Is....is SA deadeye really dead now? Did something actually good happen with this patch?

[Arheundel.6451]

I was so frustrated with ele notes that only got around to read other thief notes today and....has SA thief finally been dealt with? Is this truly happening?....

Edited June 26, 2022 by Arheundel.6451

[kash.9213]

It will depend on if there are anything like internal cooldowns on stealth or modifiers on either end of stealth and if it's better to go in and out of stealth rapidly or build to intensify while revealed. Rifle can have Silent Scope and Shadow Meld which removes revealed so that could be an interesting sequence. There should also be more opportunities to interrupt or trip up stealth sequences though. Won't know until detailed notes release. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by kash.9213

[Dawdler.8521]

Now? Deadeye has been an ineffective meme build for very long. The nastiest of thieves all run daredevil.
In theory the SA changes should give them less sustain while in stealth but on the other hand without knowing some of the boon timers and ICD there could be even more nastiness in there such as perma protection. 

[KrHome.1920]

The superspeed addition will be the key factor. Its duration will define the strength of the traitline, both in terms of chase and escape potential. The rest of the changes won't make that much of a difference.

Edited June 27, 2022 by KrHome.1920

[Galmac.4680]

So we have now perma stealth thieves with super speed. Heyyyy... 😐

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

23 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Now? Deadeye has been an ineffective meme build for very long. The nastiest of thieves all run daredevil.
 

I agree that nastiest run DrD, however as a DE co main myself and with all the whispers I get, I def cant say DE is "ineffective"

[Solstice.5790]

 

someone else's experience to try and answer that

[AlphaReborn.1567]

Concur with the guy that posted in the Thief forum. Deadeye in particular is insane now, but in a totally different way.
 

It used to be annoying to fight them because they’d disappear then blast you with their quickness-enhanced burst. If you survived they’d stealth again and repeat until you were dead. If the tide turned because you landed a good couple hits, or your friends arrived, they’d just disengage and you wouldn’t see them again.

 

That’s thankfully been reduced a bit, but Deadeye now has effectively infinite initiative, extremely high cleanse, a lot of sustain, a lot of protection, can hit 20-25 might easily, and permanent vigor. You run Mag7, which used to be inferior to BQoBK for most pvp situations. Mark and pew pew with rifle 2. You’ll either hit 7 malice and get all your malice back with all the boons, or you’ll be close, and are now out of initiative. This would normally be the part where you’d either die or run previously.
 

Now, all you need to do is dodge for stealth, let it break, immediately pop Shadow Meld for the reveal strip, let it break. Between those two and natural initiative regen, you should have about 9 initiative (and removed all the conditions on you, and healed for a bit). This is enough initiative for another salvo of rifle 2’s. That should easily get you up to 7 malice at this point, which should give you a ton of initiative back. From there you can either pop a super strong DJ while having a lot of might stacks and 7 malice points worth of damage, or blast off another salvo of rifle 2s, use mercy to consume all 7 malice stacks and give yourself full initiative again, etc.

 

It doesn’t feel cheesy like DE normally does, but man it really puts extreme pressure on people, especially if they don’t have reflects to deal with your constant volley of cripple inducing, 1200 range, 3500 - 4500 damage per hit rifle shots. The initiative gain on the new GM trait in SA is just REALLY strong with a class that quite literally has about 6-8 ways of stealthing on demand, even if the stealths aren’t particularly long anymore. That’s 18-24 initiative restored, not including natural regen, plus all the other benefits you now have from entering and exiting stealth (health, cleanse, and super speed). You also get back most your initiative when you hit 7 malice also.
 

You could always roughly approximate this playstyle with Mag7 in the past, but you’d almost always run out of initiative. That’s just about a non factor now, and has made Mag7 a competitive option to BQoBK, IMHO.

[Nighthawk.2401]

This arguably makes Shadow Arts Deadeye better at 1v1s and small-party fights, but comes at the cost of severely removing the "stealth fantasy", every trait that had any ability to buff stealth duration/uptime was completely removed/reworked, Shadow Arts no longer enables stealthing more, it just makes stealth better when you do use it. 

I liked a number of the deadeye changes, but I would've liked it more if they left at least one of the extra-stealth traits in, instead of removing all three. 

I personally enjoyed the permastealth DeadEye build that I've been maining for years, not because it was good, but because it was fun. It was objectively bad at fights and could only prey on a handful of builds - all of which get countered even harder to a more serious build.

DE has very polarizing matchups and hard loses or hard wins to different specs in 1v1s. And running the full-stealth build was objectively bad because it didn't give you any new matchups you could win, and only made more you would lose. This change likely makes shadow-arts less meme and more viable for a serious build - but the meta 1v1 build for a while hasn't run shadow arts anyway, so it's still as good as always (arguably even better with some of the other trait changes)

I never understood the deadeye complaints though - daredevil is the meta, deadeye itself is the worse spec for roaming, for group play, and for sPvP, and for PvE. The complaints have always been focused from the players who main the few specs which Deadeye hard counters, and every build has things it counters hard, they don't all deserve nerfs.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Nighthawk.2401

[AlphaReborn.1567]

Oh yeah - if I was playing seriously I was on DD almost always. I did love DE for the stealth fantasy and utility, though, as you did. I loved being able to sneak around a map, appearing only for a few seconds to take a camp, then disappearing again. I believe you can still permanently stealth if you want to, particularly if you use the reduced cooldown shadow refuge, but it’s not as easy. Definitely not as easy to do in fights.

 

But now, I really think DE is going to better take advantage of SA much more than DD. A majority of DD’s stealth comes from the p/d combo, which won’t get the initiative benefit DE does since it costs a fair amount of initiative to get into stealth that way, much more than you’ll recover. You also lost stealth on heal and particularly on steal, which was very much important to the DD’s playstyle. I’m curious to see how it impacts DD’s play rates, because it’s definitely more difficult to use now… Whereas Deadeye feels like it got stronger, even without the cheesy easy permastealth.

[senftube.6081]

So in the end they made DE even more annoying and killed every other build.

[AlphaReborn.1567]

1 hour ago, Yunari.9065 said:

So in the end they made DE even more annoying and killed every other build.

Yeah, mostly. Good DD/Core thief took SA for the stealth on heal, the stealth on steal, the prolonged stealth, and the deception skills cooldown reduction. Literally all of that is gone now, which really hurts those builds.

 

If you hated DE because they disappeared for long periods of time, that has been reduced quite a bit. So you may be happy with that. But if you hated the fact they can burst hard from range, that got buffed quite a bit, so much so that I expect a nerf or rework. It’s not all-in sicem ranger one shot level of burst, but it’s got like 80% of that damage, sustained for a very long time, with a lot more mobility/stealth/cleansing/sustain.

 

Though honestly it probably will be a non factor, since most other Thieves that I respect that I talked to are pretty much quitting until they figure out the balance.

[MarkBecks.6453]

Did anyone else see Silent Scope mentioned in Patch notes? The Trait 2 on Deadeye used to give 4 second's of stealth, now its reduced to 1 second which doesn't give you a chance to escape, but mesmers, they stealth for longer periods, trap rangers stealth along with their longbow trait, so deadeye, is now like a dead duck, you cant outrun 1500 range invisible ranger, even with speed now increased. its clunky at best, and you get chased down easily by any profession. I thought thief was exactly that, invis surprise attacks, and I am not talking perma stealth, just good one on one fighting, already died a few times to 6 clone mesmers.

 

[Curennos.9307]

17 minutes ago, MarkBecks.6453 said:

Did anyone else see Silent Scope mentioned in Patch notes? The Trait 2 on Deadeye used to give 4 second's of stealth, now its reduced to 1 second which doesn't give you a chance to escape, but mesmers, they stealth for longer periods, trap rangers stealth along with their longbow trait, so deadeye, is now like a dead duck, you cant outrun 1500 range invisible ranger, even with speed now increased. its clunky at best, and you get chased down easily by any profession. I thought thief was exactly that, invis surprise attacks, and I am not talking perma stealth, just good one on one fighting, already died a few times to 6 clone mesmers.

 

Silent Scope never gave 4 seconds of stealth. It was 1 second baseline, increased to 2 seconds by a Shadow Arts trait that has been reworked, so it's back to 1 second.

[kash.9213]

5 hours ago, AlphaReborn.1567 said:

Yeah, mostly. Good DD/Core thief took SA for the stealth on heal, the stealth on steal, the prolonged stealth, and the deception skills cooldown reduction. Literally all of that is gone now, which really hurts those builds.

 

If you hated DE because they disappeared for long periods of time, that has been reduced quite a bit. So you may be happy with that. But if you hated the fact they can burst hard from range, that got buffed quite a bit, so much so that I expect a nerf or rework. It’s not all-in sicem ranger one shot level of burst, but it’s got like 80% of that damage, sustained for a very long time, with a lot more mobility/stealth/cleansing/sustain.

 

Though honestly it probably will be a non factor, since most other Thieves that I respect that I talked to are pretty much quitting until they figure out the balance.

I liked Stealth on Steal at times on core if I didn't have Cloak and Dagger but it wasn't a huge factor unless you were playing that specific type of thief. Still, I think that should be added somewhere again as an option, because not all weapon sets seemed to have been taken into consideration and it's not like it was super strong.

Stealth on heal was more annoying and in the way than anything else unless again, you're playing that particular thief but that particular thief can still stack stealth to mask direction and position. I don't think it's a big loss unless those players were on a crutch, that stealthed heal could pack a lot in it depending on traits or slots.

Edited June 29, 2022 by kash.9213

[MarkBecks.6453]

30 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Silent Scope never gave 4 seconds of stealth. It was 1 second baseline, increased to 2 seconds by a Shadow Arts trait that has been reworked, so it's back to 1 second.

Ah No, go look at KatKyle on Youtube giving an explanation on what to run on Deadeye, then go to the part where he is explaining the deadeye trait and look carefully at the silent scope and look at the seconds it gives, even if it was 2 seconds, now you die to guard because your bar fills up slowly, and all you doing is trying to stay stealthed and not fighting, because you have no chance to stealth or even run away

[Curennos.9307]

1 minute ago, MarkBecks.6453 said:

Ah No, go look at KatKyle on Youtube giving an explanation on what to run on Deadeye, then go to the part where he is explaining the deadeye trait and look carefully at the silent scope and look at the seconds it gives, even if it was 2 seconds, now you die to guard because your bar fills up slowly, and all you doing is trying to stay stealthed and not fighting, because you have no chance to stealth or even run away

Lmao my bad, I don't know how I ended up in this sub forum. sPvPer here, where it's been 2 seconds for us for a while xD

[Sprymazi.6472]

ITT: Non thief mains talking about thief like it's their mains.

 

DE is not dead, it's about the same power level, maybe slightly less powerful than before. The initiative gain you had before was already insanely high with Mal7. The extra initiative you gain from entering and exiting stealth quickly is good, don't get me wrong, but the power of constant repositioning and passive initiative regeneration in stealth is always much more useful.

 

What this patch did was much much more harmful to d/p SA DD, d/p SA Core and SA d/d core which people used to run to counter DE. People think it's a buff claiming "permanent protection and superspeed is so OP" which in my opinion is completely useless traits in WvW. Superspeed on thief is one of the weirdest thing to add since thief bread and butter is gap closers (Shadowstep, infil signet, steal, d/p 3, longbow 5, sword 2, rifle 4, wells etc etc etc). The protection is short and doesn't really fit thief since the real strength of thief has always been resetting in stealth, they will lose brawly fights anyways unless your opponent is much worse than you or play a dedicated zerg build (hammer rev, scourge etc.). Let's not forget that Mal7 in a good DE's hands is going to give perma protection regardless. I agree, the SA traitline has always felt cheap and not fun to play against, but making thief more brawly doesn't work unless they revamp thief completely or buff something else. The ability to reset on the same level as DE while also being able to gap close with SA d/p DD was one of the only hard counters to DE and now it's kind of dead.

 

It feels like the whole SA tree now is just a glorified side tree for support Specter. Much more useful changes would be to focus on the actual problems.

DE: Reducing Skirmishing Shot damage, increasing Skirmishing shot initiative cost by lets say 1, add diminishing returns or rework the immob spam on Spotter Shot, alternatively increase Spotter Shot initiative cost by 1 or 2, reduce knockdown duration on Blinding Shadows, reduce Mal7 boon uptime by 4s, remove 1 ammo charge on Shadow Meld.

SA: Revert changes completely. Give other classes more easy access to reveal, bake it in to relatively common traits.
 

D/p: Reduce blind uptime on Shadow Shot to 1.5-2s instead of 5, reduce Backstab damage slightly, reduce damage on heartseeker slightly.

 

 

 

 

[smiiirf.3201]

13 minutes ago, Sprymazi.6472 said:

ITT: Non thief mains talking about thief like it's their mains.

 

DE is not dead, it's about the same power level, maybe slightly less powerful than before. The initiative gain you had before was already insanely high with Mal7. The extra initiative you gain from entering and exiting stealth quickly is good, don't get me wrong, but the power of constant repositioning and passive initiative regeneration in stealth is always much more useful.

 

What this patch did was much much more harmful to d/p SA DD, d/p SA Core and SA d/d core which people used to run to counter DE. People think it's a buff claiming "permanent protection and superspeed is so OP" which in my opinion is completely useless traits in WvW. Superspeed on thief is one of the weirdest thing to add since thief bread and butter is gap closers (Shadowstep, infil signet, steal, d/p 3, longbow 5, sword 2, rifle 4, wells etc etc etc). The protection is short and doesn't really fit thief since the real strength of thief has always been resetting in stealth, they will lose brawly fights anyways unless your opponent is much worse than you or play a dedicated zerg build (hammer rev, scourge etc.). Let's not forget that Mal7 in a good DE's hands is going to give perma protection regardless. I agree, the SA traitline has always felt cheap and not fun to play against, but making thief more brawly doesn't work unless they revamp thief completely or buff something else. The ability to reset on the same level as DE while also being able to gap close with SA d/p DD was one of the only hard counters to DE and now it's kind of dead.

 

It feels like the whole SA tree now is just a glorified side tree for support Specter. Much more useful changes would be to focus on the actual problems.

DE: Reducing Skirmishing Shot damage, increasing Skirmishing shot initiative cost by lets say 1, add diminishing returns or rework the immob spam on Spotter Shot, alternatively increase Spotter Shot initiative cost by 1 or 2, reduce knockdown duration on Blinding Shadows, reduce Mal7 boon uptime by 4s, remove 1 ammo charge on Shadow Meld.

SA: Revert changes completely. Give other classes more easy access to reveal, bake it in to relatively common traits.
 

D/p: Reduce blind uptime on Shadow Shot to 1.5-2s instead of 5, reduce Backstab damage slightly, reduce damage on heartseeker slightly.

 

 

 

 

Why should dmg be reduced on Backstab again? Lol. They should first fix the god kitten engis spamming backstabs on their autoattack. xD

 

Then lol even more reveal? Dudes now really l2p and stop with your flaming. SA got reworked and thief can't permastealth anymore. Stop now really.

 

The DE Nerfs i can agree.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Leolas.6273

[ASP.8093]

Nah, Deadeye seems fine with the changes. The boons, the resource management, the condi cleanse, the repositioning ability are all still there. People who suck at it are gonna struggle a bit more, people who are good at using all their skills at gonna be just as difficult to kill as before.

It still occupies the same thief niche basically (pressuring down the tanky builds that can survive taking your Daredevil's entire Initiative bar to the face without dying).

[Ian.8340]

The new playstyle with superspeed and focusing more on staying in combat has potential but it isn't as fun as the stealth playstyle. Hopefully they'll realize that they gutted this game's stealth fantasy class and revert the changes. 

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

WTF is even "stealth fantasy"?
This was the only mmorpg in existence that allowed to permastealth while in combat.

[kash.9213]

28 minutes ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

WTF is even "stealth fantasy"?
This was the only mmorpg in existence that allowed to permastealth while in combat.

No one can perma stealth while in combat. If you don't attack anyone and reveal yourself, then there's no combat happening. It's also a game where Stealth application can be Interrupted and full damage is still received while in stealth. 

Edited July 1, 2022 by kash.9213

[Psycoprophet.8107]

4 hours ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

WTF is even "stealth fantasy"?
This was the only mmorpg in existence that allowed to permastealth while in combat.

I laugh when I read comments like this, it's like posters like above have 0 experience in any other mmo and make statements like above. U ever play bdo? Ninja can steath-attack-evade giving it stealth again-attack-evade giving it stealth and repeat over and over for like 20 secs (Oni shadow skill). U ever play eso? Nighblade can just hit cloak every 3 secs to perma stealth while dropping dots. U ever play wow? Rogue can stealth indefinitely until it attacks and has 2x in combat stealth options to re-aply. I could name more mmo's that have far easier stealth mechanics than gw2 but list is long, only ff14 ninja has stealth that's not really used. In gw2 a thief has a couple utility's they usually take for stealth but all the rest of the options require the thief to actively upkeep the stealth by using its global resource of which it uses to also attack with. Gw2 thief has one of the most balanced stealth mechanics of any mmo.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Psycoprophet.8107

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

11 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

No one can perma stealth while in combat. If you don't attack anyone and reveal yourself, then there's no combat happening. It's also a game where Stealth application can be Interrupted and full damage is still received while in stealth. 

Then I assume there's a bug in game, since I can't really mount-up after teef touched me, yet you claim it's "no combat" when he camps 24/7 stealth.🤔
Your second sentence also doesn't make sense, because how do you interrupt stealth application if target is already stealthed? It's still game of luck than skill against teefs. Probably you are assuming that he'll do it in front of your face in open field with smoke field + heartseeker combo?
On top of that, you only receive damage in stealth from very few sources "intentonally", anything else is also based on prediction or luck.
People still defending this broken mechanic...