Maugetarr.6823

> @"Doctor Hide.6345" said:

> > @DeceiverX.8361 said:

> > > @"Doctor Hide.6345" said:

> > > > @TwiceDead.1963 said:

> > > > Deadeye is perfectly capable of dealing with the same mobs everyone else is fighting. Where Daredevil can run into a pile of trash-mobs and _vaultvaultvault_ as you put it, a Deadeye can IS into the same pack and throw around a couple of pistol-whips and achieve the same results, there's going to be a dead pack of mobs at your feet at the end, except you are going to be in better shape than the Daredevil. **To stay competitive with Daredevil against boss-mobs, we've got Daggers**, to top that off, Deadeye is arguably more survivable than a Daredevil is depending on build due to the steady stream of boons and protection. A Deadeye's DPS isn't that much lower than Daredevil's either, so I think as a traitline, Deadeye is fine. The utilities could use some love though...

> > >

> > > I disagree with the bolded part since daggers shouldn't enter into the equation. The rifle should be dealing melee level of damage like daggers at range since that is what the Deadeye was designed for. I know you said you are not opposed to rifle buffs, but the buffs need to be at the level of staff/dagger damage for the rifle to be competitive.

> > >

> > > At no point should the Deadeye have to switch to any melee weapon to stay competitive when it should be the rifles jobs.

> >

> > ANet has repeatedly over the years come out and said they do not intend to allow long-ranged weapons to deal similar sustained damage as melee kits on the basis that it's too safe. They probably made a comment about the rifle dealing high damage, which it can and does do, but "damage" is a generic term which could honestly mean anything when it comes to DPS vs DPH.

> >

> > And frankly, this is how it should be.

> >

> > Dagger DPH is lower than rifle's, and is a lot less safe. You can't infinitely kite while dealing damage with a dagger. You can with a rifle. And that's why its sustained damage is lower.

> >

> > You're not holding a HMG. You're playing the "sniper" archetype which on that concept alone is supposed to make one lethal shot and that's the majority of the fight.

> >

> > Might as well be complaining that Reaper isn't a great long-range control caster. That's just not supposed to be what it does.

>

> I think you are wrong with that assumption on the Deadeye. Like I said, they said they are **breaking their own rules** when it comes to the Deadeye. No, it should not be that way, but that is a discussion for another time. The rifle has the immobile mechanic behind it which allows it to have melee level damage. The only way rifle will ever be taken seriously in a raid or fractal without making your own group is if rifle gets that buff it needs. I am sick of melee only stuff in this game, Many other games have ranged competitors do melee level of damage, and they are taken.

>

> I know of the sniper archetype which is why I wouldn't mind 2 round/3 round burst get the unload treatment with ini coming back to help with sustain. Having melee be king of the hill is illogical to me when ranged should be up there as well. If need be, every time there is a q and a with devs I will link the part where they said Deadeye should be doing melee level of damage. I will use the lobbyists tactics of pure annoyance if I have to get something passed.

Rifle is sorta close to Dagger in terms of DPS. If they buffed the kneeling auto attack to 0.9 instead of the 0.78-0.8 it's sitting at right now and let the autos pierce 1-2 targets, it would be on par with Dagger without having to do anything else. Double Tap and 3RB still need some work, but at least kneeling would be there in terms of damage, and that boost only puts it at the same multiplier as ranger long range shot at its long range value.

Fight with Balthazar feedback:

Initially cool, but giant healthpool made it monotonous after about half health. Suggestions that might have prevented that and could be used for living story updates.

Reduce his health by 1/3. At first he doesn't take you seriously because he's killed you once. At half health he gets annoyed with you and summons 2 forged hounds of Balthazar or similar large ad (each with health at about 1/6 Balthazar's current health), unique in their types of attacks from each other (think flame and frost duo). After you kill the hounds, he comes back, angry, and fights like how he did at the end of the current fight with the AoE spam and the stun mechanics with Aurene kick in like the current fight as well.

General feedback:

Casually playing it, I enjoyed the game. Difficulty was somewhere in between HoT and Core, which seems about right. Without knowing what's to come, it seems you guys have left open the possibility of extremely hard open world content by having the option to open up the mouth of torment if the story goes there.

I enjoyed the maps more than the HoT maps, but that comes down to personal preference and I largely enjoyed the storyline more than HoT. Mordremoth (in regular mode) was a more mechanically interesting fight because you had 2 pre-fights with bosses you got to choose, but the fight with Balthazar got to the final fight in a more sensible way than the HoT storyline.

For a quick fix in terms of numbers for rifle, I'd just like to see them bring the auto-attack multiplier up to 0.925 (Just over untraited DPS for Long Range Shot at max range and equal to the traited version) for kneeling, and 0.65 for standing (Equal to DPS of untraited Long Range Shot at closest Range). For mechanics, the easiest fix to tackle would be to make the autos pierce 1-2 targets. For more complicated redesigns, refer to my earlier post (if the devs read this for input before the next balance patch).

Edit: Slightly different suggestions in addition to the above:

Move Death's Retreat to the standing #3 weapon skill because virtually all of our in combat ports/evades/rolls on weapon skills are tied to #3. Put 3RB in the standing #4 slot. Put in a 600 range ground target shadowstep into kneeling #3 at maybe 4 initiative, instant cast to allow for some tricky plays.

Alright, I'm back and tested it because as I said in my edit, the wiki numbers might be off... which they were, by a lot. Someone had plugged in damage values at 2225 power instead of the coefficient so it wasn't using the base power of 1000. Anyway, it's now corrected, and here's the results.

Kneeling rifle does pretty well. P/P falls off on targets with a larger healthpool because of the initiative starvation and weak autos, although a build with trickery for the initiative refund on mark while attacking smaller mobs would probably boost it's numbers because of renewing gaze. Without permanent quickness, rifle would probably fall behind S/P because of the DPS loss seen using pistolwhip as opposed to autos. Build choices and buffs were focused on keeping stats relatively flat when comparing weaponsets to each other and trickery wasn't used because I didn't want the fluctuation in damage seen with lead attacks.

For my changes to rifle if they wanted to be on par with melee while kneeling.

Kneeling Auto: Bring up to a multiplier of 0.925 from where it is now (~0.776) and pierce 1-2 targets (this would put kneeling Rifle rotation DPS on par with D/D rotation DPS)

Standing Auto: Bring Up to a multiplier of 0.65 from where it is now (~0.58) and pierce 1-2 targets (This would put standing Rifle Rotation at about 8% lower than P/P Unload spam)

Double Tap: Improve the might duration to 10s if nothing else changes (spamming this skill only resulted in a 6% improvement of DPS over just autoattacking with rifle, so at least make the utility good)

Three Round Burst: Improve might duration to 10s

Kneel: Replace with Sniper's Cover as baseline. Let moving/dodging/jumping break the kneel, but not remove movement impairing conditions. Keep free action to remove those conditions if it's actually used.

TLDW Summary: If we normalize the DPS around the D/D Rotation, currently it stands at

D/DRotation(1)>RKRotation(.86)>S/PAuto(.79)>RKAuto(.71)>P/PUnload(.67)>RSRotation(.56)>RSAuto(.52)

> @Manpag.6421 said:

> I think people are missing the beauty of the rifle; Kneel puts it on a similar, albeit clunkier, damage level to P/P when played right, while without Kneel it's a great skirmishing weapon (low power, but Death's Retreat is a good escape) that can let you kill most melee opponents without them even laying a finger on you.

I just wanted to tack onto this part. The exact multiplier for Rifle autos isn't up, but based on heartseeker values (550-1.5 & 734-2.0), Brutal Aim(545) and Deadly Aim(727) are somewhere around 1.5 and 2.0 respectively. So rounding to those for the sake of simplicity, and using the longer shot to shot value of. 94 (which includes precast and aftercast), Rifle has a Multiplier Per Second of 1.596 and 2.128 for the standing and kneeling versions of the attack (this could very well be lower since I'm rounding). Putting this in perspective, Unload has a total multiplier of 2.4 over 1.5 seconds, yielding about 1.6 MPS.

If you include some melee auto chains for more comparisons:

Dagger AA: 2.75m/1.68s=1.63MPS

Sword AA: 2.9m/1.88s=1.54MPS (1.697 w/Swindler's Equilibrium)

Staff: 3.097m/2.14s=1.447MPS(1.59 w/Staff Master)

This really puts standing rifle on par with melee autos, and even if the Rifle multipliers are 25% lower than the tool tips indicate (or my rounding is way off) , kneeling rifle attacks are still on par with melee auto chains and unload, so I actually really like where the damage is.

That said, Double Tap is bad and Rifle could use some other QoL improvements as well to smooth out its game play.

Edit1: I wanted to emphasize that the base damage numbers on the wiki could be wrong. There's a pretty big discrepancy if you use gw2skills.net. Equipping a rifle and dagger and swapping between them on the site shows a pretty big difference. Based on their numbers, the kneeling autoattack multiplier is about 0.92 resulting in an MPS of 1.0. From quick tests over the past couple of weeks that seems low as the 'Weak Enemy' target had very similar TTK from rifle auto, dagger auto (not a rotation), and chain unloads. I'll have to check over the weekend to see which one is wrong. They might both be.

Edit2: Values on the wiki were off which are now corrected. See later post for explanation

> @Coolguy.8702 said:

> -Make deaths judgement pierce and be unblockable because this skill reveals, has a cast time, and deals too much damage to just be reflected or blocked by some Mesmer clone, lower initiative cost to 5 or 4

I could get behind being able to make kneeling skills pierce 2 targets by a trait like reworking silent scope.

> - Increase auto attack damage by 100%

Increasing either kneeling or standing auto by this much would be ridiculous. Standing auto attack is around a 1.5 multiplier and kneeling is around 1.9 (compare tool tips to heartseeker). They have a hit to hit time of 0.92 seconds making the DPS (in terms of multipliers) about 1.6 and 2.0. Doubling the damage would average it out to be 50% more than a backstab every second.

> - Remove initiative cost on kneel or make snipers scope baseline and replace it with a trait that lets rifle skills inflict an aoe explosion around the target

I like the idea of making Snipers Cover baseline and being able to trait piercing shots with silent scope, so it's really potayto/potahto on this one

> - Get rid of the stolen skills and replace it with something else

The stolen skills could probably just use duration increases. They're not terrible, but not great.

> - Mark needs to be unblockable or at least make it instant

Maybe. I'm sort of neutral about it having a cast time. I think with improvements to stolen skills it would be in a good place since those are instant.

> - Kneel also needs some kind of damage reduction and stability since it's pretty easy to get shut down

Reworking iron sights to be something like "kneeling reduces incoming damage and condition damage" like dash could be a marked improvement and fit this suggestion

> - Malice needs to be built much faster and last longer as well

With revealed malice it can reach max pretty quickly, but I don't see why baseline stack speed couldn't be better. Maybe 1.5 and 3 seconds instead of the 2 and 4 they have now.

> - Rifle skills also need to pierce which would make the set feel a lot less clunky to play

Maybe traited or baseline. As earlier, I don't see more piercing on the rifle as a bad thing. At least on the autos.

> - Reduce the cast time and cds of all the cantrips besides shadow meld.

Yep

> This is just for pvp\wvw tho, in pve it'll need a huge damage increase since it's pretty bad in that game mode

I don't really think it needs to be split yet as the things I suggested in response to your post would put it in an alright place in all game modes (imo). Double Tap needs to be reworked entirely as it's terrible in terms of damage and utility. Putting 3RB in as the standing skill and putting a different skill entirely in as the kneeling one would help both the standing and kneeling skill bar.

An alternative idea to my own up above. Double Tap is a redundant/weaker version of 3RB, so remove Double Tap and put 3RB in its place. Make Snipers Cover a skill still and have that be the kneeling 3 skill. Leave damage on 3RB where it is, but reduce initiative cost to 3 and/or increase might duration to 8 seconds. I think this might help reduce the huge disparity between damage of standing/kneeling and help to be able to select between kneeling and stealthing while letting the devs keep free action as the rollover 5 skill.

And please fix the pathing of Death's Retreat.

Yeah, I'm spamming my suggestions a bit, but I think rifle is almost a really good weapon, just in need of some minor tweaks. The ability to give some of the skills piercing and rolling Snipers Cover into base rifle while making breaking the kneel more user friendly would be helpful.

In the hopes of a dev checking our feedback, here it is again:

> R1: Fine as is (maybe reduce aftercast)

>R2: Fine as is

>R3: lower initiatve cost to 3

>R4: lower initiative cost to 4 (and fix buggy pathing)

>R5: Make total cast time (precast, cast, aftercast) 0.25 seconds. Leave at 1 initiative. Remove the count from it.

>KR1: Fine as is (maybe reduce aftercast)

>KR2: Fine as is

>KR3: Lower initiative cost to 3

>KR4: Fine as is

>KR5: Remove. Dodge rolling, jumping, stowing weapon, switching weapon, and moving should break kneel (as well as getting cc'd still). Replace with Snipers Cover with a 0.5 second total cast time at 3 initiative. Keep the count.

>SR1: Make it stun for 1 second, but keep all other aspects (velocity, cast time other effects) the same.

>Deadeyes gaze: fine as is

>Revealed malice: fine as is

>Iron sight: Reduce incoming damage by 10% while kneeling

>One in the chamber: Additionally reduces CD on cantrips by 20%

>Renewing gaze: fine as is

>Silent scope: kneeling give +20% crit chance, kneeling shots pierce up to 2 targets (up to 3 hit total)

>Unforgiving: Fine as is

>Peripheral vision: fine as is

>Perfectionist: Fine as is

>Maleficent seven: fine as is

>Be quick or be killed: Stunning or knocking down a target gives you 4 seconds of quickness, icd 5-10 seconds. Gain 200 power and 150 ferocity while you have quickness.

>Fire for effect: Hitting your target grants allies around your target 8 seconds of might (360), icd 1 second. Attacks deal an extra 0.5% damage per stack of vulnerability.

>Malicious restoration: reduce cd to 25 seconds

>Binding shadow: fine as is

>Mercy:reduce cd to 25 seconds

>Shadow flare: have it leave a dark field for the duration.

>Shadow gust: fine as is

I agree with a lot of the sentiment that standing rifle could be slightly worse than P/P and kneeling rifle could be slightly better than P/P, both by measurable amounts maybe the in terms of something like:

Standing =~93% of P/P DPS

Kneeling=~107% of P/P DPS

This damage shouldn't be attached to 3RB or Double Tap as those should fill more of a utility role of might building, and like OP mentioned, spamming 3RB is a horrible way to play DE. I mean kneeling autos are something like a 1.64 multiplier at 0.75s cast time and 3RB is 1.95 at 1.0s cast time, meaning just reducing the initiative for DB and 3RB would go a long way to clearly defining the role of autos versus 3RB. I want to mention I don't think pre and aftercasts are included in the cast times of these skills, so buffing the autos could be as simple as reducing aftercast time.

Nice, someone else making good use of tricks, although I have more precision and pick up CS instead of DA to make use of no quarter, practiced tolerance, and assassins fury.

R1: Fine as is

R2: Fine as is

R3: lower initiatve cost to 3

R4: lower initiative cost to 4 (and fix buggy pathing)

R5: Make total cast time (precast, cast, aftercast) 0.25 seconds. Leave at 1 initiative. Remove the count from it.

KR1: Fine as is

KR2: Fine as is

KR3: Lower initiative cost to 3

KR4: Fine as is

KR5: Remove. Dodge rolling, jumping, stowing weapon, switching weapon, and moving should break kneel (as well as getting cc'd still). Replace with Snipers Cover with a 0.5 second total cast time at 3 initiative. Keep the count.

SR1: Make it stun for 1 second, but keep all other aspects (velocity, cast time other effects) the same.

Deadeyes gaze: fine as is

Revealed malice: fine as is

Iron sight: Reduce incoming damage by 10% while kneeling

One in the chamber: Additionally reduces CD on cantrips by 20%

Renewing gaze: fine as is

Silent scope: kneeling give +20% crit chance, kneeling shots pierce up to 2 targets) up to 3 hit total)

Unforgiving: Fine as is

Peripheral vision: fine as is

Perfectionist: Fine as is

Maleficent seven: fine as is

Be quick or be killed: Stunning or knocking down a target gives you 4 seconds of quickness, icd 5-10 seconds. Gain 200 power and 150 ferocity while you have quickness.

Fire for effect: Hitting your target grants allies around your target 8 seconds of might, icd 1 second. Attacks deal an extra 0.5% damage per stack of vulnerability.

Malicious restoration: reduce cd to 25 seconds

Binding shadow: fine as is

Mercy:reduce cd to 25 seconds

Shadow flare: have it leave a dark field for the duration.

Shadow gust: fine as is

Entirely agree with making preparedness baseline. Replace with something like shadow prison: 2-3 seconds of chill on your steal/mark target.

Steal baseline 25 seconds CD. Remove the CD reduction from sleight of hand, sleight of hand gears 1stack of stability for 1 second as well as dazing the target for 1 second.

Quick pockets: Reduce weapon swap cd to 4 seconds. Gain 1 initiative on weapon swap.

If you have the money, you can go with a razer or weaver. I came from console to pc a while back and that helped with the transition because I had movement bound to the thumb joystick.

Lately I've been trying to get away from that, so my current keybinds compared to default are:

Movement:rdfg

Weapon skills in order(12345):xzsaw

Heal:q

Utilities in order (789): left ctrl, e, left shift

Elite(0):h

F1:t

F2:y

F3:5

F4:6

F5:7

Dodge:n (this is bound to a mouse side button which I always use instead).

Jump:space (again, also on mouse side button cause I have 2)

I have a left and right clicking mouse wheel so I bind weapon swap and stow to that.

Special actions that pop up are bound to clicking down the mouse wheel

I have 2 buttons directly under the mouse button that have interact and toggle action camera bound to them.

C, V, and B can be bound to targeting options, or maybe if you don't find my f-key setup comfortable, f1-5 on tyhbv and move the elite to 4 or 5. T and Y are easily accessible either way and we don't use the others for theif, so I didn't really care where those were.

> @jaif.3518 said:

> In my experience in WvW, trying to snipe is a waste of time. Any decent player is moving around and rarely stands in 1500 for long enough to get off a good death's judgement.

>

> What did work well for me was to use S/D to initiate, and then when they ran away with their leaps and jumps I followed, tagged them with rifle 2, then knelt and finished with DJ. I'm still not sure if the +20% crit trait is worth it, but I think the Maleficent 7 trait might be with this style.

>

> I like the range on the rifle, and it's fun to have something to poke with when two zergs clash, but again, I don't see sniping as a big winner.

>

> -Jeff

About Silent Scope: If you use a mix of maurader armor, a maurader amulet, a zerk ring/back/weapons, and zerk+Valk for the rest of your accessories, and the precision signet, you can get 60% crit chance and then using CS, with No Quarter you'll get a good crit boost and 100% crit chance while kneeling with the trait on top of about 15k health and 2400 power for solo roaming without relying on others for boosts.

I haven't WvW much with Deadeye yet, but engaging with D/P 3 and Be Quick or be Killed+mark gives a nice initial burst and then switching to rifle as they run or allowing you to break off and finish them from a distance works similarly well to your setup.

I like where the damage is currently on rifle auto, however, Double Tap , Three Round Burst, and Death's Retreat could all have their initiative cost reduced by 1. I would also like like to see Snipers Cover be the default rollover for Kneel, with Kneel being 1 initiative at 0.25 seconds cast time and remove the count from it, and Snipers Cover being at 3 initiative and a 0.5 second cast time with the same count and recharge as now. Jumping, moving, and dodge rolling should all break kneel. Silent Scope could keep the 20% bonus to accuracy and make kneeling shots pierce 2 targets allowing them to hit up to 3 targets.

A couple of suggestions if the devs are still looking for feedback on deadeye:

_Traits_

Deadeye's Gaze: Fine as is.

Revealed Malice: Fine as is.

Iron Sight: Should reduce incoming damage by 10% while kneeling.

One in the Chamber: Should reduce the recharge of cantrips by 20% also.

Renewing Gaze: Fine as is

Silent Scope: Remove the skill change to sniper's cover (we'll come back to this). Increased rifle critical hit chance while kneeling (same as now). Rifle shots pierce up to 2 targets (making them able to hit up to 3 total).

Unforgiving: Fine as is

Peripheral Vision: Fine as is

Perfectionist: Fine as is

Maleficent Seven: Fine as is

Be Quick or be killed: Gain 3s quickness when stunning or knocking down a target (ICD 10 seconds). Remove the bonus to power an precision while under the effects of quickness. Deal 10% more damage to stunned and knocked down targets (and creatures with a broken break bar).

Fire for effect: Grant 5s of might to allies around your target when you hit your target with a rifle skill (Radius: 360). Rifle Skills deal extra damage to your target for each stack of vulnerability on your target (0.5%).

_Rifle Skills_

Brutal Aim: Fine as is

Deadly Aim: Fine as is

Cursed Bullet: Have it stun your target (1s), but leave it at the current damage and projectile speed to make it dodgeable

Skirmishers Shot: Fine as is

Spotters Shot: Fine as is

Double Tap: Fine as is

Three Round Burst: Fine as is

Death's Retreat: Fine as is

Death's Judgement: Fine as is

Kneel: Remove the count for this. Leave at 1 initiative

Free Action: Remove this. Jumping or moving should break the kneel like using killshot with warrior. Put in Sniper's Cover for 3 initiative and with a 0.5 second cast time, so the overall time to kneel and stealth is 0.75 seconds for counterplay. Leave the charge count on this skill.

_Cantrips_

Malicious Restoration: Reduce CD to 25 seconds (so it can be 20 when traited with the new One in the chamber)

Binding Shadow: Fine as is

Mercy: Reduce CD to 20 seconds since it's resetting your malice

Shadow Flare: Have it leave a dark field too

Shadow Gust: Reduce CD to 30 seconds

Shadow Meld: Fine as is

Anyway, I think some of these changes could help Deadeye and keep it unique compared to P/P