Deadeye Balance Patch Preview Feedback

[Darkglade.8419]

The changes in the latest balance patch preview are promising, and I believe they make a good step forward in addressing some of the usability issues plaguing Deadeye (I was pleasantly surprised to hear the developers acknowledge these issues on stream.) However, while the changes to "move while kneeling" and “piercing Death’s Judgement” are good, there are a number of other issues that severely affect Deadeye’s overall usability and not simply Rifle-specific usability. These include the following:

 

Losing Deadeye’s Mark on downstate

This is one of the biggest issues affecting Deadeye’s usability. Deadeye is completely reliant on having a marked target at all times to even be able to perform their DPS rotation, so being punished with losing it on downstate dramatically decreases Deadeye’s usability on any difficult encounter that might downstate the player. No other profession is punished so hard for going downstate, and I would love to see this issue addressed in the November balance patch as well.

 

Reliance on 100% critical hit chance

Deadeye’s DPS rotation is generally reliant on always generating 2 Malice per skill use, which means Deadeye is very reliant on always critting to always get that second point of Malice. However, Deadeye relies on several conditional critical chance modifiers to reach crit cap – this includes Twin Fangs, which provides 7% crit chance while flanking, and Keen Observer, which provides a whopping 15% crit chance while above 90% HP. This extremely strict threshold severely hinders Deadeye’s usability in any encounter where the player’s HP might regularly go below 90% - this issue is exacerbated if the healers are not consistent in keeping the Deadeye topped off on HP, especially in encounters with constantly ticking arena damage. Not critting on a skill, especially likely on a single-hit skill like Heartseeker, can severely derail a Deadeye’s DPS rotation. Thus, it would do much for Deadeye’s usability if the 90% threshold were relaxed in a manner similar to the upcoming change to Revenant’s trait Rising Tide: which is having its health threshold reduced from 90% to 75% in PvE only. In addition, the Twin Fangs trait also has a 90% HP threshold requirement for a 7% critical hit modifier – it would also be appreciated if this skill’s HP threshold requirement were also lowered to 75%, although it is not as important as Keen Observer’s HP threshold.

 

I believe the inclusion of the above changes would do much to help improve Deadeye's usability in endgame PvE. Although the balance patch preview also included nerfs such as increased initiative cost on Kneel and reduced range on Rifle skills which technically reduce Deadeye's usability, the other changes such as being able to move while kneeling may be good enough to alleviate the impacts of these nerfs, so I will withhold judgement on those nerfs until I have been able to playtest the changes. 

[Jianyu.7065]

I appreciate the calmness of this post as I am not capable of being as calm as you are regarding these changes that I find unhelpful and punishing at best. I believe these changes make a class that is already a chore to play even less fun.

 

I ask how something already not fun can be made even less fun, and can now credit this balance team for finding the solution to that puzzle. But they seem pretty good at figuring out how to make us feel like they don't want us to have fun playing this game.

 

🤷‍♂️

[Dadnir.5038]

Well... They buffed dagger so maybe at some point you might not even use rifle. I mean, if we consider snowcrow's power deadeye rotation along the heartseeker change, you'll already most likely stop using rifle when the boss is at 50% health instead of stoping when it's at 25% health (and that's not taking into account the buff to the AA and cape and dagger).

[Arc.8247]

What is the point of an espec when you cannot use the weapon that comes with it because it doent work the way it should. I never understood that in any espec.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Arc.8247
typos

[Dadnir.5038]

13 hours ago, Arc.8247 said:

What is the point of an espec when you cannot use the weapon that comes with it because it doent work the way it should. I never understood that in any espec.

There hasn't been much incentive to use ranged weapon in organized PvE group content since release of the game. Rifle is mostly a PvP toy for a profession that people usually prefer to play in PvP.

[Tails.9372]

2 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

There hasn't been much incentive to use ranged weapon in organized PvE group content since release of the game.

Yes but that's more on how the encounters are designed and how the support in this game works so if they want to "improve the usability" of the "sniper specs sniper stance" then nothing will fundamentally change until they address those areas (most importantly the support aspect) first.

But if their goal is to increase the QoL of the "kneel gameplay" then Silent Scope is what they should be going after.

[FrancisN.9276]

This is Deadeye specialization description: "Deadeyes are guns for hire, using Deadeye's Mark to mark their target for assassination. They strike their target to generate Malice, and then consume it to empower their Stealth Attack. For this, Deadeyes learn cantrip skills, which provide defence and control, and stealth. They can wield rifles, picking off targets to snipe them one by one with deadly precision. They excel at damage dealing."

 

As of the current build and the upcoming balance patch, devs seems to miss the "excel at damage dealing" part. Even with perfect rifle DE rotation. which severely limits normal movement (not yet mentioning the level of mobility of thief class), DE DPS output is still subpar. This class has too many problems that require a rework to fix:

 

Deadeye's Mark + Malice + Death's Judgement: There are 3 main problems with this system, on which DE is severely and unnecessarily dependent:

(1) It forces DE to chase after a specific target in groups while the targeting system of this game is not working accurately. It happens many times for Death's Judgement to target the wrong one, instead of the one with Malice, just because of the aiming hitbox. This can be fixed by making the Marked target a prioritized one (unless player aims 30-45 degree away from it) when Death's Judgement is triggered.

(2) Deadeye's Mark has long cooldown and does not renew immediately if marked target decides to leave the combat area. For other classes with normal skill cooldown mechanics (instead of Initiative-base mechanic), it is alright since their rotation is not dependent on it. Yet, for DE class which must have initiatives in order to do any barely meaningful damage, this means DE is automatically rendered useless after emptying the first set of initiatives. DE desperately needs initiatives to stay relevant to the fight (since their auto attack skill is abysmal in terms of speed and damage, meaning "useless"). This can be fixed either by making Deadeye's Mark auto-renewed if marked target goes outside 1,200-1,500 range; or by immensely buffing Rifle 1 skill (either increasing speed or damage or making it pierce) to provide acceptable DPS.

(3) Kneel mechanic, on paper, is a great idea since it switch to another set of weapon skills and provide a new playstyle. But when it come to implementation, balancing is messy. The next iteration plans to increase initiative cost from 1 to 2, when the current initiative system for DE is already unfair. The price to pay for increased DPS output when kneeling is already the severely limited mobility in an game where literally every class have at least 2-3 mobility skills to outmaneuver a pinned-down glass cannon (Please bear in mind the "increased DPS output" mentioned above is still subpar, compared to many other DPS classes, such as Mechanist). Kneeling should not cost initiative to trigger.

 

When it comes to rifle class, I made an Engineer to look at their skillsets and trait for a more objective comparison. To my surprise, Engineer DPS is really high with piercing + multi-target autoattack and excellent CC on short cooldowns (immobilized, launch) and 2-3 good mobility skills. All of that comes without the difficulty of sticking to a target and managing initiatives.

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by FrancisN.9276