I am shocked in the best possible way that Anet listened to our Deadeye patch feedback

[SamuelW.2685]

Just played Deadeye today cause I was so bumed out from the preview patch notes I didn't want to when the patch went live

Not only did they keep the 1500 range while kneeling, they also added a whole new skill to kneeling rifle 4! You can shadowstep if you step into the cover, that you can now place further away! It doesn't have to in front of you now, it makes the RP walk in kneel more useable cause you can use it to shadowstep away from danger! 

I know it's a small change, but the reason I'm so happy about it is that it's telling us that Anet listened to us, the 1500 range change was HORRIBLE, it killed Deadeye thematically, it's made to be a sniper and they were gonna gut what made it a sniper, but now we get to keep it, on top of Deaths Judgement piercing and the new kneeling skill, it makes me so, so happy, it keeps Deadeye fun and helps make it just a liiiiiitle bit less memey, haha.

Are there issues still? Of course, I still think the kneel initiative increase is silly and rifle could really use piercing on all it's attacks, and keeping with guns on Thief it'd be awesome if they brought Ricochet back to give us another tagging weapon other then Shortbow, but I still think this is a step in the right direction. 

My only issue is how they said nothing, when they were gonna nerf Mirage a while back they made a post saying they were gonna revert it, checking the dev tracker and don't see nothing about this change to the patch notes, only in the notes themselves are they listed, ideally they wouldn't have to make a update cause the patch would be perfect from the get go but more transparency would be apricated in cases like this.

Edited December 1, 2022 by SamuelW.2685

[Lord Warfin.1209]

I was very glad to see it not get nerfed.  It would be nice if they put the range circle back in too as that was convenient, but if they are determined to reduce the range eventually and this is only a temporary reprieve that isn't going to happen.

[voltaicbore.8012]

Shadowstep through rifle 4 is good, but the kneel RP walk is still stupid. I accidentally shadowstepped into a dungeon boss' face using kneel 4 lol.

I think the walk is still utterly useless - I do what I used to, which is to dodge, un-kneel, and run if needed. The RP walk does nothing for me.  EDIT: I'm stupid. I just use Death's Advance by dropping the field right on me as I kneel, but I realise if you drop it a bit offset from you, you can now RP walk into it to enable the shadowstep. I guess that ONE function is what I'll use it for. If I'm in a fight where I know I need to make space faster, I'll take roll for initiaive or something to help.

At least the kneel shadowstep means I never need to take those other movement utilities anymore, which is nice.

Edited December 2, 2022 by voltaicbore.8012

[Doctor Hide.6345]

Well, the pierce/penetration for all attacks won't happen. I took a two year break from the game when they decided to remove the penetration from Death's Judgment for all modes which pissed me off royally. So, I highly doubt they would add it to other attacks. I am surprised they even brought it back for Death's Judgement to an extent because from my understanding they didn't like it. 

[ASP.8093]

Pierce on Rifle 2 and Death's Judgement is sufficient, imo. I refuse to look this gift horse in the mouth further.

[shinvold.3618]

As the Deadeye main, I think just giving the DJ piercing is too enough. Rather, I'm worried that other changes will cause a nerf later.

 

Every time I see a ridiculous kneeling walking animation, I honestly want to roll back the kneel.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

26 minutes ago, shinvold.3618 said:

As the Deadeye main, I think just giving the DJ piercing is too enough. Rather, I'm worried that other changes will cause a nerf later.

 

Every time I see a ridiculous kneeling walking animation, I honestly want to roll back the kneel.

 

If anything, they will remove it again like they did like 3 years ago when it initially was removed.

[SamuelW.2685]

4 hours ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

Well, the pierce/penetration for all attacks won't happen. I took a two year break from the game when they decided to remove the penetration from Death's Judgment for all modes which pissed me off royally. So, I highly doubt they would add it to other attacks. I am surprised they even brought it back for Death's Judgement to an extent because from my understanding they didn't like it. 

I understand your frustration and skeptism, I main Thief and while I don't know whether you main it or not but you clearly have been burned at least a little by the constant ineffective and backwards changes, and I have too. But we need to appreciate every victory we get, and we need to show Anet that things like these changes are a step in the right direction.

Cannot put into words just how bad the Deadeye changes were, they could've killed it at a fundamental level, it's whole shtick is being a sniper and they almost got rid of it being a sniper. But instead they listened and changed it for, imo, the better, they didn't need to give rifle 4 this update but they did anyway.

I'm saying that we need to stay positive, it's too early to tell how CmC will compare to the old balance team, we gave Anet our feedback and they listened, not only that, they went a step further and gave Deadeye a new skill. But I will reiterate that it's important to be constructive if we think Anet is missing the mark, people saying the range changes suck are likely a big part of what got it reverted.

Edited December 2, 2022 by SamuelW.2685

[Jumpel.3972]

3 hours ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

 

If anything, they will remove it again like they did like 3 years ago when it initially was removed.

DJ never pierce before last patch. Back then, they remove the unblockable that they add with DE rework

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

10 hours ago, SamuelW.2685 said:

Just played Deadeye today cause I was so bumed out from the preview patch notes I didn't want to when the patch went live

Not only did they keep the 1500 range while kneeling, they also added a whole new skill to kneeling rifle 4! You can shadowstep if you step into the cover, that you can now place further away! It doesn't have to in front of you now, it makes the RP walk in kneel more useable cause you can use it to shadowstep away from danger! 

I know it's a small change, but the reason I'm so happy about it is that it's telling us that Anet listened to us, the 1500 range change was HORRIBLE, it killed Deadeye thematically, it's made to be a sniper and they were gonna gut what made it a sniper, but now we get to keep it, on top of Deaths Judgement piercing and the new kneeling skill, it makes me so, so happy, it keeps Deadeye fun and helps make it just a liiiiiitle bit less memey, haha.

Are there issues still? Of course, I still think the kneel initiative increase is silly and rifle could really use piercing on all it's attacks, and keeping with guns on Thief it'd be awesome if they brought Ricochet back to give us another tagging weapon other then Shortbow, but I still think this is a step in the right direction. 

My only issue is how they said nothing, when they were gonna nerf Mirage a while back they made a post saying they were gonna revert it, checking the dev tracker and don't see nothing about this change to the patch notes, only in the notes themselves are they listed, ideally they wouldn't have to make a update cause the patch would be perfect from the get go but more transparency would be apricated in cases like this.

Yeah, I agree that it's nice, but I'm not surprised.

About kneel initiative costs. I thought about it when it was discussed on the EcK thieves discord. It's not like one is popping in and out of kneel that often so the change is fine to me IMO. I've been playing deadeye in PvE map meta events for fun to see how it feels and honestly it's great. I'm using a pylon rifle build and still I get top 10 DPS easily. With some practice, and a more optimal build I could get it even higher. It's easy to flank and I rarely leave kneel. There's some other changes I wish would happen (the 90% modifiers being looked at), but overall I am pretty happy too.

Edited December 2, 2022 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[ozgu.6524]

Even though I still insist on the vanilla Deadeye, it is obvious that the last update has brought some cool stuff.

But, it is still useless and ineffective if you wish to exploit kneel skills.
Because you even cannot fill your malice (in case for m7) with Three Round Burst because of its high initiative cost, while you can with Skirmisher's Shot easily...

So, I cannot see much reason to use kneel other than shadowstepping with the new skill, Death's Advance.

[Doggie.3184]

Still want a Rifle AoE skill and/or Pierce on 1 to fully like it but I'm actually enjoying DE at the moment, including Dual Dagger in PvE (not death blossom tho, still don't like it or the forced movement^^). Still tricky in WvW but I feel like I can actually do something now to people who fail to counter it. And yes there are a lot of counters. In a moderate sized on both sized skirmish I was picking off a lot of people for maybe a good 30mins till they all started working together rotating wall and reflect skills, making me have to swap to melee most of the time.

Feels strong in small groups but not overpowered, yet also weak in very large zerg battles since all Rifle can do is pierce on 2 till out of ini, leaving you vulnerable, and Shadow Flare doesn't do much damage on it's long CD + mostly disables stealth during the duration.

Would like to know what's with Deadeye mark still not working on certain bosses though, and even weirder you can mark Leviathan in Kaineng but spending Ini doesn't give malice and SP Leviathan can't be marked neither on land or water. Tarir meta can't be marked. The rock/water boss thingy in fractal 100 can't be marked and so on.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[Bunny.9834]

On 12/1/2022 at 11:05 PM, SamuelW.2685 said:

I'm saying that we need to stay positive, it's too early to tell how CmC will compare to the old balance team, we gave Anet our feedback and they listened, not only that, they went a step further and gave Deadeye a new skill. But I will reiterate that it's important to be constructive if we think Anet is missing the mark, people saying the range changes suck are likely a big part of what got it reverted.

People have every reason to be skeptical and pessimistic because historically the balance them never listened to thief players the same way they listened to other classes. 

The fact that CmC and his team pulled back on that nerf range gave me hope. 

This is the balance team that actually listens to the playerbase.  

 

[kash.9213]

On 12/1/2022 at 6:23 PM, voltaicbore.8012 said:

Shadowstep through rifle 4 is good, but the kneel RP walk is still stupid. I accidentally shadowstepped into a dungeon boss' face using kneel 4 lol.

I think the walk is still utterly useless - I do what I used to, which is to dodge, un-kneel, and run if needed. The RP walk does nothing for me.  EDIT: I'm stupid. I just use Death's Advance by dropping the field right on me as I kneel, but I realise if you drop it a bit offset from you, you can now RP walk into it to enable the shadowstep. I guess that ONE function is what I'll use it for. If I'm in a fight where I know I need to make space faster, I'll take roll for initiaive or something to help.

At least the kneel shadowstep means I never need to take those other movement utilities anymore, which is nice.

It takes getting a feel for the perfect speed, but you can Kneel-> drop Snipers Cover-> flip it to Death's Advance-> Right Mouse Camera pan around left, right, or top over arch-> activate Death's Advance-> then nearly but not quite immediately Right Mouse drag Camera back around or over top to normal view and it should propel you backwards or back left or right (you'll land back right if you panned camera to the left and the same for the other direction like parking a hitched trailer). 

I can't describe well the feel of the perfect speed or pace of the camera pan (you have to tune in to the inertia of it and feel the start of the sequence, the middle, and the end up to where you're back there and facing where you want, all at the same time) and doing a straight back shot is tricky and more about just doing it than thinking too hard about it, but it's a similar vibe of fly fishing or swinging a weapon in Skyrim but it's swinging the weapon around and then pulling it back with that mouse and camera mechanics. Or, it's the same as Death's Retreat or Withdraw and will act a little differently depending on Default cam or Action Cam. I think Death's Advance get's a little more control when you have a target selected than Death's Retreat, but you can always detarget or get used to toggling in and out of Action cam frequently.

Action cam feels more natural and works basically the same. Just remember to feel out where you want to land and it should face you correctly if you held the camera pan right and angle into it a little, only just enough, as needed. 

Again, too hard to describe and wont always be super accurate but it's doable if you don't always want to jump forward with that. 

Edited December 5, 2022 by kash.9213

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

im amazed as well. With DoubleTap in EcK, the pvx thief only guild,  im hoping through our goals and exploits (not in the cheating sense) we can help pass along thief bugs, concerns and such more with him maining thief thay he can get the word to those responsibile for thief balance. So far so good.

The range nerf would have absolutely killed deadeye.  Great job listening...but can we keep it going?!?!

[Rukia.4802]

The thief changes are great, coming from one that hasn't played in about a year.

 

Deadeye D/D power with rifle on swap using the updated shadow arts is really good for open world & general questing. Dancing daggers does a fine job of aoe tagging and also happens to be your main spammable to build malice for backstabs, I feel like this skill is far more accurate than it used to be too.

 

Swap the shadow arts out for crit strikes and its very good in strike/raid/fractal as well. I can finally drop Daredevil staff which I had been using literally since HoT. Dual daggers will forever be the OG and best thief fantasy, it deserved a good power variant.

 

I'm not a fan of rifle thematically, but now that its fluid and easier to use its a powerful range option. I feel like aoe on rifle doesn't fit and some people want to have everything on a single weapon set so thats basically a 1st world problem kinda thing. I wouldn't be opposed to pistols (yuck) getting ricochet on unload only, that way its kinda the aoe range damage option. Shortbow can remain the boring 1 spam utility weapon it always has been.