Deadeye damage

(talking about pve raiding etc., not a pvp or wvw discussion) Does anyone else feel like deadeye rifle damage is just too low for the sacrifice of mobility? I feel like I do mediocre single target dps and abysmal aoe. I know its the first day so I am not throwing a hissy fit but am I the only one feeling like deadeye isn't worth it?

Yeah, I am noticing that I am doing a fair chance better with something like p/p. I also feel like trying to get a high powered DJ off is a bit too difficult, seeing as how by the time I am set up for it I have no initiative. If Rifle 3 worked like Unload, that would improve the whole weapon.

Hmm I can feel it. I know a lot of people talked about Rifle 1 not doing enough damage, and I can def feel it. Once I'm out of Initiative, it just feels so mediocre. Burst is "okay", and I suppose for the range, its okay to be that way. But the Rifle 1 needs to feel better.

sword cleave and the shadow flare do pretty well aoe wise. at least it seems like it. (i'm not great at maths) The damage of shadow flare sky rockets at high malice.

Rifle is purely single target if you want to aoe then this isn't the weapon you want, period. It was never designed to be that way.

I do agree however, that the overall damage of rifle is terrible. I want to mention P/P being better single target, but i'm afraid A-net would nerf it to force rifle without streamlining rifle to actually stand a chance in pve meta....

It's not just you. The main advantage that the PVE Deadeye has is it's ability to self buff. Under kneel it can give itself plenty of might while doing O.K. damage, and Death's Judgement can hit pretty hard after 10 seconds. But, most of the thief's abilities do not lend to stationary combat, and if you're already teamed up with a phalanx strength warrior then the self buffing isn't worth much. Other than the rare circumstance where you have to attack from long range, the Deadeye doesn't have much practical use over the daredevil.

Deadeye is actually what Daredevil should've been: another playstyle. Just that stationary and thief doesn't work too well and just that the game is still unbalanced as kitten. They went overboard with Hot and that will remain a problem until they'll finally come around to remove some of the powercreep.

Good to have you back, Zach ;)

@Jana.6831 said:Deadeye is actually what Daredevil should've been: another playstyle. Just that stationary and thief doesn't work too well and just that the game is still unbalanced as kitten. They went overboard with Hot and that will remain a problem until they'll finally come around to remove some of the powercreep.

Good to have you back, Zach ;)

The wiki describes the thief as "Thieves are expert in the shadow arts. They utilize stealth and shadowstepping to surprise and to get close to their target. They're deadly in one-on-one combat using their agility, acrobatic fighting style, and the ability to steal to overcome their enemies."

I don't really like this description because it is rather generic. Here's mine: "Thieves are tricky, twitchy, and highly mobile. The nature of their initiative mechanic makes their damage bursty and frontloaded, which works well with their in-and-out style. Their limited access to raw defensive skills and low health means they must rely on dodging, evading, teleporting and stealthing to hope to survive, let alone thrive."

Let's compare that to what the rifle (and malice) has to offer.

Thieves are tricky: The rifle isn't all that tricky, except for Death's Retreat, which is pretty similar to Debilitating Arc (a skill that already exists). Everything else involves shooting bullets of varying quality at a target. Why?

...twitchy: The rifle is definitely not twitchy. None of the abilities are really reactive (think Headshot). Most of the time, you won't even be moving. Why?

...highly mobile: The rifle might be the least mobile weapon in the game, mostly because it roots you in place. Yes, a skill that roots you in place on the most mobile profession in the game. You also lose Steal, just for good measure. Why?

The nature of their initiative mechanic makes their damage bursty and frontloaded: The rifle does the exact opposite; malice's damage bonus builds up over time, and Death's Judgement, the big button, incites you to build vulnerability, fury, and might stacks from the 3 preceding skills. Fortunately, they are each on hotkey 1, 2, and 3, respectively, so you don't mess up your rotation. Why?

...which works well with their in-and-out style:Except you won't go in, nor out, because you can't anymore. Also, you're standing still. Why?

Their limited access to raw defensive skills and low health means they must rely on dodging, evading, teleporting: Deadeye loses the thief's main way of teleporting, Steal, and offers one only Death's Retreat for mobility. Too bad it can't be used while kneeling. Why?

...and stealthing to hope to survive, let alone thrive: Rifle literally has a skill that prevents you from stealthing. Yes, the profession that is about stealthing and using stealth attack prevents itself from stealthing. Why?

The good thing is it's range + ability to stack vulnerability. P/P does not stack vulnerability. I feel like rifle has big picture dps advantage in that sense.

@Oxygen.5918 said:

Welcome to this game, where noobs can cry about stealth so it's being taken away without regards that thief is built around stealth and the anti destealth is sold you as an elite which you can't take if you don't use Deadeye which is only suitable for Rifle, D/P, P/P and maybe staff who don't need an anti destealth.

Apart of that: High burst ranged damage is loved by the players and that should've never been implemented in the way it was with HoT. Deadeye fits into the vanilla game but not into HoT. HoT remains the problem.

I've been trying to roll Deadeye.

Deadeye feels very nice on trash - Mark resetting with quickness is beautiful. However it feels very lack-luster on bosses. Mark has a time-out and it resets on re-application. This puts the damage modifiers at about half on average of a melee Daredevil when traited for 5 stacks, and still a good bit less when 7 stack despite having a slightly higher potential. This, of course, comes at a survivability loss. But if you don't care about having min-max DPS, Mark does allow you to stay at ranged with P/P or Rifle, and you don't really need to dodge much when farther away.

The stolen abilities also feel lack-luster for me. Traditional stolen skills have the option to give me interrupts or ecto, a much stronger buff drop. That coupled with the loss of any stolen skills on Mark reset (be it mob death, time out, downed, or reapplication), means it just needs to be spammed with little consideration for tactics. Outside of the Fire for Effect trait, stolen skills feel ineffective and flavorless.

Rifle is definitely not a DPS tool. With the nerf of R3, the only real burst comes from Kneeling R4 after high malice stacks (it is junk at low stacks). In all cases the skills are extremely expensive, leaving you stuck with auto-attack most of the time. You can get some fun damage numbers from R4 at 7 Malice, but at 6 initiative, that's not getting spammed. Add in that Kneel has the double kicker of costing you a weapon skill along with rooting you in place in a way that is clunky to get out of, and the weapon set overall feels clunky. I still hope they allow movement to break Kneel. I also feel that R3 can afford to come down to 3 initiative and R4 could go 5 ini, though in PvE only. Auto attack I feel needs ~20% damage buff. I'm OK with a slow attack rate if they boost the damage.

Ultimately, anywhere you have targets dying relatively fast, Deadeye is quite strong as there are a ton of traits that allow Mark to be a good condi and/or damage burst. It won't earn Thief a place in WvW zerg meta as the stolen skills are RNG and not long enough duration to be support and Might stacking is not enough, and it won't fit in raids as Daredevil has much better sustained DPS, but I can see it working in Open World PvE, PvP, and WvW roaming. There are 3 things I hope for:

• The work on Rifle, making Kneel less clunky and adjusting the DPS/ini costs
• Either allow Malice to stack faster, or keep Malice stacks if reapplied before time-out.
• Make stolen skills last longer and persist until the next Mark. Stolen skills with no mark could be the current base duration with the first tick of Malice scaling from there. I like saving a stolen skill for strategic use, and balancing the need of using a new Steal/Mark vs saving that skill.

@Jana.6831 said:Welcome to this game, where noobs can cry about stealth so it's being taken away without regards that thief is built around stealth and the anti destealth is sold you as an elite which you can't take if you don't use Deadeye which is only suitable for Rifle, D/P, P/P and maybe staff who don't need an anti destealth.

This is gold

I find that DE burns through initiative incredibly quickly and I don't think the damage output makes up for it. Rifle 4 is certainly very strong burst with full malice stacks but the insane cost means you won't fit it into the rotation without just doing AAs for a good while, so 3 spam it is.

Compare that to staff DD that can do (maybe) slightly lower damage while having it be AoE AND evade during most of it.

Also, I hate the weird magical theme of rifle skills. Why go the pew pew route? For me it feels incredibly out of place, it makes me think of Star Wars honestly. It certainly doesn't improve the whole weak feeling the spec has.

I played some in wvw and even trying to kill a sentry with rifle only is tedious and slow. Had to swap to bow to get them finished.

DE damage is VERY VERY good

Anyone who hasn't had great experiences with DE damage is doing it all wrong lol

Rifle's burst damage is great. Its sustained, not so much...

As much as I hate to say it, Rifle is just flat out inferior to Deadeye P/P. Lower damage. Higher initiative costs. Shorter might duration. Required to be rooted. The only advantage rifle brings is increased range, and that simply does not compensate for the root.

@MidnightO.8632 said:I find that DE burns through initiative incredibly quickly and I don't think the damage output makes up for it. Rifle 4 is certainly very strong burst with full malice stacks but the insane cost means you won't fit it into the rotation without just doing AAs for a good while, so 3 spam it is.

My thoughts exactly, i'm constantly initiative-starved as DE which isn't super fun and makes landing any impactful Death's Judgement even harder. I understand why they put so much ramp-up on the ability, but the high Initiative cost just feel too much on top of everything else.

I think the biggest issue here is that in order to get those beautiful high bursts, you need full malice and might. Might is easier to gain, but the might duration on Double Tap and Three Round Burst are short lived. So you basically have to empty your initiative and then wait for initiative to come back to pop off a DJ, hopefully before Mark drops and Might doesn't get too low.

You could try to offset this issue with Fire For Effect and Improvisation but you still need Concentration or some kind of boon duration for it to stick long enough.

I've had my fun with rifles when it's a group activity, or even the simpler missions when you had AI companions, definitely not some like the last fight in Night of Fires. I think in order for me to survive I am switching to my trusty six-shooters permanently, the rewards with the rifle simply isn't satisfying enough with lack of mobility + high initiative cost.

@flyingfox.6150 said:I've had my fun with rifles when it's a group activity, or even the simpler missions when you had AI companions, definitely not some like the last fight in Night of Fires. I think in order for me to survive I am switching to my trusty six-shooters permanently, the rewards with the rifle simply isn't satisfying enough with lack of mobility + high initiative cost.

I had the same experience. I was doing okay with the rifle. At first I thought I just needed to get used to l playstyle of the weapon, but once I swapped to my pistols, things just got so much better all-around. Hopefully they do something to improve the appeal of rifle to offset the self-rooting functionality of kneel and lack of frontload burst. Right now it's more effective to spam unload for might and damage, especially when you have quickness on mark and can spam that, too, on trash that dies quickly.

@Jinks.2057 said:DE damage is VERY VERY good

Anyone who hasn't had great experiences with DE damage is doing it all wrong lol

Have you done any dps golem tests? Maybe you could share your secrets because for me, with full buffs staff daredevil is coming in 4k ahead of rifle deadeye. And that is with 100% kneel uptime. Once you add any movement that number drops significantly. I'm happy to learn if you have a good way to make rifle dps a competitive weapon for high end pve content.

@Zalavaaris.5329 said:

@Jinks.2057 said:DE damage is VERY VERY good

Anyone who hasn't had great experiences with DE damage is doing it all wrong lol

I don't PvE nor do I care about the game mode. No game with a PvP aspect should ever be balanced around PvE. It breaks the games balance too severely as evidenced by the HoT debacle.

Shooting another player DE rifles damage is VERY good.

@Jinks.2057 said:

@Zalavaaris.5329 said:

@Jinks.2057 said:DE damage is VERY VERY good

Anyone who hasn't had great experiences with DE damage is doing it all wrong lol

Ok, see my note at the top. This is a discussion about high end pve balance. I know some people in pvp or wvw like deadeye but when it comes to pve dps it seems to fall short. It is not wrong to enjoy the damage in pvp but it is however off topic in this thread.

Perhaps deadeye rifle could benefit from a certain level of cleave - that is having projectiles pierce through up to a certain number enemies en route to it's target. This would help reinforce the idea behind deadeye's mark too, as in it's a little hard to focus on a marked target when there are bodies in the way. a 15 - 20 percent damage buff would be nice too.

Another idea would be to bring back a form of ricochet, but for the rifle.

@Fipmip.7219 said:Perhaps deadeye rifle could benefit from a certain level of cleave - that is having projectiles pierce through up to a certain number enemies en route to it's target. This would help reinforce the idea behind deadeye's mark too, as in it's a little hard to focus on a marked target when there are bodies in the way. a 15 - 20 percent damage buff would be nice too.

If love to see rifle 3 do what it does currently but also add aoe to the mix. Like... call it incendiary round and every hit acts like a beefed up sigil of fire. Having multiple little fire explosions that do good aoe and them having a big single target burst ability seems like a good place to be. Good choice between aoe and single target, an imob, a mobility skill, and a buffed auto attack would make this weapon feel much better.