Is rifle Deadeye a meme in PvE? Or am I doing something wrong?

[SamuelW.2685]

PvE being strikes and open world 

Said in a previous post that Deadeye was gonna be my first thief elite spec, but I went with Daredevil instead. Now it's my favourite spec I've played so far, it's versatile, mobile, and has good damage with a unique signature weapon that's VERY fun.

But with Deadeye, even if I'm doing good damage, I feel like I'm doing something wrong, or this spec just sucks with its main weapon. I feel so stagnant, like I'm just waiting for the mob to come over and kill me, stealth be dammed. I haven't  even brought it to strikes yet as the lack of mobility seems like a huge liability, I'm even using the shadowstep skill for extra mobility and still I feel useless.

[Puck.3697]

Deadeye isn't amazing in strikes. I believe its used for pylons, however outside of that rifle DE isn't the most recommendable build really. 

It can do all content, but it's not rly great in any mode

Edited June 17, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

There isn't one rifle build for PVE Deadeye.  There's at least two, focused around two different traits: Be Quick or Be Killed, and Maleficent Seven

BQoBK builds also take Mug.  This is the build you'll want to use for anything less than a champion.  It'll give you quickness on Mark, which when spammed against hordes of weaker enemies will effectively give you a permanent souped-up quickness.  Going this route is good, because it works with all weapons and not just the rifle.  Most enemies will be dead before they get into melee range, but if you want to cleave plenty of enemies take either Sword/X or Dagger/X to cleave everything down very fast.  I like to use Dagger/Pistol, because the dual skill will let me teleport from enemy to enemy, cutting them down while under quickness.  The disadvantage is that stronger enemies (elite and higher) will cause you to run out of initiative.  

The Maleficent Seven build is for killing bosses.  It constantly refreshes initiative, so you can lay down a savage beating against one target.  Also something to note is the kneeling skill 4 lets you spam an endless projectile destroying barrier, trivializing all ranged enemies.  Against bosses with sub 25% health, you swap to the dagger and proceed to do heartseeker spam... and a lot of it.  Aside from the ending, the M7 build is definitely an anchored playstyle, choosing to pick a point and shoot away rather than to flip about in melee range.

I won't lie, though:  Deadeye is in a very awkward place when it comes to strikes and raids.  A lot of the old raids have a combination of environmental hazards that will either force movement, or be punished by mandatory movement.  This makes Thief (especially Deadeye) hit or miss in most bosses.  Strikes have a similar issue.  While the Deadeye doesn't have a problem with mobile enemies per se, the real problem is that all of the group buffers and healers will be chasing down the boss.  This makes the Rifle DPS build cumbersome to use, since you cannot just kneel in one place and hope for the best.  

Edited June 18, 2022 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[ASP.8093]

6 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Aside from the ending, the M7 build is definitely an anchored playstyle, choosing to pick a point and shoot away rather than to flip about in melee range.

You can also kite with Rifle 2 (and Rifle 4 for emergency escapes). This is way lower damage than Kneel + Rifle 3 but you can easily solo a bunch of bosses (Chak Lobber, &c.) this way. Way less pew-pew than just spamming Three-Round Burst safely, but you'll still be able to pick apart champions and legendaries that most squishy power builds struggle with greatly.

Also note that Jade Bot Offensive Protocol (in Open World) and Sigil of Celerity (if you're running Trickery) both give a ton of extra Quickness uptime, which can greatly enhance or even just straight-up replace the BQoBK.

[ASP.8093]

6 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I won't lie, though:  Deadeye is in a very awkward place when it comes to strikes and raids.  A lot of the old raids have a combination of environmental hazards that will either force movement, or be punished by mandatory movement.  This makes Thief (especially Deadeye) hit or miss in most bosses.  Strikes have a similar issue.  While the Deadeye doesn't have a problem with mobile enemies per se, the real problem is that all of the group buffers and healers will be chasing down the boss.  This makes the Rifle DPS build cumbersome to use, since you cannot just kneel in one place and hope for the best.  

Yep. And Pistol/Dagger (condi) Deadeye has the opposite problem with movement: your rotation is constantly teleporting you out of the group. You can learn all kinds of tricks to mitigate it or you can just pick up Scepter/Dagger (condi) Specter and do about the same damage with like 1/5th the effort.

M7 Deadeye in general feels great solo (imo) because you've got all those boons, but that's kind of a liability in strikes/raids because it means all your self-buffs don't really stack with what the supports are giving you. (Which is why raid DPS builds end up taking traits like "+5% damage if you're flanking" over stronger-in-a-vacuum traits like "gain Might every time you crit").

[kash.9213]

In open world or wherever I'll weapon swap to sword/dagger if I need to for adds and stuff and I Life Steal/leech/siphon on Interrupts and will take something like Pitfall. I'll also pierce with Rifle and I use Death's Retreat a lot (I use untargeted and I toggle action cam a lot so I can control it's direction and movement).

Anything Area of Effect that you can fit in without having to throw too much out helps and bonus if it's something that compounds what you're already doing, like some kind of damage or effect from Interrupts, blinds, immob, etc. That way you should get a decent group to group kill rate as you map travel. 

Edited June 17, 2022 by kash.9213

[ASP.8093]

In Open World / Story, Shortbow is also reasonably viable as a secondary weapon for clearing big pockets of flimsy enemies (like Pocket Raptors or the Farahnur Zombie Inquest), if you're using M7 to keep initiative topped up.

I wouldn't, like, invest resources into it, but every thief should have a decent Shortbow in their inventory anyway because it's so nice for skips and puzzles. Switching out your weapons on-demand like this is one of the ways to keep thief gameplay a bit fresh since you're so often just using 1-2 optimal skills due to how Initiative works.

M7 Deadeye is also pretty magnificent underwater, you can chain high-damage attacks endlessly with plenty of evasion and on-demand stealth from skill 4.

Edited June 17, 2022 by ASP.8093

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

10 hours ago, SamuelW.2685 said:

PvE being strikes and open world 

Said in a previous post that Deadeye was gonna be my first thief elite spec, but I went with Daredevil instead. Now it's my favourite spec I've played so far, it's versatile, mobile, and has good damage with a unique signature weapon that's VERY fun.

But with Deadeye, even if I'm doing good damage, I feel like I'm doing something wrong, or this spec just sucks with its main weapon. I feel so stagnant, like I'm just waiting for the mob to come over and kill me, stealth be dammed. I haven't  even brought it to strikes yet as the lack of mobility seems like a huge liability, I'm even using the shadowstep skill for extra mobility and still I feel useless.

Consider p/d or p/p deadeye. Condi hybrid for p/d is a build i used often from Saerni. The p/p deadeye uses m7 trait and literally spams pewpew all day

[Vidit.7108]

Maybe Rifle deadeye could work in Harvest Temple alright but just in general it's not very good in instanced group play in PvE.

A common problem with rifle deadeyes is that people who play them never enter boon/heal range. I would say maybe 1/3 or 1/4th of the time I've seen a rifle deadeye pug they've full died to a mechanic during the fight, which they might have lived through if they were with the group. The last time I saw one in fractals was in T3 maybe 5 months ago or more. 

You're better off with a different weapon if you want to deadeye at all.

[Asur.9178]

Deadeye is a meme spec that was intentionally designed to be a meme by ANet, and introduced as a meme in order to satisfy the RP meme lords, who wanted to meme it up RPing as a "sniper" in an MMORPG. It is a meme everywhere, and it also memes on bad players pretty hard. It's so much of a meme in PvE that ANet had to specifically design very specific mechanics in certain encounters in order to allow the meme spec to perform its meme role and help meme lords feel like they were playing a relevant class and not a meme class, so it could find some kind of place in the game, without being a complete meme...even though, at the end of the day, that's all it ever was and ever will be under the current implementation and limitations.

[ASP.8093]

On 6/17/2022 at 7:38 PM, Vidit.7108 said:

Maybe Rifle deadeye could work in Harvest Temple alright but just in general it's not very good in instanced group play in PvE.

A common problem with rifle deadeyes is that people who play them never enter boon/heal range. I would say maybe 1/3 or 1/4th of the time I've seen a rifle deadeye pug they've full died to a mechanic during the fight, which they might have lived through if they were with the group. The last time I saw one in fractals was in T3 maybe 5 months ago or more. 

You're better off with a different weapon if you want to deadeye at all.

That sounds like people not knowing how to play, mostly. Going for "safe" spots so they can try to Kneel more greedily instead of sticking with the group for heals/Stab/Prot/Quickness.

That doesn't mean Rifle Deadeye is a good choice here — like I've pointed out before, the thing that makes Deadeye a decent solo build is the heavy self-boon application, and you could do better DPS in group content by taking a spec that stacks more direct damage-modifying stats instead.

But, like, I don't think they're really trying their best here.