Vallun's Full Analysis of Deadeye Rework Patch

[Vallun.2071]

Overall the changes to deadeye have made PvE deadeye a little more desirable because there are now DPS enhancing traits in separate lines (premeditation and be quick or be killed/maleficent seven) and the cloak and dagger initiative reduction is a nice buff for the D/D weapon set which is the highest dmg. My only change for PvE would be to make malicious intent give malice from something other than the healing skill. It just doesn't make sense to proc malice (an offensive mechanic) off of a defensive skil. Perhaps swap the functionality of One in the Chamber and Malicious Intent so that you gain an extra stolen skill from One in the Chamber when you heal since all of the stolen skills have some sort of defensive boon attached to them, and then gain extra malice from Malicious Intent when you use a cantrip.

PvP deadeye, however, feels a lot more clunky for any build that is using P/P or rifle, which were naturally the more successful deadeye builds because of the ranged steal.Pistol Pistol deadeye relied on the stun from now removed trait unforgiving to land its burst damage from unload while they have quickness up. This mechanic had decent counterplay to it because people could dodge as soon as they were stolen to to avoid the stun. Without the capability of stunning, a core critical strikes or bound daredevil pistol pistol is more effective at this role.

My suggestion is to bring back Unforgiving and combine the two traits Payback and Collateral Damage into one since they are such weak effects unless you're in open world PvE content and both trigger off of finishing your mark so they make sense together.

For rifle builds, Silent Scope was and still is a must have trait, preventing you from taking Unforgiving which is why this trait tier was a really good decision making process. As it is now, Silent Scope makes your dodge roll give you stealth instead of when you kneel. This is really unintuitive with the way deadeye works. The stealth on dodge is really nice for kiting but it happens at the beginning of your dodge rather than at the end of the dodge. What this means is if you shoot a rifle shot and then dodge something you will most likely reveal yourself as soon as you stealth because the missile will land right after. It also gives less counter play to someone chasing a deadeye to not know which direction they dodge in when they stealth.

Even if the stealth is changed to at the end of the dodge roll (which is at least better than how it is right now) it still feels wrong to dodge for stealth. How stealth attacks work now you want to unload your malice when you stealth so generally you want to be using your stealth somewhat aggresssively. Dodging does not really add to your damage in any way as opposed to before when you had to kneel for stealth. This put you in kneel which improved the damage of all your rifle abilities while also giving you a bit of detargeting cover with stealth before you unloaded your damage. Also most successful rifle builds benefitted mostly from the burst damage of double tap/triple tap burst with the mark quickness, ignoring the clunky death's judgment. While death's judgment is much better in usability right now, the way you use it with stealth by dodging is very unintuitive and generally results in you doing less damage because you're wasting animations on a dodge roll that doesnt even put you in kneel, and then because deadeye is already lacking on dodges in comparison to other thief builds you are out of dodges because you have to waste them on using malice attacks which aren't even optimal because just kneeling and spamming triple tap is probably better damage. Also there are other clunky weird situations with the new Silent Scope. For example when you need to dodge something and your silent scope icd is off cooldown but you are revealed. This makes silent scope go on icd again and you don't get stealth. Also needing to be in combat to get stealth from Silent Scope forces you to use the new kneeling smoke field for stealth openers which is even clunkier. You need to kneel > smoke field > unkneel > deaths retreat for very minimal and low value stealth openers.

My suggestion is to revert silent scope to what it was pre patch. This will make kneeling both a useful aggressive and defensive option as opposed to dodging which is a poor aggressive option but a pretty good defensive option (which is kind of the opposite of the purpose of the deadeye class). Also bring back the movement impairing condition cleanse on free action, I felt that was some nice quality of life for deadeye. If the previous kneel was an issue because it gave too much stealth access to perma stealth deadeye builds, then the requirement of using abilities to gain malice has already somewhat created a disincentive for that, forcing them to use abilities other than stealth and passive waiting to prepare their deaths judgment.

TL:DR

Combine Payback and Collateral Damage into the same spot as Collateral Damage. Put back unforgiving where Payback was. Revert Kneel and Silent Scope mechanics, Swap the trigger effects of One in the Chamber and Malicious Intent.

I'll be up for more discussion of deadeye changes on my stream which u can find below

EDIT: Also I would be much happier with the new silent scope if it just had a couple changes like i mentioned before, make the stealth at the end of the dodge and make the icd on silent scope not proc if you are revealed so you can dodge normally if you are revealed but not get punished on your icd. I do like how you are more mobile with the new silent scope but i do not like wasting dodges to do a mechanic which does not synergize with dodging at all. To be honest kneel stealth did not feel amazing either so I would definitely be fine with having it how it is now with those couple changes.

[Elxdark.9702]

Agree, like I said in my feedback revert silent scope/kneel, just by doing that this update will be 20000% much better.

The fact that we need to dodge to gain stealth and position just breaks Deadeye and the sole purpose of the spec.And as Vallun said these new traits are weak, really weak nobody will take them in pvp never they need to do something that matters.

Please revert silent scope/kneel, not gonna lie I'm having fun trying the dodge on stealth it brings some hype plays but it isn't even remotely comparable to the old mechanic, please give it us back.

[Harry.3648]

I 10000% agree bring back the old silent scope the new one feels way more clunky and doesn’t even work outside of combat

[lordhelmos.7623]

I disagree with the analysis on P/P.

After this patch, D/P + P/P permastealth build is the new apex predator. Unload and headshot are easy malice builders from stealth and once you have maleficent seven procced with the new second trait that grants bonus damage on unique boons, you can easily one shot anyone with backstab. You only need to land a few hits with the pistol to charge malificent seven and if the enemy doesn't dodge your next backstab its game over.

This patch just pisses me off. They've traded a build that took a huge amount of premeditation and simulated a stalking sniper waiting for the perfect shot and replaced it with a braindead apex build that just pidgeons thief into D/P permastealth gameplay combined with an even worse P/P pistol spam that people hated before the patch. It was like they were tired of a lesser demon running rampant so they summon lucifer himself to replace it.

You thought getting one shot by the old ghillie sniper was bad? Just wait until this gets posted on metabattle and becomes mainstream... which will be like tomorrow. Everyone will be crying for reversions.

Post patch thieves in WvW are already running marauder or valks D/P + P/P. The build just hoses damage without any delay. You are just effectively pumping out 10-12k unloads without having to worry about initiative and have a 24k backstab in your back pocket if that isn't enough to kill them or if they pop a reflect. When you start factoring in things like binding shadow to preload the backstab or if a thief with good ini management takes deadly arts, then things start to get really silly.

Rifle is effectively dead. Too much clunkiness. It's too easy to ruin stealth with the new DJ, which breaks stealth even if it doesn't fire and the new stealth on dodge within combat only just doesn't feel right. Its too easy to fire then dodge then get unstealthed when your travelled shot hits. Also as point out, thief survival is based on a rotation that balancing dodging and stealth. Burning both on one skill is counterproductive for a thief, its just not a good trait. The rifle just overall feels bad.

[RicochetXD.4128]

PVE content is no better for DE than PvP. Worse in many ways, I believe.

I main DE in PVE mostly, and I noticed a dramatic decrease in damage and evasion when running the rifle. I recently got myself a legendary, so this is more than disappointing. The new smoke screen miniature skill is redundant and less effective than its long-time counterpart, the build I was initially running ended up killing me more than once just because I would start sniping after a dodge when I was trying to evade, and the problems that had been there from the start (i.e. lack of maneuverability in a PVE environment) were still there.

From the sounds of everyone I've talked to so far that I know that also runs DE, no one likes it. A lot of people have switched back to Core Thief or Daredevil to get away from it. It just killed the class and the weapon everywhere.

[Lucinellia.9247]

I can't agree with the analysis on instanced PvE. I have quite a bit of experience as thief in a raiding environment and numerous high parse (99th or 100th percentile) logs on GW2raidar while playing Daredevil and Deadeye in the previous patch.

The changes Anet have made are abominable in an instanced raiding environment. Thief was already in a poor place so instead of Anet deciding to throw a few scant buffs in our direction, Rifle has been made useless in PvE, the new Malice mechanic is pointless in PvE and our highest DPS is indeed achieved from the "rotation" of autoattacks and CnD --> Backstab, forgoing stacking full Malice and neglecting the new Maleficent Seven trait. It is less engaging than the old Rifle setup and much less engaging than the numerically poorer power Daredevil option. If Anet had planned for a rotation involving Heartseeker to build full Malice before consuming with Backstab then they didn't test it against the most straightforward thief rotation and the baseline damage of Heartseeker or the Malice scaling of Backstab need to be increased considerably. Ideally both.

Rifle is in such a poor state for PvE and the new mechanic with stealth and Silent Scope is so clunky, unintuitive and unenjoyable that Deadeye pretty much needs a full rework. Again.

At this stage, I'm beginning to think that Anet's design and balance team hold some sort of grudge against thief. We've been bottom of the barrel with pre-patch Deadeye and power Daredevil DPS while condition Daredevil is generally mediocre (or good on bosses that don't matter and poor on the ones that do). Thief is in a really bad place. We tried to communicate this with the balance team when the Deadeye rework was announced and Anet have clearly not listened nor shown any willingness to do so.

Those words of:@Robert Gee.9246 @Gaile Gray.6029

In a previous update we increased the damage of rifle skills to put Deadeye in a good spot from a DPS-perspective, so this update is focused more around improving their gameplay patterns and mechanics.Ring with a hollowness that betrays how poor this rework has treated thief in PvE. Our DPS is going to be on par, or worse, but the rotation used to achieve it is brainless and our gameplay patterns and mechanics have been made far, far worse.

Right now, I'd be thankful for one of two things. A statement from Anet about how badly they have messed around with thieves in PvE and a promise to at least get our power DPS comparable to our condition DPS or the admission that they don't care about thief PvE, that thief is designed to be poor in instanced PvE, so that I can change to playing GW2 rarely and casually and move to a different game.

[Platanos.8107]

@"Miatela.5047" said:I can't agree with the analysis on instanced PvE. I have quite a bit of experience as thief in a raiding environment and numerous high parse (99th or 100th percentile) logs on GW2raidar while playing Daredevil and Deadeye in the previous patch.

The changes Anet have made are abominable in an instanced raiding environment. Thief was already in a poor place so instead of Anet deciding to throw a few scant buffs in our direction, Rifle has been made useless in PvE, the new Malice mechanic is pointless in PvE and our highest DPS is indeed achieved from the "rotation" of autoattacks and CnD --> Backstab, forgoing stacking full Malice and neglecting the new Maleficent Seven trait. It is less engaging than the old Rifle setup and much less engaging than the numerically poorer power Daredevil option. If Anet had planned for a rotation involving Heartseeker to build full Malice before consuming with Backstab then they didn't test it against the most straightforward thief rotation and the baseline damage of Heartseeker or the Malice scaling of Backstab need to be increased considerably. Ideally both.

When I saw the new Maleficent 7, I thought it would be great for D/D. Then I looked at the Heartseeker's damage coefficient and got sad. Shows you how much I even use heartseeker. I'm unfortunately on a trip so I can't access gw2, but on the off-chance, can you weapon-stow cancel a heal and see if you get an extra malice from the trait? Could be an easy extra 10% extra backstab damage if that's the case. For example, Trapper's Respite will proc even though you cancel your heal skill (trait still goes on 30s icd though). BQobK or whatever seems like it is going to be the better option, or uhh even daredevil d/d.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

From the PVE standpoint I'm still trying to figure out how to do the deadeye stuff now. There's a lot of things that just don't feel good anymore.

(1)The new backstab is cool, but dagger builds don't have a good way to build up malice consistently on enemies.(2)The new Death's Judgment is clunky to use, and instead of getting 30k hits solo I'm now getting 24k hits solo.(3)The traits are frustrating. Especially with the rifle. If I take premeditation, I get bonus damage from Maleficent 7, but no way to fire off DJs reliably. If I take Silent Scope, I'm now effectively running without a damage buff now that malice doesn't give me anything.

Was this all intended? The fact that I have to roll and fight with stealth mechanics just to fire off DJ feels terrible.

[Vallun.2071]

@"Miatela.5047" said:I can't agree with the analysis on instanced PvE. I have quite a bit of experience as thief in a raiding environment and numerous high parse (99th or 100th percentile) logs on GW2raidar while playing Daredevil and Deadeye in the previous patch.

The changes Anet have made are abominable in an instanced raiding environment. Thief was already in a poor place so instead of Anet deciding to throw a few scant buffs in our direction, Rifle has been made useless in PvE, the new Malice mechanic is pointless in PvE and our highest DPS is indeed achieved from the "rotation" of autoattacks and CnD --> Backstab, forgoing stacking full Malice and neglecting the new Maleficent Seven trait. It is less engaging than the old Rifle setup and much less engaging than the numerically poorer power Daredevil option. If Anet had planned for a rotation involving Heartseeker to build full Malice before consuming with Backstab then they didn't test it against the most straightforward thief rotation and the baseline damage of Heartseeker or the Malice scaling of Backstab need to be increased considerably. Ideally both.

Rifle is in such a poor state for PvE and the new mechanic with stealth and Silent Scope is so clunky, unintuitive and unenjoyable that Deadeye pretty much needs a full rework. Again.

At this stage, I'm beginning to think that Anet's design and balance team hold some sort of grudge against thief. We've been bottom of the barrel with pre-patch Deadeye and power Daredevil DPS while condition Daredevil is generally mediocre (or good on bosses that don't matter and poor on the ones that do). Thief is in a really bad place. We tried to communicate this with the balance team when the Deadeye rework was announced and Anet have clearly not listened nor shown any willingness to do so.

Now that I think of it Rifle was pretty decent in PvE before but its definitely worse now for PvE. My changes to revert Silent Scope for PvP also make it better in PvE.

Also it would be nice if building malice for backstabs other than a 2 stack for CnD but I don't think it was intended to get full malice every backstab. Though if another skill on the D/D weapon set was worth using to build malice (though I highly doubt it since you are already capped on initiative usage from CnD) then it would feel better. Still I think the changes to deadeye for D/D are positive. Of course deadeye is still far from being optimal in PvE instanced content.

[Zlater.6789]

so overall the consensus is that deadeye is worse overall?

I'm a fan of the changes because they address a lot of the problems deadeye had at its core! But yeah I'm sad that deadeye is worse off overall because of it, its a shame we have to wait another 3 months to see if they can make it a little more than barely viable.

[Urejt.5648]

i agree with some points and disagree with some. Generally i like changes a lot.

First of all i have mixed feeelings about new "Silent Scope". I like it gives stealth at the start of dodge. What i dont like it DOES NOT WORK OUT OF COMBAT. I dont like how easily u get revealed when u dodge after an atack. I rate this trait change to be much lower value now, because u cant stealth open and u have less stealth uptime. maybe if u stealth mid-dodge u would never be revealed by accident. I am discouraging from making stealth at the ned of dodge because it gives directtions to the enemy. I suggest reverting to the old versiion.

Second of all I dont like poor value of small deadeye traits in pvp:

• Malicious Intent - 1 malice on mark and one situational malice on heal is nothing of value. Maybe 400 dmg per 17 seconds if u hit deaths judgment.
• burst of Shadows is no good in pvp obv.
• One in Chamber - no good since in pvp only cantrip u use is elite Shadow Meld (1 use per 45 seconds)

Thirdly i dont like new Sniper's Cover. It doesnt blind enemies who stand on it. Bad for finishing ppl. What is more it takes too long to set up. It's cast time is only 1/4 sec, but u cant que it from stand position. When i click kneel and 4, i get msg i cant tp because game thinks i want to use Death's Retreat. Its simply too situational. Maybe if it blinded enemies standing on it...

tbc...

@Vallun.2071 said:Overall the changes to deadeye have made PvE deadeye a little more desirable because there are now DPS enhancing traits in separate lines (premeditation and be quick or be killed/maleficent seven) and the cloak and dagger initiative reduction is a nice buff for the D/D weapon set which is the highest dmg. Nice PvE changes I guess. My only change for PvE would be to make malicious intent give malice from something other than the healing skill. It just doesn't make sense to proc malice (an offensive mechanic) off of a defensive skil. Perhaps swap the functionality of One in the Chamber and Malicious Intent so that you gain an extra stolen skill from One in the Chamber when you heal since all of the stolen skills have some sort of defensive boon attached to them, and then gain extra malice from Malicious Intent when you use a cantrip.

PvP deadeye, however, feels a lot more clunky for any build that is using P/P or rifle, which were naturally the more successful deadeye builds because of the ranged steal.Pistol Pistol deadeye relied on the stun from now removed trait unforgiving to land its burst damage from unload while they have quickness up. This mechanic had decent counterplay to it because people could dodge as soon as they were stolen to to avoid the stun. Without the capability of stunning, a core critical strikes or bound daredevil pistol pistol is more effective at this role.

My suggestion is to bring back Unforgiving and combine the two traits Payback and Collateral Damage into one since they are such weak effects unless you're in open world PvE content and both trigger off of finishing your mark so they make sense together.

For rifle builds, Silent Scope was and still is a must have trait, preventing you from taking Unforgiving which is why this trait tier was a really good decision making process. As it is now, Silent Scope makes your dodge roll give you stealth instead of when you kneel. This is really unintuitive with the way deadeye works. The stealth on dodge is really nice for kiting but it happens at the beginning of your dodge rather than at the end of the dodge. What this means is if you shoot a rifle shot and then dodge something you will most likely reveal yourself as soon as you stealth because the missile will land right after. It also gives less counter play to someone chasing a deadeye to not know which direction they dodge in when they stealth.

Even if the stealth is changed to at the end of the dodge roll (which is at least better than how it is right now) it still feels wrong to dodge for stealth. How stealth attacks work now you want to unload your malice when you stealth so generally you want to be using your stealth somewhat aggresssively. Dodging does not really add to your damage in any way as opposed to before when you had to kneel for stealth. This put you in kneel which improved the damage of all your rifle abilities while also giving you a bit of detargeting cover with stealth before you unloaded your damage. Also most successful rifle builds benefitted mostly from the burst damage of double tap/triple tap burst with the mark quickness, ignoring the clunky death's judgment. While death's judgment is much better in usability right now, the way you use it with stealth by dodging is very unintuitive and generally results in you doing less damage because you're wasting animations on a dodge roll that doesnt even put you in kneel, and then because deadeye is already lacking on dodges in comparison to other thief builds you are out of dodges because you have to waste them on using malice attacks which aren't even optimal because just kneeling and spamming triple tap is probably better damage. Also there are other clunky weird situations with the new Silent Scope. For example when you need to dodge something and your silent scope icd is off cooldown but you are revealed. This makes silent scope go on icd again and you don't get stealth. Also needing to be in combat to get stealth from Silent Scope forces you to use the new kneeling smoke field for stealth openers which is even clunkier. You need to kneel > smoke field > unkneel > deaths retreat for very minimal and low value stealth openers.

My suggestion is to revert silent scope to what it was pre patch. This will make kneeling both a useful aggressive and defensive option as opposed to dodging which is a poor aggressive option but a pretty good defensive option (which is kind of the opposite of the purpose of the deadeye class). Also bring back the movement impairing condition cleanse on free action, I felt that was some nice quality of life for deadeye. If the previous kneel was an issue because it gave too much stealth access to perma stealth deadeye builds, then the requirement of using abilities to gain malice has already somewhat created a disincentive for that, forcing them to use abilities other than stealth and passive waiting to prepare their deaths judgment.

TL:DR

Combine Payback and Collateral Damage into the same spot as Collateral Damage. Put back unforgiving where Payback was. Revert Kneel and Silent Scope mechanics, Swap the trigger effects of One in the Chamber and Malicious Intent.

I'll be up for more discussion of deadeye changes on my stream which u can find below

[Lucinellia.9247]

@Vallun.2071 said:Also it would be nice if building malice for backstabs other than a 2 stack for CnD but I don't think it was intended to get full malice every backstab. Though if another skill on the D/D weapon set was worth using to build malice (though I highly doubt it since you are already capped on initiative usage from CnD) then it would feel better.

That is what bothers me. For a rework that was supposed to synergise our traits, provide better gameplay, preserve our DPS and make Malice more understandable and impactful, we end up with a rotation that is more simple than before, ignores the synergy between initiative and Malice that was supposed to come with the new Maleficent Seven since it is better to run Be Quick or Be Killed and ignores Malice building. That, with how bad rifle is in PvE, just makes it seem like Anet didn't test a single PvE rotation on either rifle or dagger/dagger.

I really hope some changes come to Heartseeker so that it is worth spending the initiative to build full (7) Malice. Perhaps improving Malicious Backstab too. That would give us some lacking synergy and a rotation that is just a tiny bit more involved.

On paper, yeah, we deal a bit more DPS as D/D in benchmarks but doing so isn't fun. It was much more enjoyable when to achieve real-usage high DPS as a Deadeye we had to switch between dagger/dagger and rifle while being careful about timing, initiative and positioning. All of that is gone with this rework and we haven't been compensated by DPS numbers that make us close to middle of the pack, never mind optimal.

[Tamurello Mistmind.5912]

@Vallun.2071 said:Overall the changes to deadeye have made PvE deadeye a little more desirable <

You obviously don't use a rifle in PvE.

[Barzah.8019]

I LOVE the DE Rifle rework despite many ppl hate it. This change give a lot of viable strategy instead of just 5,3,1,3,2,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4.... until your enemy meet it's demise or your 4 button stop working. Ofc this change also bring couple setback as well but nothing major (for now....in my opinion :D), yet i believe several minor change to DE spec can make way better.

Gain 3 initiative at full malice without the need of M7 Trait, this change could easily become the trademark for Deadeye

Remove All malice while giving 50% effect when hitting other target without mark, the most annoying part for current malice system is the need to hit the target with stealth attack in order to dump your stack. This issues r getting more tedious in PvP since your target can easily run away, leaving you with full malice that count as a burden.

Increase DJ damage to 30% on PvE, no more 5,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4 w full malice definitely took a toll on rifle damage. Adding extra 10% damage (PvE only) should be able to bring back rifle DE dmg output on PvE content.

Silent scope give stealth to dodge without the need entering combat, for better positioning...duh

@"Vallun.2071" said:Revert Kneel and Silent Scope mechanicsI disagree with this because current malice system actually encourage the user to use non kneel skill unlike previous condition where rifle kneeling attack >>> non kneeling attack. But i like your suggestion for making stealth trigger earlier so it doesn't "accidentally" trigger revealed trying use stealth dodge.

Update: i think 20% crit change when using DJ doesn't work while not kneeling...probably bugged

[Astyrah.4015]

@Barzah.8019 said:I LOVE the DE Rifle rework despite many ppl hate it. This change give a lot of viable strategy instead of just 5,3,1,3,2,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4.... until your enemy meet it's demise or your 4 button stop working.

what? you can't even spam DJ like that before. you at best were only able to DJ every 6 or so seconds after dumping your full INI for DJs when you gain full malice before the rework, if anything you were spamming 1 before hitting 4 (DJ) after doing your full malice burst and that's how you'd sustain most of your DPS for long fights

Remove All malice while giving 50% effect when hitting other target without mark, the most annoying part for current malice system is the need to hit the target with stealth attack in order to dump your stack. This issues r getting more tedious in PvP since your target can easily run away, leaving you with full malice that count as a burden.

in my opinion a better rework would be to gain a maximum of 1 malice stack if you use an INI skill on a target other than your mark. because adds body blocking your mark will prevent you from stacking malice since they removed the malice gain over time.

Increase DJ damage to 30% on PvE, no more 5,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4 w full malice definitely took a toll on rifle damage. Adding extra 10% damage (PvE only) should be able to bring back rifle DE dmg output on PvE content.

the gating of DJ to stealth took a bigger toll on rifle damage since you need more effort to do the same damage. and for other people who enjoyed the simplicity and chill gameplay of the older DE, the changes it were enough to kill the class for them, and for high end content there isnt enough time to DJ (like stop attacking and wait for your attacks to hit before dodge rolling because sniper's is broken af) as reliably as before because your dodgestealth easily breaks due to how the stealthpart is executed. the damage increase is definitely needed eitherway

[Sojourner.4621]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:From the PVE standpoint I'm still trying to figure out how to do the deadeye stuff now. There's a lot of things that just don't feel good anymore.

(1)The new backstab is cool, but dagger builds don't have a good way to build up malice consistently on enemies.(2)The new Death's Judgment is clunky to use, and instead of getting 30k hits solo I'm now getting 24k hits solo.(3)The traits are frustrating. Especially with the rifle. If I take premeditation, I get bonus damage from Maleficent 7, but no way to fire off DJs reliably. If I take Silent Scope, I'm now effectively running without a damage buff now that malice doesn't give me anything.

Was this all intended? The fact that I have to roll and fight with stealth mechanics just to fire off DJ feels terrible.

1) At least for this, if you are running Be Quick or Be Dead and Malicious Intent with a D/P build, Mark/Blackpowder/Heartseeker is your full five malice stacks as long as both Black Powder and Heartseeker hit/crit, it frontloads you in to stealth, and you have an instantly 50% boosted quickened Backstab. This combo goes off VERY fast and the backstab is consistently hitting for anywhere from 18-25k running crit strikes/trickery/deadeye with Premeditation (Fury, Might, Swiftness, Quickness, Vigor gives 5% damage boost)2) I agree with it being clunky... you're losing a flat 11% damage on it unless running Premed with a full set of boons (you still get 10% on marked targets from a minor trait). Even with Maleficent Seven you're only gaining 6%. Consider, however, that a Be Quick/Three Round Burst combo the same number of times as it would take you to reach seven malice stacks... will do about the same overall Damage (or more) as a single Death's Judgement in a shorter amount of time. If you're running trickery traitline you also already have 5 boons running the moment you steal for 5% damage with Premed (Fury, Might, Swiftness, Vigor, Quickness)3) What this means for PvP/WvW at least is that you should be running Premed and using your utilities/elite to enter in to stealth once you have full malice stacks. Your crit chance will be lower of course, but you will gain the extra 6% damage. At least at the moment, the stealth being at the start of the dodge instead of the end for Silent Scope, more often than not you will accidentally reveal yourself with a still traveling projectile. The trait is just too clunky to use in real scenarios.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Elxdark.9702 said:Agree, like I said in my feedback revert silent scope/kneel, just by doing that this update will be 20000% much better.

The fact that we need to dodge to gain stealth and position just breaks Deadeye and the sole purpose of the spec.And as Vallun said these new traits are weak, really weak nobody will take them in pvp never they need to do something that matters.

Please revert silent scope/kneel, not gonna lie I'm having fun trying the dodge on stealth it brings some hype plays but it isn't even remotely comparable to the old mechanic, please give it us back.

This... The new stealth mechanic on Silent Scope is just clunky as hell.Also the replacement of Peripheral vision was a bit bad IMO... Thief is usually a very self-centered class, and Peripheral Vision gave it a bit of interaction with others in group play, not to mention a bit extra help for fighting groups of enemies, DE doesn't have very many AoE skills. Peripheral Vision could be used to help with both these weaknesses. Losing that for CONCENTRATION? and at most 12% damage, if you manage to get in a group that can output all boons... Not the best trait replacement IMO.It all feels very clunky, the traits i mean...The Malice mechanic is better now, or i should say, at least it's not entirely dependant on using DE exclusive weapons or skills, but still feels slightly underwhelming. The fact that it's spent now when you use DJ reduces your damage output a bit compared to old DJ, but the way it stacks is better now (although i wish it'd stack without having to mark the target).The traits, however, they feel a bit clunky and disjointed, Silent scope is a complete mess, and i see myself not traiting it, and using the Elite skill to stealth.

[Sojourner.4621]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Elxdark.9702 said:Agree, like I said in my feedback revert silent scope/kneel, just by doing that this update will be 20000% much better.

The fact that we need to dodge to gain stealth and position just breaks Deadeye and the sole purpose of the spec.And as Vallun said these new traits are weak, really weak nobody will take them in pvp

never

they need to do something that matters.

Please revert silent scope/kneel, not gonna lie I'm having fun trying the dodge on stealth it brings some hype plays but it isn't even remotely comparable to the old mechanic, please give it us back.

This... The new stealth mechanic on Silent Scope is just clunky as hell.Also the replacement of Peripheral vision was a bit bad IMO... Thief is usually a very self-centered class, and Peripheral Vision gave it a bit of interaction with others in group play, not to mention a bit extra help for fighting groups of enemies, DE doesn't have very many AoE skills. Peripheral Vision could be used to help with both these weaknesses. Losing that for CONCENTRATION? and at most 12% damage, if you manage to get in a group that can output all boons... Not the best trait replacement IMO.It all feels very clunky, the traits i mean...The Malice mechanic

is better

now, or i should say, at least it's not entirely dependant on using DE exclusive weapons or skills, but still feels slightly underwhelming. The fact that it's spent now when you use DJ reduces your damage output a bit compared to old DJ, but the way it stacks is better now (although i wish it'd stack without having to mark the target).The traits, however, they feel a bit clunky and disjointed, Silent scope is a complete mess, and i see myself not traiting it, and using the Elite skill to stealth.

If you do happen to be using rifle, Silent Scope is still useful in-so-much as it gives you an additional 20% chance to critical hit, but the stealth mechanic itself is pretty bad as it sits now.

[Turk.5460]

I don't understand the hate on the new Silent Scope. Is it because you can't use it for OOC stealth now? I don't think that should be a game breaker and OOC stealth is kind of a crutch (a lot of a crutch). I absolutely love it - it gives me stealth in my build where previously I had none. The one before was super clunky and slow - very adverse to a Thief archetype.

[Astyrah.4015]

@Turk.5460 said:I don't understand the hate on the new Silent Scope. Is it because you can't use it for OOC stealth now? I don't think that should be a game breaker and OOC stealth is kind of a crutch (a lot of a crutch). I absolutely love it - it gives me stealth in my build where previously I had none. The one before was super clunky and slow - very adverse to a Thief archetype.

i don't actually hate the new silent scope myself, i like the idea of dodge to stealth but the execution of it is pretty bad. like half the time i try to use it to stealth myself it just wont go off reliably when fighting actual enemies just because of how they implemented the stealth portion of it. if they would tweak and adjust it a bit to make stealthing more reliable, the new DE rifle would be a little better for me ^^

[Sojourner.4621]

@"Turk.5460" said:I don't understand the hate on the new Silent Scope. Is it because you can't use it for OOC stealth now? I don't think that should be a game breaker and OOC stealth is kind of a crutch (a lot of a crutch). I absolutely love it - it gives me stealth in my build where previously I had none. The one before was super clunky and slow - very adverse to a Thief archetype.Repost from another page to highlight the problem with silent scope:"It's not JUST that it makes us choose between losing a dodge to get an offensive damage boost or losing a stealth in order to dodge... it's that even the offensive boost is questionable because the stealth activates at the beginning of the dodge. What that means is that if you were auto-attacking with rifle, and you dodge to stealth so that you can DJ (losing the defensive utility of a dodge in the process), then the projectile from your auto finishes traveling to the target and immediately reveals you. Now you've used a dodge, and a stealth opportunity, and also gained no offensive boost from it at all, wasting three opportunities all at once. I am fine with something being risk reward, but right now the "reward" is too buggy to be worth the opportunity cost of using it in the first place."

Basically it's a risk/reward where the reward isn't as high as the risk because of where during the dodge roll the stealth activates. If it activated after the dodge instead of before, then it wouldn't run as high a risk of immediately being removed and then might actually be usable as intended.

[Turk.5460]

@Astyrah.4015 said:

@Turk.5460 said:I don't understand the hate on the new Silent Scope. Is it because you can't use it for OOC stealth now? I don't think that should be a game breaker and OOC stealth is kind of a crutch (a lot of a crutch). I absolutely love it - it gives me stealth in my build where previously I had none. The one before was super clunky and slow - very adverse to a Thief archetype.

i don't actually hate the new silent scope myself, i like the idea of dodge to stealth but the execution of it is pretty bad. like half the time i try to use it to stealth myself it just wont go off reliably when fighting actual enemies just because of how they implemented the stealth portion of it. if they would tweak and adjust it a bit to make stealthing more reliable, the new DE rifle would be a little better for me ^^

Stealth at the end of the dodge would make this trait perfect!

[kash.9213]

@Sojourner.4621 said:

@"Turk.5460" said:I don't understand the hate on the new Silent Scope. Is it because you can't use it for OOC stealth now? I don't think that should be a game breaker and OOC stealth is kind of a crutch (a lot of a crutch). I absolutely love it - it gives me stealth in my build where previously I had none. The one before was super clunky and slow - very adverse to a Thief archetype.Repost from another page to highlight the problem with silent scope:"It's not JUST that it makes us choose between losing a dodge to get an offensive damage boost or losing a stealth in order to dodge... it's that even the offensive boost is questionable because the stealth activates at the beginning of the dodge. What that means is that if you were auto-attacking with rifle, and you dodge to stealth so that you can DJ (losing the defensive utility of a dodge in the process), then the projectile from your auto finishes traveling to the target and immediately reveals you. Now you've used a dodge, and a stealth opportunity, and also gained no offensive boost from it at all, wasting three opportunities all at once. I am fine with something being risk reward, but right now the "reward" is too buggy to be worth the opportunity cost of using it in the first place."

Basically it's a risk/reward where the reward isn't as high as the risk because of where during the dodge roll the stealth activates. If it activated after the dodge instead of before, then it wouldn't run as high a risk of immediately being removed and then might actually be usable as intended.

On top of the stipulations on gaining Malice that's in large part why trying to hang with squad play felt even more restricted. I wasn't melting swaths of people but I could contribute by positioning and timing where now it feels like I have to suicide bomb my Mark before they peel away through or behind anyone or anything. To much is reliant on hitting the Marked target and Flare kinda sucks right now. The easier kills I got last night were pretty much 3rnd burst after Mug. If they weren't dead after that they'd be in another zip code in a second. I'm sure we'll all simmer this patch down to something workable and maybe some things will look better after more play time but this is looking bleak for squad play.

[Sojourner.4621]

@kash.9213 said:

@Sojourner.4621 said:

@"Turk.5460" said:I don't understand the hate on the new Silent Scope. Is it because you can't use it for OOC stealth now? I don't think that should be a game breaker and OOC stealth is kind of a crutch (a lot of a crutch). I absolutely love it - it gives me stealth in my build where previously I had none. The one before was super clunky and slow - very adverse to a Thief archetype.Repost from another page to highlight the problem with silent scope:"It's not JUST that it makes us choose between losing a dodge to get an offensive damage boost or losing a stealth in order to dodge... it's that even the offensive boost is questionable because the stealth activates at the beginning of the dodge. What that means is that if you were auto-attacking with rifle, and you dodge to stealth so that you can DJ (losing the defensive utility of a dodge in the process), then the projectile from your auto finishes traveling to the target and immediately reveals you. Now you've used a dodge, and a stealth opportunity, and also gained no offensive boost from it at all, wasting three opportunities all at once. I am fine with something being risk reward, but right now the "reward" is too buggy to be worth the opportunity cost of using it in the first place."

Basically it's a risk/reward where the reward isn't as high as the risk because of where during the dodge roll the stealth activates. If it activated after the dodge instead of before, then it wouldn't run as high a risk of immediately being removed and then might actually be usable as intended.

On top of the stipulations on gaining Malice that's in large part why trying to hang with squad play felt even more restricted. I wasn't melting swaths of people but I could contribute by positioning and timing where now it feels like I have to suicide bomb my Mark before they peel away through or behind anyone or anything. To much is reliant on hitting the Marked target and Flare kinda sucks right now. The easier kills I got last night were pretty much 3rnd burst after Mug. If they weren't dead after that they'd be in another zip code in a second. I'm sure we'll all simmer this patch down to something workable and maybe some things will look better after more play time but this is looking bleak for squad play.

It might be better now to use a different weapon on swap to build malice and then swap to rifle for the burst... but then if you're doing that why not just run D/P in the first place which can line up a 5 malice backstab in about 1.5 seconds with Be Quick trait selected over M7. Once you start taking that route, if the goal is to do as much damage burst in as short a time period as possible, you're mostly bypassing the damage boost of Executioner to do a one shot from about 75% enemy HP so it ends up being better to run Trickery for the more constant Initiative damage boost instead.

[Elxdark.9702]

@Turk.5460 said:I don't understand the hate on the new Silent Scope. Is it because you can't use it for OOC stealth now? I don't think that should be a game breaker and OOC stealth is kind of a crutch (a lot of a crutch). I absolutely love it - it gives me stealth in my build where previously I had none. The one before was super clunky and slow - very adverse to a Thief archetype.

don't get me wrong I actually like the stealth on dodge because it gives more chances to do more plays with rifle BUT not having stealth on kneel is crucial for this spec, we lost the opener and the position which is extremely important in Deadeye.Taking a stealth utility isn't enough while I lost the chance to use an utility that would help me a lot instead.

Yes stealth on kneel was bad in fights because it had a casting time and it immobilized you for a second but still I'd take that anyday instead of this new sniper scope.why do we hate the new mechanic? because it forces us to waste a dodge when we only have 2 and it prevents us to be sneaky around the map because we no longer have the ability to stealth on kneel.

we lost surprise, position, dodge, opener and we gain slightly better kite potential in fights.Revert it please.