Recommendations for making Deadeye Meta!

Hi guys, as we all know deadeye has just about been discarded by the entirety of the community who play endgame content in gw2. Undoubtedly it is a spec that has a tremendous potential for single target damage but by far it has been underutilized. I have a love for thief and I am hoping some of my ideas might serve as an inspiration, I put effort and time into these considerations and I hope they will be well regarded. As a quick note, none of these are changes to the rifle; I understand that rifle is a very risky weapon to buff and I feel anet are very cautious about buffing rifle. So while these do affect rifle in a way, none of them affect it directly. So let's get into it:

1. Shadow Flare: Possibly one of the coolest skills introduced in PoF, but possibly also one with the most underutilized potential. I propose increasing the duration of Shadow flare to 20s in PvE and 15s in PVP while also reducing its damage by 50%.

Explanation: Shadowflare is already a good skill in PvE, but this also incentivizes play in other game modes while increasing its utility and the AOE DPS potential of deadeye in PvE; making it more viable for endgame content like fractals or raid encounters where there are adds. In PvP deadeye is currently partially outclassed by the mobility available on Daredevil. Because players choosing deadeye are unlikely to desire mobility from the spec while Daredevil is an immediate option, this change will enable deadeye to become stronger on the close and middle points by offering point denial and better constant sustain through invigorating precision or sigil of malice if players choose those options. Increasing its duration to 20s means that maintaining almost 100% uptime is realistic in PvE; this also helps future balancing for PvE while also making it a measurable indicator of performance for the individual.

2. Deadeye's Gaze: There is a skill in gw2 that puts a giant persisting target on someone's head, but does nothing for anyone else while it is there. The understanding is that it is there because its designed to be a PVP related tell. So I propose that it is given further functionality giving a debuff to the marked target that also increases incoming damage by 5% while marked for death.

Explanation: While a 5% flat damage increase is pretty easily overlooked in PVP or WvW by most, it does, however, increase the purity of purpose of deadeye in both of those game modes. The purpose of this change is to incentivize and reward organized coordination of burst in the PVP and WvW game modes. Also very importantly in PvE; a 5% DPS increase to 10 people is a thing borderline impossible to be overlooked by any well-organized groups. This is a buff that takes into consideration a large number of things, three of which I specify here: Firstly the role of a "might-stacking deadeye," this brings good synergy with the 10 player limit of fire for effect and the lack of offensive support deadeye offers in place of a Condi-ps warrior. Secondly, it brings good synergy with the range potential of rifle and the inherent nature of 'mark', being a unique debuff instead of a unique buff. Finally it also deeply incentivizes the appeal of diversifying the current meta 10-player squad composition, to include singular roles all while avoiding breaking other game modes, namely WvW.

3. Maleficent Seven: The grandmaster traits in Deadeye are all very interesting, however, I believe that Maleficent Seven can do with a rework to better distinguish itself from Be Quick or Be Killed. I propose that instead of healing the player when they gain perfectionist it instead stops the player from losing malice when marking a target who is already marked.

Explanation: Maleficent Seven and Be quick or Be Killed, while being technically different are practically the same in the PvE game mode, with Be Quick or Be Killed superior mostly for QoL reasons. Whereas in PvP and WvW there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the viability of these, with each one pulling ahead of the other circumstantially only. To add further to this the very lacking DPS of deadeye in PvE is considered and is improved upon. This change makes it possible to maintain 7 malice stacks at all times which brings its personal DPS closer to Daredevil, where daredevil offers a 29.47% personal DPS increase while using staff vs 27.05% in deadeye including the second change proposed here. This theoretically enables deadeye to potentially pull ahead of daredevil in a strictly single or dual target situation as; considering auto attacks only, the base DPS of the auto attacks on dagger main hand is approximately 10% higher than of the auto attacks on staff. This change also doesnt not touch the effectiveness of the burst potential of Be Quick or Be Killed, maintaining its good synergy with other weapons sets like d/p and traits like burst of agility.

These are the ideas I would like to share with others here and I hope they are taken into consideration, while there are many others who have additional ideas and very good suggestions, myself included. I believe that these have the most to offer if they were implemented in the next balance pass while staying on course thematically and without overbuffing, underbuffing or breaking anything in the process.

Deadeye will never be viable in PvP unless they change the mark and malice mechanic.

It doesn't really matter if you buff rifle to do 12312312 more damage or improve traits or whatever, the fact that mark is stupidly inferior to steal it's enough for deadeye to be out the meta.Malice is the opposite of thief goal, thief needs to be fast, killing targets quickly move and jump into another fight as soon as you can, you can't do that with malice because you need to wait to actually do damage.You can also add kneel which is horribly bad designed for pvp.

Conclusion : Deadeye is not going to be viable or at least playable in top tier unless they change its mechanics (mark/malice/kneel).

Shadow Flare damage and duration seems just about right at the moment, with proper set up it's a nice burst aoe, reduced damage and longer duration makes it more of a throwaway circle to tag everything for xp. For WvW, it does what it needs to do before the window is closed.

Already driving a squad with a full stack of Vulnerability? Hold on to this extra 5% incoming damage while your at it. I think that extra 5% isn't necessary and just adds stress to the marked target who's probably already seen the threads about Death's Judgment on the forums. I do like the idea of a more upfront team function for the mark but I kind of already know they're under pressure at the moment with that on top of them.

@Elxdark.9702 said:Conclusion : Deadeye is not going to be viable or at least playable in top tier unless they change its mechanics (mark/malice/kneel).I agree, and I think the biggest problem with Mark is that its simply a lesser steal, it attempts to fix steal for rifle, but in fact it makes it worse because it does not synergise well with any other weapon / trait / class.I disagree with kneel, I believe rifle should be forgotten as a weapon choice for endgame and should definitely not be a sticking point of deadeye, it's too dangerous to balance without breaking rifle as it is, and we both know it is unrealistic to ask Anet to rebuild the rifle skill set. It is very op as it currently is for roleplayers in casual PvE and WvW who like to play as a sniper.

@kash.9213 said:Already driving a squad with a full stack of Vulnerability? Hold on to this extra 5% incoming damage while your at it. I think that extra 5% isn't necessary and just adds stress to the marked target who's probably already seen the threads about Death's Judgment on the forums. I do like the idea of a more upfront team function for the mark but I kind of already know they're under pressure at the moment with that on top of them.I never considered the human element of stress to be an important factor in high level WvW play. How do you personally use rifle deadeye in WvW, is it to any level of success in GvGs, or more as a thing in ganking and in pug raids?

I'm not really interested in rifle as I conclude that it is worthless, but I'm interested in how you have found value in it.

@Zlater.6789 said:I never considered the human element of stress to be an important factor in high level WvW play. How do you personally use rifle deadeye in WvW, is it to any level of success in GvGs, or more as a thing in ganking and in pug raids?

I'm not really interested in rifle as I conclude that it is worthless, but I'm interested in how you have found value in it.

I only mention the stress as people are already freaking out about mark+death's judgment, devs would end up gutting us if there was another very noticeable effect that people know can wreck them.

I don't have a set way to play with rifle. I keep enough precision to land stuff and I build to pressure forward or for peeling away and stagger Silent Scope to do something over here then stealth drop agro to make some openings over there. The reason Shadow Flare is good right now is because with full Malice it's a powerful and somewhat fast acting aoe so it's great when I need to steer their squad over a bit or for making an opportunity for mine, something slower and not so impacting with the right prep would likely be ignored and wouldn't force anyone to make decisions. Right now, that mark means a killer Deaths Judgment or Shadow Flare along with whatever else the DE can throw at them and I rarely see my marked target again after marking them as it is. Knowing that a full squad is going to focus you when that pops up on your head would probably be meta changing.

I like your Maleficent Seven change. I can't claim to know how it might negatively impact pvp but that would be a nice QoL change for pve. I mostly do open world bosses and stuff sometimes for pve but I do notice DE has some downtime or build up time when everyone else is still pounding away.

The fact that one trait is wasted on something that should be baseline (Renewing Gaze: Deadeye's Mark recharges if your mark is defeated.) is enough to show just how little they care about the class. The regen is pathetic and irrelevant.

@Asur.9178 said:The fact that one trait is wasted on something that should be baseline (Renewing Gaze: Deadeye's Mark recharges if your mark is defeated.) is enough to show just how little they care about the class. The regen is pathetic and irrelevant.

On the contrary, Renewing Gaze provides more access to steal traits which are pretty strong themselves. Add Mercy and Swindler's Equilibrium, Mark becomes fairly spammable.

@kash.9213 said:Knowing that a full squad is going to focus you when that pops up on your head would probably be meta changing.I'm glad you think so, that's kinda the angle I'm going for a little bit here ;D I still really like 5% boost because even if you build it into your squad, it's not something you want to overdo because those 5% damage buffs very quickly reach a saturation point where you don't want anymore deadeyes. Imagine a world boss, everyone can play deadeye, but it wouldn't ever increase dps by more than 5% so people won't feel forced to play it as there will usually be someone else covering it, so they can play what they like instead.

I like your Maleficent Seven change. I can't claim to know how it might negatively impact pvp but that would be a nice QoL change for pve. I mostly do open world bosses and stuff sometimes for pve but I do notice DE has some downtime or build up time when everyone else is still pounding away.Thanks

@Asur.9178 said:The fact that one trait is wasted on something that should be baseline (Renewing Gaze: Deadeye's Mark recharges if your mark is defeated.) is enough to show just how little they care about the class. The regen is pathetic and irrelevant.I agree with @Zacchary.6183 the synergy between that skill and trickery is pretty amazing, it's just a shame about the stolen skills disappearing though, it makes it kinda annoying to spam. With regards to regen, I appreciate it more than I appreciate the regen from perfectionist because it gives enough to go until you get perfectionist, but perfectionist being such a long duration regen it makes it a pain in PvE because it overrides regen from other classes who are more likely to have more healing power.

Some people don't read full responses I see.

@Asur.9178 said:Some people don't read full responses I see.

We saw what you wanted with expecting it to be made baseline. But nobody understands why you want it because you don't give any background or context to removing something so unique, and nobody understands what you want in its place, maybe elaborate further on your though process behind this.

Renewing gaze is hardly useful in pvp but it's alright I mean it resets the mark so the regen or whatever they add on it's unnecessary.

But I agree with Asur here, I'd rather have it baseline and have another trait, because it only makes sense for pve but for pvp it's kind of useless besides of a winning teamfight situation where you can reset the mark and keep the pressure on the enemy team.

As I have said my main problem with deadye is the mechanics from it and not exactly the traits or the utilites, yes they could get some buff why not but until the mechanics from this elite don't change then you won't see deadeye being meta in any game mode.

The stolen abilities are also horrible compared to the normal kit. Biggest problem as you guys already mentioned they built deadeye only for rifle and perhaps P/P but the other weaponsets suffer because of how mark works etc. What they could do is you personally can swap to steal or Mark similar to legend swap, that would sort out the playstyles with different weapons

I feel the gameplay around malice doesn't fit the theme of a thief with a rifle when thief has mostly been about instant burst.I would do away with malice entirely and rework abilities that were tied to malice accordingly (maybe a slight buff for baseline and a bonus on marked target ). Then the mark can be made to increase by X% the damage on the target, lasting Y sec with a 30 sec cooldown with the possibility to trait it to last Y+33%. I have no idea what value should X and Y take tho :)

@Elxdark.9702 said:Deadeye will never be viable in PvP unless they change the mark and malice mechanic.

It doesn't really matter if you buff rifle to do 12312312 more damage or improve traits or whatever, the fact that mark is stupidly inferior to steal it's enough for deadeye to be out the meta.Malice is the opposite of thief goal, thief needs to be fast, killing targets quickly move and jump into another fight as soon as you can, you can't do that with malice because you need to wait to actually do damage.You can also add kneel which is horribly bad designed for pvp.

Conclusion : Deadeye is not going to be viable or at least playable in top tier unless they change its mechanics (mark/malice/kneel).

Malice deals increased damage to targets other than your marked one. It is NOT a damage debuff on the marked target, it is a damage buff on the thief. You have to play deadeye differently than core thief. Mark has unlimited range once applied, which means you can mark a target that is back capping, then move to mid and kneel in to stealth, then start insta killing players in the team fight with DJ once your malice is built (which most of it will be by the time you hit mid anyway)

I like how the DE is played and its obvious for me why they can't make it anymore stronger than it is without hurting the game. You can hit people for 15-20k, that's an insta-kill. And you can do it from far away. I'm not sure what they should do to get it more out there, but they better do very small changes at a time or it can go very wrong.Oh yes, and the stolen skills are totally meh.Oh, and some of the traits are just meh.

One in the chamber: When hitting a foe from x range on the side or the back, regain one Initiative.Unforgiving: Hitting a foe from range on the side or the back will make your bullet ricochet once.

i wonder where all these rifle thiefs are nowadays?pre PoF so many tools where crying for rifle thief so they can snipe and balabalaaba, now barely any1 has good word about it.the dmg is there u can snipe perfectly fine..

i nagged from start already that rifle thief would be beyond horrible.. well i guess i was right.

it doesnt work in WvW, cus WvW is sadly about mass PvP mostly (if not u better of being like sPvP mobility ftw) so in mass PvP u cant really snipe cus will always be some asshat infront of what u just wanted to take down. No problem tho ull just rape the other person but it just lacks piercing every1 constantly moves as tight as possible chance u hit multiple people with for example 3 shots is much greater then being able to 1 hit some1 out of the mass.the build is also to slow if u make mistake by kneeling in wrong spot for example u got shadowstep to gtfo, and thats it more or less its not like we can handle a few hits we are 1 shots our self also we really cant have this "static" build with amount of armor we have been given on this class we heavily relay on movement/dodges.

@reddie.5861 said:i wonder where all these rifle thiefs are nowadays?pre PoF so many tools where crying for rifle thief so they can snipe and balabalaaba, now barely any1 has good word about it.the dmg is there u can snipe perfectly fine..

i nagged from start already that rifle thief would be beyond horrible.. well i guess i was right.

it doesnt work in WvW, cus WvW is sadly about mass PvP mostly (if not u better of being like sPvP mobility ftw) so in mass PvP u cant really snipe cus will always be some kitten infront of what u just wanted to take down. No problem tho ull just kitten the other person but it just lacks piercing every1 constantly moves as tight as possible chance u hit multiple people with for example 3 shots is much greater then being able to 1 hit some1 out of the mass.the build is also to slow if u make mistake by kneeling in wrong spot for example u got shadowstep to gtfo, and thats it more or less its not like we can handle a few hits we are 1 shots our self also we really cant have this "static" build with amount of armor we have been given on this class we heavily relay on movement/dodges.

A lot of us are playing the game and enjoying ourselves with the DE spec while doing it? I don't know about you, but that kind of sounds successful in my eyes.

I didn't read the thread, yet. I just want to respond to the OP.

@Zlater.6789 said:

1. Shadow Flare: Possibly one of the coolest skills introduced in PoF, but possibly also one with the most underutilized potential. I propose increasing the duration of Shadow flare to 20s in PvE and 15s in PVP while also reducing its damage by 50%.

I am more in favor of a 10s duration with increase damage and lower CD to 20s. Plus a bigger radius about 300, 240 is too small. This will better serve as an effective AoE for trash mobs. This should be better than Caltrops.

2. Deadeye's Gaze: There is a skill in gw2 that puts a giant persisting target on someone's head, but does nothing for anyone else while it is there. The understanding is that it is there because its designed to be a PVP related tell. So I propose that it is given further functionality giving a debuff to the marked target that also increases incoming damage by 5% while marked for death.

Why not apply 5 stacks of Vulnerability on target when you reach max Malice? It would be the same damage-wise but at least it will give the target a window to counterplay by cleansing the condition if your team didn't act fast. So any organized group has to be ready to burst the target as soon as the Malice reached max. I personally do not like debuff that I cannot cleanse.

If the Mark passively applies 5% debuff, they will demand to have DE Mark be removable by cleanse.

3. Maleficent Seven: The grandmaster traits in Deadeye are all very interesting, however, I believe that Maleficent Seven can do with a rework to better distinguish itself from Be Quick or Be Killed. I propose that instead of healing the player when they gain perfectionist it instead stops the player from losing malice when marking a target who is already marked.

Explanation: Maleficent Seven and Be quick or Be Killed, while being technically different are practically the same in the PvE game mode, with Be Quick or Be Killed superior mostly for QoL reasons. Whereas in PvP and WvW there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the viability of these, with each one pulling ahead of the other circumstantially only. To add further to this the very lacking DPS of deadeye in PvE is considered and is improved upon. This change makes it possible to maintain 7 malice stacks at all times which brings its personal DPS closer to Daredevil, where daredevil offers a 29.47% personal DPS increase while using staff vs 27.05% in deadeye including the second change proposed here. This theoretically enables deadeye to potentially pull ahead of daredevil in a strictly single or dual target situation as; considering auto attacks only, the base DPS of the auto attacks on dagger main hand is approximately 10% higher than of the auto attacks on staff. This change also doesnt not touch the effectiveness of the burst potential of Be Quick or Be Killed, maintaining its good synergy with other weapons sets like d/p and traits like burst of agility.

I disagree only because of Shadow Flare and the 7% damage increase per Malice -- this is the skill that will pull DE ahead of DD using M7. If they change Shadow Flare as I suggested (increase dmg + duration, lower CD), you don't need to do this at all.

@bluri.2653 said:The stolen abilities are also horrible compared to the normal kit. Biggest problem as you guys already mentioned they built deadeye only for rifle and perhaps P/P but the other weaponsets suffer because of how mark works etc. What they could do is you personally can swap to steal or Mark similar to legend swap, that would sort out the playstyles with different weapons

I could get behind this suggestion, the stolen skills themselves even seem totally borked. Having them disappear invalidates saving using them for almost any defensive means, and because of DE's dependence on stealth, you don't even want to use them when you get them because they will reveal you if you are stealthed, so it's not like you want to use them for pre-buffing before you open on someone. There is a lot of thinking beyond even this that can go into explaining the deficiencies in this however, I can see your suggestion being a suitable fix. But I honestly don't see them allowing us to remove a "feature" of a new elite spec, there are developer egos to consider.

@Doctor Hide.6345 said:A lot of us are playing the game and enjoying ourselves with the DE spec while doing it? I don't know about you, but that kind of sounds successful in my eyes.

hehe yeah Deadeye can be a lot of fun, and there is a lot of appeal to it. For context what we are talking about in this thread, is using Deadeye in endgame or high-level gameplay. If you wanted to join any raid, a pvp team or a WvW guild, you would get kicked or asked to reroll if you were playing a Deadeye. There are instances where you do see them in these settings but it's only when the person doing it is very experienced and they are either: surrounded by people who are also very experienced and they are confident that their experience has allowed enough margin, to allow the deficiency. Or if the person playing it is able to play it to such a standard that they are able to exceed the minimum expected standard level of play deemed to be acceptable by those around them.

@"Sir Vincent III.1286" said:I am more in favor of a 10s duration with increase damage and lower CD to 20s. Plus a bigger radius about 300, 240 is too small. This will better serve as an effective AoE for trash mobs. This should be better than Caltrops.

I really prefer the specifics of your suggestion here, and I'm really interested in your opinion on this because you have a different perspective than I do. How do you feel about this skill being used for trash clearing? Like from my perspective I actually see it being used primarily for 3 purposes, firstly as point pressure in PvP, secondly as a power based DOT (damage over time) ability, and thirdly for mobility. Do you prefer its use as a spikey AoE damage ability, how would you prefer it?

Why not apply 5 stacks of Vulnerability on target when you reach max Malice? It would be the same damage-wise but at least it will give the target a window to counterplay by cleansing the condition if your team didn't act fast. So any organized group has to be ready to burst the target as soon as the Malice reached max. I personally do not like debuff that I cannot cleanse.

If the Mark passively applies 5% debuff, they will demand to have DE Mark be removable by cleanse.

I can understand it is annoying to not be able to cleanse everything. But vulnerability is already incredibly abundant, an additional 5 vuln to 1 target will more than certainly go unnoticed by everyone except perhaps people who play Deadeye in a ganking or roaming setting. But I'd say that's probably the one place that deadeye might be considered viable already.

I disagree only because of Shadow Flare and the 7% damage increase per Malice -- this is the skill that will pull DE ahead of DD using M7. If they change Shadow Flare as I suggested (increase dmg + duration, lower CD), you don't need to do this at all.

I cant agree with this, a big buff to shadow flare alone is not nearly enough to make Deadeye comparable to Daredevil, let alone its DPS. Like many have pointed out earlier in this thread, the problems with deadeye lie deeper than its AOE burst potential. For a single target DPS spec, it's actually incredibly useless for single target DPS; so when you compound other annoying specifics on top of its uselessness, you get a lot of things that would have been seen as smart balancing choices, actually getting perceived as horribly limiting. Take for example putting a cast time on deadeye's mark, if you had some sort of reason to do it besides "I have to or else I am even more useless" people won't see it as an issue at all because you are rewarded for it. I would argue it is the same way with M7 because at the moment you are not rewarded for building up malice, so why the hell would you want to anyway when Daredevil allows you to do more damage, not only more easily and to more targets; but doing so will also make you more survivable and less prone to die, by giving you more endurance regen, a larger endurance pool and a free combo finisher to top it off.

To add further to that, without this change to M7 the way malice works is exclusively like this: take for example you give a toddler a lollipop, you let it play with the lollipop, eat it and enjoy the sugar, the moment it begins to enjoy it, you snatch the lollipop away from the toddler. Malice is unlike every other profession system in the game where you build up a resource, instead of rewarding you for your hard work, it instead punishes you for being in combat for any more than 25 seconds. In fact it even punishes you for traiting into the deadeye mark skill or even for acquiring alacrity.

@Zlater.6789 said:

@Doctor Hide.6345 said:A lot of us are playing the game and enjoying ourselves with the DE spec while doing it? I don't know about you, but that kind of sounds successful in my eyes.

@"Doctor Hide.6345" said:That's why you ignore elitist jerks like that and make your own group in raids, WvW, pvp. You don't have to follow the meta in everything, It can be ignored because completing content can be down without the meta. It is just a pigeonholed used to be jerks to one another, so yes, the DE can be viable in those encounters.I would kick a deadeye in any of those settings. I would say that the standard isn't because some people are disgusting on the inside and they get a kick out of being a grinch. The standard for example in raids, is there so we don't spend more time than we need to on a kill, it means we have more room for mistakes which people make because they are humans.You saying exactly what you just said insists that you either don't value others time, you are intolerant of human error, or that you are just very selfish overall (actually this one is me too sometimes) and you refuse to work cohesively as part of a team; being that you refuse to "play meta builds" indicating that you react poorly to criticism as there is a possibility you might with my post now. Or heck maybe I'm the jerk because the wording on your post just came out sounding a little "hey wait thats not what I meant." Well only you can actually make that self assessment with total certainty I guess.

@Zlater.6789 said:

@"Doctor Hide.6345" said:That's why you ignore elitist jerks like that and make your own group in raids, WvW, pvp. You don't have to follow the meta in everything, It can be ignored because completing content can be down without the meta. It is just a pigeonholed used to be jerks to one another, so yes, the DE can be viable in those encounters.I would kick a deadeye in any of those settings. I would say that the standard isn't because some people are disgusting on the inside and they get a kick out of being a grinch. The standard for example in raids, is there so we don't spend more time than we need to on a kill, it means we have more room for mistakes which people make because they are humans.You saying exactly what you just said insists that you either don't value others time, you are intolerant of human error, or that you are just very selfish overall (actually this one is me too sometimes) and you refuse to work cohesively as part of a team; being that you refuse to "play meta builds" indicating that you react poorly to criticism as there is a possibility you might with my post now. Or heck maybe I'm the jerk because the wording on your post just came out sounding a little "hey wait thats not what I meant." Well only you can actually make that self assessment with total certainty I guess.

Then I would never group with you ever. I make my groups where everything is allowed because I am anti-meta to the core. I think people should play what they want because any content can be done that way for PvE. It is how they designed content. Not everything has to be speed cleared; there is a thing called hating certain weapons and specs and personal preference which I respect more then telling people you can't play because you don't follow qty because they are gods in or world.

I don't play meta builds because I don't care for most of the weapons they say to use. What weapons I play with greatly affects my enjoyment level, and I am not the only one who plays this way. Now, if the LFG tag says meta builds, I won't join it because I know that is not what I am looking for. If it says casual comp non meta, and you join insisting use meta because you ignore personal preference. Then I say that is a jerk move.

Sorry for the double, the edit button has been broken for me, so I can't add. If I am doing PvP/WvW though, I will still be playing as a Deadeye because I enjoy it, so you can try to kick me from your map all you want, but I doubt it will work because you hate the spec so much.

@Zlater.6789 said:

@"Sir Vincent III.1286" said:I am more in favor of a 10s duration with increase damage and lower CD to 20s. Plus a bigger radius about 300, 240 is too small. This will better serve as an effective AoE for trash mobs. This should be better than Caltrops.

I want to use this for trash but the long cooldown, short duration, and small area makes the skill not worth the utility slot. As for damage, SF deals 395 DPS in my build so for 5 ticks, that's 1975 total damage. Since there's no slow down mechanic like cripple to keep targets within the AoE, the target will walk out of the AoE after 2 ticks -- that's only 790 total damage (1185 for 3 ticks). Now compare this to Caltrops using the same build, it applies 2 stacks of bleed for 5 seconds with a total damage of 220. So after 5 ticks, if my calculation is correct, Caltrops have dealt over 3000 damage after 5 seconds -- or 600 DPS. This damage is applied to every enemy within the AoE, not just on the marked target. If the target is not marked, SF deals less damage to them, thus it's not a good skill for AoE-ing trash mobs.

The increase in duration, damage, & area radius and lower cooldown will accomplish the 3 purposes you listed effectively. My problem with using SF in PvP is the fact that the short duration forces me to use the shadow step right away. The long cooldown makes it hard to use tactically. I personally do not favor any skills with a cooldown longer than 20s unless it is a really good skill like RoI. It just doesn't work for my playstyle.

I disagree only because of Shadow Flare and the 7% damage increase per Malice -- this is the skill that will pull DE ahead of DD using M7. If they change Shadow Flare as I suggested (increase dmg + duration, lower CD), you don't need to do this at all.

If the goal is to balance DE with DD, then it will take more than changing M7. The first problem they need to solve is; why DE is using D/x or P/P instead of Rifle? Then there's the issue of mobility and survivability. Maybe the damage issue can be solved by making the Rifle bullets piercing and/or unblockable. M7 can reduce the initiative cost of the skills by 2. One in the Chamber can reduce Cantrip cooldown by 20%. My point is, DE requires a lot of tweaks to improve its performance in combat. I really want to see changes more than what you're suggesting -- not just for one trait, but overall change. As it stands, I still prefer DD only because of the 3rd dodge and the GM traits. In my opinion, these traits should swap with Acrobatics and give Acro 3rd dodge.

To add further to that, without this change to M7 the way malice works is exclusively like this: take for example you give a toddler a lollipop, you let it play with the lollipop, eat it and enjoy the sugar, the moment it begins to enjoy it, you snatch the lollipop away from the toddler. Malice is unlike every other profession system in the game where you build up a resource, instead of rewarding you for your hard work, it instead punishes you for being in combat for any more than 25 seconds. In fact it even punishes you for traiting into the deadeye mark skill or even for acquiring alacrity.

One of my suggestions is to have Malice build up passively as part of the DE Gaze. So no matter who I'm fighting, if I have 5 stacks of Malice, the damage boost applies to all of my skills and it will persist as long as I am in combat. DE Mark will speed up the process and boost damage toward that single target for me and my team. So in a sense, it achieves the same goal you want with a lot of rooms for other improvements.