Thief needs help in PvE, particularly Deadeye.

[Jack Redline.5379]

@TexZero.7910 said:I wouldn't be against PvE thief buffs. But i would be against direct damage buffs for deadeye since ya'know its ranged. If they want to buff damage for thief it should be core thief and daredevil since those require melee and their melee DPS is already falling behind others.

Especially condi

[Jack Redline.5379]

@Mercurias.1826 said:The thief was designed to be a highly mobile, high burst damage class with an evasive, hit and run playstyle. A class like that is never going to be a sustained DPS king. Building to restore initiative and endurance is probably your best bet if you want sustained damage, particularly with a Deadeye.

This is not true (partially) since we are talking about burst dmg. A class like this should do hell of a lot of dmg to a single target within a burst. Mastering such class means you are able to drop burst after burst = a lot of dps SINGLETARGET. But we as thieves do no longer do this. You can sustain ini you can drop boons on urself. You wont get above 33k and i am talking PROS and that is the very bottom of DPS that should be possible for any class.

[Jack Redline.5379]

@Griever.8150 said:

@"Mercurias.1826" said:

The problem, specially for Deadeye, is that outside Be Quick or Be Killed, our Grandmaster's trait are horrible. What should be our "longer wind up, higher damage" grandmaster, Maleficient Seven is ENTIRELY useless for the current "viable" (i use the term loosely) Deadeye PvE playstyle as showcased in the videos posted on Snow Crow's website, as stacking up malice instead of simply using backstab as often as possible is a DPS loss.

I will disagree with this M7 is a good trait. If you play it correctly you are able to have literally infinite initiative.

[Jack Redline.5379]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Tails.9372 said:

@"TexZero.7910" said:given the relative safety of ranged in general, buffing that is a silly conceptThere is no point in keeping the damage of damage oriented ranged builds low just cause "they're to safe", that's what the low HP is there for. Every enemy worth a kitten already has big ranged AoEs, some form of CC or some other game mechanic to abuse vs. ranged characters and everything else doesn't matter anyways since random trash mobs aren't supposed to be challenging.

I'm going to challenge this ... it's a recurring theme on these forums and it's nonsense ... You don't think it's reasonable trade off to have less damage because of the reduced risk to bad stuff happening to you when playing ranged? I do, and generally, so do most games. How could it be otherwise? It's not like it's a novel concept in this game that this trade off exists ... in fact, MOST games I've ever played acknowledge a differentiation between melee/range and the various factors impacted by those two positions.

Let's take a step back ... if the point of ranged weapons isn't to give you a margin of error with freedom to position yourself ... then what is it? Just flavour? I don't think so. There MUST be a meaningful differentiator between melee and ranged weapons, if only because of the generally favourable factor of positional freedom you get with ranged vs. melee. It can't be any other way as long as the devs want players to have meaningful options to make meaningful choices.

And i will challenge this .. because the point is good but the reality is a bit different... We are talking about DEADEYE = ''I'm just gonna sit here in this pretty bush and aim at that nasty enemy righ' there. Yea... Steady Steasy. I SAID STEADY! My god he is here. Auch stop hitting my face. OH damn i am dead.'' That is literal definition of what you get from the elite spec itself on its own. You will get a rifle with lets say decent dmg compared to other weapons. You will get a set of skills, lets still be optimistic and say they are fine. Then you get skill 5 = KNEEL. (°-°) YEA kneel Cuz the best thing you can do if you are already having a Distance = advantage As you mentioned. The best thing to do is just sit down there and start shooting at things. Cuz ya know they wont move right? I could list for you here 3 skills from each class which can get you right into the mouth of SITTING Deadeye on the hill withing 1 second = completely deleting his fabulous range advantage.I get it irl the rule of ''High Ground'' works. But this is MMO. this isnt real life. Here only thing that can save you as a thief if you dont have tons of life and buffs all over your face is mobility. And that one is taken from us in Deadeye as hard as anyone tries to disprove that (not pointing fingers) If deadeye has range and we are supposed to consider it an Advantage he also needs a mobility. Because above mentioned reasons.

[Obtena.7952]

I don't really get your example. If Deadeye isn't good in whatever that situation you describe is, you shouldn't use it. Blurring the line between what differentiates melee and ranged weapons because Deadeye "isn't good" doesn't make sense; removing that differentiator doesn't necessarily fix that problem (whatever that is) , nor is it necessarily the best way to fix that problem. I'm not appealing to a RL argument here; I've yet to play a MMO that doesn't, IN SOME WAY, differentiate melee and ranged weapons because of the natural advantage that ranged weapons have.

[Tails.9372]

@Obtena.7952 said:If you don't agree that damage should be a ranged/melee differentiator, then tell us what reasonable things should differentiate them.I already told you, the behavior of several enemies changes drastically when up against a ranged player which is already a big differentiator. Take the champion golem from the hero point in Verdant Brink for example, If I fight him with a melee char he mainly uses the basic attack and the "spin rush" while when I fight him with a ranged character from a distance he suddenly starts spamming rockets and CC in adition to the occasional projectile nullification field. The fight is definitely a lot easier with melee since his strongest close range attack is easy to dodge and leaves him wide open for your attacks in addition to staff 4 giving you additional dodges if needed. There is no "reduced risk to bad stuff happening to you" when fighing him at range and the same thing is true for most of these enemies.

@Obtena.7952 said:

1. You say targeting as a melee is easier ... but if I want that easy targeting with a ranged weapon, I can still play with my ranged weapon at melee range. The advantage here is clearly ranged weapons, because I can CHOOSE to stay range OR move to melee to get the same targeting advantage you say is exclusive to melee.Assuming we equalize the base damage of both the melee and the range attacks, melee would still be better off in this case since most melee attacks tend to be AoE damage within their effective range. Even at close range if I use ranged attacks I still have to worry about the other trash mobs trying to jump into my face which is something I couldn't care less about when using a staff.

@Obtena.7952 said:

2. You say you can ignore CC as a melee class because you are already in melee range, but that doesn't make sense because with a ranged weapons, I am in range MUCH sooner than any melee weapon would ever be; as long as the mob is within your attack range, the ability to 'ignore CC' is valid for BOTH ranged and melee weapons. The advantage here is again, ranged weapons, because of the increased distance I can attack from.I said they don't really have to worry about "some of the CC", for example: why would a warrior have to worry about being pulled in or being immobilized when fighting a veteran spider? Exactly he doesn't, he just wants to whale on the veteran while killing the babies she usually summons in the process.

@Obtena.7952 said:

3. The other examples are hardly even worth considering ..For you because because it goes against your narrative. You do realise that the "if range has some problems, just use melee" argument undermines your point about ranged having it easier? This completely defeats the purpose of running a ranged build to begin with. You might as well tell people which ask for XYZ to be more viable to just run mesmer, it's the same type of argument just on a different scale.

@Obtena.7952 said:What else you got?The question is: what do you got? You said you wanted to challenge my points but so far you haven't actually done that. You failed to show how most of the boss enemies are not behaving in the way I originally described, you also failed to show why it matters if random trash mob 749 can't touch a ranged character because he happens to be a regular zombie without range attack. You just claimed that range has it much easier and that there somehow wouldn't be a meaningful difference between melee and range if damage oriented single target ranged builds had at least an average amount of sustainable single target DPS which is A: complete nonsense and B: not even a rebuttal to anything I said.

[Lucinellia.9247]

@Jack Redline.5379 said:Especially condi

Condi Daredevil is fine. It is in a good place and is reasonably well balanced for an incredibly simple rotation (I'd put condi Daredevil as way easier than power Deadeye) that also grants a load of useful boons on certain encounters and also performs better in a group setting due to whirl finishers. The issue with Condi Daredevil is not unlike that of Power Deadeye - there are alternatives that are too good to the point of being broken. Scourge epi bouncing is a hilariously bad design feature that belongs in the school of MMO design circa 2006 and Mirage is utterly broken because apparently Anet didn't track confusion when balancing Mirage numbers which means it is "missing" up to 8k dps on some bosses, as reported by Arc DPS.

The other issue with Condi Daredevil is that it is excruciatingly boring to play and the movement forced by Lotus dodge and Death Blossom feels, to me, super clunky.

@Jack Redline.5379 said:I will disagree with this M7 is a good trait. If you play it correctly you are able to have literally infinite initiative.

Which is sadly useless in instanced PvE because the additional Power and Fury of Be Quick or Be Killed causes Malicious Backstab to scale much better. You also shouldn't be that initiative starved, even with using Dancing Dagger to build additional Malice during immune / CC / ranged / before high incoming damage phases.

@"Griever.8150" said:Thanks for both of your posts, really good information, i'll admit i didn't have time to test things as thoroughly as you did and kinda jumped on SC's conclusions too.

Yeah, that is kind of one of the big issues. Try bringing up that Deadeye performs far better numerically in the average group than professions like Daredevil and Dragonhunter and you'll just get incredulous responses of Deadeye having no burst, Deadeye having nothing to exploit during encounters and while I was happy to believe that for a while, it just isn't true in the reality of your pretty standard, couple of Voice in the Voids, clear all raids every week, group. Another argument I've heard is built around sample size on GW2Raidar - there are only 100 logs or so for Deadeye on each boss and the profession is being played primarily by better players relative to DH / Spellbreaker / Holosmith (delete as appropriate for the boss you are discussing). I find that line of thought particularly challenging when I hold multiple 100th percentile logs on a range of bosses and my hands do not work well due to a nerve condition. I know I do not play to the absolute best, frequently mess up because I cannot do better mechanically, so a truly good player should be able to do better.

One big problem is that a large portion of the playerbase also kinda mindlessly listen to everything they say, so for pugging it puts us in a bad place. I experienced it a few times.

Oh, I get kicked from groups all the time. Deadeye has loads of structural issues that Anet need to resolve (higher single target damage, Fire for Effect being useful) but there are definitely community / cultural issues (shout out to Sylvanheart people that tolerate my rambles for suggesting this) around the spec which are self-perpetuating. I'll be kicked from experienced fractal groups despite having KPs and titles and such like because I play a Thief. Which means I won't learn skips and exploits these groups use so that when I do join another very experienced group, I am less familiar with what to do and that causes issues. It isn't fun and as much as I love and adore playing my Thief, the only raid CM I have done as a Thief has been Samarog because the Commander hadn't seen the Deadeye icon before, mistook me for another profession and then let me stay when I was repeatedly topping DPS meters. The others have been as Chronomancer / Druid / Revenant (handkiter) but that ties back into the structural issues that Anet have with balancing in general where some professions are far too essential (Chrono / Druid / Warrior) or brokenly overpowered (Weaver / Scourge / Mirage at the moment) and others, while decent for a group looking to simply clear for the week, don't bring enough for CMs or very high level play. This issue is even more pronounced for Fractals given the more limited number of players and high number of CC phases which over emphasises extremely high burst options like Weaver.

I would disagree that Rifle is entirely useless in its current iteration though, its obviously not a good primary weapon but i find myself switching to it from times to times to burn adds or when running mechanics out of the group. Considering Deadeye lacks mobility and steal, it seems better than just waddling to mobs.

Use Heartseeker to open or close distance when doing mechanics or if going for an add - Deadeye's Mark (if available) and Dancing Dagger as you approach into a heavy hitting Malicious Backstab. If I recall, Three Round Burst spam is still beneath auto and Backstab spam. You are going to want to stay with your group for boons so you'll likely be using Double Tap which is worse and at that point the "waddle and stab" method is more damage.

Rifle does have a slim number of uses in fractals (clearing flames on Deepstone) and it can be used on Keep Construct if you are doing the stack on a spot and go to sleep tactic for the pizza slice phase after collecting the coloured orbs. Even then, your DPS will be better if you can pre-cast Spider Venom, have full Malice ready and then get off a full Malice Malicious Backstab and Shadow Flare under Assassin's Signet before carefully meleeing and repositioning with Rifle Death's "Forward" and camping Three Round Burst for a bit. Rifle is also used for afk-tactic Deimos but that is afk-tactic and doesn't really amount to much to consider. You want to maximise your time in Dagger/Dagger in pretty much all situations.

[Tenrai Senshi.2017]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Tails.9372 said:

@"TexZero.7910" said:given the relative safety of ranged in general, buffing that is a silly conceptThere is no point in keeping the damage of damage oriented ranged builds low just cause "they're to safe", that's what the low HP is there for. Every enemy worth a kitten already has big ranged AoEs, some form of CC or some other game mechanic to abuse vs. ranged characters and everything else doesn't matter anyways since random trash mobs aren't supposed to be challenging.

I'm going to challenge this ... it's a recurring theme on these forums and it's nonsense ... You don't think it's reasonable trade off to have less damage because of the reduced risk to bad stuff happening to you when playing ranged? I do, and generally, so do most games. How could it be otherwise? It's not like it's a novel concept in this game that this trade off exists ... in fact, MOST games I've ever played acknowledge a differentiation between melee/range and the various factors impacted by those two positions.

I'm not sure what games you are playing, but I've very rarely played an RPG where ranged classes are automatically relegated to doing less damage. In fact, it's often the opposite, where ranged characters or caster types end up with the highest dps (or near highest) at the trade off of being more glassy, while melee characters often tend to take more of a tanky/control sort of role. Of course, rogue type classes tend to fall into the high dps side of the spectrum, but it's also at the cost of being more glassy like ranged classes, albeit with the advantages of stealth/agility making it easier for them to position or avoid damage.

So, your challenge regarding this topic is, to be honest, a bit questionable. What makes it even more questionable is the fact that even GW2 doesn't adhere strictly to the sentiment that ranged weapons should automatically be weaker, as is evident by the fact that for some classes, their ranged weapons are also their highest dps weapons (Ele staff, Guardian scepter, Scourge with shades and scepter/offhand, etc).

Let's take a step back ... if the point of ranged weapons isn't to give you a margin of error with freedom to position yourself ... then what is it? Just flavour? I don't think so. There MUST be a meaningful differentiator between melee and ranged weapons, if only because of the generally favourable factor of positional freedom you get with ranged vs. melee. It can't be any other way as long as the devs want players to have meaningful options to make meaningful choices.

There is already a meaningful differentiator. Most boons, blast finishers or support skills in general have a very short range and so encourage players to be stacked in melee ranged to gain their full benefit. Even classes that use ranged weapons as meta already, still tend to stay in melee range because of this, while players who keep their distance tend to lose out on a lot of perks. You could say quite confidently that the trade off for being a bit "safer" is quite significant already, and would remain so even if you bought up the base dps of all ranged weapons to be equal to their melee counterparts.

[Dadnir.5038]

Making DE deal good sustain damage in PvE?Increase premeditation increased damage per boon to 2% and reduce cantrips CD to 20 second. And there you are, the same build, almost the same rotation but you deal 33k instead of 31k dps.

[Lucinellia.9247]

@Dadnir.5038 said:Making DE deal good sustain damage in PvE?Increase premeditation increased damage per boon to 2% and reduce cantrips CD to 20 second. And there you are, the same build, almost the same rotation but you deal 33k instead of 31k dps.

As usual, disclaimer that this is all PvE split and shouldn't change in PvP and WvW.

Deadeye has absolutely fine sustain. It needs higher burst and single target (particularly for encounters like Xera where we should really be doing the top boss DPS as we can't really help on the adds). The easiest way to get that higher burst with the current design is changing Malicious attack Malice scaling to 15% instead of 10%. This means a Malicious Backstab following a CC / immune / distant phase where you can build that extra 3/4 Malice hits 25% harder than currently. That fixes our burst issue (we'll hit very hard at points like Deimos taking increased damage, Samarog after CC, Ensolyss after CC especially if we can line up Assassin's Signet) while pushing us towards that high single target, low cleave and positioning dependent niche.

Improving Premeditation damage per boon is a bit of an awkward solution since it further engrains Chaos Chronomancer and Chronomancer really, really doesn't need more reasons to be taken in a group.

I do like the suggestion on Cantrips having a lower cooldown. That would definitely help both boon strip and knock back utility but might be a touch too good with Shadow Flare. That said, it would be amazing for a Fire for Effect build if that skill was improved to give more Might for a longer duration.

[Obtena.7952]

@Tenrai Senshi.2017 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Tails.9372 said:

@"TexZero.7910" said:given the relative safety of ranged in general, buffing that is a silly conceptThere is no point in keeping the damage of damage oriented ranged builds low just cause "they're to safe", that's what the low HP is there for. Every enemy worth a kitten already has big ranged AoEs, some form of CC or some other game mechanic to abuse vs. ranged characters and everything else doesn't matter anyways since random trash mobs aren't supposed to be challenging.

I'm going to challenge this ... it's a recurring theme on these forums and it's nonsense ... You don't think it's reasonable trade off to have less damage because of the reduced risk to bad stuff happening to you when playing ranged? I do, and generally, so do most games. How could it be otherwise? It's not like it's a novel concept in this game that this trade off exists ... in fact, MOST games I've ever played acknowledge a differentiation between melee/range and the various factors impacted by those two positions.

I'm not sure what games you are playing, but I've very rarely played an RPG where ranged classes are automatically relegated to doing less damage.

Then you aren't understanding what I've said. I'm talking about differentiators ... and damage CAN be one. Differentiation between melee and ranged is real and is necessary, otherwise, the decision to take a ranged over melee weapon is just superficial. If Deadeye has a deficiency in some game mode with a specific or any ranged weapon, you can swap to another weapon ... or make a decision to avoid ranged weapons altogether in that mode. No one is going to argue away from the fact that Anet has given us choice. The idea that the differentiators here should be dulled (and I believe damage is one of those in this game) to make Deadeye 'work' in the game mode in question is questionable as i've already explained. Even if people can't explain the complex situation that might exist between the melee/ranged differences, you know that intrinsically, they exist and why. Anyone that denies that is just inexperienced or trying to wish them away by ignoring them.

The idea that thief even needs help in PVE is questionable; it assumes an approach that Anet is even attempting to develop classes with similar performance in the first place. That's obviously not the case.

[Tenrai Senshi.2017]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Tenrai Senshi.2017 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Tails.9372 said:

@"TexZero.7910" said:given the relative safety of ranged in general, buffing that is a silly conceptThere is no point in keeping the damage of damage oriented ranged builds low just cause "they're to safe", that's what the low HP is there for. Every enemy worth a kitten already has big ranged AoEs, some form of CC or some other game mechanic to abuse vs. ranged characters and everything else doesn't matter anyways since random trash mobs aren't supposed to be challenging.

I'm going to challenge this ... it's a recurring theme on these forums and it's nonsense ... You don't think it's reasonable trade off to have less damage because of the reduced risk to bad stuff happening to you when playing ranged? I do, and generally, so do most games. How could it be otherwise? It's not like it's a novel concept in this game that this trade off exists ... in fact, MOST games I've ever played acknowledge a differentiation between melee/range and the various factors impacted by those two positions.

I'm not sure what games you are playing, but I've very rarely played an RPG where ranged classes are automatically relegated to doing less damage.

Then you aren't understanding what I've said. I'm talking about differentiators ... and damage CAN be one. Differentiation between melee and ranged is real and is necessary, otherwise, the decision to take a ranged over melee weapon is just superficial.

No, I didn't misunderstand at all. It's just that you chose to disregard someone else's way of thinking as "nonsense" because they mentioned that a weapon shouldn't automatically have less damage just because it is "ranged". You yourself suggest that damage CAN be one differentiator, but it isn't necessarily the sole differentiator. You also seem to ignore the other drawbacks rifle already has, such as a lack of cleaving, AoE and the fact that you have to root yourself in one spot to access some of its benefits, or to achieve its maximum dps potential, a drawback you don't have with daggers or staff.

I'd say it's simply a case of you jumping the gun, so to speak. It's not like people are saying there can't be trade offs to differentiate different weapon types, but those trade-offs don't always have to be purely about how much damage they do.

[Obtena.7952]

Perhaps, but no more so than someone jumping the gun that more damage is always the answer to every problem all classes have. I don't doubt anyone, including myself, is going to waste time to do a comprehensive list of all the trade offs that ranged weapons have because of the intrinsic advantage ranged weapons get in every game ever, but there simply isn't a discussion if people are going to outright deny that the ranged advantage exists and devs must go out of there way with SOME kind of differentiator to compensate for that if they want to even attempt to provide players with meaningful weapon choices and play strategies.

I'm opposed to damage for primarily one reason ... damage is not a way to develop or enhance the theme of a class in this game. I like and play Deadeye ... because it's a cool concept that excels for the mode of play I use it for. The OP's argument for improving Deadeye is performance-based ... that's already a solved problem in this game; players have lots of choices to combine class/skills/weapons/traits to get a wide range of highly-performing builds relevant to whatever game mode they want. OP concludes that thieves have little utility ... so his solution is more sustained DPS? That's a pretty contrived solution if you ask me.

Frankly, I'm stunned that so many people still come to the conclusion that the solution to their PVE problems is more damage, because it never will be. Ask yourself why people accept certain classes into engineered premade raid teams that are not THE highest DPS class and build ... that answer has more to do with the utility the class brings to the team than it does about the damage it provides.

[Tenrai Senshi.2017]

@Obtena.7952 said:Perhaps, but no more so than someone jumping the gun that more damage is always the answer to every problem all classes have. I don't doubt anyone, including myself, is going to waste time to do a comprehensive list of all the trade offs that ranged weapons have because of the intrinsic advantage ranged weapons get in every game ever, but there simply isn't a discussion if people are going to outright deny that the ranged advantage exists and devs must go out of there way with SOME kind of differentiator to compensate for that if they want to even attempt to provide players with meaningful weapon choices and play strategies.

I'm opposed to damage for primarily one reason ... damage is not a way to develop or enhance the theme of a class in this game. I like and play Deadeye ... because it's a cool concept that excels for the mode of play I use it for. The OP's argument for improving Deadeye is performance-based ... that's already a solved problem in this game; players have lots of choices to combine class/skills/weapons/traits to get a wide range of highly-performing builds relevant to whatever game mode they want. OP concludes that thieves have little utility ... so his solution is more sustained DPS? That's a pretty contrived solution if you ask me.

Frankly, I'm stunned that so many people still come to the conclusion that the solution to their PVE problems is more damage, because it never will be. Ask yourself why people accept certain classes into engineered premade raid teams that are not THE highest DPS class and build ... that answer has more to do with the utility the class brings to the team than it does about the damage it provides.

I agree with you that damage isn't always the answer. But I also think people just expect that if a class is only really good at damage and not much more than that, then it needs to excel in that area. Maybe the reason they suggest damage for thief in some cases, is so that it doesn't become too much like other classes by focusing on some unique support mechanic (like alacrity). It might also come from a predisposed idea that rogue classes in games in general typically focus on a dps role rather than a support/utility based role and that's the kind of gameplay style they hope for/expect from thief. That being said, some people have suggested more support or utility options as well, so not everyone is necessarily following the same train of thought.

To be honest though, I think part of the problem here is ANet's approach to the thief's design as a whole. Keep in mind we've had two expansion launches already with two elite specs being added, and yet unlike other classes that often get drastically different tools to utilize, thief has just gotten more of the same. Daredevil gave us more evasion oriented mechanics, which thieves were good at already with their former acrobatics tree, and we got a dps oriented melee weapon and dps / interruption oriented utility skills. With Deadeye, we got a single target dps oriented ranged weapon, more stealth and more shadow step skills (tools we already had). Neither spec gave us anything for support or group utility, so thieves end up playing the same way they always have, focusing solely on damage in PvE.

Maybe the simple solution would have been to incorporate malice as a unique debuff that affected not only the thief's damage to a target, but also their party's damage to the same target (or some other unique mechanic, like healing for a % of damage done against marked targets). Or maybe ANet should have given a more utility/support oriented kit for Deadeye rather than just giving us more of the same kinds of selfish tools thieves already had.

[Despond.2174]

Staff power is still solid for fractals, decent in raids--it's dmg vs rotation difficulty is very good--condi d/d excels in quite a few fights also. You're never going to have perfect balance, but I do agree thief in PVE is definitely on the more least desirable side. It's more to do with group buffs/utility, just buffing the raw damage won't be a solution but then you need to consider PVP implications etc.

[Tenrai Senshi.2017]

@Despond.2174 said:just buffing the raw damage won't be a solution but then you need to consider PVP implications etc.

I think when most people think of thief damage buffs in PvE, they view them in a context where the changes would be PvE only, and not carry over to PvP. I think it's good that ANet is starting to split changes between PvE and PvP more now, because often changes in one would cause problems for the other.

[Tails.9372]

@Tenrai Senshi.2017 said:It might also come from a predisposed idea that rogue classes in games in general typically focus on a dps role rather than a support/utility based role and that's the kind of gameplay style they hope for/expect from thief.I don't really think that's the case here, like I said nobody asks for thief to do 50% more damage than everyone else as compensation for the lack of everything else. People just want thief in general to hit the baseline in this regard and yes, if you have a damage focused profesion which only brings damage to the table (single target damage to be precise) and most damage oriented builds can't even do that then more damage is the solution for them.

@Tenrai Senshi.2017 said:To be honest though, I think part of the problem here is ANet's approach to the thief's design as a whole.I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the design philosophy behind this class, there is value in having a profession which is capable of breaking up from the mass, zipping over the battlefield and swiftly soloing side objectives. The problem is just other professions can do the same thing but better. High mobility isn't unique to thief, neither is access to invisibility (not that it really matters since the amount of side objectives which are better of being soloed by one person sneaking behind the enemy lines instead of just kicking the door in with the group is pretty much non existent). There is a flaw in game design here, it's just not this profession.

@Tenrai Senshi.2017 said:as a unique debuff that affected not only the thief's damage to a target, but also their party's damage to the same targetThief used to have something like that in critical strikes, making vulnerability hard to come by for everyone but thief would help but A-Net already removed that trait and replaced it with something stealth releated (which feels comepletly out of place in critical strikes btw.).

@Tenrai Senshi.2017 said:some other unique mechanic, like healing for a % of damage done against marked targetsThis would definitely help because then people would be more inclined to use deadly arts over critical strikes but that's not going to help non deadeye builds.

[Tenrai Senshi.2017]

@Tails.9372 said:I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the design philosophy behind this class, there is value in having a profession which is capable of breaking up from the mass, zipping over the battlefield and swiftly soloing side objectives. The problem is just other professions can do the same thing but better. High mobility isn't unique to thief, neither is access to invisibility (not that it really matters since the amount of side objectives which are better of being soloed by one person sneaking behind the enemy lines instead of just kicking the door in with the group is pretty much non existent). There is a flaw in game design here, it's just not this profession.

Well, to me if other classes do the same thing as thief, only better, then that is a problem with the design of either the thief, or of the other classes in question. If Mesmers, for example, can also bring stealth, mobility (including multiple teleports), even higher damage and a much greater variety of support on top of it than thief can, then it does leave me scratching my head regarding what niche exactly thief is meant to fulfill that would help it stand out in a group setting. Whether the game design is flawed really depends on what the intention behind that design is, but classes do also need to be designed with that intent in mind regardless.

That being said, my comment regarding the approach to the design of the thief was more focused around what our elite specs have bought to the table. To put it bluntly, other than more ways to move, deal damage or go into stealth, they haven't bought much (and those were things thief was already good at). My ideas about how they could have expanded on the malice mechanic were just examples of how they could have broadened the utility that thieves could have bought in a group setting, but there are many other ways you could implement such utility. My overall point, however, was that they haven't really expanded on the thief's play style or given the class the opportunity to branch out in terms of what kinds of roles it can fulfill, at least not to the degree that some other classes enjoy.

[Tenrai Senshi.2017]

Accidental double post...

[Obtena.7952]

@Tenrai Senshi.2017 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Perhaps, but no more so than someone jumping the gun that more damage is always the answer to every problem all classes have. I don't doubt anyone, including myself, is going to waste time to do a comprehensive list of all the trade offs that ranged weapons have because of the intrinsic advantage ranged weapons get in every game ever, but there simply isn't a discussion if people are going to outright deny that the ranged advantage exists and devs must go out of there way with SOME kind of differentiator to compensate for that if they want to even attempt to provide players with meaningful weapon choices and play strategies.

I'm opposed to damage for primarily one reason ... damage is not a way to develop or enhance the theme of a class in this game. I like and play Deadeye ... because it's a cool concept that excels for the mode of play I use it for. The OP's argument for improving Deadeye is performance-based ... that's already a solved problem in this game; players have lots of choices to combine class/skills/weapons/traits to get a wide range of highly-performing builds relevant to whatever game mode they want. OP concludes that thieves have little utility ... so his solution is more sustained DPS? That's a pretty contrived solution if you ask me.

Frankly, I'm stunned that so many people still come to the conclusion that the solution to their PVE problems is more damage, because it never will be. Ask yourself why people accept certain classes into engineered premade raid teams that are not THE highest DPS class and build ... that answer has more to do with the utility the class brings to the team than it does about the damage it provides.

I agree with you that damage isn't always the answer. But I also think people just expect that if a class is only really good at damage and not much more than that, then it needs to excel in that area.

Those people think wrong, because they don't understand why classes are chosen for the premade raid teams they want to play thief in. To be fair, I agree that the thief as a class doesn't bring much of those things that pre-made teams are looking for and Anet really hasn't brought that recognition to the especs. Still, I don't see that as a particularly pressing problem, considering that metapushing teams (and the people that want to join them) are interested in playing meta builds. In otherwords, if you want to play in metapushing teams, you play classes that are meta. If you don't, then you can play whatever you want. There isn't a lack of people that want to play builds they like in content that other people that want to play builds they like in the same content.