Jugglemonkey.8741

The amount of spin on this is amazing. You're calling it initiative loss as you won't always get malice, but that's EXACTLY the same thing as what I said in my previous comment, you're making it cost more initiative to get the same amount of malice. That, sir, is a nerf, no matter how you say it, and it heavily incentivises me to build full zerk, mark, hide in stealth for max malice and backstab/death's judgement for max damage out of nowhere followed by heartseeker spam, exactly like we used to do before the malice rework. Hizen released this meme video in May 2018. Watch the gameplay. This is exactly what your rework will let people do. Sit in stealth on full zerk, wait for max malice, precast spotter's shot before the death's judgement (fury procs No Quarter) and shoot someone for 14-15k out of nowhere, then either heartseeker spam for the win or stealth up again to rinse and repeat. Do you really want to enable this kind of gameplay again? Do you honestly think that deadeye is more of a meme now than it would be if this were possible? *sigh*.... Your rework does not reduce max DPS in any way shape or form. DPS = damage per second. You haven't changed skirmisher's shot's damage or cast time. So the DPS is exactly the same as it was, and this is exactly why your rework is terrible: in order to reduce reliance on one skill you have changed everything on the spec except the skill in question, you don't seem to understand the impact the changes you made will have, and your reasoning for your changes as you stated in previous comments is "Why not". I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be harsh, but when you make comments like this it is really difficult to take anything you're saying seriously. No, it can't. Malice is only gained when you hit the marked target, so hitting multiple targets means bupkiss if you don't crit on the target you marked. If that's not a requirement then you made marking a target completely pointless, in which case resetting mark is also completely meaningless. YOU CAN ALREADY DO ALL OF THIS WITHOUT ANY CRIPPLING REWORKS OR THE ABILITY TO CRAWL AROUND THE FLOOR ON YOUR KNEES. Seriously, I don't like telling people to learn to play, but that's exactly what you need to do here. Okay, I'm done. The last patch made deadeye more OP in competitive modes than ever before with unlimited initiative and superspeed, and the only people complaining about deadeye being weak are the ones who don't understand the spec. I am now convinced you are one such. Good day sir.

Making it cost more ini for the same amount of malice isn't making other skills more viable, it's making deadeye as a whole worse. Also, you've not considered how your change would make P/P & P/D all kinds of broken if you made the malice on crit anywhere near low enough cooldown for three round burst to benefit, you'd potentially get max malice just from sneak attacking. Deadeye doesn't always have to use rifle, you know. Burst is one of thief's main selling points, yes. I agree with you that it's bad when a skill like three round burst that is supposed to just burst does less damage than a skill like skirmisher's shot that has baked in utility. I disagree with you in how to fix it: you want to rework the whole spec to fix one skill on one weapon at the expense of every other build, I just want to change the skill that's underperforming. I'm well aware of this stuff, I'm also aware that I can use all this stuff now without needing your rework so being able to move while kneeling is totally unnecessary. Have you heard the saying, if the only tool you have is a hammer you will see every problem as a nail? Not all classes have to bring AoE and deadeye doesn't need to deal with situations in WvW that core, daredevil or specter already deal with. A build is a tool, I bring the right tool for the situation. That for me means staff daredevil for melee squad play, S/D or D/P daredevil for playing around a zerg, specter for duo roaming and deadeye for solo roaming, scouting and picking single targets. That's also assuming I only run rifle as a main weapon: Deadeye works well with shortbow and P/D for condi, or S/D and D/P for power. Try a different tool. I mean, the really simple answer to this is to not miss your mark, or use mercy. If you manage to miss mark twice in 30 seconds you deserve the DPS loss.

So explain to me how your rework incentivises people to not spam standing 2 and to use other skills instead? and explain to me how three round burst going from 4 ini to 6 ini in competitive modes had no effect on the skill's usage? The only thing that passive malice gain will encourage is passive play while waiting for max malice, we've been there and done that. Saying that a skill that doesn't see use because it only brings DPS is like two other skills/builds that don't see much use because they only bring DPS only reinforces my original point, the skill needs more to incentivise people to use it. I'm also not sure what daredevil has to do with a discussion about deadeye, please stick to the point. If you mark something, kill it. Either choose your mark better or play better to secure the kill. Not sure what else to suggest to you here. I'd say the same thing for 40% reduced kneel speed, that's slower than a dodge so realistically it won't get you out the way of anything. If you're expecting to be able to stay in kneel and carry on pew-pewing something while relying on 40% reduced move speed for defence & repositioning then no amount of buffs to kneel skills will help you. If you can only mark a single target, then by definition you don't have a second mark, you reset mark with a skill. If you want to keep track of a marked target better, make it your target. As I said above, learn to choose your mark better or secure your kill better. You're saying in your OP that deadeye is a meme partly because it has no AoE, while your rework by your own admission would leave deadeye as a single target spec. I'm not opposed to changes to mechanics if they are good changes. I'm opposed to your changes because I think they're bad changes and you haven't yet convinced me otherwise. It's that simple.

You are introducing a lot of things here that arent actually relevant to why people swapped which skill they spam. People played hide and seek because there was nothing to gain for attacking, just risk from being out of stealth. Yes, death's judgement spam was a thing, but you could do that whether you hid or not. You had to spam kneel before and after the patch to use three round burst. Ranger has always outranged deadeye. None of these points explain why whether people now favour standing rifle 2 over kneel 3. The reason people swapped is because kneel 3 had it's initiative cost increased from 4 to 6 in competitive modes, and kneel three offers nothing but dps. The malice rework has nothing to do with it, your rework won't change it back, people spammed kneel 3 until the ini cost was increased and now they spam standing 2. Make both standing 3 and kneel 3 offer something besides dps and you will see both skills being used again, imagine if kneel did half damage but 3 stole 3 boons or was unblockable (not necessarily saying this is a good idea, but you can see how that would make you want to use the skill over standing 2 depending on what you're fighting, despite it being less efficient for malice/damage). It really doesn't make sense if the skills are powerful enough to risk being immobile to use them. They currently aren't worth the risk, I'd rather they changed the skill that's lacking instead of trying to reinvent the wheel entirely. That's kinda the point. You want to rework the single target spec into a multiple target spec, I don't. if you mess your mark, the tools are there to rectify the situation. Yeah, there are spots in PvE where mark could work better (octovine for instance), they need fixing. If you want to play other thief specs then feel free, but remaking a spec on the logic that other specs do it so this should too is a really fast way to kill everything that makes the spec unique.

Okay...... I'll abandon the numbered points because while i replied to each point you made in your OP respectively, your reply doesnt do that which just makes the whole thing look a bit silly. The reason pre-rework deadeye was tedious was because while you could speed up malice gain by attacking it was better to mark, sit in permastealth then blow something up at max malice than to actually fight. Your rework isn't an addition to the old system, it IS the old system. The current system forces you to engage with the target, and I strongly oppose ANYTHING that allows you to generate malice without interacting with the target because it would be a massive step backwards. End of. You are correct, standing rifle 2 is the most efficient way to generate malice, and the kneel skills are generally sub-par. I actually use kneeling rifle 2 a lot when i need to pressure through the immobilise, and that leads me to my main point; your proposed change does not address the fact that rifle 3, both standing and kneeling, is less DPS than standing rifle 2, and so will still not be used because it brings nothing useful to the encounter. You also butcher the only good skill on kneel in the process, making it an objectively worse option vs ranged attacks than simply dodging. The only thing your rework will accomplish is that nobody will EVER use kneel in any circumstance, and what i am saying is that you should instead buff kneel skills so they are worth the risk of using like sniper's cover currently is. We don't need a second mark, we don't need passive malice gain, we don't need to move while kneeling, we need kneel skills with better utiility and comparable damage to the rest of the kit so people don't just spam the highest DPS skill and instead use the best skill for the situation. And lastly, i will take your argument regarding your pierce/silent scope changes far more seriously when your reasoning for making the change is better than "why not", especially when you clearly haven't thought through the implications of removing the main stealth access on the set in order to give back pierce to skills that already have it now.

I thought you wanted to buff Deadeye? Most of your suggestions are flat out nerfs. In all seriousness tho: 1) What would differentiate 2nd mark from, you know, actual mark? This is just steal without steal traits. Take mercy if you wanna retarget, or get the kill. 2) Do you really want combat to look like this again? Been there, done that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWTCNJINmuQ 3) I never understood why people pushback against kneel as a mechanic when the most powerful & efficient way to generate malice is standing rifle 2, meaning you can win fights without every kneeling once. Make kneel 3 (and standing 3 while you're at it) worth using, problem will fix itself. 4) You want thief to have the only projectile block in the game to have a target cap. And this is a buff.... how? 5) ..... Why? 6) ..... WHY? Why remove something then give it back again in a different place, while also removing the main way to sneak attack and dump malice? 7) ................. You want Deadeye to auto spam, THE ONLY THING ON THE WEAPON SET THAT DOESN'T GENERATE MALICE?!? And even if it does generate malice through autos, how are you gonna spend it if the auto is the new sneak attack? Do you actually play Deadeye? Asking for a friend.

Replacing the might from Fire for Effect with quickness would be a good change. Would be better as fury and quickness but frankly the trait could only offer quickness and it'd still be an improvement.

It's usually far worse than I think xD But thanks for the info, it does explain a lot. I've had fights 1v3+ where one guy gets ressed 3-4 times before something forces me to leave or die, like I say I don't mind down state in and of itself but it's a little too forgiving for larger groups right now. Especially when larger groups already have the advantage by virtue of having more players/damage/CC etc. As you said above, either 1:1 ressing or making the penalty for going down last longer & take less downs before you die, both suggestions would fix the problem with minimal fallout.

Full disclosure: thief main here. I don't necessarily have a problem with rally or with downed state, but I do think that there should be a harsher limit to the number of times your friends can get you up before you skip downed and die straight off. Right now an ally could res me 4ish times in 5ish mins before the next down would kill me, if you only got 1 or maybe 2 resses in 5 mins before you hit that state that would be a happy medium: roamers/outnumbered opponents will get the kill if they can consistently down someone, but the downed guy still gets the benefit of his allies helping him out and an opportunity to fight back. Changing this would give the most impact with the least changes imo.

Probably silent scope. I don't think that they need to change anything personally, but if they were going to nerf deadeye to promote specter with the new SA, silent scope is the obvious target. And that's fair about S/P. It's been a favourite build of mine since vanilla, so maybe I remember more about it than one otherwise would haha.

They could really do with changing the initiative cost of pistol whip back to 5 across PvP and WvW. The damage reduction, fine, leave that as is if needed, but the increased cost really hurts the flow of the weapon.

It was hitting for roughly 900-1k in WvW for me yesterday. Not a lot by itself, but paired with draining and air sigils you get a little over 3k per interrupt which isn't awful. Not what it used to be for sure, but not awful. Edit: for context, I was playing S/P bound, one of my old favourite builds that's actually better than I remember. That 3k might be low, but add that onto a tactical strike of 2k followed by a pistol whip and it really starts to hurt. Sure you can't kill necros just by headshotting them 4-5 times anymore but frankly that was pretty degenerate to begin with.

Problem is the people that irrationally hate certain builds/classes would be totally fine with classes ceasing to exist as long as they are happy. They don't think far enough ahead to deal with the consequences of a change. Ranger longbow can be annoying when there's 3 of them who all decide to chain reveal & rapid fire you. It's part of the game tho, learn to adapt & counter or stick with a group next time.

The thing that you're not getting is that when playing thief you need to outplay the other player at the same time as countering their build, doing just one thing on it's own usually isn't enough to win the fight. For example, a burst oriented thief won't deal as much damage in as short a time from as much range as a glass sic 'em longbow ranger no matter how you build, and you won't be anywhere near as tanky while doing it either. You can't win a DPS race if you just try to face tank and kill him before he kills you. To deal with this guy, I'd dodge the initial rapid fire sic 'em combo using withdraw, roll for initiative or regular dodges, then I'd set up sniper's cover (kneeling rifle 4) to protect me from his arrows while using rifle 2 with shadowsteps to set up death's judgements as I described in my earlier post. I want the ranger to go for the melee spike with greatsword, when he does I'd kite the greatsword skills with death's retreat (standing rifle 4) and dodges while staying just out of melee range. Once that has all happened most rangers will swap to bow then immediately go for the knockback to create distance for a rapid fire to finish you off, if I dodge the knockback I'll have forced a situation where he's got no mobility, can't swap to melee, and is in melee range. That's my cue to finish him off with my melee set. TLDR: remember that you're not trying to match the other guy in a straight up fight, because usually you can't. That's fighting on his terms, which is dumb. You're countering his damage while forcing the guy behind the keyboard to fight on your terms.

Sword dagger can do decent damage in WvW if you take critical strikes, but with the shadow arts changes it would be insane not to run that line and most builds dont have room for both. Acro needs a serious rework to support the set, and it could really do with some of it's auto attack damage being restored along with dagger. That change never made much sense to me.

@OrangeHedgehog.6310 Not sure if you're aware of this from reading this post, but you don't need to kneel to use death's judgement. It's the sneak attack, so it'll go off whether you are kneeling or stood. As for landing a death's judgement with the 1s stealth, a sigil of agility along with shadowstep can make it easier: you dodge at long range, swap to rifle then use shadowstep to reposition closer to the enemy mid dodge so their timing is off, dodge ends which gives you stealth but the swap also gave you 1s quickness which is enough to cut the cast time of death's judgement. You can also just use death's judgement at melee range then port to long range with shadowstep, the projectile speed is unchanged by quickness so that can mess up the timing enough to get a hit too. You don't have to throw off someone's timing all that much to make them fluff a dodge, especially if they have gotten used to the timing from previous shots.

Apologies, it's common parlance with the players I normally interact with to use those abbreviations even among non thieves, but I shouldn't have assumed. SA = shadow arts, D/P = dagger mainhand pistol offhand weapon set. Daredevil running shadow arts and trickery on the dagger pistol set have been the dominant build in WvW and PvP for years, and it's usually the spec that generates 90% of the salt associated with thief (the other 10% was permastealth deadeye). Specter has largely replaced it in PvP from what I understand, and from the perspective of a player who has seen this build be meta for the best part of 9 years I'm all for anything that shakes the tree a bit. Particularly if the removal of the "crutch" traits in shadow arts (so named as they propped up the class & bad players in competitive modes) leads to buffs in other areas to compensate, buffs that couldn't have taken place beforehand without making the class (and specifically dagger pistol daredevil) busted. That all said, I do think that people are overreacting a bit when they say that deadeye is dead. PERMASTEALTH RIFLE deadeye might be dead, but in general that's a good thing for world versus world (WvW) (and even then I've seen rifle & dagger pistol deadeyes doing fine while roaming). I'm playing full marauder gear with antitoxin runes in WvW, rifle with sword dagger, and the amount of cleanse, superspeed and initiative from SA is actually insane. It feels great to play. In player vs player (PvP) the stealth traits were already nerfed in duration to make them only a target drop, couldn't even queue a stealth attack off them reliably the duration was so short, so it can only be a buff here too. The patch will rub a lot of people up the wrong way because of how central shadow arts is to the meta builds and to people's role play fantasies etc, but IMO it was a needed patch for the good of the class.

One of three things will happen. 1) You'll do what everyone else does, and learn to adapt. 2) You'll quit thief and main engi. 3) You'll quit the game. Permastealth DE basically shouldn't have been a thing to begin with, although it was fun while it lasted. If this change means they actually get around to buffing specs that aren't D/P without making D/P insanely OP along the way, I'm all for it.

The thing you're missing is that using permastealth to farm nodes is all the class could do in PvE until this year, and it was never going to get changed to be able to do more as long as SA existed in it's previous form. Yeah, the change messed up a LOT of builds (inc my cele specter build), but if this means the class can actually have stuff buffed without making D/P SA daredevil stupidly OP in the process then I'm all for it.

People don't even comprehend that it is a different set to P/P, let alone a decent one. I once got reported for "having no cooldowns" while playing P/D power deadeye lol

Permastealth is still possible WITHOUT SA and even without dagger mainhand, just like it always was. This method relies on pistol offhand though, which is fine because using black powder in stealth essentially pings your position for anyone hunting you. The patch was good in that it nerfed permastealth on DE, as the combo of leaping through sniper's cover no longer lets you permastealth easily without resorting to utilities and other skills that give a large tell. That was essential since sniper's cover can be hidden in a wall, removing the tell from the stealth, and that was not healthy whichever way you look at it. I made a video to show my point: The problem with both your video and mine is that anyone with half a brain will stand in the black powder to force you to reveal yourself. The difference is that with 6s stealth (3s after stacking) you're essentially stationary, and with the amount of ports classes have now they will be able to catch you and reveal you even if you do move. With 12s stealth per rotation (9 after stacking), I can be much further away and thus have much less chance of being attacked. This all shows what I have said for a while tho. The problem with stealth isn't shadow arts, it's smoke fields. Put all stealth on a fixed duration with no blasts etc and the mechanic would be a lot easier to balance, meaning the game would be a lot healthier for it.

The only other thing they could do is change what the actual skills do, but that also seems unlikely. Why change superspeed to swiftness on SA when acro exists? I'm actually hoping that acro gets a rework as well, but not holding my breath. This patch also only really helps you out if you were running D/P, S/D or rifle, or S/P if you were running bound (actually plan on testing this later, S/P bound is an old fav build of mine). I was running shortbow on 2nd set for my cele specter build but I feel kinda forced to run D/P now just for the stealth access in WvW. PvP is probably less of a problem as you won't have 2-3 longbow rangers/shortbow renegades chasing you at any time xD

Tbh I can see where the devs were going with the superspeed. Daredevil already has the mobility to do it's job effectively, and specter can tank much better than any other thief spec. Deadeye without stealth and without mobility is just plain dead, so if the longer stealth durations were being nerfed (which they have been), it was gonna need something else to keep it able to do it's job. The better question to me is, if SA has superspeed, what is the actual point of acrobatics? You could put things like "Steal breaks stun. If you break a stun this way, steal has 10s longer cooldown" and "Swindler's equilibrium: Steal recharge is reduced on evade (25%, 10scd). Gain 120 power, 240 if wielding a sword" and people still wouldn't play it as it stands.

Yes, the free get out of jail card, because no other class in the game has 1200 range ports right now.

Depends on cooldown. Although it would be hilarious to make rangers kill themselves by dodging rapid fire.