Deadeye Silent Scope Idea

I feel that this is one of the most unhealthy traits in the game. Currently it reads "Enter stealth when you dodge roll with a rifle equipped. Kneeling rifle skills and Death's Judgment gain an increased critical hit chance."

The reasons why I think it is unhealthy is in PvP and WvW, it is a mechanic that becomes easily abused with the easy access to stealth along with your other abilities and traits. It doesnt create any thought process outside of this playstyle with rifle other than just dodging to reset yourself over and over your enemy is dead or you both died of old age. It is really boring overall. In PvE, you are sacrificing dps on a dodge roll just to do a death's judgement which also isn't very intuitive.

So here is what I was thinking could be a replacement, was instead of stealth on dodge roll. It could be that you get a random deadeye stolen item at 5 malice.

With the recent changes to Deadeye stolen items, after 5 malice you gain stealth on using a stolen item. This would be perfect in synergy with each other. Deadeye would still be able to stealth but it comes with the condition of actually using initiative abilities on your target to get that 5 malice. It would remove the unhealthy play style in PvP and WvW where it is most of the time the whole fight turns into, dodge roll then press 1 and. In PvE, rifle Deadeye would actually have a DPS increase due to not wasting time on a dodge roll to stealth, but instead using a damage ability to stealth after hitting your abilities a couple times.

It is just an idea anyways. I feel like at the moment Silent Scope is creating a no risk-all reward play style in at least PvP and WvW and is in need of a change. And this is coming from a thief main.

Well.... stealth is half of what Deadeye is built around, and is now requirement for malice to function as a mechanic. I would also call BS that its sacrificing DPS, because D/D DE is top DPS benchmark in Raids, and its Stealth access is more difficult then Rifles. Yeah, you have a point about stealth abuse.... but don't conflate "PVE DPS" as being the reason its bad, because how that trait works is more or less inconsequential to PvE combat dynamics, when other forms of stealth access are not only more complicated, but also time and resource consuming. By that same logic, it would mean Bounding Dodger would had been a DPS detriment, when everything (including the benchmarks and practical combat) suggested otherwise.

I would also make the argument that your suggestion makes the whole situation just as unwieldy, because its STILL involving the exact same steps involving dodge rolling, but now also adds the Malice requirement on top of what it was already doing, plus the F2 cast time, plus the chance you can waste the effect if you already have an F2 skill loaded..... which added up is even more disruptive to DPS then the existing trait.

You're targeting the wrong problem. As long as Stealth is going to be a requirement to use malice, then Deadeye is going to NEED more methods to access stealth to make that mechanic viable. Silent Scope isn't the root of the problem..... nor is DE's ability to access stealth as long as its the gating mechanism for their Profession mechanic. This is all just a side effect of the fact that Stealth is just really stupidly powerful with this game's combat system, and the classes that use it creates an all or nothing approach to strategy to take advantage of it.

@Endorphin.9147 said:The reasons why I think it is unhealthy is in PvP and WvW, it is a mechanic that becomes easily abused with the easy access to stealth along with your other abilities and traits. It doesnt create any thought process outside of this playstyle with rifle other than just dodging to reset yourself over and over your enemy is dead or you both died of old age. It is really boring overall.

this sounds like rifle deadeye is overall pretty weak when outside stealth that he needs to constantly retreat into stealth. it wouldnt be efficient to go back into stealth if you can stay visible and keep fighting, because you cant both be stealthed and damage your opponent during it.

pretty much any thief build tries to avoid all hits and just hit and retreat, either with evade spamm, teleport in and out or stealth. its unfortunate that you dont like fighting against that specific version of doing it.

while you mainly complain about the restealth and escape your suggestion also heavily nerfs prestealth wich is much more important, a rifle deadeye that cant pick his encounters and get in position for them etc. is usually a dead deadeye.

@MUDse.7623 said:while you mainly complain about the restealth and escape your suggestion also heavily nerfs prestealth wich is much more important, a rifle deadeye that cant pick his encounters and get in position for them etc. is usually a dead deadeye.

You do realize thieves have many options for pre-stealth within their utilities and in a shadow arts trait right? they also have the smoke fields that they can leap and blast on. Try not to take when I say something is unhealthy for the game, that it is over powered. something can be more on the balanced side and still be unhealthy for the game. I dont like fighting against or fighting as that spec. its boring-thoughtless gameplay.

@"starlinvf.1358" said:Well.... stealth is half of what Deadeye is built around, and is now requirement for malice to function as a mechanic. I would also call BS that its sacrificing DPS, because D/D DE is top DPS benchmark in Raids, and its Stealth access is more difficult then Rifles. Yeah, you have a point about stealth abuse.... but don't conflate "PVE DPS" as being the reason its bad, because how that trait works is more or less inconsequential to PvE combat dynamics, when other forms of stealth access are not only more complicated, but also time and resource consuming. By that same logic, it would mean Bounding Dodger would had been a DPS detriment, when everything (including the benchmarks and practical combat) suggested otherwise.

Yeah I am not talking about DE d/d, im talking about rifle on DE. and i was saying my idea of a change would be a nice buff to rifle in PvE because you wouldnt have to waste time dodge rolling to land a Death's Judgement. I feel like you misread what I said about the PvE aspect. I think it would bring in some cool rotations into deadeye with initative and malice management without having to stop damage to waste dodge rolls but instead replacing it with F2

@Endorphin.9147 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:while you mainly complain about the restealth and escape your suggestion also heavily nerfs prestealth wich is much more important, a rifle deadeye that cant pick his encounters and get in position for them etc. is usually a dead deadeye.

so ? i can aswell play daredevil and constantly DODGE into stealth, you would enjoy it as much.i know that it is not fun for you but thats probably what i am trying to tell you. when you run SA + CS + X the fight will allways be like that as you basically only have damage and stealth that you focus on. you dont use other utility to interact with other mechanics like CC , boon rips ( yes there is rending shade, would be good on rifle if it wasnt on stealth attack but attacking from stealth), weakness etc.there is a reason many thieves enjoy playing the allways same TR + DA lines because they interact with other professions mechanics way more.but changing silent scope wont make it more fun to play against a SA+CS thief.sure you can nerf stuff so it becomes unvaiable to a point that you likely wont have to fight it, like it was for the most part of gw2 history.or you change SA + CS +(stealth) to be you know more interactive with the games mechanics.

i dont like the fact that numbers matter so much in a fight yet it is obviously balanced that 5 people have an advantage over their 1 opponent and it is not fun for the 1 opponent if those 5 are anything but noobs, still i wont ask the game to change for that.

@Endorphin.9147 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:Well.... stealth is half of what Deadeye is built around, and is now requirement for malice to function as a mechanic. I would also call BS that its sacrificing DPS, because D/D DE is top DPS benchmark in Raids, and its Stealth access is more difficult then Rifles. Yeah, you have a point about stealth abuse.... but don't conflate "PVE DPS" as being the reason its bad, because how that trait works is more or less inconsequential to PvE combat dynamics, when other forms of stealth access are not only more complicated, but also time and resource consuming. By that same logic, it would mean Bounding Dodger would had been a DPS detriment, when everything (including the benchmarks and practical combat) suggested otherwise.

But the reason I bring up D/D in the first place, is because its rotation has the same overall requirements of needing stealth to access Malicious backstab, but has to get that stealth via more complicated methods. If you're "wasting time" dodge rolling to gain stealth, then what do you consider Dagger 5 or Stealth utilities (which also consume more valuable resources) in order to enter stealth to setup the back stab? Despite the trait being specific to the rifle, the requirement for stealth isn't..... and thats where I think the argument is misleading.

But where it really breaks down is that "YOU STILL HAVE TO DODGE ROLL TO USE THE TRAIT", and then adds extra steps. Thats defeats your own argument of "dodge rolling hurts DPS", because your proposed solution isn't removing dodge rolling from the equation.

@MUDse.7623 said:so ? i can aswell play daredevil and constantly DODGE into stealth, you would enjoy it as much.i know that it is not fun for you but thats probably what i am trying to tell you. when you run SA + CS + X the fight will allways be like that as you basically only have damage and stealth that you focus on. you dont use other utility to interact with other mechanics like CC , boon rips ( yes there is rending shade, would be good on rifle if it wasnt on stealth attack but attacking from stealth), weakness etc.there is a reason many thieves enjoy playing the allways same TR + DA lines because they interact with other professions mechanics way more.but changing silent scope wont make it more fun to play against a SA+CS thief.sure you can nerf stuff so it becomes unvaiable to a point that you likely wont have to fight it, like it was for the most part of gw2 history.or you change SA + CS +(stealth) to be you know more interactive with the games mechanics.

i dont like the fact that numbers matter so much in a fight yet it is obviously balanced that 5 people have an advantage over their 1 opponent and it is not fun for the 1 opponent if those 5 are anything but noobs, still i wont ask the game to change for that.

I mean daredevil also has to use initiative or a utility like smoke screen to enable the dodge through the smoke field, deadeye literally is just dodge and you get stealth, no internal cooldown. So I was mainly proposing that it should be changed to not be dodge roll and provided an idea. May I ask if you are you a deadeye main?

@"starlinvf.1358" said:

But the reason I bring up D/D in the first place, is because its rotation has the same overall requirements of needing stealth to access Malicious backstab, but has to get that stealth via more complicated methods. If you're "wasting time" dodge rolling to gain stealth, then what do you consider Dagger 5 or Stealth utilities (which also consume more valuable resources) in order to enter stealth to setup the back stab? Despite the trait being specific to the rifle, the requirement for stealth isn't..... and thats where I think the argument is misleading.

Ok, dodge rolling = no damage during the animation. Right? Dagger 5 = still does damage and it adds malice stacks to power your backstab. how do you not understand that? I never said Deadeye had a problem with dps at all, I think it would be cool to open up the rifle option a little more in pve by giving you some sort of damage rotation where you fill your malice then spend it for big damage without dropping it to dodge roll. cause to be honest, would you rather use an ability that does a little bit of damage to stealth or waste 0.75 seconds to dodge roll and not do damage to stealth?

This will be the last time that I say this. Just because something is balanced in a game doesn't make it healthy for the game. Just because I say something is unhealthy, doesn't mean I think it is over powered.

My silent scope change though is mostly concerning PvP and WvW because it at the moment it is pretty unhealthy game play for someone spam dodge roll or some other stealth then death's judgement at a 1200-1500 range til you run out of the ability to even dodge or negate it through an invuln/evade ability. The whole thought of that seems mindless. I rather see thieves use the smoke field on rifle to stealth engage or something along those lines, and then have a reason to use abilities outside of stealth attacks after the stealth is all. That would be more fun even as playing it than just dodging and pressing 1 til someone is dead lol. The only other option is to nerf the damage capabilities of Deadeye rifle in PvP if people really want to keep having the best survivability in the game. Which in my opinion I think Deadeye should keep the damage and should be more limited reset options. But I was also trying to think of a change that would make rifle thief interesting in PvE (though there may be no need to do that). It was just an idea.

@Endorphin.9147 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:so ? i can aswell play daredevil and constantly DODGE into stealth, you would enjoy it as much.i know that it is not fun for you but thats probably what i am trying to tell you. when you run SA + CS + X the fight will allways be like that as you basically only have damage and stealth that you focus on. you dont use other utility to interact with other mechanics like CC , boon rips ( yes there is rending shade, would be good on rifle if it wasnt on stealth attack but attacking from stealth), weakness etc.there is a reason many thieves enjoy playing the allways same TR + DA lines because they interact with other professions mechanics way more.but changing silent scope wont make it more fun to play against a SA+CS thief.sure you can nerf stuff so it becomes unvaiable to a point that you likely wont have to fight it, like it was for the most part of gw2 history.or you change SA + CS +(stealth) to be you know more interactive with the games mechanics.

i dont like the fact that numbers matter so much in a fight yet it is obviously balanced that 5 people have an advantage over their 1 opponent and it is not fun for the 1 opponent if those 5 are anything but noobs, still i wont ask the game to change for that.

daredevil is also not as depended on stealth(attacks) so obviously they dont need as easy/frequent stealth access.i play since shortly after HoT a very stealth focused thief in WvW, first daredevil and now mostly deadeye yes.because deadeye is more suited for that style so you can build them more efficient on stealth heavy while you can build daredevil better for evasion heavy builds. and because of the anti stealth trap spamm. i am not sure if i would still favor deadeye without anti stealth traps because deadeyes biggest weakness in WvW solo roaming is that it has a hard time finishing opponents 1 vs X, the daredevil elite helps in that regard alot.

@Endorphin.9147 said:This will be the last time that I say this. Just because something is balanced in a game doesn't make it healthy for the game. Just because I say something is unhealthy, doesn't mean I think it is over powered.

My silent scope change though is mostly concerning PvP and WvW because it at the moment it is pretty unhealthy game play for someone spam dodge roll or some other stealth then death's judgement at a 1200-1500 range til you run out of the ability to even dodge or negate it through an invuln/evade ability. The whole thought of that seems mindless. I rather see thieves use the smoke field on rifle to stealth engage or something along those lines, and then have a reason to use abilities outside of stealth attacks after the stealth is all. That would be more fun even as playing it than just dodging and pressing 1 til someone is dead lol. The only other option is to nerf the damage capabilities of Deadeye rifle in PvP if people really want to keep having the best survivability in the game. Which in my opinion I think Deadeye should keep the damage and should be more limited reset options. But I was also trying to think of a change that would make rifle thief interesting in PvE (though there may be no need to do that). It was just an idea.

you say it is not overpowered but unhealthy, i get that. but in that case you need to change it neutral. you on the other hand want to nerf it.so i guess your not being honest and you actually do think it is overpowered just dont want to say it.i wouldnt mind a shift towards more offensive deadeye at the cost of survivability. the overall frequency of stealth is needed regardless because of malice interaction with stealth attacks. thats why i proposed in another thread to give instead of stealth on dodge an f3 with a minimal casttime of maybe 1/4s that consumes endurance for stealth with that you still have less dodges, your vulnerable during all the reveal time and you would overall be faster in stealth as it is faster than a dodge wich would be a buff for the offense, you also wouldnt leave the spot making it better for sniping from an edge.

Honestly, no i dont want a nerf exactly, just a rework. I guess it would be a nerf since a lot of deadeyes to heavily rely on that single trait to stealth spam and reset fights. That F3 idea sounds pretty interesting though.

Read the suggestion... TL:DR: bad idea.You can test what your suggestion would do, you can try playing rifle DE without Silent Scope. Stealth is the source of DE-s defense AND offense. If you want to take half of it away, that will delete the spec from sPvP.If you wan't to tone down stealth access this much, just redesign the entire spec... currently it needs the stealth it has.

Alright maybe so, maybe it is a bad idea. But that trait does need a rework. Keep arguing with me that it is fine, since I guess people don't know how to use smoke fields and have good positioning with rifle. Its pretty bad that people rely on stealth on dodge this much that they are defending it. With shadow arts you literally cant die. I guess landing 2 rifle 3's (assuming you trait to get a malice stack from f1 also) to get a free stolen item is too much work, you'd rather just dodge and press 1 and sometimes press 3 a couple times when the guy ran out of gap closers. Keep doing that for a couple minutes til your target finally dies. Have fun with that.

@"Endorphin.9147" said:Alright maybe so, maybe it is a bad idea. But that trait does need a rework. Keep arguing with me that it is fine, since I guess people don't know how to use smoke fields and have good positioning with rifle. Its pretty bad that people rely on stealth on dodge this much that they are defending it. With shadow arts you literally cant die. I guess landing 2 rifle 3's (assuming you trait to get a malice stack from f1 also) to get a free stolen item is too much work, you'd rather just dodge and press 1 and sometimes press 3 a couple times when the guy ran out of gap closers. Keep doing that for a couple minutes til your target finally dies. Have fun with that.

I don't think it should be reworked. It is on-dodge trait related to particular weapon. Deadeyes that don't swap weapons are usually bad ones.Deadeye don't need a nerf itself some aspects of it will be adjusted tho (speaking of rifle pretty much).

In fact, two other traits are for you if you want to play DE without rifle at all, and they're good too.But as Bazsi stated: silent scope is a source of deadeye offense and defense -> the reason rifle will be viable in any state of meta.things like icd or "you don't gain stealth if you already stealthed" will make gameplay more clunky and less intuitive in terms of skill/cd rotation.

In fact, a lot of other broken stuff in game is cheesy,Why deadeye can't have its cheese when rock beats scissors but beaten by paper?

@"Endorphin.9147" said:Alright maybe so, maybe it is a bad idea. But that trait does need a rework. Keep arguing with me that it is fine, since I guess people don't know how to use smoke fields and have good positioning with rifle. Its pretty bad that people rely on stealth on dodge this much that they are defending it. With shadow arts you literally cant die. I guess landing 2 rifle 3's (assuming you trait to get a malice stack from f1 also) to get a free stolen item is too much work, you'd rather just dodge and press 1 and sometimes press 3 a couple times when the guy ran out of gap closers. Keep doing that for a couple minutes til your target finally dies. Have fun with that.

What people don't seem to get is that DE by design needs stealth. Just like how necromancers needs lifeforce: it's both defense and offense. If a spec is overperforming, you don't target the base mechanic that makes it unique, you tone down anything but that.

Also on that "people don't know how to use smokefields" what are you suggesting?Enemy puts up a 4 second block/reflect, so you start laying combofields and leap/blast in it to get acess to DJ? If you introduce to any kind of clunkyness to DE it will go right back into being unplayable, just like it was immediately after the rework.

What if they change it so it only procs when you dodge with full endurance? Personally i think the stealth only with riffle is to restricting but otherwise it might be broken. With only stealth on endurance it might could work with other weapons too.

its called being mechanically good, it isnt THAT clunky and using a utility isnt clunky either. you use initial stealth with a utility, burst, get 5 malice then you have access to stealth again, how is that hard? dodge roll is so faceroll, everytime I play shadow arts deadeye I never die and in situations where I should be dead if I was playing anything else, while still 1 shotting anyone I want to.

how about enter stealth when you evade an attack with rifle equiped instead of just dodging?

oh like actually evade an attack? see that would be fine

@Endorphin.9147 said:With the recent changes to Deadeye stolen items, after 5 malice you gain stealth on using a stolen item. This would be perfect in synergy with each other. Deadeye would still be able to stealth but it comes with the condition of actually using initiative abilities on your target to get that 5 malice. It would remove the unhealthy play style in PvP and WvW where it is most of the time the whole fight turns into, dodge roll then press 1 and. In PvE, rifle Deadeye would actually have a DPS increase due to not wasting time on a dodge roll to stealth, but instead using a damage ability to stealth after hitting your abilities a couple times.

This will not alleviate the issue you've brought up. Picture this;

Skirmisher' shot (3x) = 5 stacks of Malice on high crit build.That 5 stacks of Malice will stay up there forever unless I use a stealth attack.Why should I use a stealth attack if I can keep it there for easy stealth every dodge?

Do you see how your proposed solution is not a solution at all?

If a Thief wants to perma-stealth or reset a fight, the Thief will and can do it.

I once suggested that there should be only one skill for stealth and it should be in F1.

REF:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:I'm not a big fan of any ideas making stealth or evasion debilitating to the Thief. They are the Thief's defense mechanism and they shouldn't be debilitating. This is the reason why I do not like the idea of stealth on dodge nor the idea of spending init for stealth.

F1 - Stealth, 0.25s CT, 8s CDF2 - Steal (DE: this will remain Steal but also applies Mark) - still instant castF3 - Stolen Items

All stealth from init skills (e.g. CnD) should be removed. All stealth from traits should be removed. Non-init skills that grant stealth will instead remove Revealed debuff (e.g. Blinding Powder will remove Revealed debuff instead of granting stealth). Having one skill to apply stealth will end the stealth stacking plus it would be really easy to balance.

Basically, I just took @MUDse.7623 's and @"Turk.5460" 's input and put them together and added a bit of my touch to come up with that. I think that would be manageable.

• it should improve both stealth and shadowstep (e.g. giving shadowstep evade frame).
• it should either reduce CD, reset CD, and/or extend stealth time for F1 stealth.
• For example, a successful stealth attack will reduce the F1 stealth CD by 50%.
• Another example, a successful stealth attack has a chance to make the next F1 stealth instant cast.
• Shadow Meld should be an SA's GM trait that reads; "Stealth skill removes revealed. Stealth has 2 charges, but CD is now at 25s"
• CiS and SR should be just one trait
• Meld with Shadows grants evade on Shadowstep in addition to extending stealth
• Last Refuge and Concealed Defeat deleted forever

@Sir Vincent III.1286No that isnt what I meant originally. Currently stolen items on deadeye give stealth on use when you have 5 stacks right?

Now remove the stealth on dodge. Have a trait that gives you a new stolen item on 5 stacks of malice. Use stolen item, gain stealth.

So basically the set up would be start the fight with F1, you have access to smoke fields and stealth utilities to engage. Usually people have the trait where steal gives a stack of malice and stealth attacks give a stack of malice, you land 2 skirmisher shots or 3 round bursts and you have 5 malice. You gain stolen item. Use stolen item, you gain stealth. Stealth attack. Gain 1 stack of malice from stealth attack and repeat. That was my idea

also Shadowstep is incredibly strong as it is, it doesnt need anything to buff it. Its a double stun break(technically), condi clear, and a 2 way port. I feel like evade frame on top of that would be overkill lol.

I wouldn't mind having a more mechanical means to stealth to give opponents a better chance to shake us up but not something locked into a predictable timed sequence.

@"Endorphin.9147" said:No that isnt what I meant originally. Currently stolen items on deadeye give stealth on use when you have 5 stacks right?

Now remove the stealth on dodge. Have a trait that gives you a new stolen item on 5 stacks of malice. Use stolen item, gain stealth.

So basically the set up would be start the fight with F1, you have access to smoke fields and stealth utilities to engage. Usually people have the trait where steal gives a stack of malice and stealth attacks give a stack of malice, you land 2 skirmisher shots or 3 round bursts and you have 5 malice. You gain stolen item. Use stolen item, you gain stealth. Stealth attack. Gain 1 stack of malice from stealth attack and repeat. That was my idea

Hmm, I see now where you're getting at. I re-read your original suggestion and I totally botched that, didn't I? lol.

I personally have no problem with that approach since that is basically how I do things already anyway. I don't go in stealth without full Malice.

However, I don't think this will solve the issue of easy stealth access or extended (perma) stealth. Unless the stolen item consumes Malice stack (which is a bad idea), this will not make any difference.

I can still easily chain stealths using the stolen items no different than I can chain stealth with CnD - timing it isn't hard if you played Thief for a long time.

Keep in mind, DE stolen items have 2 ammos. I have not tested Improvisation with DE, but even if that trait gives only an extra use, that is still 3 stolen items chained for longer stealth. All the while keeping the Malice stack at 5.

The "dodge roll-> press 1" simply turned into "stolen item-> press 1" and I think it's faster to stack Malice than to wait for Endurance. It takes 10 seconds to get enough endurance for a dodge roll. With Vigor, dodge roll is available in 6.6s. It only takes 6 seconds to get 6 initiatives for 2 skirmisher shots to get max Malice. The delay between the stealth methods is practically the same thing.

However, in the same time frame of 10s, I've stealth twice using stolen items, while I can only stealth once using dodge.