Rifle on Deadeye Really Needs Improvement!

This is just my opinion, and what I feel like needs to be adjusted.

Comparing Rifle Deadeye to Longbow Ranger in term ranged skills..

Long Range Shot .. has 1500 range, and can hit between 270 - 347 depending on range (base damage). Brutal Aim is 1200 Range and can hit for 253. (base damage)Rapid Fire .. has 1500 range, and can hit for 1440 (base damage). Three Round Burst has 1500 range and can hit for 948 (base damage).

I can't really think of other skills between the 2 classes to compare appropriately.

Anyways, I think Rifle needs it's base range up to 1500, then Kneel range at 1800. I know what you're thinking.. 1800 that's OP.. yeah it's pretty far distance, but you also have to be stationary to use it. So the enemy can just run in closer to attack you. Meanwhile Ranger can spam at 1500 while roaming, while deadeye has to be stationary to even match that range. Ranger hits for more damage at range and their skills have a lot shorter aftercast. So I believe at least Brutal Aim should have it's attack speed increased to match Ranger's Long Range Shot. In terms of Rapid Fire vs Three Round Burst. It's hard to really say what you could do with those 2.. rapid fire has a 10 second cooldown, while three round burst is based off of initiate spent, but the 1800 range on it would be only the thing you could do, and just up the range on double tap to 1500.

Also Kneel. I suggest dropping Free Action from Kneel and just making it so if the player hits a movement key it cancels kneel out, and after they do that it put's kneel on a half second cooldown preventing it being spammable. Needing to press a key to disable kneel just makes it feel completely clunky and unfriendly to use :anguished:

In short term.. what's the point in playing Rifle Deadeye, if Ranger can do more damage, attack faster, and still be mobile at the same time.

That cover skill 4 that provides protection from projectile needs to be turn back into a high damage long cd devastating shot like it use to before the nerfs. I barely play my thief since the "adjustments" only when a daily forager, miner or lumbered is in it's home instance that I log with it.

I do think tying Death's Judgement to stealth was a mistake. The ability is essentially unusable in PvE since we're required to pick every possible, even small DPS for our utility skills to have any chance at pulling our weight along being forced to trait into Premeditation, gives us no access to stealth while wearing our Rifle.

But outside of instanced PvE where the spec is absolutely hurting, it works just fine anywhere else, its actually great in WvW and Open World content and workable in sPvP.

All rifle needs in pvp is to make it same as in pve. In pve rifle skills cost less initiative and still its unuseable. Lets hope next balance patch buffs deadeye.

Ive recently found it weird that rangers can move and shoot from 1,500 distance when deadeyes have to stay still to get the same range, it really makes no sense. Also rangers can shoot further than 1,500 or thieves cant really shoot up to 1,500 while kneeling. It happens to me all the time, rangers shooting at me just outside of kneel attack range.

Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes fucked meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

@NoNameNoob.9758 said:Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes kitten meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

Ranger has

• Damage mitigation through signet of stone
• Sic 'Em (2000 Range), which reveals the DE
• Deadly LB2 skill that follows DE even after the DE went invis, not to mention the buff from Strength of the Pack
• Block through GS4

Add dodge on top of that

@ihazbackup.5697 said:

@NoNameNoob.9758 said:Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes kitten meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

• Damage mitigation through signet of stone
• Sic 'Em (2000 Range), which reveals the DE
• Deadly LB2 skill that follows DE even after the DE went invis, not to mention the buff from Strength of the Pack
• Block through GS4

Stealth is still The strongest def Tool ingame so you have to give thief some disadvantages otherwise it Would Be to opBut yeah LB2 should Not Follow After going in stealth... Makes stealth as a def Tool pretty useless

@NoNameNoob.9758 said:Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes kitten meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

Ranger has no stealth? What game are you playing? How can you position yourself badly when you can move freely while shooting? Thats just you being bad, it has nothing to do with profession mechanics.

@Synstylae.2751 said:

@NoNameNoob.9758 said:Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes kitten meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

Yeah I mean you are more likely to position yourself badly as a DE because kneeling down is very essential mechanic to your whole play style. Thus for that reason I think the suggested increase of kneeling range to 1800 would be a welcome improvement.

@NoNameNoob.9758 said:Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes kitten meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

Hunters shot is three seconds stealth on a 12 second cooldown. Traiting in Marksmanship can give 3 seconds stalth on a cooldown of just over 9 seconds meaning if they wished they could stealth 6 seconds out of 9.5 as long as the shot hits

@NoNameNoob.9758 said:Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes kitten meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

Ranger does have stealth access and multiple invulns and higher base sustain.

And before someone brings up the sham, "but arrows arc and can thus travel further enabling rangers the 1500+". No marksman that can call themselves a marksman changes position or conditions without redoping their weapon to compensate. Range capabilities should be the same.

bring back old mechanics, thats all

@Vegeta.2563 said:This is just my opinion, and what I feel like needs to be adjusted.

Comparing Rifle Deadeye to Longbow Ranger in term ranged skills..

Long Range Shot .. has 1500 range, and can hit between 270 - 347 depending on range (base damage). Brutal Aim is 1200 Range and can hit for 253. (base damage)

Brutal Aim's damage increases over time based on the number the Vulnerability stacks. Plus the Marked target gets another 10% damage due to Iron Sight.

It's really misleading not including all these other effects.

Rapid Fire .. has 1500 range, and can hit for 1440 (base damage). Three Round Burst has 1500 range and can hit for 948 (base damage).

Rapid Fire has 10 seconds cooldown which equates to 10 initiatives.

If you spend 10 initiatives on Three Round Burst, you'll find that you are dealing more than 1440 damage.

Within the 10 initiatives/10 seconds, you can use TRB twice meaning in the same timeframe, you'll be dealing 948x2 damage -- which is way more than RF --- and DE will only waite 8 seconds cooldown (Init regen) instead of 10s.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Vegeta.2563 said:This is just my opinion, and what I feel like needs to be adjusted.

Comparing Rifle Deadeye to Longbow Ranger in term ranged skills..

Long Range Shot .. has 1500 range, and can hit between 270 - 347 depending on range (base damage). Brutal Aim is 1200 Range and can hit for 253. (base damage)

Rapid Fire .. has 1500 range, and can hit for 1440 (base damage). Three Round Burst has 1500 range and can hit for 948 (base damage).

You are forgetting 1 thing though. Initiate is used for all skills 2-5 .. so if you spam TRB to match the damage from Rapid fire, you can't use anything else after that, until some of it regenerates. While ranger still has access to skills 3-5 in the meantime.

@Vegeta.2563 said:Also Kneel. I suggest dropping Free Action from Kneel and just making it so if the player hits a movement key it cancels kneel out, and after they do that it put's kneel on a half second cooldown preventing it being spammable. Needing to press a key to disable kneel just makes it feel completely clunky and unfriendly to use :anguished:

if hitting a movementkey cancels kneel. how can i while kneeling select the direction i want to dodge for stealth for a DJ without dropping out of kneel because i dont want to in that situation?the problem of free action is that while it is an instant ability it is not instant. meaning you cant use it during other actions you cant press free action during a roll or while fireing a skill, if you try it will fire the skill first and then free action or you need to finish dodge first and then free action wich makes it feel a little clunky.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Vegeta.2563 said:This is just my opinion, and what I feel like needs to be adjusted.

Comparing Rifle Deadeye to Longbow Ranger in term ranged skills..

Long Range Shot .. has 1500 range, and can hit between 270 - 347 depending on range (base damage). Brutal Aim is 1200 Range and can hit for 253. (base damage)

Rapid Fire .. has 1500 range, and can hit for 1440 (base damage). Three Round Burst has 1500 range and can hit for 948 (base damage).

Your argument is invalid. If thief uses 10 initiative on three round, he wont have much left to use other weapon skills, but a ranger can still use other skills and swap weapons for more. Also rangers longbow has longer range than thieves rifle(kneeling).

@Vegeta.2563 said:You are forgetting 1 thing though. Initiate is used for all skills 2-5 .. so if you spam TRB to match the damage from Rapid fire, you can't use anything else after that, until some of it regenerates. While ranger still has access to skills 3-5 in the meantime.

@Synstylae.2751 said:Your argument is invalid. If thief uses 10 initiative on three round, he wont have much left to use other weapon skills, but a ranger can still use other skills and swap weapons for more. Also rangers longbow has longer range than thieves rifle(kneeling).

All it takes is 6 initiatives (2x TRB) to exceed the damage of Rapid Fire.

Why 6 init? TRB has a casting time of 1s. By the time the casting animation ends, the Thief has regenerated 1 Initiative. After 2 TRB, the net cost is 6 initiatives.

Besides both of your responses are irrelevant since the OP started this discussion by comparing damage skill-to-skill. Thus my response is based on the same premise.

Now if we are going to argue about the whole weapon set and its cost, then I agree that overall, the Thief's weapon sets are lacking.

My argument to support this is based on the total cost of each weapon set. For example, in order to use every skill in S/P, it would require 20 initiatives -- yet we only have 12 base and 15 max. This total cost wasn't too bad when we used to have Opportunist that grants initiatives on crit. Now, this total cost is a burden to many of the Thief's builds.

I also argued that Quick Pockets should be a baseline that grants 6 initiatives on weapon swap instead of 3 and that the base Initiative pool should be 15 making Preparedness baseline also (which is a shared opinion by many Thief players).

The point of all these is to focus not by comparing other profession's skill to Thief's, rather improving the Thief profession based on what we are lacking. So the main issue here is, there are not enough Initiatives to sustain high DPS. And they can't possibly expect us to auto-attack 50% of the time.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

I also argued that Quick Pockets should be a baseline that grants 6 initiatives on weapon swap instead of 3 and that the base Initiative pool should be 15 making Preparedness baseline also (which is a shared opinion by many Thief players).

I also heard the suggestion that each weapon set should have its own initiative pool (even if both are the same weapons). This would increase the complexity of thief by increasing the available skills by 2 and also offer twice the initiative regeneration in effect. I wouldnt mind it if more mechanics evolved around weapon swap too, like gain boons/remove conditions/apply venom/gain a malicious strike etc. From a thematic standpoint a sneaky/conniving/scheming thief would have many tools in its bag to take out an enemy and should be able to adapt to many situations, more so than a straight forward combat class such as warrior.

Originally, I thought since M7 was already providing an initiative regeneration mechanic, that it would make sense make it baseline to DE while also being easier to implement. But if initiative regen were baseline to core thief that would open up more possibilities and make the class as a whole easier to balance. Youd just have to change what M7 does right now.

I personally feel there should be 2 category of dmg powers for thief. One that cost 3 ini and ones that cost 5-6. The 3 ini cost powers would be designed to replace auto attacks i.e. unload/3rb/heartseeker and ones that cost 5-6 which would be hard hitting abilities (think whirling axe lvl) with cd and possibly ammo charge to prevent spam. My hope for malicious strike when I first heard of the thief changes was that they did HUGE dmg which is what the thief is missing but it wasnt to be.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Vegeta.2563 said:You are forgetting 1 thing though. Initiate is used for all skills 2-5 .. so if you spam TRB to match the damage from Rapid fire, you can't use anything else after that, until some of it regenerates. While ranger still has access to skills 3-5 in the meantime.

@Synstylae.2751 said:Your argument is invalid. If thief uses 10 initiative on three round, he wont have much left to use other weapon skills, but a ranger can still use other skills and swap weapons for more. Also rangers longbow has longer range than thieves rifle(kneeling).

You made a case for TRB being better than RF, not me. But you forgot all the other stuff that makes TRB spamming bad. Also your post to OP was irrelevant since TRB deals less dmg than RF, you just pointed out how spamming TRB results more dmg overall and again forgetting that after RF the ranger can use other abilities while running. You have to compare profession to see whats wrong with them.

@Synstylae.2751 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Vegeta.2563 said:You are forgetting 1 thing though. Initiate is used for all skills 2-5 .. so if you spam TRB to match the damage from Rapid fire, you can't use anything else after that, until some of it regenerates. While ranger still has access to skills 3-5 in the meantime.

@Synstylae.2751 said:Your argument is invalid. If thief uses 10 initiative on three round, he wont have much left to use other weapon skills, but a ranger can still use other skills and swap weapons for more. Also rangers longbow has longer range than thieves rifle(kneeling).

Comparing the professions is not the premise of the OP. You're the one not following the flow of the conversation.

The OP compared two skills, that are not even equivalent in any way, thus I simply pointed out the cost of using each skill -- which is the skill CD.

It makes sense for TRB to deal less damage given the cost. If you are willing to pay the same cost (10s CD = 10 initiatives) as using RF, you will deal more damage than RF using TRB.

That's all it. Yet you want to expand it by including other skills that Ranger has, but that is not what's being discussed here.

EDIT:Just a reminder, this is the OP's premise;

"Comparing Rifle Deadeye to Longbow Ranger in term ranged skills.."

@babazhook.6805 said:

@NoNameNoob.9758 said:Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes kitten meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

actually, you have to hit with that arrow, and usually enter in cd without shooting it or hit people and dont stealth you because pet sometimes reveal you (yes, the pet....),if arrow is blocked or evaded, will not stealth you , in fact the skill is a bit buggy.

BTW rifle hit harder than LB.

@eldrjth.7384 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

I also argued that Quick Pockets should be a baseline that grants 6 initiatives on weapon swap instead of 3 and that the base Initiative pool should be 15 making Preparedness baseline also (which is a shared opinion by many Thief players).

The problem with Initiatives is that it is intended to be a resource upon engagement, but was not meant to be a resource if the combat extended for a long time.

At this point, one of my many suggestions is

1) to give each weapon skills their own cooldown and allow the Thief to spend Initiatives to use a skill that is in cooldown. This way the skill will spend cooldown first and the Thief will have a choice to spend Initiative to reuse that skill while waiting for the cooldown.

2) to make Initiatives a resource that once depleted, it will not regen unless out of combat. But each weapon skill will have cooldown and skill use spends Initiatives first until fully depleted. Going stealth will regen Initiatives as a baseline this way and weapon swap will grant full Initiative bar. They can even limit the Initiative to 5 points but each skill only cost 1 initiative.

3) to keep everything as is, except that auto-attack generates 1 initiative per hit, grant 6 Initiative on weapon swap baseline, and max 15 initiative baseline. This is the lazy alternative, but it can work.

@urdriel.8496 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@NoNameNoob.9758 said:Dont forgett that Ranger has no stealth so if he miss position hisself hes kitten meanwhile thief pops 1 of his thousand stealth is gets away

Yes I mentioned you had to hit with it, but it does not change the fact it provides stealth and a good many rangers rely on it for stealth. In some ways that you have to HIT to get stealth an advantage as many Thieves will become revealed when they stealth prior to a shot hitting the target and that hit then reveals them. That one reason they changed up the timing of the stealth on dodge and silent scope.