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Small Change ideas for Deadeye to make them more Healthy


Exitus.3297

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Hey guys,

Considering the overall reaction Thief players had to the last balance patch, I wanted to throw out some ideas that ANet could have made to make burst from Deadeyes more healthy without affecting Thieves as a whole.

  • Malicious Intent: Currently adds one stack of Malice when marking a target or when using a stealth attack on a marked target.Suggested change: Marking a target makes the next Initiative-consuming skill add an extra stack of Malice. Stealth attacks still also apply Malice. This will lower the overall burst of anyone using Backstab or Death's Judgement (both of which get more % damage per stack of Malice) as an opener. The feel of the trait remains intact in terms of Malice generation.

  • Be Quick or Be Killed: Currently causes Deadeye's Mark to also apply 4s of Quickness. Quickness from any source also causes the Deadeye to gain 200 Power and Precision.Suggested change: The Deadeye gains a buff that is consumed (meaning they don't get it again until the next use of Deadeye's Mark) when the Deadeye successfully damages the marked target with a Stealth Attack (Death's Judgement, Malicious Backstab, etc.). Consuming the buff grants the Deadeye 5s of Quickness. Quickness still gives the Deadeye 200 Power and Precision. The Quickness is applied AFTER the damage, meaning the stealth attack will not benefit from the 200 Power and Precision boost unless they already had Quickness from another source. This change would be intended to accomplish a couple of things. The first is that this will lower on the damage of the initial stealth attack from just the one trait without wrecking the feel of the trait, while also giving it a tiny bit more Quickness in return. Secondly, by tying the Quickness to a buff that gets consumed, it will allow the Deadeye to apply the mark preemptively instead of holding on to it specifically for the Quickness (they can plan it out better, basically).

  • Silent Scope: Currently grants increased Precision, even more so with a Rifle Equipped. Dodge rolling with a Rifle also grants stealth.Suggested Change: Dodge Rolling no longer grants stealth (I'm honestly not sure what to replace it with but I think we can agree that the stealth on dodge is cancerous)


For anyone who is interested beyond reading beyond these suggested changes, I really had to put some thought into this. Specifically, I wanted to think of changes specifically to the Deadeye to make their burst more manageable. I know some will say that the Deadeye needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, and they may be right, but I wanted to start small. I was thinking about how I could make the Deadeye's burst more manageable without necessarily affecting the entire Thief class. Even then, I don't want to lower their burst per se; I was thinking of how to make their burst more of a ramp up.

It seems to me that Deadeye was intended to be a spec that generates big numbers from far away, often from stealth, but being brought into balance by the fact that they can't just get it for free from nowhere. The big numbers need to be justified by the fact that the opponent has opportunities to avoid being hit by them, or keep the buildup from happening to begin with. The key issue I'm seeing with Deadeyes at the moment (and keep in mind this is just my opinion) is that they can (or at least could) score some really big numbers right from the get-go without even needing to build up to it, or the buildup is so fast that opponents can't actually react to it. Moreover, even when their opponent does avoid the burst properly, they have very little time to put pressure on the Deadeye because they are more forgiving to play than a Core Thief or Daredevil, both due to their range and their easy access to stealth. So the thing that makes Deadeye's in particular so cancerous to fight isn't even necessarily their damage, but the fact they are difficult to punish even if you play well against them. Even if the goal was to just nerf their up-front damage a bit, well, see above changes.

What does everyone else think?

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3 straight nerfs to deadeye without considerable amount of reasons behind them,Stealth on dodge is not caancerous — can't agree with you on that. Mind provide reasoning, why?

You'd better thought of how to change traits that are not used in pvp, to make them compete with "meta" picks.Like:Fire for effect —In addition to its current effect, also effect from your stolen item applied in aoe around you and your marked target.

Your suggestions are unjustified and not well-thought. Dislike.

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You either didn't read the post or you are Deadeye main. These changes are okay and if you consider what DE is currently running the most they wouldnt change it that much. He has provided considerable amount or reasons and stealth on dodge is cancerous. There is one thing to camp from a far and get high numbers. Other thing is blinking in and out of stealth and dealing massive dmg. That is not how sniper works. And yes these changes MUST affect PVP because PVP is filled with De's who are getting to legendary just by pressing 5 buttons. And that needs to stop. In comparison to other Thief elites DE is too much OP and either we get buff for other elites or we get nerf for DEAnets choice

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These changes look meaningful on paper, but only the last one really changes anything. In detail;

Changing malicious intent seems rather pointless to me to be honest. Most deadeyes seem to be veering away from backstab builds in WvW since the rune changes; I tried the old valk SA/CS/DE build again recently and one malice backstabs that used to hit for 17k now hit for 13k on average. Not sure if that's the meta getting tanky (earth runes are now a thing apparently) or a result of a nerf, but initial damage feels less than it was. In PvP, nobody build SA/CS/DE for backstab, so I don't consider this trait to be an issue since in either mode you now have to stack malice in order to get the big hit. As for DJ, I usually use spotter's shot at range with quickness (see the note on bqobk) then cast DJ as the first projectile is in flight; this means with the trait I'd have 3 malice for the DJ regardless of whether your changes were implemented. So again, a bit of a non issue.

Changing bqobk in that way won't actually stop the 200 power being applied to the opening strike due to me running celerity sigil on rifle. This means all I have to do is take sleight of hand for the daze to get 5s of quickness from the sigil, use spotter's shot from stealth and cast DJ before it hits. This means using trickery over critical strikes, so potentially less damage from that, but then all I'd have to do is use binding shadow instead of spotter's shot to set up the DJ. If I wanted to backstab, I'd mark for celerity sigil proc before swapping to dagger. In either case I get the quickness on the opener, and only in the case of backstab would I have to drop CS for trickery to make celerity sigil work, but given this is something I see a lot of deadeyes doing already, I doubt that will be an issue. This may have more of an impact in PvP (no idea if celerity is in PvP offhand, and this is assuming people play deadeye in PvP over daredevil or core), but in WvW at least your change will have minimal effect on initial damage, if any.

Changing silent scope to not apply stealth I could live with, given time to adjust to it (obvious crutch is obvious). The problem is as you say, how do you compensate for that loss so rifle doesn't become just another meme weapon? I still think that the way it was implemented immediately after the rework makes the most sense (10s cooldown on stealth on dodge, reset by kneeling) as it forced you to be less mobile if you want the stealth, and the added clunkiness punished mistakes by the DE much more than the current system if they dodge and kneel in the wrong order in panic. Also, it links the stealth to a physical thing that can be interrupted, which adds counterplay opportunity through interrupts (getting locked out of using kneel is a right pain when you encounter the rare mesmer running power lock).

Lastly, I don't see a reason to nerf deadeye at all given soulbeast, mirage and holosmith all have much more powerful builds at this point for roaming and decapping. Feel free to try to change my mind, I just don't see the justification as is.

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@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:Lastly, I don't see a reason to nerf deadeye at all given soulbeast, mirage and holosmith all have much more powerful builds at this point for roaming and decapping. Feel free to try to change my mind, I just don't see the justification as is.

i think its more that many here do think, that deadeye is the only thing in the way of making core/daredevil better and thats what they actually want. yet instead of asking for changes that would buff these without affecting deadeye, they ask to nerf deadeye as if anet would automatically buff core/daredevil then ..pretty delusional.

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@"dDuff.3860" said:3 straight nerfs to deadeye without considerable amount of reasons behind them,Stealth on dodge is not caancerous — can't agree with you on that. Mind provide reasoning, why?

You'd better thought of how to change traits that are not used in pvp, to make them compete with "meta" picks.Like:Fire for effect —In addition to its current effect, also effect from your stolen item applied in aoe around you and your marked target.

Your suggestions are unjustified and not well-thought. Dislike.

Stealth on dodge is cancerous. Can't be interrupted so leaves no counterplay, and added with all other stealth resources, de can reset way to easily. It means de can play like dumb, without any punishment.Problem with de is the same as with mirage. It's rly hard to balance becouse of rly unhealthy mechanics it represents

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@Safandula.8723 said:

@"dDuff.3860" said:3 straight nerfs to deadeye without considerable amount of reasons behind them,Stealth on dodge is not caancerous — can't agree with you on that. Mind provide reasoning, why?

You'd better thought of how to change traits that are not used in pvp, to make them compete with "meta" picks.Like:Fire for effect —In addition to its current effect, also effect from your stolen item applied in aoe around you and your marked target.

Your suggestions are unjustified and not well-thought. Dislike.

Stealth on dodge is cancerous. Can't be interrupted so leaves no counterplay, and added with all other stealth resources, de can reset way to easily. It means de can play like dumb, without any punishment.Problem with de is the same as with mirage. It's rly hard to balance becouse of rly unhealthy mechanics it represents

Odds are both mirage cloak and silent scope will be nerfed when the next expac rolls out, so I wouldn't worry too much. You're not wrong though, the general balance in the game has been all over the place since HoT because of mechanics that are either broken or useless by nature, and with Anet's current expac driven model I doubt it'll be better anytime soon.

The thing that annoys me is that it kills off build variety entirely. I've been trying to get DE condi to work this week, but when you're getting +1'd by soulbeasts that 2-3 hit you in full trailblazer gear (9k knockback shot, 7-8k auto plus whatever one wolf pack did), you have to wonder what the point is.

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@Safandula.8723 said:Stealth on dodge is cancerous. Can't be interrupted so leaves no counterplay, and added with all other stealth resources, de can reset way to easily. It means de can play like dumb, without any punishment.

Since stealth is applied after the dodge there is actually counter play. You know where the thief will get stealth so you can put AOE there, apply stuns/reveals etc. Good players at least do this. It's the same as with all the skills that lock thieves into a dodge-animation. At the end of that skill the thief is vulnerable (except if chaining skills well) but people lack timing/latency and the willing to actually inform themselves about this.

@Safandula.8723 said:Problem with de is the same as with mirage. It's rly hard to balance becouse of rly unhealthy mechanics it represents

But while stealthed you are actually vulnerable to any kind of damage and cc. So Mirage Cloak is in many situations much stronger...

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The least I'd take as replacement to Silent Scope right now is a black powder at the end of dodge that I can leap from or something more fluid like that, but even that would feel like forever when you're getting blown up. Call WvW what you want but there are still quick thinkers, fast groups, and loaded up squads out there who can auto pressure you and not have to spend any resource pool to shut you down without Silent Scope unless you're built to spend everything avoiding a fight instead of killing anything. Have fun being the designated Keep tapper.

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Stealth on Dodge has counterplay. As outlined above drop AOE , use Rapid fire and other channel type skills that just hit the stealthed Thief. I have killed DE thieves using pew pew on with unload killing them while they stealthed. My warrior can bull rush and cleave .

The better Rifle thief will stealth on dodge and then use #4 to open some distance to avoid these things as they seek to counter those things. Stealthed thieves still take damage and unless in SA take just as much damage as they would if out in the open. There all manner of damage skills such as those channel skills that can hit that thief or the AOE type skills that do not even need a target.

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@syszery.1592 said:

@Safandula.8723 said:Stealth on dodge is cancerous. Can't be interrupted so leaves no counterplay, and added with all other stealth resources, de can reset way to easily. It means de can play like dumb, without any punishment.

Since stealth is applied
after
the dodge there is actually counter play. You know where the thief will get stealth so you can put AOE there, apply stuns/reveals etc. Good players at least do this. It's the same as with all the skills that lock thieves into a dodge-animation. At the end of that skill the thief is vulnerable (except if chaining skills well) but people lack timing/latency and the willing to actually inform themselves about this.

@Safandula.8723 said:Problem with de is the same as with mirage. It's rly hard to balance becouse of rly unhealthy mechanics it represents

But while stealthed you are actually vulnerable to any kind of damage and cc. So Mirage Cloak is in many situations much stronger...

The issue is that the stealth is not interruptable/counterable by anyone that does not have on demand reveal. You can aoe around where they will most likely be, but if they are at least halfway intelligent, they will port out of the danger before you land anything on them. It should also be worth mentioning that unlike the daredevil dodges, the normal dodge anim doesn't have animation locked vulnerability frames in them so interrupting stealth isn't possible on the thief (especially if they jump dodge, as it shifts the evade frames further forward in the animation so you can cover the end of your stealth dodge even easier).

Stealth itself isn't the issue, the issue is DE's lack of sacrifice and setup for attaining said stealth. Mirage cloak is a whole different level of stupid design so let's not associate stealth with that bs.

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@"dDuff.3860" said:3 straight nerfs to deadeye without considerable amount of reasons behind them,Stealth on dodge is not caancerous — can't agree with you on that. Mind provide reasoning, why?

You'd better thought of how to change traits that are not used in pvp, to make them compete with "meta" picks.Like:Fire for effect —In addition to its current effect, also effect from your stolen item applied in aoe around you and your marked target.

Your suggestions are unjustified and not well-thought. Dislike.

You clearly didn't read my post because I provided several reasons. Also, when I mention removing stealth on dodge, I should have maybe given another suggestion. It would make more sense to tie a stealth into another specific rifle skill, like Death's Retreat with a small internal cooldown. The problem with dodging into stealth is that there is no counterplay to it, as others above me have mentioned. I would also add that for PvP the duration for Reveal be extended by 1 second, because for some reason, Revealed only lasts 3 seconds in sPvP when every other sneak attack applies a 4 second Revealed debuff. This further enforces my point of the Deadeye having too much reward for too little risk or effort compared to other Thief builds.

Another thing I'm assuming you either glossed over or didn't bother to read:

@Exitus.3297 said:

Considering the overall reaction Thief players had to the last balance patch, I wanted to throw out some ideas that ANet could have made to make burst from Deadeyes more healthy without affecting Thieves as a whole.

I want to make this very clear: I do not want additional nerfs. I'm providing ideas that ANet could have implemented if the burst from Deadeyes right from the start we a problem. Instead they opted to nerf Thieves as a whole in that area and it isn't clear why when it was only Deadeyes being overbearing.

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@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:These changes look meaningful on paper, but only the last one really changes anything. In detail;

Changing malicious intent seems rather pointless to me to be honest. Most deadeyes seem to be veering away from backstab builds in WvW since the rune changes; I tried the old valk SA/CS/DE build again recently and one malice backstabs that used to hit for 17k now hit for 13k on average. Not sure if that's the meta getting tanky (earth runes are now a thing apparently) or a result of a nerf, but initial damage feels less than it was. In PvP, nobody build SA/CS/DE for backstab, so I don't consider this trait to be an issue since in either mode you now have to stack malice in order to get the big hit. As for DJ, I usually use spotter's shot at range with quickness (see the note on bqobk) then cast DJ as the first projectile is in flight; this means with the trait I'd have 3 malice for the DJ regardless of whether your changes were implemented. So again, a bit of a non issue.

Changing bqobk in that way won't actually stop the 200 power being applied to the opening strike due to me running celerity sigil on rifle. This means all I have to do is take sleight of hand for the daze to get 5s of quickness from the sigil, use spotter's shot from stealth and cast DJ before it hits. This means using trickery over critical strikes, so potentially less damage from that, but then all I'd have to do is use binding shadow instead of spotter's shot to set up the DJ. If I wanted to backstab, I'd mark for celerity sigil proc before swapping to dagger. In either case I get the quickness on the opener, and only in the case of backstab would I have to drop CS for trickery to make celerity sigil work, but given this is something I see a lot of deadeyes doing already, I doubt that will be an issue. This may have more of an impact in PvP (no idea if celerity is in PvP offhand, and this is assuming people play deadeye in PvP over daredevil or core), but in WvW at least your change will have minimal effect on initial damage, if any.

Changing silent scope to not apply stealth I could live with, given time to adjust to it (obvious crutch is obvious). The problem is as you say, how do you compensate for that loss so rifle doesn't become just another meme weapon? I still think that the way it was implemented immediately after the rework makes the most sense (10s cooldown on stealth on dodge, reset by kneeling) as it forced you to be less mobile if you want the stealth, and the added clunkiness punished mistakes by the DE much more than the current system if they dodge and kneel in the wrong order in panic. Also, it links the stealth to a physical thing that can be interrupted, which adds counterplay opportunity through interrupts (getting locked out of using kneel is a right pain when you encounter the rare mesmer running power lock).

Lastly, I don't see a reason to nerf deadeye at all given soulbeast, mirage and holosmith all have much more powerful builds at this point for roaming and decapping. Feel free to try to change my mind, I just don't see the justification as is.

Your logic makes sense but the thing is that in order to achieve a similar feat with BQoBK, you needed to invest into it with a Sigil; that is a Weapon sigil slot being used up in order to gain that same Quickness, nevermind sticking to Trickery. That was what I was thinking when I thought of that change: you can still work your way around this but it is no longer given to you.

As for the change to Malicious intent, again you hit the nail on the head. It is a change specifically meant to target builds that use the Stealth attack right from the beginning, including Backstab and Death's Judgement. But as you pointed out, the damage seems to be getting lower in WvW where this was more relevant, so it could be unnecessary. But as I said, these were more to be changes intended to force the Deadeye more of a ramp-up, and what could have been implemented over the changes we got instead. I'm not advocating for more nerfs.

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@Exitus.3297 said:

Considering the overall reaction Thief players had to the last balance patch, I wanted to throw out some ideas that ANet
could have made
to make burst from Deadeyes more healthy without affecting Thieves as a whole.

I want to make this very clear: I
do not want additional nerfs.
I'm providing ideas that ANet
could
have implemented if the burst from Deadeyes right from the start we a problem. Instead they opted to nerf Thieves as a whole in that area and it isn't clear why when it was only Deadeyes being overbearing.

its your opinion that deadeyes were the only ones overbearing. but for this you assume there has to be one overbearing to begin with. it could prefectly well be that they dont want trickery to compete with DA/CS too much for damage but limit it to utility.

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@MUDse.7623 said:

its your opinion that deadeyes were the only ones overbearing. but for this you assume there has to be one overbearing to begin with. it could prefectly well be that they dont want trickery to compete with DA/CS too much for damage but limit it to utility.

Trickery has never beat CS/DA for damage. People will eat the nerfs to Lead Attacks and go for Trickery anyways because of the utility it provides, despite the fact the nerf wasn't necessary. Until they make Preparedness baseline and/or revamp other Specs to provide similar utility, then Thieves will always opt for Trickery in PvP scenarios. That didn't happen. They opted for just straight up nerfing damage to anyone using Trickery, particularly D/P Thieves who were not even a meta pick.

It is not just my opinion that Deadeye was overbearing. I have heard from many very skilled Thief mains that Deadeye is cancerous to fight, mostly due to its access to stealth via dodging combined with its high damage. Either one of those things aren't problems in and of themselves, but combined it makes it very frustrating to fight. Not difficult, but _frustrating._This is a point that is repeated over and over and yet it still doesn't resonate. Still, I would have argued that Thieves didn't need a damage nerf at all, at least not without getting something in return.

My point remains: Thieves as a whole were not the problem (and if they were, the changes we got didn't address them). A majority of the complaints were in regard to Deadeye, including from decent Thief mains. Yet, ANet still took it upon themselves to nerf the Thief class as a whole when there were other alternatives. The point of my post was to provide examples of said alternatives, not advocate that nerfs were justified.

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i didnt say trickery beat them for damage. but it provided a decent dmg boost ONTOP of that utility.

taking it away from trickery doesnt mean it will have to remain like that, they might aswell give it back to us somewhere else after collecting more data. but i cant blame them for reducing the dmg boost of trickery as i would pick trickery always for utility not for damage. i wouldnt be suprised if they buff CS. because outside of oneshot builds rarely anyone gives up the utility of either trickery or DA for that little extra dmg. maybe you will have to go CS+TR+X soon.

and again i dont think those changes need to be related to any complains or player opinions. players often assume anet doesnt know what they are doing, but the reality is we players do not know what anet is doing as they simply do not state their intentions in detail. you just make an assumption of anets intention and conclude that they failed to achieve it, yet you cannot even know what they had in mind.

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Umm, Malicious Intent adds a malice stack after Stealth Attack. It doesn’t add damage to the current stealth attack. You get one point of malice for marking and one with the stealth attack after the fact.

I appreciate the attempt to improve the functionality but be careful with understanding the current mechanic.

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@saerni.2584 said:Umm, Malicious Intent adds a malice stack after Stealth Attack. It doesn’t add damage to the current stealth attack. You get one point of malice for marking and one with the stealth attack after the fact.

I appreciate the attempt to improve the functionality but be careful with understanding the current mechanic.

Malicious Intent grants 1 Malice after marking a target. Malice increases the damage of Death's Judgement and Backstab. This means that a Backstab or Death's Judgement after marking a target will do more damage.

I understand the mechanics fine.

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@Exitus.3297 said:

@saerni.2584 said:Umm, Malicious Intent adds a malice stack after Stealth Attack. It doesn’t add damage to the current stealth attack. You get one point of malice for marking and one with the stealth attack after the fact.

I appreciate the attempt to improve the functionality but be careful with understanding the current mechanic.

Malicious Intent grants 1 Malice after marking a target. Malice increases the damage of Death's Judgement and Backstab. This means that a Backstab or Death's Judgement after marking a target will do more damage.

I understand the mechanics fine.

Oops, my mistake. I, however, disagree that one stack of malice in mark is bad. It doesn’t add enough damage to matter in most cases so why change it? And if the same per stack is too high just change the % bonus instead.

Edit: I do think dodge stealth has issues but I’m not sure if you can just get rid of it. Maybe lower the duration of stealth granted by the dodge? Seems more fair.

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i didnt say trickery beat them for damage. but it provided a decent dmg boost ONTOP of that utility.

You said they competed for damage. It never has. It has always been a Utility tree with some damage. They took away damage and provided nothing in return. Trickery is primary component in sPvP builds. If they take away damage from Trickery without providing other alternatives in terms of Utility, then it is just a damage nerf. There is no evidence that suggests the nerf was justified.

taking it away from trickery doesnt mean it will have to remain like that, they might aswell give it back to us somewhere else after collecting more data.

They should have done this from the beginning. They only did this with S/D Thieves with changing how Swindler's Equilibrium works now. Even then, it's still bugged for the ICD to be 30 seconds and they still haven't addressed it.

and again i dont think those changes need to be related to any complains or player opinions. players often assume anet doesnt know what they are doing,

ANet is responding to a playerbase who routinely complains about Thieves.

but the reality is we players do not know what anet is doing as they simply do not state their intentions in detail. you just make an assumption of anets intention and conclude that they failed to achieve it, yet you cannot even know what they had in mind.

This is exactly correct. We don't know what ANet is doing and we don't know why they are doing it. That is the exact point of my post. Based on their own brief explanation of why they made the changes, the example changes I provided (and that is all they are, just examples) would have made more sense. Instead they punished all Thieves.

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@saerni.2584 said:

Oops, my mistake. I, however, disagree that one stack of malice in mark is bad. It doesn’t add enough damage to matter in most cases so why change it? And if the same per stack is too high just change the % bonus instead.

Edit: I do think dodge stealth has issues but I’m not sure if you can just get rid of it. Maybe lower the duration of stealth granted by the dodge? Seems more fair.

If they were trying to min-max for burst, it would help a bit. It would lower the first Death's Judgement by 20% (iirc) and Backstab by 10%. To give an example, there is (or was) a Deadeye Backstab build in WvW that is designed to literally 1-shot from stealth with the combination of damage boosters from BQoBK (200 power) Malicious Intent (10% damage) and Assassin's Signet active. If the one-shot failed, the Deadeye would still have Quickness to auto-attack them to death. Moving around where the Quickness and Malice go with how these 2 traits interacted would hopefully bring it down to a more reasonable level. But that is just one example.

I don't think it would be a good idea to lower the Deadeye's access to stealth as a whole for how reliant it is on spending Malice. I would just move it away from dodge rolling. I think it was a step in the right direction for ANet to tie a Stealth to the Deadeye stolen skills for this exact purpose. I'm sure of the best place to move the stealth, but I would maybe tie it with a Rifle skill.

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@Exitus.3297 said:

but the reality is we players do not know what anet is doing as they simply
do not state their intentions in detail
. you just make an assumption of anets intention and conclude that they failed to achieve it, yet you cannot even know what they had in mind.

This is exactly correct. We don't know what ANet is doing and we don't know why they are doing it. That is the exact point of my post. Based on their own brief explanation of why they made the changes, the example changes I provided (and that is all they are, just
examples
) would have made more sense. Instead they punished all Thieves.

no their own explaination was:

Additionally, we've toned down the initial burst of damage that the thief can apply by removing the ability to stack Lead Attacks when outside of combatnot deadeye, thief.now you interpreted it as they wanted to only reduce deadeye opening burst.

@Exitus.3297 said:

i didnt say trickery beat them for damage. but it provided a decent dmg boost ONTOP of that utility.

You said they competed for damage. It never has. It has always been a Utility tree with some damage. They took away damage and provided nothing in return. Trickery is primary component in sPvP builds. If they take away damage from Trickery without providing other alternatives in terms of Utility, then it is just a damage nerf. There is no evidence that suggests the nerf was justified.yes thats the word i used, still dont think its inaccurate. it did certainly provide enough dmg that you mostly would go DA+TR+X, because those provided the most utility with sufficient dmg. reducing TR dmg makes CS+TR or CS+DA lets say more viable, if they are still not as good choices maybe we really need to take out lead attacks completely. trickery simply was not just a utility line as 15% dmg is pretty decent if you ask me.keep in mind i also do not know anets intention, i can just make a guess. but i do not make a guess based on the assumption that anet fails their own goals of the change.

and again i dont think those changes need to be related to any complains or player opinions. players often assume anet doesnt know what they are doing,

ANet is responding to a playerbase who routinely complains about Thieves.there is alot more than just some whiney players opinions that do go into balancing. (luckily)

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