An Eye on the Deadeye

[TwiceDead.1963]

Oooo... Interesting. Gonna be fun to play around with, already got an armor set focused on Boon Duration on one of my Deadeyes, seems like he's getting a buff.

Not sure about that Sword stealth-attack though...Most who run swords are running Acrobatics in conjunction, and the Vigor boost endurance regen along with the initiative evades would make any more Endurance kind of superfluous. I guess we'll see.

I'm excited regardless.

[saerni.2584]

As for Malice gain on crit this substantially increases the value of Condi/Vitality/Precision stats.

But that assumes the per malice bonus is significant enough to justify taking extra crit for condi builds.

[omgdracula.6345]

Just sitting here wanting the stealth attack cooldown removed because its clunky as shit.

[stone cold.8609]

It sounds like the new system will be a bit like warrior adrenaline - spend initiative (i.e. attack) to gain malice (i.e. adrenaline). After it is built up, gain a stealth based more powerful attack (i.e. burst). Did I get this right?

I wonder how the melee builds will work with this and hope there is a good non-sniper rifle based build that will come out of this.

[Turk.5460]

@Sarge shot Grif.6450 said:Welp... I'm super mixed on this and I think it will all boil down to how much, if at all, they changed BQoBK.

PS: Since this seems to be a thread that the devs are watching I might as well ask a question I've had for a while now. Whenever you're using a rifle with a unique firing sound and mute them it only plays the rifle 2 sound for all shots instead of their own sounds , is this intended or a bug? I really hope it's a bug that can be fixed because I adore the sound design for the rifle ( both rifle 3 skills for example) and I'd love to have predator shots with all correct sounds.

Also is there a chance for us to get an option to hide unique projectiles (Hope, dreamer, chuka etc) because the projectile effects for deadeye are really nice.

I am completely the opposite here, I hate the DE rifle sounds. I'm stuck with using Scarlet's Rainbow just because the gunfire sound effect is much more punchy and brutal. I wish they would change the default DE rifle sounds to something less...laser gunny.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@Robert Gee.9246 is there any chance that you could look into why certain “1200” and “1500”Range Skills hit a lot further than Deaedeye’s 1500 Range Skills? A lot of players have been wanting better clarification to end this discussion once and for all o if at all possible, since there is nothing stating the discrepancy from Anet on the old forums new forums or on the Reddit.

[MakubeC.3026]

Can't say I'm loving these changes from the get-go :/Let's see how they do live. Wishing for the best!

[babazhook.6805]

HYbrid might become more a thing. I have a build using grieving armor in a p/d spec and this switch can be a win win if I am understanding how it intended to work.

I am also reading that Malice no longer tied to the mark. I am not clear on this that will change the dynamic of the spec.

S/d builds I used never relied on stealth and the stealth attack a lot and this might change things up for that spec requiring a change in how one plays. If entering stealth key to maximizing a DE build , S/d and s/p in particular might not be as well suited as they are today. D/p might do better in a DE build then it does now.

Rather then stack malice while parked in stealth, I have always favored popping in and out to launch attacks. The number one issue as I see it is how the specs that do not have ease of stealth access (s/p , p/p , SB and to a lesser degree s/d) will perform under DE.

While I reserve final judgement until I see the full roll out and changes and test the builds, at this point I am leaning to the positive side.

[Delweyn.1309]

Well, I suppose the overall changes turn around some points

• make spe less bursty. Even if it's the goal of the spe, I suppose too many people (victims) were angry about it
• remove stealth. Because it makes some people (enemies) angry.
• make spe less skilled. Because I suppose some average sniper weren't able to survive well with quick reflexes, so it's better to make spe with simple mecanic of tank more.

I may be wrong but ......

[Nightmare.1234]

this sounds more complicated than previous. I got a feeling this all just a massive over the top work around to people camping stealth in pvp, building up high stacks and then bursting people down. because they will need to have to fight their target for a bit first to get the high stack modifiers then go into stealth if they want to hit a stealth burst.

maybe the changes be healthier will have to see how they work.

[bq pd.2148]

@babazhook.6805 said:I am also reading that Malice no longer tied to the mark. I am not clear on this that will change the dynamic of the spec.malice is still tied to the mark.you build malice only by hitting the marked target, you spent malice only by hitting your marked targed according to the dev posts on page1.

S/d builds I used never relied on stealth and the stealth attack a lot and this might change things up for that spec requiring a change in how one plays. If entering stealth key to maximizing a DE build , S/d and s/p in particular might not be as well suited as they are today. D/p might do better in a DE build then it does now.

problem is that you need to use alot of ini to build up malice and then still need stealth to use that. at least with rifle many wont even survive to the point that i am at full malice.Rather then stack malice while parked in stealth, I have always favored popping in and out to launch attacks. The number one issue as I see it is how the specs that do not have ease of stealth access (s/p , p/p , SB and to a lesser degree s/d) will perform under DE.

the problem i see here is that you will use all your malice on stealth attacks but the build up is too slow and costs too many resources - poping in and out of stealth costs alot of resources, but you will spamm them into malice gain, so you wont pop in and out or wont reach close to max malice

[Lucinellia.9247]

Hello to all the sneaky thieves out there! I'm unstealthing today to reveal details of the upcoming changes to the Deadeye profession. In a previous update we increased the damage of rifle skills to put Deadeye in a good spot from a DPS-perspective

@Robert Gee.9246 While I appreciate the considerable amount of work you and the team have put into redesigning Deadeye (and I sincerely wish that it pays off), I do want to point out that Deadeye is not in a good spot from a DPS-perspective. While it can benchmark almost 33k currently, Deadeye gives up all WASD based mobility, all CC, any additional utility and all cleave to achieve this - and it is still 3k benchmark DPS behind Spellbreaker which offers cleave, the ability to move and CC. Furthermore, Deadeye DPS is incredibly vulnerable to adds body blocking the Malice target since our heavy hitting abilities do not cleave. The current DPS pattern of Deadeye, whether being played with rifle, dagger/dagger or switching between the two offers lower burst damage and lower sustained damage than the accepted power classes of Dragonhunter, Holosmith and Weaver. This is backed up by even a casual glance at relative PvE performance on GW2raidar - I shouldn't be hitting 99th percentile as a Deadeye on a fight such as Samarog and seeing a substantially lower ranked Weaver almost 3k DPS above me (though admittedly, this is the hitbox issue at play and statistical significance and what not).

I hope Deadeye suffering from poor DPS and heavy handed restrictions is being considered with the redesign since Deadeye can easily end up with engaging and fun mechanics but a lack a reason to be taken to high end PvE content. That would be a shame for something that appears to have had a good degree of thought and effort going into and has some thieves excited and talking for the first time in a long time. I'd personally suggest a single target DPS closer to 37k due to the lack of cleave but I'm sure other opinions on that will vary.

Anyway, thank you. As anyone that knows me will attest, I've been a vocal complainer about the state of thief, both in general and relative to others. The role and position of Deadeye has been paramount to that so I am really happy that at least Anet seems aware of some of the problems facing thieves and that you are actively trying to make this profession better. For someone like myself, with 4k+ hours on thief but needing to main support in raids because I can rarely justify my DPS slot, the attention and communication means a lot. Thanks!

Can you elaborate what you do in raids with those permanent revealed on you? You are just saying you can't play deadeye in raids?

Permanent reveal is only an issue on Deimos and even without clearing it, Deadeye functions fine currently if you are doing the ranged strategy. Other bosses where you get long duration reveal (such as Samarog fixate), you switch to dagger/dagger and simply auto while keeping up Deadeye's Mark and Shadow Flare, taking advantage of the Revealed Training trait. On other bosses, the reveals are not an issue.

However, I'd hope that the Deimos reveal is reconsidered since it is currently out of line with other bosses and would negatively impact Deadeye after these changes.

I guess we have to see the benefits of those new stealth attacks, but is it really better than 21% dmg ?

It sounds like that is being baked into a trait. I hope it is!

[Doggie.3184]

My main Gameplay with Deadeye (just as I played Core Thief and Daredevil) has still been focused on dealing brute force ungimmicked damage and avoiding damage manually with fast movement/teleports/dodging/trickery/etc like GW1 Assassin over hiding from it in stealth. I hope you leave enough options in Deadeye to keep it fun and useful for people who use little to no Stealth in their builds.

[Spurnshadow.3678]

Sounds like this is making sense.

The only issue I see is having malace spending tied to stealth. There are lots of thieves who don't use a lot of stealth and lots of builds that have 0 stealth. This would ensure that we trait into SA which is unfair trait wise, but also forces us into a certain play style. Perhaps tying malace spending to the Deadeye utilites as well would be good as well for the less stealthy theives.

[Leo G.4501]

@stone cold.8609 said:It sounds like the new system will be a bit like warrior adrenaline - spend initiative (i.e. attack) to gain malice (i.e. adrenaline). After it is built up, gain a stealth based more powerful attack (i.e. burst). Did I get this right?

I wonder how the melee builds will work with this and hope there is a good non-sniper rifle based build that will come out of this.

That's probably the reason I'm not all that interested in this change. If I want to play that type of gameplay, I can play one of my warriors. If they initially released DE as a war inspired thf spec, that would be different. Instead they are taking away one play style to give me another I can already play.

[dragonkain.3984]

Some COMMON SENSE things deadeye totally needs to stop being garbage in pvp:

**1. Remove ALL sound warnings to enemies, no other class screams into your eardrums like this supposedly-stealth based assassin, which is just ABSURD. No other class in game screams into your ears that he's about to kill you.

2. Make not-kneel-based rifle into an actually useful weapon, currently its absolute joke when you're not kneeling. Offer players an alternative playstyle with not-kneel based rifle deadeye.
3. Make kneel have 0 cast-time, it's absurd how much casting needs to be done only to start dealing damage to someone. Mark=cast time, kneel=cast time, all rifle attacks=cast time. It takes around 2 seconds only to start dealing ANY damage, by that time your target already ran a mile away when he noted a mark above his head.
4. Rangers longbow has 1750 range base (yes, 1750 is the real range and not 1500 as description states in case you didn't know), rifle deadeye has 1200/1500.... and rangers longbow doesnt require you to stand still, can burst up to 40k dmg every 30 seconds with no warnings whatsoever, yeah, 40k burst out of nowhere, pretty funny how bow rangers are so much more op than rifle sniper eh? To make deadeye less garbage buff range to 1750 both kneeling and not kneeling, it's a fkn rifle, rifles are supposed to have longer range than bows.
5. Retreat on rifle is useless in 80% of situations because terrain still makes it bug in almost all maps that have even a slightest elevation, making you NOT want to use it at all because you know that there's high chance that it will do NOTHING. To fix this just make it a short range targeted teleport, like mirages elite, 450 range anywhere mesmer clicks, it will be balanced because it costs initiative to use it while it costs nothing for mesmer. Mesmer can do it even while using other skills/attacks too.**

READ THIS POST DEVS.

[bambi.6214]

Awesome!

Can we get similar, solid rework for Scrapper too, pretty please? :(

[Kallist.5917]

From the sounds of this, can we expect DE rifle to lose a good amount of its DPS? I was able to do just under 1M damage to Teq during a burn phase, Will the damage be comparable now that we have to rebuild Malice every DJ?

[Asphelt.6802]

@"dragonkain.3984" said:Some COMMON SENSE things deadeye totally needs to stop being garbage in pvp:

**1. Remove ALL sound warnings to enemies, no other class screams into your eardrums like this supposedly-stealth based assassin, which is just ABSURD. No other class in game screams into your ears that he's about to kill you.

2. Make not-kneel-based rifle into an actually useful weapon, currently its absolute joke when you're not kneeling. Offer players an alternative playstyle with not-kneel based rifle deadeye.
3. Make kneel have 0 cast-time, it's absurd how much casting needs to be done only to start dealing damage to someone. Mark=cast time, kneel=cast time, all rifle attacks=cast time. It takes around 2 seconds only to start dealing ANY damage, by that time your target already ran a mile away when he noted a mark above his head.
4. Rangers longbow has 1750 range base (yes, 1750 is the real range and not 1500 as description states in case you didn't know), rifle deadeye has 1200/1500.... and rangers longbow doesnt require you to stand still, can burst up to 40k dmg every 30 seconds with no warnings whatsoever, yeah, 40k burst out of nowhere, pretty funny how bow rangers are so much more op than rifle sniper eh? To make deadeye less garbage buff range to 1750 both kneeling and not kneeling, it's a kitten rifle, rifles are supposed to have longer range than bows.
5. Retreat on rifle is useless in 80% of situations because terrain still makes it bug in almost all maps that have even a slightest elevation, making you NOT want to use it at all because you know that there's high chance that it will do NOTHING. To fix this just make it a short range targeted teleport, like mirages elite, 450 range anywhere mesmer clicks, it will be balanced because it costs initiative to use it while it costs nothing for mesmer. Mesmer can do it even while using other skills/attacks too.**

READ THIS POST DEVS.

Absolutely bloody nailed it. Non of these changes conflict with the core reworks they seem to be making and would make rifle far more fun. I don't mind sacrificing mobility for range and stealth, it gives the class another option and if you don't like it, don't play it. But kneel needs to be quicker, and honestly I'd also remove all damage from retreat so it doesn't break stealth meaning you can re-position a short distance away. It already costs 5 in pvp so you cannot spam it, if it was done right they could make it cost 6 and it would still be viable, while not replacing shortbow which had a much greater range. Also maybe instead of removing cursed bullet just remove the extra kneel damage and make it the standing stealth attack, the new DJ the kneeling one.

[Ouranoz.9275]

The rework sounds interesting, always good to get a breath of fresh air. Although I worry it's going to break my interrupt based build but hey! My only question is if this has been confirmed to come out with the underwater skills balance patch?

Thanks

[Swagger.1459]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@"MicROpart.7905" said:am I the only one think that this change is make deadeye alot useless now? the class called deadeye, using rifle as sniper rifle, whic the point is to "kill fast as posible, without drawing to much attention" now they change the malice to only generate if u hit them, whic taking much more more more time to kill.. dahell? better scrap the name "deadeye" and change it to something else like, "I'll poke u first so I can kill u", I'm sorry but i have to say this is ridiculous..

Not everyone wanted the Deadeye to be something that camped stealth. Permastealth + Nuke is unhealthy design and makes for horrendously boring gameplay for a majority of people.

We agree on this, and can’t be said enough! Great post!

[kash.9213]

@Swagger.1459 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@"MicROpart.7905" said:am I the only one think that this change is make deadeye alot useless now? the class called deadeye, using rifle as sniper rifle, whic the point is to "kill fast as posible, without drawing to much attention" now they change the malice to only generate if u hit them, whic taking much more more more time to kill.. dahell? better scrap the name "deadeye" and change it to something else like, "I'll poke u first so I can kill u", I'm sorry but i have to say this is ridiculous..

Not everyone wanted the Deadeye to be something that camped stealth. Permastealth + Nuke is unhealthy design and makes for horrendously boring gameplay for a majority of people.

We agree on this, and can’t be said enough! Great post!

Micropart is right though as well as MUDse, why are we calling this a Deadeye then and what are we trying to make this elite into? This proposed change sounds more like an old 80's action movie, spray shooting from the hip running at full speed to try to land as many crits as we can. As it is we can build our DE's for multiple play styles, that doesn't sound like the case post change. DE's look likely to be funneled into an optimal sequence, optimal weapon set, and likely traits unless there's more fleshed out details they haven't shared yet about how fluid stealthing with rifle, pistol, etc will be and how many build choices traits will allow to limit any favoring of one stealth attack over others and what kind of damage increases we can get.

[bq pd.2148]

@kash.9213 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@"MicROpart.7905" said:am I the only one think that this change is make deadeye alot useless now? the class called deadeye, using rifle as sniper rifle, whic the point is to "kill fast as posible, without drawing to much attention" now they change the malice to only generate if u hit them, whic taking much more more more time to kill.. dahell? better scrap the name "deadeye" and change it to something else like, "I'll poke u first so I can kill u", I'm sorry but i have to say this is ridiculous..

Not everyone wanted the Deadeye to be something that camped stealth. Permastealth + Nuke is unhealthy design and makes for horrendously boring gameplay for a majority of people.

We agree on this, and can’t be said enough! Great post!

Micropart is right though as well as MUDse, why are we calling this a Deadeye then and what are we trying to make this elite into? This proposed change sounds more like an old 80's action movie, spray shooting from the hip running at full speed to try to land as many crits as we can. As it is we can build our DE's for multiple play styles, that doesn't sound like the case post change. DE's look likely to be funneled into an optimal sequence, optimal weapon set, and likely traits unless there's more fleshed out details they haven't shared yet about how fluid stealthing with rifle, pistol, etc will be and how many build choices traits will allow to limit any favoring of one stealth attack over others and what kind of damage increases we can get.

and especially it would be nice to know if we do get options to gain malice aside from the 'hit your marked target with a skill that costs initative'. because that is the main reason that is going against stealth play on DE. you need resources to play with stealth be it in and out or camping, but having to use tons of ini to build malice through attacks - not repositioning / stealthing, will simply leave little room to utilize stealth and is pushing too much into a fixed playstyle.

[MakubeC.3026]

I think DE appeal's was to have sustained good damage. This build up then release approach is not only lacking originality, but I feel is going to be clunky if locked behind stealth. There so many good suggestions in some threads about how to improve DE. I can't believe Anet went for this.

[Bunny.9834]

@"dragonkain.3984" said:Some COMMON SENSE things deadeye totally needs to stop being garbage in pvp:

**1. Remove ALL sound warnings to enemies, no other class screams into your eardrums like this supposedly-stealth based assassin, which is just ABSURD. No other class in game screams into your ears that he's about to kill you.

2. Make not-kneel-based rifle into an actually useful weapon, currently its absolute joke when you're not kneeling. Offer players an alternative playstyle with not-kneel based rifle deadeye.
3. Make kneel have 0 cast-time, it's absurd how much casting needs to be done only to start dealing damage to someone. Mark=cast time, kneel=cast time, all rifle attacks=cast time. It takes around 2 seconds only to start dealing ANY damage, by that time your target already ran a mile away when he noted a mark above his head.
4. Rangers longbow has 1750 range base (yes, 1750 is the real range and not 1500 as description states in case you didn't know), rifle deadeye has 1200/1500.... and rangers longbow doesnt require you to stand still, can burst up to 40k dmg every 30 seconds with no warnings whatsoever, yeah, 40k burst out of nowhere, pretty funny how bow rangers are so much more op than rifle sniper eh? To make deadeye less garbage buff range to 1750 both kneeling and not kneeling, it's a kitten rifle, rifles are supposed to have longer range than bows.
5. Retreat on rifle is useless in 80% of situations because terrain still makes it bug in almost all maps that have even a slightest elevation, making you NOT want to use it at all because you know that there's high chance that it will do NOTHING. To fix this just make it a short range targeted teleport, like mirages elite, 450 range anywhere mesmer clicks, it will be balanced because it costs initiative to use it while it costs nothing for mesmer. Mesmer can do it even while using other skills/attacks too.**

---

READ THIS POST DEVS.

NAILED IT.Totally agree with a lot of these points. I feel like the Rifle range/damage is laughable compared to the Ranger who can burst the crap out of you with more health + pet tank + better utility. The Deadeye just seems to be nothing but a gimmick spec. I would love to invest again in Assassin Attributes using high precision but it needs to have a great pay off. The range of the rifle vs the LB needs to be addressed. Trying to do anything productive during WvW group fights is interesting when Scourges literally creates WALLS OF RED CIRCLES OF DEATH while you have the unkillable Spellbreakers rushing and trolling. You're little deadeye attempts to mark someone and then marked dude rans to the back and then you're useless.

Make this Sniper and actual sniper.