Deadeye's tradeoffs and general feedback

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

tl;dr Read the bolded text for digest version of this.

Firstly I want to preface, I'm very grateful to whoever conceived Deadeye; I love this spec, there is also a huge nostalgia factor as it sometimes feels like my old favorite Assassin's Promise spike build was packaged into this elite spec: Mark target, assassinate, repeat. Secondly, my point of view has a PvE bias, which is where I spend most of my gameplay, I do play WvW casually every other month and I don't do much PvP.

 

I am very pleased with the communication towards addressing elite spec tradeoffs, it has been ever contrasting with specs with great freedom and role compression like Firebrand and Mechanist vs professions who have to be punished in order to be good at one thing and gain value out of it, and said value feels it may not even be greater than what you put into it. Which leads me to this topic and this elite spec which is a whole living tradeoff in itself: Deadeye. 

 

* Changing targets

As a former Assassin main, I was happy with the Initiative system because it meant you now had freedom to use your skills however you saw fit on whichever target(s) you saw fit, this freed Thief from one of the tradeoffs that plagued Assassin and single-handedly kept it from high-end play in both PvE HM runs and PvP: Lack of target re-prioritization. Deadeye feels very inflexible when a gameplay mechanic or change in the battlefield requires you to prioritize a different target, or when transitioning to a new phase leaving you with little Initiative and unable to use Deadeye Mark. I feel Deadeye brought with it one of the trade-offs that hurt Assassin who had to commit its entire combo chain on the same target, on a cooldown. With Deadeye Mark on cooldown you can no longer interact with Malice on the new target (and any you had is gone), making your damage plummet, the only contribution Deadeye is allowed to bring. Some examples of when this happens: When switching from Voice to Claw, the swap between Fraenir and IB Constructs, transitions in Kaineng Overlook does not give you your mark back, pretty much the entirety of Dragon's End is an ever changing example on adaptability. Experienced raiders surely have their own examples in encounters that aren't a prop (an issue I believe has been already identified by the dev team, but just to reiterate it within context). Downstate will also have you lose your mark. As a player, I want to be free to adapt to a situation and not be penalized on changing targets that are a priority to my squad.  

 

* Movement and Positioning

Kneel and Rifle are a thread of on their own and I'd like to leave that discussion for someone who is more passionate about Rifle, I'm more of a daggers and swords guy. On top of managing two systems, initiative and malice, Deadeye must manage positioning to maximize damage. An argument can be made about class identity as the rogue who stabs from behind, but the problem is that in just about every encounter or boss, Malicious Stealth attacks like Backstab and Tactical Strike puts you away from your teammates, which as a player feels bad because it goes against the theme of being stronger together. Good luck trying to backstab the icebrood construct, you will miss out on all boon support. Also veteran players understand and know how to work flanking and behind positioning, but it's not obvious for new(er) players which enemies point south for flanking/backstab purposes. As a player, I don't want to be penalized for engaging in my spec's core feature making me lose on my team's support and bonuses while having little to nothing to show for it: As a selfish spec Deadeye is very reliant on its allies quickness, alacrity, healing, stability/aegis, condition cleanses in order to bring the value I provide when I bring Deadeye to a squad: high burst damage. 

 

* Deadeye's Mark 

Aside of the changing targeting concern above, and the known problems with props and some structures (I can't bring Deadeye to Octovine at all), Core Thief and Daredevil have their steal ability as a instant cast while Deadeye Mark's has a cast-time, this trade off on Deadeye feels unnatural and less fluid to play, specially in group situations where you're contributing to killing several enemy minions and you depend on your mark unlike Specter which also has a cast time on Steal/Siphon where one could argue its relatively fair.   

 

The following are not strictly "trade-offs" of core thief vs elite spec as defined in the balance notes, but I feel they're nonetheless part of what makes playing Deadeye difficult by inconvenience and fall behind other burst damage elite specs when it comes to the value you get out of playing it.

 

* Stealth

Relax WvW roamers reading this, I'm not about to advocate for more stealth, I know how DE and stealth can be frustrating in PvP. The problem here is that you have an innate reliance of being able to come in and out of stealth and other players trying to help the team can inadvertently reveal you, (there's also several raid encounters that reveal you constantly as well or are fixated on you for a larger duration/times beyond what Shadow Meld can remedy). You cannot use malice when revealed, so as a player you once again suffer from your elite spec's tradeoff.

 

* Malice

One of the joys of playing Deadeye is getting that big 50k number on the screen, and building Malice is our means for it. You are heavily reliant on Maleficent Seven for its initiative generation, increased malice (for optimal stealth attack damage output) and boons which feels like other grandmaster traits, Be Quick or Be Killed and specially Fire for Effect, are not viable or rewarding options at all. Much like Assassin from Guild Wars 1's disruption pains, Malice generation suffers from losing out on performing your role at all if you are minimally disrupted: blinds, slow, weakness and other situations where you can't/won't critical hit hurt your malice generation greatly. Your malice is also spent if the target dies, which when playing Deadeye feel unfun in groups where mobs/adds die faster than you can generate malice and you're left without initiative/malice (adding to that what I mentioned above on target changing). 

 

* Stronger together and support 

Soulbeast and Bladesworns are prime examples that self-sufficient top burst damage is a welcomed contribution with the additional utility they also provide. With the change in balance leadership and philosophy I don't know what direction this elite spec will take, but as a player and Deadeye enjoyer, I feel the game is ever moving in a direction Deadeye stubbornly won't follow, in which everyone, even pure DPS, brings something to the table, and the niche this class does provide is ever shrinking and being left behind. 

 

Suggestions 

I confess I have some apprehensions in making suggestions that go beyond the flavor "increase this number here", "let this also do bleeding/torment/etx" and fall more under the core gameplay aspect where game developers have infinitely more knowledge on systems or the future balance roadmap than I ever could, this is what I as a player feel could ease some of the tradeoffs and is by no means meant to address everything above: 

- Allow any leftover Malice to be retained after target dies

- Allow Malice to be generated when striking targets aside from marked target, weakened/blind

- Allow Backstab's damage bonus to also apply on flanking 

Edited September 23, 2022 by LyraOrpheo.8450

[Bern.9613]

2 hours ago, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

* Stealth

Relax WvW roamers reading this, I'm not about to advocate for more stealth, I know how DE and stealth can be frustrating in PvP. The problem here is that you have an innate reliance of being able to come in and out of stealth and other players trying to help the team can inadvertently reveal you, (there's also several raid encounters that reveal you constantly as well or are fixated on you for a larger duration/times beyond what Shadow Meld can remedy). You cannot build malice when revealed, so as a player you once again suffer from your elite spec's tradeoff.

I'm going to ignore most of the op's "views" and his idea that wvw roamers don't want more stealth. Nope, I'm curious about the statement, "you cannot build malice when revealed". When was the last time this guy played deadeye? Does he even know what deadeye meant to the thief as an elite? It meant thief had a long range weapon after the gutting of the short bow. And so I'm curious, op, if you can't build malice when revealed, when does one build malice? And are you aware that stealth is broken and you are revealed once you have attacked? Thief already has a hard enough time with all the baby boohoos crying because of stealth and ANet nerfing the living crap out of the class, we don't need false information being transmitted by the uneducated to the unknowing.

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

2 hours ago, Bern.9613 said:

I'm going to ignore most of the op's "views" and his idea that wvw roamers don't want more stealth. Nope, I'm curious about the statement, "you cannot build malice when revealed". When was the last time this guy played deadeye? Does he even know what deadeye meant to the thief as an elite? It meant thief had a long range weapon after the gutting of the short bow. And so I'm curious, op, if you can't build malice when revealed, when does one build malice? And are you aware that stealth is broken and you are revealed once you have attacked? Thief already has a hard enough time with all the baby boohoos crying because of stealth and ANet nerfing the living crap out of the class, we don't need false information being transmitted by the uneducated to the unknowing.

 

The WvW roamers was a joke about people who play against Deadeye and complain about it. I fixed the Malice mistake, I meant spending Malice.

Edited September 23, 2022 by LyraOrpheo.8450

[draxynnic.3719]

The movement and positioning points feel like they apply to all dagger or sword thieves.

Regarding Deadeye's Mark - your comparison to Assassin's Promise is apt. It's supposed to be a mechanic that encourages you to focus on a single target until it dies, and punishes you if it doesn't. There's also Mercy as an option to facilitate switching mark targets in a pinch. I do agree, though, that it's probably overly punishing in situations where the mark target becomes invulnerable because the deadeye and team have been successful, such as boss phasing. It'd probably be fairer if a boss entering a phase where you need to switch targets for a while would recharge the mark. Possibly link it to the Determined buff - it your target gains Determined, your mark is refunded.

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

On 9/22/2022 at 9:16 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

The movement and positioning points feel like they apply to all dagger or sword thieves.

Regarding Deadeye's Mark - your comparison to Assassin's Promise is apt. It's supposed to be a mechanic that encourages you to focus on a single target until it dies, and punishes you if it doesn't. There's also Mercy as an option to facilitate switching mark targets in a pinch. I do agree, though, that it's probably overly punishing in situations where the mark target becomes invulnerable because the deadeye and team have been successful, such as boss phasing. It'd probably be fairer if a boss entering a phase where you need to switch targets for a while would recharge the mark. Possibly link it to the Determined buff - it your target gains Determined, your mark is refunded.

 

Yeah,  I explicitly mention its for daggers and sword scenarios. Mercy is not flexible enough specially since the opportunity cost is huge on using it when you have little or no malice, and that's usually when you want to switch, at the cost of one utility slot. Iron Scope sufficiently gives you the incentive to focus on your one target, the strike damage modifier is pretty hefty.

Edited September 25, 2022 by LyraOrpheo.8450

[draxynnic.3719]

9 hours ago, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

 

Yeah,  I explicitly mention its for daggers and sword scenarios. Mercy is not flexible enough specially since the opportunity cost is huge on using it when you have little or no malice, and that's usually when you want to switch, at the cost of one utility slot. Iron Scope sufficiently gives you the incentive to focus on your one target, the strike damage modifier is pretty hefty.

Yeah, it's not supposed to be a perfect solution, but Mercy is an option. The overarching point is that it really is GW2's Assassin's Promise - there's even a trait that will cause it to recharge your other skills (only partially, but partially is still pretty good if your kill rate is high enough). Whiffing Deadeye's Mark, like whiffing Assassin's Promise like an aggressive but overly optimistic centaur, is supposed to be a bit punishing. But even then, compared to other thieves, it's not that punishing. The mark has about the same duration as Steal and Swipe, and those skills don't get to recharge if you kill the target. Furthermore, deadeye ambush attacks have the same effect on unmarked stacks as the regular ambush attacks, consuming malice stacks just increases the effect, so if for whatever reason you're unable to attack the marked target, you're still only back to the regular thief baseline, the only 'tradeoff' is that in this situation you're not fully benefiting from the deadeye-specific stuff, and that you could have had a different traitline instead. This seems pretty solidly in the realm of 'natural tradeoffs' to me - the core profession mechanic gets replaced by a new mechanic, but there's no downside to taking Deadeye, merely the opportunity cost of not being able to take Daredevil, Spectre, or a third core traitline. It's just a question of how much benefit you're getting out of the upsides.

I think there is validity that Renewing Gaze should probably trigger in situations where the target stops being a valid target due to the Deadeye or their allies doing the right thing (such as a boss going invulnerable for a phase transition), but on the whole I don't think Deadeye shows any indication of having been hit by the "elite specialisations need penalties as tradeoffs!" craze. Deadeye's behaviour was established before that craze started influencing balance philosophy, and it's in the same category as necromancer and guardian elites where it's a natural tradeoff of replacing the baseline profession mechanic with something different and (generally) better.   

[DoctorExplosion.4136]

I think the best thing they could do for the spec without making it busted is to give it a way to apply the mark with stealth attacks as long as it's off cool down. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

Quote

The mark has about the same duration as Steal and Swipe, and those skills don't get to recharge if you kill the target.

 

Why would they? You're loading a false equivalency between "make mark have no cast time" to "refund the cooldown on kill" when speaking about the fluidity of using the profession, if you are trying to disagree for the sake of disagreeing then fine, enjoy your deadmark cast-time. I do agree on refunding mark when you do things right however, I'd feel that's the bare minimum regardless of what direction Deadeye takes. I had a lot of fun the other night bringing Deadeye to Seitung meta, but it was really janky, even with Mercy, when switching between Renyak and the Bulwark gyros, another example of transitions in a encounter to add to the list.

 

I'd think Iron Sight is already what defines the reward/no reward from interacting with your marked target. Are you hitting your market target? Then you get the potential to do close to the best damage in the game. You're not? Then you get to still bring "decent" damage to the table rather than have it to a screeching halt.

 

Restricting Building Malice (which is already a rather punishing process in itself) for a Malicious Stealth skill shouldn't be the punishment. Hell, why even have a punishment on top of no reward. Hate to bring the constant comparison, but professions like Firebrand, Virtuoso, Mechanist, etc don't have any sort of punishment, you simply get to enjoy what they offer, and the reward is about as much (Mech AA aside) as you put in. I don't know whatever its stockholm syndrome or masochism (perhaps the later is why we love this spec), but I don't think its right to defend that gameplay, on top of offering no reward, punishes you on top of it. 

[draxynnic.3719]

Deadeye's Mark has a short activation time in exchange for having a 1500 range, not teleporting you to the target (something that is sometimes useful, sometimes not, but when a deadeye does want to quickly close the distance there are other options), being something you always want to use rather than being as situational as Steal and, let us not forget, being able to be reused much more often as long as you keep killing targets and resetting the cooldown. Which means you get more use out of traits that trigger off F1. The downside of 'maybe you can't kill the target before the mark wears off' isn't even a downside compared to Steal because the base recharge is shorter to begin with, so you're STILL getting more of them even if the target lives.

I guess the stolen skills are different, so that might be a downside? But if it's just that it has a casting time... well, you must think firebrand sucks because it replaces instant activation skills with tomes that have an activation time and then take several seconds to use up the tome? To be less extreme, the trade is like trading core guardian F1 for willbender F1, except that there's no passive for core guardian F1 and willbender F1 has the cooldown reset on kill effect from Radiance as baseline.

Regarding the malicious skills: did you even read what I wrote? You can use any of them against an unmarked target and they'll have the same effect as their core equivalents would. Any Malice you have is pure profit over the baseline, and there's the reward. If the malicious skills had a lower baseline so it took 2-3 malice stacks to break even, I could see your point, but that's not the case. You break even at 0. Every malice stack you consume rewards you for playing deadeye and engaging with the deadeye mechanics. Hit the wrong target? It's just like you hit them with a core ambush skill, and you still have your Malice to unload into your marked target if you get the opportunity.

If your argument is that deadeye could stand to be improved for endgame boss fights, then sure. But this idea that it's apparently riddled with debilitating tradeoffs just doesn't hold up.

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

10 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

But this idea that it's apparently riddled with debilitating tradeoffs just doesn't hold up.

 

Hard disagree, for reasons already outlined, I dont want to repeat myself saying what I've already said. If you think the profession should be left as is I respect your opinion.

[draxynnic.3719]

11 hours ago, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

 

Hard disagree, for reasons already outlined

Which I've already addressed:

Malicious skills are straight upgrades over core ambush skills. Requiring malice for full effect isn't a tradeoff because the malicious skills are just as good as their core equivalents without malice, the benefits you get from spending malice are a pure buff.

Mark requiring you to kill your target to refresh it isn't a tradeoff because even without the refresh it has a shorter recharge than steal, and steal doesn't have a refresh option. If you happen to get the refresh, that's a pure buff.

Mark does have a 1/2 second activation time, and has different functionality to Steal. This technically is a tradeoff, since you're giving up one thing for another, but it's not a punitive one, because overall it's trading up, especially when you consider that deadeyes don't necessarily want to teleport to their target. It's the same sort of "change your profession mechanic into something else" tradeoff that guardian, necromancer, and revenant elite specs get. And you'll note that all of the guardian elite specs are trading off instant activation virtues for virtues that have a more powerful effect in exchange for having an activation time. Deadeye's Mark (and spectre's Siphon, for that matter) are in the same vein. Sure, it has an activation time, and sometimes that'll mess you up, but the effect is worth it.

The real tradeoff, like all elite specs always had despite the cries of the people demanding tradeoffs back in the day, is that you're taking Deadeye rather than some other third traitline. But again, deadeye was pretty much operating as it does now before the whole "elite specs need tradeoffs!" craze started. None of its characteristics grew out of the thinking that led to the tradeoffs that are being reverted now.

[itspomf.9523]

On 9/29/2022 at 11:59 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Mark does have a 1/2 second activation time, and has different functionality to Steal. This technically is a tradeoff, since you're giving up one thing for another, but it's not a punitive one, because overall it's trading up, especially when you consider that deadeyes don't necessarily want to teleport to their target. It's the same sort of "change your profession mechanic into something else" tradeoff that guardian, necromancer, and revenant elite specs get. And you'll note that all of the guardian elite specs are trading off instant activation virtues for virtues that have a more powerful effect in exchange for having an activation time. Deadeye's Mark (and spectre's Siphon, for that matter) are in the same vein. Sure, it has an activation time, and sometimes that'll mess you up, but the effect is worth it.

draxynnic is right, you know.  And personally, Deadeye is the first spec that made Steal feel good for me.  I ran a dual pistols Critical Strikes + Trickery build, combined with Premeditation and Fire for Effect, which basically let me spam out tons of boons on short cooldowns.  All I had to do was focus on weaker targets to keep myself and the party topped off.  And back in the day, I could almost full-heal by hitting Unload twice (but then the fire nation balance team attacked and Invigorating Precision died a swift death).

Sure, boss-fights were slower, but if you spec for cooldown reduction via Trickery, the only time Deadeye's Mark wears off is if you forget to pop F1 again.

So yeah, you've got three choices which core Thief simply cannot bring:  tons of self-boons by capping Malice, Quickness on mark, or sharing boons with your allies (in two radii).  That's a massive upgrade, and way better than the weirdness of choosing your flavor of dodge / tradeoff for Daredevil.

Edited October 1, 2022 by itspomf.9523

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

26 minutes ago, itspomf.9523 said:

draxynnic is right, you know.  And personally, Deadeye is the first spec that made Steal feel good for me.  I ran a dual pistols Critical Strikes + Trickery build, combined with Premeditation and Fire for Effect, which basically let me spam out tons of boons on short cooldowns.  All I had to do was focus on weaker targets to keep myself and the party topped off.  And back in the day, I could almost full-heal by hitting Unload twice (but then the fire nation balance team attacked and Invigorating Precision died a swift death).

Sure, boss-fights were slower, but if you spec for cooldown reduction via Trickery, the only time Deadeye's Mark wears off is if you forget to pop F1 again.

So yeah, you've got three choices which core Thief simply cannot bring:  tons of self-boons by capping Malice, Quickness on mark, or sharing boons with your allies (in two radii).  That's a massive upgrade, and way better than the weirdness of choosing your flavor of dodge / tradeoff for Daredevil.

 

I'm confused, could you clarify right on what regard? You went on to explain about the positives of Deadeye's Mark which I also agree with but I don't see why you have a problem with what I outlined.

[ASP.8093]

The main problem with Deadeye in PvE is that Mark/Malice interacts really poorly with multi-part bosses and boss phases sometimes. Change those mechanics and it's fine, just good consistent single-target-oriented high DPS.

The other problem is that you get a ton of your DPS from Premeditation, which means Rifle builds are forced to do absurd stuff for stealth instead of just enjoying the versatility and convenience of Silent Scope.