum we have Grimm/SevenMirror who runs in Knight’s gear and does quite well. Knight’s has good damage. It’s not Berserker power and crit dmg but you have a ton of damage mitigation in Knight’s. The fact that you’re a Thief doesn’t magically change how the same gear available to everyone works.

I never said that Thieves are the only reason people take toughness/vitality. However, Thief is the only class where people’s advice is to take those stats so you can fight against the Thief. The reason the advice is so is, as I and others previously mentioned, because you can’t see some of the Thief’s burst so reacting to it is a non-option outside of guessing (lol).

Heck, non-stealth, compare Steal as a closer to Bull’s Charge. I see that warrior sliding towards me. The Thief simply changes from up to 900 range (1,200 traited) from me to instantly next to me. Elementalist Ride the Lightning, Ranger Swoop, etc. are just like Bull’s Charge. People see them.

Actually it does, I said the thief then become a warrior but with crappy damage that has to sit in the back when cooldowns aren’t up. You have a thief go grab a Sword/pistol and pistol/pistol no stealth skills in some knights gear. You basically become a warrior with crappy damage. A person can pretty much walk out of pistolwhip and not take any real damage that they wouldn’t from the auto attack.

The gear does change how it works depending on your class because how effective that gear is depends on your class and your build. Its why you know zerker warriors have 20k hp and zerker thieves have 11-12k hp.

If you don’t consider your professions base value hp into your builds then I don’t what to tell you.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor I am all for helping out the uninformed though.

Defense ratings
light
920
medium
1064
heavy
1211

You know in the mist there is light, medium, and heavy golems hmmmm I wonder why they did that. I mean knight gear is knights gear right?

Sebrent.3625:

oZii.2864:

Sebrent.3625:

What you guys are faily to grasp about the “building against thieves” being different from the regular “building against burst” is the fact that since other classes are actually visible with all their high-damage skills, people can counter burst through use of active skills like dodging, blocking, blind, interrupts, etc.

Against a thief, we have to guess when you hit steal, backstab, etc. and that’s assuming you came at us from a direction we were looking on our screen and not already stealthed from hitting someone/something else nearby.

I don’t have to stack vitality/toughness to survive a glass cannon warrior. I can simply see and react to his burst attempts.

I dont think us guys are failing to grasp anything I think we know that stealth makes us invisible.

Yes, Cynical, but that wasn’t the point. I’m glad you are emphasizing your continued lack of understanding though.

It’s that there is only one class in the game that requires people to stack toughness/vitality if they want to be able to fight against several of its builds … that one class is Thief.

Why is it that Thief is able to force people this way? Because Thief has very good burst with zero visuals. What’s worse is that it’s spammable.

But hey, as you admitted in that screenshot I posted earlier, you can’t think of a thief build that isn’t just spamming some ability.

Such a hard class, lol. Pick build, spam something, stealth and run if it fails. Lol.

This is why I was able to do better after 5 minutes on a Thief than on a warrior after a week.

Yes you spam something auto-attack, your high damage dealer, something its the way initiative works those abilities that are spammed don’t compare to the other abilites classes with cooldowns have. I can’t think of any thief weapon skill that would warrant a cooldown when compared to the other classes because if you look at them individually and compare each weapon skill of a thief to each weapon skill of other classes they pretty much suck. Initiative system is the only reason they don’t suck.

That also was the point of your post you know that you can’t see a thief that is about to burst you. See how you highlighted zero visuals. Or thats not the point of that post either?

Putting on vitality and toughness isn’t because of thieves lol is that your argument that the only reason people take those 2 stats is because of thieves?

LordByron.8369:

Being the best at jumping in and being the best at jumping out of battle is per se too much and the most unbalanced thing.

After that also the fact of being able to pull out an unreactable burst that some builds/classes cannot react to.

its not because you like a concept that make a class with just lot of advantages and almost no drawback.

Thief is squishy? i don t think so……thief is squishy because players build it squishy being too good at jumping in and out….they are leather not light.

Just watch out how anet said warriors + food was OP because they could build GC with no drawback….
Well the same works with thieves….they have just strong points and no drawback.

Mobility OR stealth + burst would be balanced.
Mobility+stealth+burst its not.

A thief is squishy because its squishy. I can roll p/d in full carrion but I am still squishy. Just because I have 20k hp doesn’t mean I am not squishy. If you roll p/d full apothecary your not as squishy you just have like 12khp and dont do alot with your condition damage but you heal good. Then your basically a troll build.

Just roll sword/pistol and pistol/pistol or shortbow and take no stealth abilities all knights gear. See how well that plays out for you. Can you do it yes but you pretty much became a warrior with crappy damage who has to go sit in the back when your cooldowns arent up.

Sebrent.3625:

What you guys are faily to grasp about the “building against thieves” being different from the regular “building against burst” is the fact that since other classes are actually visible with all their high-damage skills, people can counter burst through use of active skills like dodging, blocking, blind, interrupts, etc.

Against a thief, we have to guess when you hit steal, backstab, etc. and that’s assuming you came at us from a direction we were looking on our screen and not already stealthed from hitting someone/something else nearby.

I don’t have to stack vitality/toughness to survive a glass cannon warrior. I can simply see and react to his burst attempts.

I dont think us guys are failing to grasp anything I think we know that stealth makes us invisible.

LordByron.8369:

Aberrant.6749:

Having a response to burst damage isn’t only useful against thieves… EVERY class can burst and you should be prepared for that situation.

you can react to other classes actually.

Just waste few minutes to browse other classes section for www.

Almost any build tells “add some vitality to survive thieves”….

Quite significant if you ask me.

That is just building against burst damage. Not necessarily thieves most people still think thieves have the highest burst damage in the game. Also the thief is suppose to be able to sneak and flank targets, hop in and out of combat. No other profession can do that better than a thief and that is what a thief is suppose to do.

Otaking.4675:

I just had the experience of a good d/d in Spvp and we were a total stalemate for the entire match. I guess he was bunker and I felt I really had no options. He could force me off the point but I could use mobility to go cap all the others so it was a true stalemate on the tactical level even.

I am s/d 0/25/30/15/0, zerk amulet, divinity runes, para, and fire sigil, with sb on swap and using ambush trap and guild to help my mediocre damage become ‘burst’. Even with three thieves out I would get him to half life at which he could mist form or w/e and come back refreshed to full.

I may need to make more use of sb vs. a bunker like this since I’m new to gw2 and am not too hot with it so far beyond running around.

I have no problems landing c/d or flanking when I wanted to remove his boons but he just had too many and the ability to apply more too easily. This opponent is making me reconsider my s/d build to venom share to come up with more burst. Venom share looks good on paper but what I don’t like about it is being locked into heals on a 30 second lifesteal venom cooldown only vs. regen in stealth.

I could also d/d since I landed a ton of dazes on him which could have been BS instead but I am loving aoe pressure and inf strike right now for mesmer clones, faking off point caps etc. Would really like to stick with s/d.

Input appreciated.

If its full bunker I don’t you will be able to kill him unless he wants to die, unless you go full glass to counter.

TheFug.5278:

The downed state needs a bit of tweaking. In WvW you should not be able to chain rez people. The speed in which people can rez you should be lowered, and there should be an increased penalty taken while rezzing.

If you want to rez people effectively, it needs to be something you actively take part in – you need to be popping skillls that give you stability and regen / quickness before hand or actively using skills / runes that are specific to rezzing. Make people work for their rezzing.

Isn’t just sitting there rezzing not being able to attack enough of a penalty? I am sure many 100bs glass warriors foam at the mouth when they see 2-3 people rezzing a downed person.

I only use baslisks venom in a opener if the person I’m going after isn’t payng attention. I save my bas until after they have blown 2 dodge rolls or some other form of cc/get out jail cards. Blowing it at the beginning is really only for full glass specs I would think or somebody running the cd reduction on venoms for a 38 sec bas can catch people by surprise but most dont run that trait.

After you bas its usually a stun break or dodge roll anyway. I don’t think devourer is good enough to take up a slot in my utility bar if I’m a burst build.

dreztina.4820:

Why should you only break even or make a small profit from wvw? Why shouldn’t you get the same 2g/hr+ that you get from pve?

And no, the mobs aren’t fun. It isn’t fun downing someone with a bit of health left just to have them finish off a mob that got caught in all the aoe and pop up with half health while you’re sitting on nothing. That’s just plain bad game design.

Bad game design in your eyes.

Wanderer.3248:

Removing downed state would favour glass cannon builds with burst damage. There is already too much burst damage in the game.

If you haven’t defeated an opponent, you haven’t defeated them. A downed player has not bean defeated yet. Hit them some more. If you can’t defeat a downed player maybe you shouldn’t have rolled a burst damage spec. If you can’t survive long enough to stomp, you are probably running a glass cannon.

Some classes downed states do need tweaking.

This is spot on and probably the reason why it would never be removed. People can call it noob state or whatever you want to call it. The thing is nobody knows the skill level of the player they are fighting anyway so maybe just maybe that person you fought is you know a Noob! You might be dragon sPvP rank and he might be a rabbit. There is no way to know that and it doesn’t matter anyway (thankfully).

Snowfire.9410:

Today I also got wispered by an enemy in WvW. Didn’t they fixed that issue yet? Was the player probably using some sort of hacking tool?

I’m just asking because I was a bit annoyed since he tried to spy out our zerg which did’t quite work as he expected and so, after we killed his people, he offended me and simply left the group afterwards.

He wasn’t able to do any serious harm, but I don’t really like the idea that this is still possible, because as in my example people tend to offend other fractions.

You didn’t notice the Words x invader/defender when trying to join your party or invite you to his?

Acelerion.6820:

I absolutely agree. The “wvw is supposed to be unbalanced” crap is a cop out and every effort should be made to balance things in that specific environment.

My point is that working as intended != balance and you can’t use one to imply the other.

Still didnt address the point I made about the 12% extra crit chance and +10 crit damage

The +5% extra endurance regen, +5 healing effectiveness, +5% maximum health just because my server is winning.

You think people would say sPvP was balanced if it allowed food buffs as long as you had the gold to buy them? Or the Server bonuses given in WvW, where given to people that had the highest rank in sPvP just because they have a higher rank?

I’m going to cap a camp your going to cap the same camp. We meet at the ruins OMG. I have all those bonuses and you don’t, mathematically this fight that is about to happen is not balanced.

How do we balance this engagement? Remove food buffs, make sure everyone is equal in gear, Remove server bonuses for the winning side.

I don’t see it as a cop out I see it as WvW, the majority of changes that happen in WvW especially balance ones are ones that effect objectives. Like pets destroying siege being able to climb walls, line of sight to mesmer (questionable but nobody really qq’s about it anymore) pets rezing a dead mesmer on keep so after everyone leaves he can portal people in. Portal numbers reduced to 20 cap, not being able to use a portal entrance or exit that is on the other side of the wall. Cloak and dagger over and over on keep walls to maintain infinite stealth. Though you can still cloak and dagger a wall. You just cant stay in stealth and cloak and dagger repeatedly over and over never revealing yourself.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that WvW is suppose to be unbalanced just a different kind of balance, small engagements matter but in the bigger picture with so many variables in WvW whatever this type of balance is Anet feels it is fine.

Acelerion.6820:

“Who said they weren’t viable? " – No problem I misread.

To the second part Im not making claims one way or another. However, using intentions as justification for balance is not sound. Anet could have “intended” class x to be grossly overpowered or pigeonholed them into being subpar. Check out the warrior forums with the condition cleanse issues.

Intended or not thieves have the capability of resetting fights at will. That has to be considered on its own merits when talking about balance.

Then its balanced if they intended because its working as intended. The thief is suppose to dictate the pace of the fight more so than any other class in the game and it does that.

There are alot of factors in WvW that should be considered on their own merits when talking about balance but half the people don’t acknowledge them.

Like getting +5 maximum health because your server is winning.

Food buffs, Norn buffs, Mobs, there are no rings or ring outs, Are NPC’s close by,

+5% endurance regen and +5% heal effectiveness.

Nobody brings those things into discussion because people think WvW = open world deathmatch COD style, sPvP, or some fighting game. Which it is not

If we are running the same exact build I am pretty sure you would agree that getting 12% increased crit chance and +10 crit damage is a huge advantage if WvW was about 1v1’s and 1v2 and 1v3’s. Math would also prove that it is huge aswell.

Laika.8795:

oZii.2864:

Heartseeker is fine, if a thief wants to blow all his ini to spam it then let him. Heartseeker is good but it isn’t great. None of the thief weapon skills require a target for you to use them. No need to make an exception for heartseeker.

It’s a fine crutch. Infiltrator Strike needs a target or it goes nowhere, whereas HS can be a gap closer, an escape, a leap finisher, and a damage skill.

It’s not all about spamming, but it’s pointless arguing because it comes right back to that.

You can still use infiltrator strike doesn’t matter that it doesn’t go anywhere. You can also target something 1200 units away and infil will move you toward the target despite its only 600 range. Either way you can still use the skill without a target.

I don’t know how its classified as a cruth just because it can be used for all of those things. The warriors shield leap can do the same thing.

Ironvos.9014:

Oh yes i took into consideration how this would affect the thief permastealth build.
It would solve two problems at once.
No more HS spam, less permastealth trolling.
Thieves would be less of a faceroll class and would require more thinking to be played.
That shouldn’t be a problem for good thieves since they already don’t use these gimmicky mechanics.

Heartseeker is fine, if a thief wants to blow all his ini to spam it then let him. Heartseeker is good but it isn’t great. None of the thief weapon skills require a target for you to use them. No need to make an exception for heartseeker.

0/30/30/10/0 isn’t anything new alot of people run that. Im all for new builds but to call the other builds out there over hyped and over used is kind of unnecessary. The last brand new builds or not known about builds will be something involving S/P. There are S/P builds out there but something that is really really good that makes people want to try it. Other than that pretty much all the other builds or supposed new builds are really old builds with a trait changed or a sigil or a utility. Not downing your build but it isn’t anything new really.

I just cut them up with S/D watch the boons. If they have stability up then just slice away with auto attack the tac strike isnt going to work unless you can strip the stability. The boon stripped in which ever is farthest left so most of the time I don’t even try to strip it. After the armor of earth wears off proceed as normal definitely want a interrupt on heal if you can.

Eduardo.4675:

The best choice is almost allways force. Since this is mostly a pve/www thread (sigil of paralize doesnt work in tpvp), you can say it with a huge degree of certainty. The best choice to get more dmg is bloodlust/perception, but in these environments you can load the 25 stacks with one weapon and than go to the weapon of choice, so these 2 sigils automatically are out of the equation. Specially true for pve, where getting those 25 stacks is trivial.
The only way to have sigil of accuracy being better than sigil of force is to make those 5% more crit chance worth more than 5% dmg. However, in a build that wants to emcompass sigil of air, its impossible. Sigil of air only makes sense if you have high power, a crit chance of no less than 50% (to ensure a lot of procs, reducing the inate ramdomness of RNG mechanics) and also high crit dmg. The way this game handles crit dmg makes it so that a percentual increase in crits has dimishing returns, and those come very early.
For starters, any crit equal or below 100% more dmg will allways make force sigil do more dmg, as the crit rate is capped at 100%. With 100% crit dmg, if you have 95% crit chance, and then have to choose between adding 5% more direct dmg or 5% more crit rate, the result will allways be better for force sigil, by a margin of 1.0238%. Allways. It doesnt matter if you have 1 power or 3000 power. This margin gets higher the more you decrease crit dmg. Also, decreasing crit rate will actually make this margin smaller. Thats how numbers work, in misterious ways.
However, in this game it is possible to have crits that do more than double dmg, or higher than 100% more dmg. It is possible to conjure situations where a sigil of accuracy will do more dmg than a sigil of force. For this we need very high crit dmg and low crit rate. Seems contradictory, but it isnt. To calculate the average power of any given build, i use this formula: ((Pow x (100-Pre)) + ((Pow x Pro) x Pre))/100, where Pow is power, Pre is crit rate and Pro is crit dmg. Lets consider this example:
2000 Pow
4% Pre
250% Pro -> ((2000 x (100-4)) + ((2000 × 2,5) x 4))/100 = 2120, with sigil of force its -> 2120 × 1.05 = 2226 Average Power.
If instead we use a sigil of accuracy, we have this numbers:
2000 Pow
9% Pre
250% Pro -> ((2000 x (100-9)) + ((2000 × 2,5) x 9))/100 = 2270 Average Power. In this case, sigil of accuracy is more beneficial. Low crit rate, very high crit dmg. Lets get more crit rate in the next examples.
Using a scenario with 33.33% Pre, we have:
-> ((2000x (100-33.33)) + ((2000 × 2.5) x 33.33))/100 = 2999.90; with sigil of force -> 2999.90 × 1.05 = 3149.90 average power.
If instead we use sigil of accuracy:
-> ((2000 x (100-38.33)) + ((2000 × 2.5) x 38.33))/100 = 3149.90 average power.
With a crit dmg of 150% more dmg (250% Pro), the break point occurs at exactly 33.33%.
Finally,lets use a scenario with 50% crit rate:
-> ((2000 x (100-50)) + ((2000 × 2.5) x 50))/100 = 3500; 3500 × 1.05 = 3675 average power.
With sigil of accuracy:
-> ((2000 x (100-55)) + ((2000 × 2.5) x 55))/100 = 3650 average power. As we can see, at this point sigil of force has started to pay off.

Conclusion: sigil of force its allways better than accuracy in terms of raw numbers, accuracy is only worthwhile if you have a higher crit dmg than 100% and if you have very low crit rate. In a build with very high crit dmg, you need to look at your crit rate and perform some calculations to compute average power. I presented some numbers to serve as guidance, to better assess whats best for you, use the above formulas to determine average power on your build.

Just caught your reply on this thank you for this very very helpful! Will make good use of this.

to the OP nobody has said they are making changes to thieves stealth.

It proves what? Definitely not that Heartseeker is OP. If I wasn’t making a heartseeker only video I would have auto attacked that mesmer in the back. She barely tried to stop me. She just let me hit her in the back. I didn’t really even use stealth to get her to that low. So I don’t know what your trying to prove by using the mesmer example.

Whats a heartseeker spammer run I dont run full glass and that has nothing to do with the video that I have some soldiers armor on. I still am rocking 2.3k power, 53% chance to crit and 85 crit damage with a sigil of fire (around plus 8%-9% more damage and a sigil of force +5% damage) the damage is there so you can’t go that route and say I wasn’t specced to do damage.

I would have had 11k to 12k hp if I ran full zerker and I would have died much faster. Especially just heartseeker spamming which is dumb and that video shows how dumb that is.

Everyone else countered it why don’t you pull those examples out instead of the Mesmer at 2:33 that pretty much let me hit her in the back the whole time?

+50% speed is in acrobatics not shadow arts.

Sebrent.3625:

For my Mesmer to reset, I have to blow some cooldowns. Often two against fast opponents (most anyone not a mesmer, lol).

Elementalist ride the lightning, blink, mist form. 20+ cooldowns.

Warrior is a different animal, i’ll give you that I can make a warrior pretty darn hard to stop … unless people are spamming cripple/chill/immobilize on him.

Thief simply stealths and is done. Thanks to Shadow Arts, Thief stealths and now they are removing conditions, gained might, healing, and maybe moving +50% speed.

The Warrior and Elementalist have speed but no stealth.
The Mesmer has stealth but no speed.
The Thief has both stealth and speed.

What people keep trying to tell you is that not every class can do what other classes can do. The warrior and ele have speed but no stealth but they have invul’s and stability, and protection. What difference does it make how they got out of combat or reset they did so.

You realize that initiative is like a global cooldown so we aren’t stealthing for free its either we used a utility or we used initiative.

I don’t know why people fuss over the condi removal I call it condition que’s. A p/d vs another thief with stealth condi removal doesn’t really do well or its a draw if the only thing the thief is stacking is bleeds. If that thief is stacking venoms then 1 or 2 of those conditions will stick even if they go in stealth. Usually the bleeds stick and something else. Its the same against other classes with passive condi removals. You are going to be hurting if your only stacking 1 condition but you can kill them much faster if you are stacking more than one since the passive is usually 1 condition.

If Im on my mesmer I get confusion for free for the most part since Im 30 into illusions, then I get cripples and bleeds all free and I am not even specced condi. So anyone with passive condi removal is eating something a cripple, a bleed, confusion something always sticks.

Sebrent.3625:

It’s a flawed design decision. You know what allows me to beat that good thief? My cooldowns. You know what the thief can do after he escapes? Reset the fight and come back at me quickly before my cooldowns are done or continue the cycle until I simply get sick of him, he gets reinforcements, I make a mistake after “winning” several fights.

It’s bull.

If someone loses a fight on another class, they die. They don’t escape and kill someone else nearby.

Who do you roam with in WvW? We are on the same server. Go run around with Amins from Echo squad, Jakeman from GH thats a guardian and a warrior, Schlags from FTF. GLS isn’t on our server anymore he played a warrior and I was fighting a ele one time and I looked over and GLS killed 4 people on his warrior shocked me.

I don’t understand this. If your losing a fight and don’t escape don’t you still die? What is losing a fight to you? Escaping or making the other person flee? Then that is just your definition of loss. I don’t think me and you share the same definition of loss.

I always considered a win as staking but thats just me I guess. There is no ring in WvW, there are no imaginary rules of out of bounds.

You know how you balanced thieves in your version of WvW you make a ring that is 600×600 and you die if you go out of bounds.

Found this little nugget

Despite the intention of making the class as easy-to-understand as possible, the team believes that many first-time Thieves will find themselves dying horribly. Players are used to going toe-to-toe with monsters, and the Thief is built around hopping in-and-out of combat. If you don’t know when to back off, you’re going to die.

They might also have trouble seeing how the Thief fits into Guild Wars 2’s system of making sure each class can fit into any role, from damage to support to tanking.

“We’re making sure he fits in different ways,” says Peters.

The Thief might not be able to tank a creature in the traditional sense, but he can peel a monster away from the group and keep it occupied, or use caltrops to slow a group on incoming enemies. The helpful group buffs obtained by stole items slides him into the support role, while a well-managed Thief should be able to handle doing damage quite readily. They can dictate the pace of battle in Guild Wars 2 like no other.

Designed to be able to dictate the pace of the fight!! That is what thieves are suppose to do, designed to do. I know someone will pick that apart as something changed from when the thief class was announced but regardless it still fits the role they designed it to do. They will always make sure that the thief can dictate the pace of the fight.

magicthighs.5372:

Sebrent.3625:

If you do it and target tanky people in the middle of a group, yes. You’re ignoring the fact that he hit 2 2 and killed the ele

You mean the upleveled ele that was already at half health because they were being followed by half an enemy zerg? And he didn’t kill them, he downed them. The zerg finished them off.

and was killing that necromancer easily until its group rolled him

He killed the necro? Where?

The rest of that video he just does it on a tanky target in the middle of that target’s group and dies. Of course that’s going to happen.

How are you going to prevent that hitting tanky targets if all you do is spam heartseeker, though? You’d only find out for sure if they were tanky or not after first hitting them.

Thats what Im trying to figure out where is this necro at? I didn’t see a necro in that video and if there was one I sure didn’t hit him. I guess guardians are auto tanks since they have passive aegis or something. I know I have seen some glass guardians.

Sebrent.3625:

Lol, teg, quite right.
Here’s a video of Cynical (oZii.2864) on his thief (Sintact) as recorded by someone on another server.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ArWxfaeeYu4

Anyone else have a video of a single non-thief harassing a group like this while staying in range and then taking a few down? No? I wonder why that is.

Heck, people’s advice is to CC the thief. That’s a bloody hammer warrior.

Do please note how he is actually playing like he has a brain in this video as opposed to the one he made to “prove” that heartseeker spam is “nothing”.

Lol I didn’t kill anyone in that video the warrior was killed by the theif from ASG notice the corrupted daggers at the end. Those people could have left and I wouldn’t have been able to stop them I had like 18.5k hp in that video as I was learning s/d.

Also look at the engagements I never engaged all 5 of them at the same time I picked at someone seperated attacking maybe 1 or 2 times for most of that video. Notice how I almost die by the dolyak when it’s just him and another person? That was me trolling thieves can do that but I couldn’t have killed any of those people not my fault they stayed there wanting to kill me when they could have went to do something else. Notice how 3 of them you know just left to go do something else.

I respect Stiv because he agrees with me!! I bet Stiv totally cares about my respect in a video game. That is why I had to let him know how much I respect him because he is my friend. Rofl

It’s a video game serbent. We aren’t debating taxes and social security.

I have a stance and I stick with it, I also like to debate in the forums (go figure) if they nerf thieves then that’s what they do. I provide my opinion on why I feel it’s fine I’m not going to uninstall if they nerf thieve because I like the game. It’s not as serious as you make it out to be lol.

Grow up

You giving your opinion of who you respect or not is totally irrelevant to the topic.

People will complain regardless you can’t satisfy everyone. Nerfs for thieves stopped in november since then its been minor buffs to some traits or skills that’s about it. Most of the arguments made for or against how the thief works are usually the same people arguing anyway with the same posters. I probably have 20-30 posts in Xsorus nerf stealth thread in the WvW forums.

Myself personally am fine with how a thief works and yes I play one. This is a forum for discussion so you pick your stance on whatever the topic is and discuss it. Its up to the devs what they do with that feedback. When asked what was the last class on watchlist it was d/d elementalists. Even though thief was mentioned in that same question to Devs.

Some people will lead you to believe that stealth and thieves are the number 1 problem with WvW. When its not the number 1 issue, things like keeping the matchups fresh, people don’t like the glicko system, move away from zerging, transfers, rewards and incentives for WvW. Those are the number 1 issues with WvW which is why the devs have recently been making posts about what they plan to do to fix those things. Of course culling is the other big one which is not a thief ability just something that benefits thieves but its not like any of us know if we are culling to the people we are fighting or not I never even think about if I am culling to be honest.

Basically what enoriski is saying. Like I said for me easier to play compared to Mesmer for my skill level. That’s just me. Those skills you named I didn’t worry about them as much because I had decoy, blink and mirror images I roll all 3 of those. Greatsword and and sword pistol. The warrior is eating all of those skill by time he closes in on me plus confusion damage. Basically softening him up before they even get close. Get to close knock back/stun.

That’s just how it was always on my Mesmer. I am not saying I never died to those skills I have but not enough where I said I need to find out about them.

I never felt like a mmo is really hard I am a fight game fan so it doesn’t compare IMO.

The 2 classes I played with most time for me. I just feel like Mesmer is easier. I just always opened exactly the same way against every opponent no matter the class and it worked most of the time.

About being honest about the class I am being honest. I’m sorry I have a lot of hours on Mesmer and thief and Mesmer is easier. When I never felt forced to find out the deadly abilities of other classss on my Mesmer because I didn’t die to them often but I did on my thief then for me that means Mesmer is easier to play for me.

Wait I thought we are talking about heartseeker being a I win button. Now we are on your personal views on thief class from a spvp, WvW, pve standpoint. Guess that’s multiple points.

If you see a lot of thieves in spvp then it’s low level spvp that doesn’t happen at higher levels. In WvW I don’t see more thieves than I do any other class.

So posted a picture of someone else death screen to make your point about heartseeker with no context? How many stacks of might did the thief have, did the target have vulnerability sacks? Was the target down? How much crit damage did thief have, power, traits. That’s weak.

I can go get a picture of a car accident and say hey guys the driver was definitely texting while driving see picture of phone in the car.

Sebrent.3625:

Aww, that’s cute that you made a video and it somehow came out in favor of your argument. Imagine that.

I’ll do you one better.

Here’s two videos not made by me that show the opposite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByB7_QhIxws

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSH2dKfemj8

I’m not really sure what you heartseeker spamming the tanky target in a group and then being zerged by that group really shows other than your ability to intentionally play poorly to try to prove your point.

---

Also, those pictures aren’t mine. Just like the videos, they are from other sources. It’s amazing that if you simply search for things like gw2, thief, heartseeker, spam, 2013, etc. that you can find very up-to-date instances of shenanigans.

Your reaching now first video is just a dude heartseeker on a afk person

second is a video of a guy using it on people at 50% health which is recommended.

My video wasn’t posted in my favor we told you that it doesn’t do alot of damage above 50% you posted that screen shot. I don’t even run that full glass build with the that much extra crit chance and crit damage. I said my heartseekers hit for around 1.6k on crit which is what they do above 50%. I only run 20 points in crit but I still have 75 crit damage and 49% crit chance.

My video shows your claim that you can just spam 2 and be effective is completely false.

I present the OP Heartseeker build for you viewing pleasure. If you want build info send me a PM. These are facts people! They go way beyond the picture that serbent posted of him getting hit by 7 heartseekers and we are to assume he had no stacks of vulnerability on him at all, or that he was getting heartseeker spammed while he was down.

We are to assume that all 7 of those heartseekers came above 50% health and he was specced for toughness in a tanky build and not glass in a fair 1v1 duel with a heartseeker thief

This video shows that heartseeker definitely needs a nerf

Imagine if I was running all zerker gear and scholar runes how tanky I would be!

The amount of skill needed by my opponents to avoid this deadly attack doesn’t balance with the effectiveness of 2,2,2,2!

Most D/P I see run either S/D, SB, or D/D I never seen one use P/P offset or P/D. If your running S/D and they switch to either other those sets you should be able to kill them pretty easily.

When they are in D/P just stand right outside the ring of BP and slice there your reach is long enough you can hit them. You also want to use infil strike to immobilize them and dancing dagger occasionally to cripple the range of bp.

Also anticipate the backstab its usually 2-3 secs after invis I will do a bind flanking strike when I assume they are close also if your running sb offset then cluster the bp area they are stealthing in. D/P controls the pace of the fight honestly and they can disengage when ever they like and you can also.

If it is a duel and no one is leaving the area then some of the things I suggested will help. P/P can work really good also if it is a “duel” if your just out and about roaming though then yea you can win but since there is no ring outs then it depends on if the D/P sticks it out and stays to fight you honestly. If not then its a stalemate.

I stand corrected in my assessment of heartseeker. I never spammed it before on opponents as I thought it was really lackluster. I definitely think it needs a nerf. I recorded 3 good clips in WvW.

Changed my build up to 25/30/15. 2.3k power 58 crit chance and 85 crit damage. I was suprised at the numbers I was able to achieve and how effective it was in WvW.

It is rendering now I will post it in here for devs to get solid feedback.

MrForz.1953:

It’s surprising Engineer hasn’t been mentioned even once. The CC spam when caught could make someone literally scream.

Yea I will throw engis in there also when the elite is up I can’t engage running s/d and d/p. p/d isn’t a problem since its ranged but as melee if the elite is up that’s no bueno unless they stray from the turrets and chase me otherwise it is suicide.

So is the problem you have with heartseeker while your engaged fighting another person?

I mean if someone is fighting someone else and am going to kill them in not going to blow everything to kill someone that is at half life that’s overkill and wasted cool downs and Dps. At best I will go in stealth and back stab auto attack them.

I still don’t get what your problem is so now the problem your fighting someone else and a thief heartseeker you in the back after you blew cool downs? Anyone can do that with any skill. I don’t care if you don’t respect me based on my forum posts that’s silly.

I troll occasionally or if someone posts something crazy. Your jumping all over the place as usual with your posts about thieves and others. Your reading what you want.

I said that a thief spamming 2 assumes they are going to crit the burst opener and your going to be under 50% so they spam 2 after. The burst opener is 5,F1,1 from behind, then spam 2. You can add baslisks to that if you like.

That was APART of my counter argument to your claim that heartseeker is so good. Did I really need to spell out the burst opener for a glass cannon thief followed by 2? I guess so that was the rotation comparison.

Your counter to that was “How can you compare decoy to heartseeker”. What? Lol. All over the place I said burst rotation assume under 50% spam 2 I even bolder it for you.

Then your next statement makes it sounds like there a thieves opening and using nothing but 2,2,2 HIS 222. That is the funny part that I can’t believe you die to that. Now you are saying you don’t die to it unless your fighting someone else. I can sword auto chain you if you tied up with someone else and blew everything.

Your all over the place with your argument.

Your making it sound like you find heartseeker difficult to stop I just don’t know why you think that. I’m gonna try this later for lulz find a person, record I few fight of me just spamming 2 and nothing else rofl. This should make for some good laughs.

Give me some parameters can I dodge roll too? If I kill a lot of people with this I will concede that most of the WvW players are indeed terrible.

What are you talking about did you even read what I wrote? I said a Mesmer using decoy’s rotation is …. The rotation is pretty much the same with or without decoy. I compared rotation not skill on skill.

I don’t understand your argument that average player vs noob player. If you are saying that you die to thieves that just press 2 and no other buttons then that shows your skill level.

I mean seriously you are dying to thieves that open with 2222 and finish with 2222 like why lol? If you can sit here and type to us the rotation of a thief that kills you with just 2 why not counter it? If you know HIS is coming after 3 hs why not interrupt the hide in shadows?

Heart seeker doesn’t go far unless they have swiftness otherwise the travel distance isn’t that great. You dodge toward the thief if the queued up 3 heart seekers it keeps going that direction it doesn’t auto 360 and go the opposite direction.

Why not pop distortion and just blurred frenzy them? Or put confusion on them and let them kill themselves since your a burst shatter Mesmer?

I don’t know Serb if you dying to thieves that open and finish with heartseeker then you gotta switch something up. Heartseeker is so easy to counter I find it funny that you die to someone only using heartseeker and you play a Mesmer. There are so many ways to kill a heartseeker spam thief as a mesmer I just can’t believe this lol.

Sebrent.3625:

We were talking about Thieves a good bit last night in the Ehmry Bay TS and it got brought up how easy heartseeker is to use. It’s actually easier to use than most (if not all) auto-attacks because:
(1) It doesn’t matter what direction you’re facing
(2) If you’re in range it will jump you to the target to hit them
(3) If you’re not in range it will jump you towards the target (possibly putting you in range for the next heartseeker)
(4) It’s spammable

The annoying aspect of this is the fact that heartseeker spam is that easy to use while, depending on your spec, is non-trivial to avoid. You have to time your dodge rolls, blocks, etc. to mitigate the damage. This takes a larger amount of skill than is required of the thief simply hitting 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2.

I don’t know why people complain about Heartseeker its not that great of a move honestly. I only use it occasionally because I know it does damage when the target is at about 45% above that its not that great. Mine hits for 1.6k on crit above 50% health. My Sword auto crits for more than that.

I don’t know heartseeker just isnt that great its situational if you die to someone spamming it then that is l2p all you need is a stun breaker and you throw their whole rotation off.

Heartseeker spammers mindset is

Bursting I expect everything to crit and the opponent to be below 50% everytime using my burst opener.

That is just a rotation and alot of people in WvW have that mindset and stick to their normal comfortable rotations because it works for them and they get away with it.

I am sure the majority of mesmers with a Sword/Pistol and decoy on util bar Open pretty much. Decoy, 4,5,3,3,2 switch weapons to greatsword or staff. I see it all the time since I played mesmer alot I know after I get stunned with Pistol 5 that iLeap and Phantasmal duelist is coming so I stun break immediately. I know after blurred frenzy is finished the mesmer is going to dodge roll backwards. Alot of people just play with a set rotation and when you throw that off they don’t know what to do.

So heartseeker spammers just have a rotation that is probably glassy, cloak and dagger, mugged, backstab, heartseeker because they been using it and getting away with it. I am pretty sure every class has a pretty standard type rotation that is used and abused by pretty much every class and they get away with because they aren’t forced to adapt.

Also if a person presses 2,2,2, in succession they just commited to all those heartseekers because of ability que a simple dodge roll screws them over.

MrForz.1953:

oZii.2864:

That shouldn’t be hard to do. He is with a D/D ele the whole video. Picks off some underleveleds or people that strayed from what looks like a 6 man zerg(if you call that a zerg). I can’t see why you couldn’t the same kill count on another class in the scenario’s in this video.

Well, I pretty much spoke in general. I felt proud of the few moments of glory I had with the engi during hairy situations, having made a charr thief and handling such situations with such ease, I pretty much grew disgusted that alot of people would make tons of videos about it and act like it’s super-amazing.

Mm there isn’t really anything amazing that is ever going to be posted honestly. Most people have seen pretty much what a thief can do so it’s not highly entertaining at least to me. I watch it if there is something funny or if it’s in a thread making a case for nerf X vs Y then I look at the video.

It happens in all games though people post videos and eventually they just become standard nothing to see here really for those people that play that style (whatever game it is) unless it has really good editing

I watch other classes videos now because those are interesting to me since I don’t know all the other classes. Like that warrior solo roam video when he kills all the thieves, that ranger video from the turkish guy, I’ll admit even that I like Xsorus ranger video’s more than his thief one. That thief play is old 3 months ago (see wild bill on youtube) thief forums already put it out there that we find P/D video’s boring thats why nobody posts them here anymore. Now that Warrior video thats boss!! Love that video

I don’t know what build you play on your Engi but there is a Engi on Yaks Bend in Lame guild that 1v4 or 1v5 us all day its annoying but its good.