Deadeye without rifle, it works?

Hello guys,

What do you think of running a deadeye build without rifle? Probably Sword/Dagger + Shortbow?

It would be a sort of Core Thief 2.0, landing F1 from distance and safety will be easier (if you run deadly arts the damage and healing works from 1500 with deadeye), and you will still have pretty high damage and get the bonus from malice stacks.Maybe even Dagger/Pistol for that crazy high damage malicious backstab, but I just love Sword main hand too much when playing thief even tho it received nerfs last patch.

Maybe you say why deadeye without rifle if you can play still core with same results, and deadeye adds nothing much?Maybe, but already for the F1 casted at range, malice stacks benefits and probably the use of some cantrip skill for example Binding Shadow, which feels pretty good, it's already worth it in my opinion.

calling especially @MUDse.7623 which I hope will come with an answer, even tho maybe everyone just tried always rifle.

@whoknocks.4935 said:Hello guys,

What do you think of running a deadeye build without rifle? Probably Sword/Dagger + Shortbow?

It would be a sort of Core Thief 2.0, landing F1 from distance and safety will be easier (if you run deadly arts the damage and healing works from 1500 with deadeye), and you will still have pretty high damage and get the bonus from malice stacks.Maybe even Dagger/Pistol for that crazy high damage malicious backstab, but I just love Sword main hand too much when playing thief even tho it received nerfs last patch.

Maybe you say why deadeye without rifle if you can play still core with same results, and deadeye adds nothing much?Maybe, but already for the F1 casted at range, malice stacks benefits and probably the use of some cantrip skill for example Binding Shadow, which feels pretty good, it's already worth it in my opinion.

calling especially @MUDse.7623 which I hope will come with an answer, even tho maybe everyone just tried always rifle.

sPvP or WvW though?Even regardless of mode, Ranged F1 is the very last thing you want with S/D and the malice stacks are utterly useless for Sword stealth attack as well as the core skill is already especially useless on its own.

what do you want to know from me?i dont see why you would need shortbow outside of spvp and for spvp you better tag @dDuff.3860 not me, he can explain to you in wich situation you pick rifle and when you pick shortbow in spvp.

so yeah first of all what do you want to play spvp or wvw? if wvw, what do you want to do there?

You can already land steal at a distance of 1200 instantly, but mark has a 1/2 second telegraph. Since landing steal can be the difference between winning and losing in tough fights with S/D, you want it to land it as reliably as possible even if you don't chain it with another skill. S/D can also keep range and kite using infiltrator's strike/SB when pressured , but all your damage comes from melee so tagging people from a distance doesn't benefit you much.

If you're set on using sword and deadeye, S/P might be a better weapon set. Pistol whip coupled with Be Quick or Be Killed probably has enough damage to burst people down and have some potential.

@MUDse.7623 said:what do you want to know from me?i dont see why you would need shortbow outside of spvp and for spvp you better tag @dDuff.3860 not me, he can explain to you in wich situation you pick rifle and when you pick shortbow in spvp.

so yeah first of all what do you want to play spvp or wvw? if wvw, what do you want to do there?

On wvw solo roaming.Wanted to know your opinion if tried something other than rifle on deadeye, maybe a burst dagger/pistol, sword/pistol without rifle.

@Warkind.6745 said:You can already land steal at a distance of 1200 instantly, but mark has a 1/2 second telegraph. Since landing steal can be the difference between winning and losing in tough fights with S/D, you want it to land it as reliably as possible even if you don't chain it with another skill. S/D can also keep range and kite using infiltrator's strike/SB when pressured , but all your damage comes from melee so tagging people from a distance doesn't benefit you much.

If you're set on using sword and deadeye, S/P might be a better weapon set. Pistol whip coupled with Be Quick or Be Killed probably has enough damage to burst people down and have some potential.

But sword/dagger3 is better than sword/pistol3 in my opinion.

@whoknocks.4935 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what do you want to know from me?i dont see why you would need shortbow outside of spvp and for spvp you better tag @dDuff.3860 not me, he can explain to you in wich situation you pick rifle and when you pick shortbow in spvp.

so yeah first of all what do you want to play spvp or wvw? if wvw, what do you want to do there?

my opinion is that in wvw solo roaming, the most important ability is to pick your fights to your advantages. there is absolutely no skill in winning fights in solo roaming WvW, the only thing that matters is fighting to your advantages. fights won while the opponent has the advantage is mostly a sign of their lack of skill more than a sign of your own abilities.so going from there i for a very long time now play stealth heavy in solo roaming as that is the best way to pick your fights. you can aswell pick fights with mobility but that forces you to leave the area and can cost you a ton of time with people chasin while with stealth you can just go past larger groups without them even knowing you are there as they dont pay attention.if i play deadeye, i wouldnt think to play it in WvW roaming without rifle for 2 reasons. you can get a ton of stealth uptime on rifle and it is a decent range weapon. i think it is very important to be versatile enough to face any build. if i run d/p +s/p for example thats twice melee and this forces me into melee wich can be very stupid fight if you go against 2-3 scourge/holo type of opponents. having a range advantage is really strong and the only form of a thief being offensive and defensive at the same time. mirage has mirage mirror, warriors endure pain etc. we can hit while out of range. against ranger who is the only one with better range, we have 100% projectile absorb while shooting back, you can play around their unblockables if you pay attention to them. so even if i say i want to play mainly with sword pistol, then i will still use rifle on backbar. rifle is just too good not to run it, it can kill any build. only against near perma reflect/absorb it might get dragged to a longer fight, yet with binding shadows CC you can mostly get a window big enough in the reflects to build malice and then oneshot through reflects with DJ. any other kit has bigger weaknesses IMO and if it is just that they are melee.

In my opinion atm deadeye carried by silent scope trait which has use only with rifle coupled with incredible damage of rifle. Other traits given just enforce this advantage.

But if you want to play some sick thief stuff you can try rifleless P/D, S/P, D/P (I'm yet to find good build for deadeye S/D (without rifle))

@whoknocks.4935 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what do you want to know from me?i dont see why you would need shortbow outside of spvp and for spvp you better tag @dDuff.3860 not me, he can explain to you in wich situation you pick rifle and when you pick shortbow in spvp.

so yeah first of all what do you want to play spvp or wvw? if wvw, what do you want to do there?

@Warkind.6745 said:You can already land steal at a distance of 1200 instantly, but mark has a 1/2 second telegraph. Since landing steal can be the difference between winning and losing in tough fights with S/D, you want it to land it as reliably as possible even if you don't chain it with another skill. S/D can also keep range and kite using infiltrator's strike/SB when pressured , but all your damage comes from melee so tagging people from a distance doesn't benefit you much.

If you're set on using sword and deadeye, S/P might be a better weapon set. Pistol whip coupled with Be Quick or Be Killed probably has enough damage to burst people down and have some potential.

Better in different ways; pistol whip has superior damage, which I figure you'll need if you sacrifice any traitline other than trickery for deadeye. And if you swap deadeye in for trickery, it's not really Core Thief 2.0 anymore.

S/p works very well with DE. You have a built in port so while missed the port on steal is NOT that great an issue. BqoBk on a PW coupled with Sigil Of Severance in WvW is giving +450 Precision + 250 Ferocity plus 200 power for the duration of a Quickness enhanced Pistolwhip. DE will also allow stealth use with s/p via stolen item and you will ramp up very quickly to 5 malice for that stealth.

The Stealth attack with s/x is not to ne scoffed at. It gives a dodge and applies 10 stacks vuln plus blind or daze. It was rarely used prior because of the need to trait up stealth utilities but with the new steal source and or smeld you can use this much more often.

DE in a Condition P/d build is very effective. You have more stealth sources for sneak attack, can keep might stacks at 25 quite easily for harder ticks and the stolen items are just better from a Condition application point of view in DE than they were with old steal.

As example trait IMPROV and against Necro. Steal and apply stolen (5 bleed on necro from 1500 range you also get a heal) apply second stolen item iteration from imrpov (5 more bleed plus heal) mercy , steal apply stolen item X2. 20 stacks of bleed from 1500 range PLUS 6 poison off Serpents and any other things your steal applies all of this while adding 10 Might stacks each time you use stolen item. This all just from the steal. Payback works great here if you do menagae a kill as it lowers cooldowns on all utilities meaning if you use a venom as example , you are getting more uses out of it.

@Warkind.6745 said:

@whoknocks.4935 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what do you want to know from me?i dont see why you would need shortbow outside of spvp and for spvp you better tag @dDuff.3860 not me, he can explain to you in wich situation you pick rifle and when you pick shortbow in spvp.

so yeah first of all what do you want to play spvp or wvw? if wvw, what do you want to do there?

@Warkind.6745 said:You can already land steal at a distance of 1200 instantly, but mark has a 1/2 second telegraph. Since landing steal can be the difference between winning and losing in tough fights with S/D, you want it to land it as reliably as possible even if you don't chain it with another skill. S/D can also keep range and kite using infiltrator's strike/SB when pressured , but all your damage comes from melee so tagging people from a distance doesn't benefit you much.

If you're set on using sword and deadeye, S/P might be a better weapon set. Pistol whip coupled with Be Quick or Be Killed probably has enough damage to burst people down and have some potential.

I think D/P could work crazy well.

There was this guy the other day who marked me from stealth, he was using rifle and d/p but never attacked me with rifle, just few shots to remove my aegis and then stealth again, he didnt even try a single death judgement.

Then it was like 1 minutes without him doing nothing, just perma stealthing while i was marked.

Then I'm sure he used basilisk venom, i started running to a camp ignoring me, i thought he was just trolling.

BAM, 18k malicious backstab downed me xD

Death judgement is easy to dodge and avoid, but the backstab has zero sound and animation.

So yeah he used rifle just to build stealth and finished me using dagger oneshot.

So I bet a playstyle like that is very viable, i tried rifle but i didnt like it much, too cheesy playstyle and boring in my opinion. To build up stealth and troll your opponent is great instead.

Dagger/dagger probably works great too.

Dagger/dagger core is very deadly in the right hands... with the malice buffs on backstab it's oneshot on any class.

Sure, you can build for a burstier Core S/D & SB variant by dropping Acro in favour of DE. You could even opt to drop Trickery for DE if you're inclined to run M7.Using DE instead of DA is done, I've seen some people playing DA/CS/DE, some SA/TR/DE, even some ridiculously troll-y SA/Acro/DE stuff with S/D + S/D and energy sigils on weaponswap and such...Several variants and a few more saw some pretty decent play and results at the release of PoF, especially for S/D (maybe there's still some clips on twitch by Sizer showing them). They can still work, but you do pretty much handicap yourself, moreso in WvW than PvP, because in PvP the additional burst can be somewhat useful for S/D at times.The main problem is, you'll lack some surviveability against players who see you coming. Which is rather often the case with S/D reliant builds. Players who see you coming are prepared with countermeasures, considering the fact that "every "other build out there has better staying power, sustain and consistent damage, you'll just end up dying.Ofcourse there'll be people in WvW who just can't handle a little bit of burst and you can definitely use some mind tricks to (significantly) improve your odds. But still... There's just nothing that DE offers that actually benefits anything other than Rifle too much. Not to a degree where you'd be better off running DE over another traitline from my findings.

Right now I don't know why you would want to go DE and not have rifle on either slot in favor of shortbow. If you learn to use Deaths Retreat freely without About Face you get used to landing where you want and that will let you manage your distance and post ups. If you're dead set on a non rifle DE with shortbow, I'd take Backstab instead, if sword I'd stick with rifle.

Actually that works fine because with changes not too long ago they added Malice skills to all weapons based on two handed and main hand weapons. This lets deadeye use base thief weapons with more effect, which means a new skill Malicious Back Stab for example uses the same malice system as the rifles Death Judgement. You must attack Stealthed and from the side or back of course, like the original back stab..

If you're going to use DE, your best choice of weapons are Dagger main hand (D/D or D/P) and Rifle for WvW. Shortbow is for sPvP.

S/D is nice if you want to play with your food, but if you want a no-nonsense approach, you have to use Dagger main hand. S/P also gets the job done and much faster too.

Im Just thinking about s/d +sb build TR +ACR+DE with runes of durability. U take M7 and trait for dmg from boons. Point is to steal all enemy boons with endless initiative and perma evade. Ill try it soon i think. Also wondering if fried Golden dumplings wouldnt work well

Can anyone give me their toughts on this dp build ? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVn0MBVOh9OB2FDUGjFYCj/YGNvmaJgAQGwLNEHaDA-jpxHQBA4QAQwHAQP2f4alBU2RAAenAAA

@"Gandrogh.1530" said:Can anyone give me their toughts on this dp build ? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVn0MBVOh9OB2FDUGjFYCj/YGNvmaJgAQGwLNEHaDA-jpxHQBA4QAQwHAQP2f4alBU2RAAenAAA

No reason to drop bountiful imo

@"Gandrogh.1530" said:Can anyone give me their toughts on this dp build ? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVn0MBVOh9OB2FDUGjFYCj/YGNvmaJgAQGwLNEHaDA-jpxHQBA4QAQwHAQP2f4alBU2RAAenAAA

I would pick Basilisk Venom over Shadow Meld for this build. Shadow Meld is only good if you are going to use stealth a lot since it's the only skill that can remove Revealed. Since you opted for BQoBK, I presume that you won't be doing a lot of stealthing.

However, this is a highrisk build (low armor) with little reward (< 200 crit damage).

IMO, I wouldn't build my D/P this way.

I'll try elite venom and bounitful. I want to know if there is a way to abuse malicious backstab

@Gandrogh.1530 said:I'll try elite venom and bounitful. I want to know if there is a way to abuse malicious backstab

One guy using dagger/pistol plus rifle did oneshot me with a malicious backstab for 18k and i have around 2700 armor. I bet you can hit even for higher numbers with full 7 stacks malice.

He was using rifle only to stealth and kite with rifle4, didn't fire a single bullet to me.

His main weapon set was actually dagger/pistol, with rifle only as utility tho.

And if you think about it, it's not a stupid idea, since when you shoot with rifle you remove stealth and you are half of times locked in place (death judgement), and that's the moment you are more the most vulnerable to get speared and stunned and killed.

You have to be sure to have always the weapon swap to rifle available if you fail the backstab or get revealed, so you simply swap to rifle, dodge stealth and kite, then swap, pistol5 dagger2 to build up stealth and try to burst again when the enemy wasted dodge because he panic or when he doesn't expect it.

I don't know if it's better to use shadow arts or acrobatics.

Defenitely shadow arts health regen is very good, and even condis will get removed too while in stealth, plus stealth will be longer and on F1as well and it's pretty sweet and it might save you in many occasions.

Of course rifle is used as utility weapon but nobody says you can't use it for example on a running warrior or running thief as well for range pressure.

@whoknocks.4935 said:

@Gandrogh.1530 said:I'll try elite venom and bounitful. I want to know if there is a way to abuse malicious backstab

SA is worth it because of this trait: Hidden Thief: 50% movement speed. Positioning is very easy with SA.

Also, Rending Shade is a better alternative to Bountiful since you can Stealth Attack more often than Steal, thus stripping more boons. In addition, Rending Shade steals the whole stack of boons. Plus damage reduction.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@whoknocks.4935 said:

@Gandrogh.1530 said:I'll try elite venom and bounitful. I want to know if there is a way to abuse malicious backstab

Hidden Thief makes your steal apply stealth as well, so it's definetely the trait to use, I don't question that.About the third line of shadow arts both Shadow's Rejuvenation and Rending Shade are both good in my opinion.For the first line, Shadow's Embrace just feel good since you don't need deceptions shorter cooldowns, unless you wanna play full deceptions skills probably it's worth considering

SA is worth it because of this trait: Hidden Thief: 50% movement speed. Positioning is very easy with SA.Yeah it should make backstab landing much more easier.

Playing deadeye and not oneshot daredevil for example means you must be double patient, and try to get full malice backstab, and since you are almost perma stealth your opponent will panic a lot usually and freak out wasting dodges, skills, heals etc.If you use the standard rifle to damage, you are much more vulnerable in my opinion, you will get many many kills on bad players only, on good ones is tough.

@Gandrogh.1530 said:I'll try elite venom and bounitful. I want to know if there is a way to abuse malicious backstab

You would have nothing to deal with conditions with BT selected over Trickster. With lower stealth access given the build not focused on it , you will have to dodge every condition application or die. Withdraw will be all you have and the only damaging it gets is torment. On an 18 second Cooldown Withdraw just does not provide the heal power you would need to keep up with condition ticks you will be taking. Even against power builds you will be prone to weakness and vuln.

@Safandula.8723 said:Im Just thinking about s/d +sb build TR +ACR+DE with runes of durability. U take M7 and trait for dmg from boons. Point is to steal all enemy boons with endless initiative and perma evade. Ill try it soon i think. Also wondering if fried Golden dumplings wouldnt work well

I do use something again to that with my boon build taking leadership Runes over durability. With foods and other traits from DE/Acro combined you get uber high durations on all boons.

@babazhook.6805 said:

@"Safandula.8723" said:Im Just thinking about s/d +sb build TR +ACR+DE with runes of durability. U take M7 and trait for dmg from boons. Point is to steal all enemy boons with endless initiative and perma evade. Ill try it soon i think. Also wondering if fried Golden dumplings wouldnt work well

Can u show ur build? I craft ed something like this. But got no leggy armor so was using it with scholar runes. Feel like its rly strong 1v1, cuz u dont run out of initiative with mercy. Also thinking about using d/p instead of sb to finish enemy and to escape with stealth.http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVn0MBlOhFOBOGDUGjFsCj/OOILkeZgLQHoLAEdKAA-j1SBQBiUpxDOBA6RTw+2fwkKBzoyMydIA0wRAIhq/gH9AA4BAQKgAHDA-w

EDITI also think it could work well with trailblazer but not sure if i should sqap TR or ACR for DA. also as told before i got no leggy armor so maybe 1 Day...