Thief (Deadeye) vs Elementalist (Weaver)

In your opinions, should these classes be pushing similar/equal DPS numbers (I know it's hard to get equal) or should one be ahead of the other? Consider fractals and raids.

Personally, I see the arguments for both. Some say Weavers should push out more DPS due to its more complex rotation. Others say Deadeye should since it has less sustain and trying to position yourself with a rifle in a raid is not very easy. Deadeye also has less cleave than a Weaver.

They are both glass and can’t have utility without sacrifice dps . Weaver should do best cleave damage. Dead eye for single target. Rotation doesn’t matter for me. It’s just a personal preference. I agree that dead eye rotation is too easy tho.

It's all about effort and reward for games. If someone puts more effort in they should be rewarded more. Unfortunately with the initial system in thief you're almost guarantee not going to have the same complexity as attunements. While you can argue it's the same difficulty if you perfected both, the extra time and effort of perfecting weaver should naturally be compensated.

Cleave is rarely an issue in raid btw. While you do have few odd boss mechanics and mobs (that die within seconds), most of the time 2 target cleaves from D/D thief is sufficient. Also positioning with thief rifle takes some thinking but it's the same with few staff weaver channels. Most thief will go to dagger for safe options as well.

Also please stop with the no utility myth. Other than cleave thief brings second best CC (750) in game without sacrificing much dps (thief guild's long CD means good burst but minor sustain increase). You can do the math if you want but most dps builds in raid only have equal or less CC potential, I can only think about 1-2 specs that may bring more and they certainly are not top damage dealers. Majority of dps specs may need to compromise their skill slot to match thief.

DE should have more dps, weaver should have bigger burst. Lets say DE has 35k constant dps from start, while weaver gets 40k burst with 32k dps.

Noobs will want DE because it's reliable, advanced players will want weaver because it can potentially phase bosses faster. Burst from weaver is also easy to mess up, so average player will always be worse than deadeye and pro ele will always perform better than DE. Phasing bosses faster is also group dps dependent so you'd either stack weavers or not use them at all.

The problem is: where do you fit condi engi and no cleave power chrono? Condi engi is more complex than weaver, but brings more utility. Same situation with chrono and deadeye.

What happens with other classes if you can stack only these 2 (4) builds?

The bigger issue is the basis of the discussion itself. Thief is heavily focused in burst damage and duel..... most so then any other class at its core (which includes Mesmer). 80% of what a Thief IS, is completely irrelevant to Raids because of what they emphasize..... pure sustained damage.

If you make the argument that builds should be rewarded for rotation difficulty, then Core Engineer should be Meta by a wide margin. But this is a false premise! Because despite the mechanical similarity between Ele and Engie Skill juggling, the skills themselves emphasize completely different functionality. In fact, they're actually inversions of each other. Ele is designed with an emphasis on damage, with secondary support/utility. Engineer is designed with an emphasis on support and utility, with damage secondary. Engineer's skills can't reach the peak damage of Ele, because its skills aren't centralized around it the way Ele is.

The situation with Deadeye is a completely problem. Thief normally caps out on sustain damage, because most of its skills are dedicated to setting up a stealth attack as a take down strike on a single target. Daredevil has less emphasis on stealth, and more emphasis on shut down, and got strong sustain damage to compensate for losing Stealth's burst damage. What Deadeye is doing now is giving the thief the ability to chain Stealth attacks... and the speed at which they can cycle this is making it viable as sustain damage. This definitely wasn't what the Devs had in mind with the DE changes..... they just needed something to make Malice pay off with an aggressive playstyle. But when you look at the design changes, they're all focused on how it works in PvP and WvW, where windows of opportunity are small. When malice was passive, they were incentivized to wait for malice to build up before attacking; but it also lead to opening strikes that could one-shot a significant number of half-glass builds. The second change to make malice building dependent on attacking, while malice pay off depended on stealth, created a situation where the whole mechanic was at odds with itself. This last change fixed the problem of accessing the pay off...... but now its created a problem where it can keep chaining 5-digit bursts in succession.

Its not a question of complexity, but if a burst oriented mechanics should be allowed to output this level of sustained damage.

@"starlinvf.1358" said:If you make the argument that builds should be rewarded for rotation difficulty, then Core Engineer should be Meta by a wide margin.

All that you can say with certainty because of that is "there are other factors involved". Which is true. However, complexity is also a factor, as evidenced by the lower popularity of high-complexity, low-performance builds in comparison to low-complexity, low-performance ones. They're both out of favor, but the easier ones are still played more.

Same goes (obviously) for group utility, CC, survivability, cleave... basically anything that can be regarded as either advantage or a drawback. They all influence players' decision to play this or that, so they have to be accounted for in balance. And yes, the "burst - sustain" balance you speak of is also on the list.

@steki.1478 said:DE should have more dps, weaver should have bigger burst. Lets say DE has 35k constant dps from start, while weaver gets 40k burst with 32k dps.

Noobs will want DE because it's reliable, advanced players will want weaver because it can potentially phase bosses faster. Burst from weaver is also easy to mess up, so average player will always be worse than deadeye and pro ele will always perform better than DE. Phasing bosses faster is also group dps dependent so you'd either stack weavers or not use them at all.

The problem is: where do you fit condi engi and no cleave power chrono? Condi engi is more complex than weaver, but brings more utility. Same situation with chrono and deadeye.

What happens with other classes if you can stack only these 2 (4) builds?

I agree with this for the most part. Higher spike for weaver and higher sustained dps for deadeye to give both a purpose in a group, but over the course of a fight they should average out somewhat the same if played well. Sounds fair to me.

@starlinvf.1358 said:Its not a question of complexity, but if a burst oriented mechanics should be allowed to output this level of sustained damage.is it a burst build tho?i think before the rework someone made the suggestion of an inverted malice system so the old system in reverse. mark and gain full malice wich depletes over time, with this you would have a strong opener and a cooldown phase. as opposed to old system : slow build up and then constant higher singular hits or new system quick build + high single hit altering. neither the old nor the new malice system creates a downtime in pressure wich means they are both build around sustained damage not burst, despite some single skills hit higher in a single hit then many other skills. maybe thats what thief should be like as it allways has had the option to take the initative and be rather flexible in timing. if thief was really burst centric, it would need way more burst damage in PvE to be relevant and in PvP modes people would less complain about thieves as they could expect a downtime after avoiding a burst.thief currently does sustained high singluar attacks, but thats not bursting.

@MUDse.7623 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:Its not a question of complexity, but if a burst oriented mechanics should be allowed to output this level of sustained damage.is it a burst build tho?i think before the rework someone made the suggestion of an inverted malice system so the old system in reverse. mark and gain full malice wich depletes over time, with this you would have a strong opener and a cooldown phase. as opposed to old system : slow build up and then constant higher singular hits or new system quick build + high single hit altering. neither the old nor the new malice system creates a downtime in pressure wich means they are both build around sustained damage not burst, despite some single skills hit higher in a single hit then many other skills. maybe thats what thief should be like as it allways has had the option to take the initative and be rather flexible in timing. if thief was really burst centric, it would need way more burst damage in PvE to be relevant and in PvP modes people would less complain about thieves as they could expect a downtime after avoiding a burst.thief currently does sustained high singluar attacks, but thats not bursting.

Its definitely a burst build/attack, because most of the damage is heavily loaded into singular actions. Thief Stealth attacks are designed to either finish a target, or severely wound them. This is normally followed by a period of lower damage or evasion as they setup another around of attacks. Some builds can go for high pressure to finish off the target, but is usually riskier because its not nearly as front loaded as something like backstab.

You're splitting hairs on the fact that a series of high damage, front loaded attacks suddenly gets classified as sustain, because they can be chained. But name any other skill where 40k spike damage in a single hit is considered "sustain damage'.

@starlinvf.1358 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@starlinvf.1358 said:Its not a question of complexity, but if a burst oriented mechanics should be allowed to output this level of sustained damage.is it a burst build tho?i think before the rework someone made the suggestion of an inverted malice system so the old system in reverse. mark and gain full malice wich depletes over time, with this you would have a strong opener and a cooldown phase. as opposed to old system : slow build up and then constant higher singular hits or new system quick build + high single hit altering. neither the old nor the new malice system creates a downtime in pressure wich means they are both build around sustained damage not burst, despite some single skills hit higher in a single hit then many other skills. maybe thats what thief should be like as it allways has had the option to take the initative and be rather flexible in timing. if thief was really burst centric, it would need way more burst damage in PvE to be relevant and in PvP modes people would less complain about thieves as they could expect a downtime after avoiding a burst.thief currently does sustained high singluar attacks, but thats not bursting.

your too much on the actual number of the hits, wich is completly besides the point.the difference between burst and sustained damage is the time between the spikes in damage, it is short in sustained damage and longer in burst.in PvP those singular hits are considered burst as the HP of the targets is alot lower and by it being single hit it is alot better to apply then any multihit burst.

Actually DE builds aren't burst. Weaver is. Look at the dps graph from a benchmark.

Ele got nerfed, my T4 party laughed at my dps earlier today. Still farming fractal to gear up my Thief with Berserker using DeadEye.

Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

@Coolguy.8702 said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

Saying that ele has utility shows that you've never played one seriously.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Coolguy.8702 said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

I mean if we continue with that logic:saying that Ele doesn't have utility shows that you've never attuned to Water :joy:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Coolguy.8702 said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

Of course I didn't. Same way I don't wear Magi when taking a dps spot in the party.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Coolguy.8702 said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

So you do agree on Ele having constant access to utility during the fight?

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Coolguy.8702" said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

I agree ele has useless "utility" that nobody ever touches because it's a major dps loss and covered by other classes. Unlike thief, who has actual group utility called "Basilisk Venom".

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Coolguy.8702" said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

Ele has access to all the utility during the fight even if it is a dps loss. If shit hits the fan and you need to save yourself you still have option to do that, while Thief does not. Being dead is a bigger dps loss than switching to use some utility.

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Coolguy.8702" said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

Nonsense. If the situation is so bad that I need to attune Water, all I can do is delay the wipe by a few seconds. Very utility, so balance.

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Coolguy.8702" said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

2.8k heal after ~10 seconds wont save you from anything though. Thief still brings 750 cc from basi in a second or two.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Coolguy.8702" said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

Still better option to dying is to buy those few seconds and hope your healers can get themselves together during that time.

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Coolguy.8702" said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

Nope. The better option is to not waste time and /gg.

Still better option to dying is to buy those few seconds and hope your healers can get themselves together during that time.

I would kick any weavers who attune to water if I knew it...…..why do we even have a healer spot? to heal kitten?

Edit: also balancing class from bad groups is a bad balancing

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Frozey.8513 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Coolguy.8702" said:Deadeye because unlike eles they have no utilitys to give to the group. All they have is dps which is why they should be the best at it

modern Raid tactics have evolved to try and simplify to the trinity, and has no tolerance for diversification and recovery in fights so in this context you are wasting your time stacking healing. Its perfectly viable to setup a raids tactic that is slower but allows more hybrid play, but that requires a change of mindset that is difficult for most raiders.