Thief "Deadly Aim Trait" still needs some attention from Balance Team

[Doggie.3184]

This has been a frustrating issue for me and I want to know why this is never addressed. The trait; "Deadly Aim" has some serious issues in both PvP and PvE that have been ignored nomatter how many times it's reported, for several years, but here's another thread about it anyways:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Aim_(trait)

TLDR: The Deadly Aim trait is bad in many ways and requiring it for a basic Quality-of-Life feature everyone else gets for free feels very bad. 

As a customer, my favorite product GW2 provided me with was the "Dual Pistol" 'Gunslinger' weaponset on Thief back when the 1050 range and Ricochet trait existed. I considered it the most fun weaponset in game. Way back in 2015 Anet deleted it all and eventually replaced it with a broken unfinished trait, and didn't tell us why, and never looked back, what's going on with this? All I could assume was the weaponset was just shelfed completely to promote Rifle, which wasn't all that different than what we had with Pistols, except without Ricochet on either weapon.

1. Thief "Deadly Aim" Trait, (which oddly has the same name as the 'Rifle 1 Auto Attack') is the only self-debilitating trait in the game. It reduces all damage you deal even if you're fighting only 1 target, just to obtain Pierce. I feel like it was supposed to reduce damage on additional targets after the first Pierce but was designed incorrectly and never double checked. Further damage is lost when taking it just from not taking a different trait instead like 'Practiced Tolerance.' 

2. Pistol damage is currently low, so why the reduced damage at all? Headshot damage is reduced by this trait by a far higher percent than 5.

3. Pistol is a Hybrid weapon and Deadly Aim is in "Critical Strikes," making it not even an option for condition builds as that traitline isn't taken for it. The weaponset doesn't have much to distinguish it from Rifle other than it's off-hand pistol for more breakbar damage and a Black Powder + Bounding Dodge combo for Stealth Attacks that doesn't even fully function because personal combo fields aren't prioritized for Bounding Dodger finishers; so ally fields will override them 100% of the time regardless of the placement order: This makes the combo completely unuseable in all forms of group play since ally combo fields are always on the ground under enemies.

4. Literally all other gun users in the game have baseline Pierce, Explosion bullets or Bouncy bullets~ some doing multiple of those at same time like Pierce+Explosion Engineer Rifle AA. Why is Thief the only one who not only gets nothing of the sort baseline for their Pistols but is the only one with a negative-damage Pierce trait? You're even deleting the trait requirement for Pierce from Revenant Shortbow soon, it's hard not to feel jealousy and neglect from that with what Thief is left with. Elementalist is also already popping off with multi-explosion lava bullets with their Pistol, followed by Guardian Pistols with baseline Pierce, among other baseline AoEs.

5. The trait still shows a cooldown from back when it was 'Ankle Shots,' even further making it look like it's been totally forgotten by Anet. Ankle Shots didn't AoE but at least it had 10% increased damage instead of -5%.

6. I feel like most gun bullet skills are naturally designed to explode because of how Pierce physics functions on them and that was somehow just forgotten for Thief when they removed Ricochet. Piercing bullets fire in a straight line and often arch upwards missing targets behind the first one (they can even fly 90 degrees upwards if you're too close). Ricochet's bounce functioned superiorly to Deadly Aim's Pierce because of this. Returning to bounce like Necromancer's first Pistol attack or adding an AoE explosion around struck target like Engineer's would be more reliable. All these other gun classes get these features for free. Thief is the only one with nothing baseline and needs a trait that's in the wrong traitline which also punishes them for taking it. 
 
7. The upcoming patch totally ignores these issues and does something unrelated to any Thief Pistol requests I've even seen, despite improving this very issue on a totally different class, Revenant, that didn't even need it as much because their Pierce trait didn't cause self-harm and increases damage. Oh it was on the wrong Revenant traitline preventing other builds from using it? WELL so is Deadly Aim, it's locked in a traitline condition builds don't use. Why does this continue to be missed on Thief when you're already in that neighborhood of thought?

Please fix this. This trait's been in a poor state for way too long. If it's going to continue to never be fixed then I want to at least know why. Give us an actual logical reason for Deadly Aim to be designed this way. Give us a sign Anet even acknowledges this trait exists and that it's a problem to your Thief customers.

Edited November 17 by Doggie.3184

[Asra.8746]

They fixed it for you.

You wanted pierce with no negatives for free? You got it!

[Doggie.3184]

Yes, even Guardian gets baseline pierce and etc, as I expected.

Thief is literally the only Pistol user without this QoL feature. Please fix this Anet.

[Stx.4857]

Yes..  A-net has been pretty bad about keeping certain weapons and traits up to date.  
 

please buff or rework deadly aim and dual pistols, and also buff sword in pve, it’s useless…

[SoftPup.3048]

Thank you Doggie for always fighting the good fight to fix thief pistols. I miss Ricochet so much.

[draxynnic.3719]

At the very least, the damage penalty should go. The trait already has an opportunity cost damage penalty by competing with DPS traits, it doesn't need an additional penalty.

[anonim.5932]

18 hours ago, Asra.8746 said:

They fixed it for you.

You wanted pierce with no negatives for free? You got it!

That was also, what I was thinking when seeing guardian pistole - first, make thief's pistol hit multiple targets somehow. It seems so unfair, that "the main pistol user" class does not have any viable option for that...
One solution could be that only first target get's full damage and pierced ones get a bit reduced damage perhaps? If that kind of reduction is needed...

Edited November 18 by anonim.5932

[nopoet.2960]

Unpopular opinion:

So I've been playing around with deadly aim on a p/d build (Crit strikes/Trickery/x).  It's ...not so bad under the right circumstances.  I actually get why there is a damage reduction.  Pistol was intended to be a single target weapon.  Taking one trait has the potential to double (or more) your damage output in a lot of fights.  Yes, it's a trade off but not a completely unfair one.

Finally, we can't have access to piercing and bouncing bullets at the same time.  The logic would get weird.

[Doggie.3184]

35 minutes ago, nopoet.2960 said:

Unpopular opinion:

So I've been playing around with deadly aim on a p/d build (Crit strikes/Trickery/x).  It's ...not so bad under the right circumstances.  I actually get why there is a damage reduction.  Pistol was intended to be a single target weapon.  Taking one trait has the potential to double (or more) your damage output in a lot of fights.  Yes, it's a trade off but not a completely unfair one.

Finally, we can't have access to piercing and bouncing bullets at the same time.  The logic would get weird.

I've played around with it a ton yeah, considering it's my favorite weaponset, and I wish it could be viable and less frustrating, but no it's not great and actually try testing the DPS. Pierce is okay if it's Baseline on some Bullet skills, especially the AA and Stealth Attack. It's better designed to suit lobbing projectiles though like Arrows which gain a lot more use (and range) from those traits. Which is why Pistols were infinitely more fun, useful and functioned better with the old trait Ricochet; so Bounce would be preferred over Pierce~ Explosions would also be preferred. Regardless, even if it stayed; Deadly Aim still needs moved to a Hybrid tree so both Condi & Power can use it, and have it actually improve damage, or just have it made Baseline for Pistol 1 and certain skills.

You're weakened VS multiple enemies and you're weakened even more anytime you're fighting 1 target with this trait~ for no reason at all. There's just no getting around that, it's an unfair problem. No one else deals with something like that, it needs to go. It's likely designed incorrectly and forgotten anyways.

Now we have Rifle using the same moveset as P/P with it's differences just being it gets extra range, extra leaps and it's black powder variant blocks bullets. We also have Scepter/Pistol now too which replaces the Condi variants of Dual Pistols and Pistol/Dagger while all being single target focused. We got three/four weaponsets doin' the same thing right now.

[nopoet.2960]

20 minutes ago, Doggie.3184 said:

...

You're weakened VS multiple enemies and you're weakened even more anytime you're fighting 1 target with this trait~ for no reason at all. There's just no getting around that, it's an unfair problem. No one else deals with something like that, it needs to go. It's likely designed incorrectly and forgotten anyways.

...

This is the part I disagree with.  Without the trait you can only damage one enemy at a time.  With Deadly Aim you can damage 5 at a time.  That's a reason for the damage reduction.  You can potentially multiply your damage by 5x.  Should you take it if you are not generally fighting groups of enemies, no.  Also on p/d strike damages doesn't matter that much.  You really just want everyone to bleed (or bleed and poison on core).

Anet seems to doubling down on the idea that pistol is a single target weapon with the upcoming adjustments.  I'm looking forward to abusing Deadly Aim + Mark + Repeater Spam + Mercy + Repeater spam. 

P/D is my favorite set too.  Honestly, I would rather have bouncy bullets too because scepter/pistol is really really close to the playstyle we are trying to get out of piercing (for condition anyway). 

[Tails.9372]

18 minutes ago, nopoet.2960 said:

Without the trait you can only damage one enemy at a time.  With Deadly Aim you can damage 5 at a time.  That's a reason for the damage reduction.  You can potentially multiply your damage by 5x.

Just take a look at similar weapon traits on other classes like Lead the Wind for Ranger LB. That trait gives boons on hit and a cooldown reduction on top the piercing. There is no good reason for the double standard here.

[Stx.4857]

3 hours ago, nopoet.2960 said:

Unpopular opinion:

So I've been playing around with deadly aim on a p/d build (Crit strikes/Trickery/x).  It's ...not so bad under the right circumstances.  I actually get why there is a damage reduction.  Pistol was intended to be a single target weapon.  Taking one trait has the potential to double (or more) your damage output in a lot of fights.  Yes, it's a trade off but not a completely unfair one.

Finally, we can't have access to piercing and bouncing bullets at the same time.  The logic would get weird.

Why is thief forced into a single target design when other classes do the same damage but can AoE?  Why should thief have a damage penalty for piercing shots when other classes get it baseline?

 

I think I understand what you’re trying to get at, but it’s flawed at the premise because pistol does such low damage already, that the trait is more of a slap in the face than a proper trade off.  

[draxynnic.3719]

12 hours ago, nopoet.2960 said:

This is the part I disagree with.  Without the trait you can only damage one enemy at a time.  With Deadly Aim you can damage 5 at a time.  That's a reason for the damage reduction.  You can potentially multiply your damage by 5x.  Should you take it if you are not generally fighting groups of enemies, no.  Also on p/d strike damages doesn't matter that much.  You really just want everyone to bleed (or bleed and poison on core).

Anet seems to doubling down on the idea that pistol is a single target weapon with the upcoming adjustments.  I'm looking forward to abusing Deadly Aim + Mark + Repeater Spam + Mercy + Repeater spam. 

P/D is my favorite set too.  Honestly, I would rather have bouncy bullets too because scepter/pistol is really really close to the playstyle we are trying to get out of piercing (for condition anyway). 

I don't think this follows. There may have been good reason for the damage penalty at the time, but pistol isn't exactly topping the damage output tables and the trait is competing with traits that increase your damage. It's also the only case where a trait incurs a penalty (not just an opportunity cost) for the ability to hit multiple targets. Pierce is also often the hardest multitarget ability to really leverage - rifle got piercing by default not to make it an AoE weapon, but just to make sure you can continue to hit your mark in a crowd.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

13 hours ago, nopoet.2960 said:

This is the part I disagree with.  Without the trait you can only damage one enemy at a time.  With Deadly Aim you can damage 5 at a time.  That's a reason for the damage reduction.  You can potentially multiply your damage by 5x.  Should you take it if you are not generally fighting groups of enemies, no.  Also on p/d strike damages doesn't matter that much.  You really just want everyone to bleed (or bleed and poison on core).

Anet seems to doubling down on the idea that pistol is a single target weapon with the upcoming adjustments.  I'm looking forward to abusing Deadly Aim + Mark + Repeater Spam + Mercy + Repeater spam. 

P/D is my favorite set too.  Honestly, I would rather have bouncy bullets too because scepter/pistol is really really close to the playstyle we are trying to get out of piercing (for condition anyway). 

I miss Wild Bill Slicgw2 on utube. Wish he came back. Was p/d king 🤴 

[BobbyT.7192]

On 11/18/2023 at 11:53 AM, Stx.4857 said:

Why is thief forced into a single target design when other classes do the same damage but can AoE?  Why should thief have a damage penalty for piercing shots when other classes get it baseline?

 

I think I understand what you’re trying to get at, but it’s flawed at the premise because pistol does such low damage already, that the trait is more of a slap in the face than a proper trade off.  

"Purity of Purpose"..... or something like that. It give the Dev's the excuse to favor some classes over others.

[nopoet.2960]

On 11/18/2023 at 11:46 AM, Tails.9372 said:

Just take a look at similar weapon traits on other classes like Lead the Wind for Ranger LB. That trait gives boons on hit and a cooldown reduction on top the piercing. There is no good reason for the double standard here.

Yeah but a ranger can't spam rapid fire.  There's still an 8 sec cooldown.

I think we are getting bodged down thinking to narrowly about what could be done.  Alternatives to the Deadly Aim:

Ricochet: Critical Strikes with your pistol have a 50% chance to bounce to a nearby foe. Maximum of 3 bounces

Deadly Aim (reworked): Increases pistol range by 150.  Strikes on foes under 70% health trigger Lesser Signet of Shadows (Allows devs to work piercing/bounce natively into pistol)

Deadly Range: Critical Strikes increase pistol range by 50 for 6 seconds.  Can stack in intensity up to 6 times

Killing Fields: Pistol Attacks become guaranteed projectile finishers doubling the effect of finishers

 

[Virgarth.6354]

On 11/16/2023 at 5:15 AM, Doggie.3184 said:

This has been a frustrating issue for me and I want to know why this is never addressed. The trait; "Deadly Aim" has some serious issues in both PvP and PvE that have been ignored nomatter how many times it's reported, for several years, but here's another thread about it anyways:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Aim_(trait)

TLDR: The Deadly Aim trait is bad in many ways and requiring it for a basic Quality-of-Life feature everyone else gets for free feels very bad. 

As a customer, my favorite product GW2 provided me with was the "Dual Pistol" 'Gunslinger' weaponset on Thief back when the 1050 range and Ricochet trait existed. I considered it the most fun weaponset in game. Way back in 2015 Anet deleted it all and eventually replaced it with a broken unfinished trait, and didn't tell us why, and never looked back, what's going on with this? All I could assume was the weaponset was just shelfed completely to promote Rifle, which wasn't all that different than what we had with Pistols, except without Ricochet on either weapon.

1. Thief "Deadly Aim" Trait, (which oddly has the same name as the 'Rifle 1 Auto Attack') is the only self-debilitating trait in the game. It reduces all damage you deal even if you're fighting only 1 target, just to obtain Pierce. I feel like it was supposed to reduce damage on additional targets after the first Pierce but was designed incorrectly and never double checked. Further damage is lost when taking it just from not taking a different trait instead like 'Practiced Tolerance.' 

2. Pistol damage is currently low, so why the reduced damage at all? Headshot damage is reduced by this trait by a far higher percent than 5.

3. Pistol is a Hybrid weapon and Deadly Aim is in "Critical Strikes," making it not even an option for condition builds as that traitline isn't taken for it. The weaponset doesn't have much to distinguish it from Rifle other than it's off-hand pistol for more breakbar damage and a Black Powder + Bounding Dodge combo for Stealth Attacks that doesn't even fully function because personal combo fields aren't prioritized for Bounding Dodger finishers; so ally fields will override them 100% of the time regardless of the placement order: This makes the combo completely unuseable in all forms of group play since ally combo fields are always on the ground under enemies.

4. Literally all other gun users in the game have baseline Pierce, Explosion bullets or Bouncy bullets~ some doing multiple of those at same time like Pierce+Explosion Engineer Rifle AA. Why is Thief the only one who not only gets nothing of the sort baseline for their Pistols but is the only one with a negative-damage Pierce trait? You're even deleting the trait requirement for Pierce from Revenant Shortbow soon, it's hard not to feel jealousy and neglect from that with what Thief is left with. Elementalist is also already popping off with multi-explosion lava bullets with their Pistol, followed by Guardian Pistols with baseline Pierce, among other baseline AoEs.

5. The trait still shows a cooldown from back when it was 'Ankle Shots,' even further making it look like it's been totally forgotten by Anet. Ankle Shots didn't AoE but at least it had 10% increased damage instead of -5%.

6. I feel like most gun bullet skills are naturally designed to explode because of how Pierce physics functions on them and that was somehow just forgotten for Thief when they removed Ricochet. Piercing bullets fire in a straight line and often arch upwards missing targets behind the first one (they can even fly 90 degrees upwards if you're too close). Ricochet's bounce functioned superiorly to Deadly Aim's Pierce because of this. Returning to bounce like Necromancer's first Pistol attack or adding an AoE explosion around struck target like Engineer's would be more reliable. All these other gun classes get these features for free. Thief is the only one with nothing baseline and needs a trait that's in the wrong traitline which also punishes them for taking it. 
 
7. The upcoming patch totally ignores these issues and does something unrelated to any Thief Pistol requests I've even seen, despite improving this very issue on a totally different class, Revenant, that didn't even need it as much because their Pierce trait didn't cause self-harm and increases damage. Oh it was on the wrong Revenant traitline preventing other builds from using it? WELL so is Deadly Aim, it's locked in a traitline condition builds don't use. Why does this continue to be missed on Thief when you're already in that neighborhood of thought?

Please fix this. This trait's been in a poor state for way too long. If it's going to continue to never be fixed then I want to at least know why. Give us an actual logical reason for Deadly Aim to be designed this way. Give us a sign Anet even acknowledges this trait exists and that it's a problem to your Thief customers.

I wrote the same stuff when the 28th has been announced and into a couple of other discussion around the forum, it is indeed a griefing trait... They could easely make it at use by granting pierce+unblockable in order to get finally rid of that annoying barriers... But guess what, they don't care -.-... Same story for the deadeye concentration trait... 1.5% per boon (and u can barely generate 5 after a good steal), and enhanced concentration (already nerfed in competitive, just to clear the fact it will always be useless), but the trait still has some dedicated bonus to dual pistol users, something like dodge rolling giving you haste + swiftness.... Guess what again: they do not care... And the "rebooted" final trait to always perform slow is just another meme..