An Eye on the Deadeye

[MUDse.7623]

> @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > @"MicROpart.7905" said:

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

>

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

 

sure for many it might be boring but :

 

> @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> We decided to tie the malice consumption to stealth for a few reasons. First, we felt that stealth was a solid core mechanic that touched every single thief weapon and had many synergies through core traits and skills. Thief players already understand stealth attacks so this allows malice spending to be an upgrade to an established system rather than an entirely new one. Finally, **the Deadeye was already leaning towards being a stealth-based character due to its elite skill Shadow Meld and utility skill Shadow Gust, so we felt that having malice slot into the stealth attack was a natural fit**.

 

so one of their reasons for those changes is because deadeye is leaning towards being stealthed based. with those changes tho at least in WvW many of my opponent would be dead before i am at full malice, because i only get malice if the attack actually hits. and then when i used all my ini i need to find a way to get into stealth to oh yeah suprise my opponent with the shot, we really needed another tell. but it will be interesting to get into stealth as i probably need to use a utility as (if i understood correctly) they will remove stealth from rifle.

so how is that a playstyle leaning towards stealth? if it was at least designed to go in and out of stealth frequently, but you dont want to go into stealth untill your malice is up or you get a low stealth attack.

i simply dont get how they imagine a deadeye will fight then. using stealth attacks and using all your ini for malice gen IMO is creating a conflict in resource use. as said above: builds that rely on stealth be it a in and out style or camping will still use most ini on going into stealth and not for attacking. for instance with SA and bound you often will go BP-> bound -> BS -> mainly AA -> BP -> bound etc. you will use most ini to cast BP and left over for SS or HeadS but far less then for those two then a build running DA over SA.

[DeceiverX.8361]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with stealth-based play.

 

There's absolutely something wrong with play that revolves around sitting invisible and doing nothing but that for minutes on end and then one-shotting someone, with free escapes on a failed attempt.

 

The nature of the changes support weaving in and out of stealth if using it heavily and using Meld proactively, and will cause players to need to be able to sustain themselves by not solely relying on stealth to stay alive.

 

Basically to use stealth as a positional tool and target break to set up for subsequent damage or safety as originally intended.

A DE integrating stealth into its play would do something like:

Stealth (Meld 1 maybe) -> Reposition -> Expend initiative, utilities, etc. for some pressure per a normal fight -> Stealth (Meld 2) -> Execute target.

 

We still lack information on the exact changes which will be made, and I hope there are some tweaks to some of the rifle's skills in terms of their initiaive costs to account for the fact that it will require these expenditures. That said, I think the approach to gameplay patterns is a healthier one. The current iteration of SA DE just feels awful to play against and is generally extremely binary in how it performs. It's why I think SA could also use a rework in general, but small steps.

 

 

[MUDse.7623]

> @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> There's absolutely nothing wrong with stealth-based play.

>

> There's absolutely something wrong with play that revolves around sitting invisible and doing nothing but that for minutes on end and then one-shotting someone, with free escapes on a failed attempt.

>

> The nature of the changes support weaving in and out of stealth if using it heavily and using Meld proactively, and will cause players to need to be able to sustain themselves by not solely relying on stealth to stay alive.

>

> Basically to use stealth as a positional tool and target break to set up for subsequent damage or safety as originally intended.

> A DE integrating stealth into its play would do something like:

> Stealth (Meld 1 maybe) -> Reposition -> Expend initiative, utilities, etc. for some pressure per a normal fight -> Stealth (Meld 2) -> Execute target.

>

> We still lack information on the exact changes which will be made, and I hope there are some tweaks to some of the rifle's skills in terms of their initiaive costs to account for the fact that it will require these expenditures. That said, I think the approach to gameplay patterns is a healthier one. The current iteration of SA DE just feels awful to play against and is generally extremely binary in how it performs. It's why I think SA could also use a rework in general, but small steps.

>

>

 

the huge benefit and the actual strength of shadow meld is the reveal removal in your proposed way tho you never use it to remove reveal for faster in and outs. because that would be actually pointsless unless you go into stealth without using stealth attacks or use them without malice bonus.

on top shadow meld has 45s cooldown, yes you got 2 ammos at the beginning but thats still a long cd, stealth utilities are also around that CD number. thats a bit high for in and out of stealth isnt it considering current TTK? especially if you need stealth to use your malice - your class mechanic. to that comes that you need too many resources to gain malice and they got to be used directly offensively.

sure there is no stealth camping that way, but there is no real stealthplay at all that way.

would you even think of using shadow arts if your perfectionist boons already run out before you enter stealth with a long CD utility so that you right away come out of stealth again?

and now dont tell me 'then SA has to be changed' you cant say a proposed class design is good, because if someday they might actually for the first time change SA to favor in and out of stealth over camping it, then it would peform good. because then still bound DD would mainly profit from it not the proposed DE concept.

 

in dont think there is an easy way to make a working concept for a deadeye without changing basic game mechanic, to create a playstyle that will let the rifle deadeye go in and out of stealth in quick succession without enableing stealth camping tho. i know you dont like that style, but if deadeye was good with an in and out style then there maybe would be more of that sort around and the 5 deadeyes pers region playing camper, wont get noticed as much anymore.

 

you are right that we dont have information on all the traits but i dont think they can change much of the base concept of the malice system and i doubt we will get another rifle stealth trait if they removed the existing one.

[Platanos.8107]

I think this is a good change for deadeye. It definitely felt like the profession design was rushed and maybe not so well thought out, so this new update will probably already be in a better state than release deadeye.

 

I do believe many deadeye traits need to be cleaned up and don't fit any playstyle well.

 

I think the rifle is balanced now, but unfun. A good analogy would probably be Zoe in League of Legends. Had like a 48% win rate, but almost perma-banned and universally hated because she could one shot someone from 1 screen away. So making it so you have to be attacking to gain stacks makes DJ is a good direction.

 

Now to talk about the scary things about what has been shown in the new spec.

 

I think only generating malice with only initiative use skills is bad design. Thief has mainly been an auto attack + utility class. Most of the play is auto attacking and using skills when the situation requires it. Barring summons, I think every strike should generate some malice. Maybe any strike can generate malice (cd 3 seconds). Initiative skill can grant 1+1 and is not part of the cd. Otherwise, you gotta waste initiative for a point blank shadow shot to play around your mechanic. Obviously I don't know the whole detail about this new mechanic, but my first impressions is that almost all strikes should generate malice.

 

I hope some of the traits are completely revamped/replaced. Premediation as written, still doesn't know what it wants to be: in raids, you don't do the boon sharing, so the concentration is useless. Anyone who has tried boon share thief, knows it only works on core thief, and basically only on Matty and statues. Sure, this trait is probably going to be meta in raids and fractals, but it's only because there will probably be nothing better. The concentration feels out of place and only used as padding to make it seem like a grandmaster trait. List of traits shown for comparison. As a reminder, there are 12 unique boons.

Grandmaster, Premediation: +1% strike damage for every boon, +180 concentration (+12% boon duration)

Grandmaster, Bountiful Power: +2% damage for every boon (includes condi).

Grandmaster, Power of the Virtuous: +1% damage for every boon (includes condi). Virtues 15% cd reduction.

Master, Empowered: +1% damage for every boon (include condi)

 

HOWEVER, I do think this could potentially be a great grandmaster traits if Trickery traits (TotC, Bountiful Theft) got the FfE treatment and also granted boons to allies near target. I would personally prefer to remove concentration, and make boon rips share boons with allies (can work with sigils, traits, weapons skills) near you and near target, or if you want to make it stronger, boons that you put on yourself are also shared with allies.

 

I see P/P fans being unhappy, but we don't know anything about the trait/utility synergy yet. It looks like you guys are pretty confident that it will work well so that's reassuring.

 

Also for the people complaining about no love for Herald, can we not. We should be appreciative that mesmers can play so many roles (albeit maybe a bit op), not complaining that, for example, that you could replace all thieves as loot bags in wvw and no one would notice. I'm sure heralds will get looked as soon.

[Leo G.4501]

Why can't this be tied to a trait? This is the same deal with Spirit Weapons and Phantasms. You can make a trait that changes the aspect you're looking at and then tailor the other aspects from there. It'd be very simple. Make the Grandmaster trait the part that does it while making the minor traits have differing effects depending on the GM trait.

 

At least a quarter of the time, I'm using mark to get into stealth but if you need to hit something to gain malice, that's kind of a useless gesture, isn't it?

[Gambit.9501]

> @"JasonLucas.4981" said:

> If I'm not wrong, in some raids we get perma revealed, how are we going to use stealth attacks in those circumstances?

 

Same way we already do. I've done Rifle Deadeye on Deimos ranged strat, and IIRC you still get to perform your stealth attack. If anything it makes your overall DPS even higher by having Revealed permanantly on you if you're doing Deadly Arts, due to that power bonus. I think the perma-revealed for that case just means that enemies are still able to attack/see you even if you're in stealth.

[MUDse.7623]

> @"Leo G.4501" said:

> At least a quarter of the time, I'm using mark to get into stealth but if you need to hit something to gain malice, that's kind of a useless gesture, isn't it?

we dont know the traits yet, maybe deadeyes can then attack without losing cover..ehm stealth.

 

> @"Gambit.9501" said:

> > @"JasonLucas.4981" said:

> > If I'm not wrong, in some raids we get perma revealed, how are we going to use stealth attacks in those circumstances?

>

> Same way we already do. I've done Rifle Deadeye on Deimos ranged strat, and IIRC you still get to perform your stealth attack. If anything it makes your overall DPS even higher by having Revealed permanantly on you if you're doing Deadly Arts, due to that power bonus. I think the perma-revealed for that case just means that enemies are still able to attack/see you even if you're in stealth.

 

well just a quick search on youtube got me

 

you can see when he uses silent scope the immune message and no stealth, so no reveal does not only make them see you but prevents stealthing.

BUT as already suspected in my previous answer to that question, at ~0:50 she uses first time DJ wich overwrites the reveal with a short 3s reveal. after that you can just stealth. ofc with DJ being a stealth skill that wont work, but then shadow meld should also work.

[Urejt.5648]

As a top 5 eu rifle thief player iam little bit scared what will happan to the thief. Everything sounds like a buff, but devil lies in the detail.

 

Firstly i agree that death's judgment was useless skilll in pvp. I never use it. However moving it into aa sneak atack with new malice generation police will make sneak atack useless in most situations i feel. Mainly because u might have no malice. maybe if it hits as hard as threebullet with no malice its acceptable.

 

Secondly i really hope rifle gets good dps unblockable skill in place of sneak atack. I autowin vs warriors thx to Cursed Bullet. i really hope new patch will also provide autowin vs warriors.

 

Thirdly iam scared anet will tryhard to make thief survive in kneel position by giving 1000 shield on kneel. First of all its not enough. Even 3000 shield would not be enough. kneeling still for long time is very bad. But if thief gets a smokescreen on very kneel every 10 seconds that would be good.

 

 

[inaho.2046]

I've really enjoyed my deadeye thief. I have daredevil done as well - but I'm a sniper at heart. The last rebalance patch destroyed my mesmer build when the pistol skill was nerfed to useless, I fear that with my deadeye. I love the DPS I'm getting with my precision and ferocity high. 70% critical chance on my rifle - in fact my attacks can keep me healed while fighting. The stealth is useless - mobs still attack me when stealthed, and stealth doesn't last long enough to be of practical use anyway. I chose a spot with room to dodge mark my target and kneel. With the HP on the deadeye low to start with - quick kills are a necessity. I'm worried about how this will work. To be honest, after the mesmer rebalance, I'm inclined to believe I'll play my deadeye that day and switch to another character to main - just as the mesmer balance patch forced me to do. The one that needs rework is Glint for herald. I hated my revenant until I finished renegade - and then it was much better - but not as good as deadeye, or scourge, or weaver. For a class that requires purchasing the expansions to get l, I was hoping it would be something special to make people want to buy the expansions for the class. It's not. You could fix that, but I'm so happy with my deadeye - and I'm not thrilled about the possibility he will be massively nerfed in practice like my mesmer was.

[Urejt.5648]

Is malice lost on marked target kill?

I wonder how will new kneel mechanic work and how will stealth on kneel work. Would love to know if i still get stealth every 10 seconds.

 

> @"Elxdark.9702" said:

> > @"kash.9213" said:

> > Are you guys trying to tank this elite to get ready for next expansion? I'm going to have to drop power for precision to kitten around with trying to land as many fire and forget hits as possible so that kitten up my kind of build and stealth setup players are going to have to play more like I currently do or they get no malice at all.

> >

> > I don't want to be discouraged from using my Stealth skills. Now stealth skills consume and reset my malice stacks? As it is right now apart from some skills or traits being a bit jankey, a patch fix or two can smooth that out but most play styles can currently operate with Deadeye. This change would favor my build and play style, but it sounds like it would totally dismantle and shelve other playstyles and builds.

> >

> > You're basically creating the same feedback loop of skill/initiative to trait modifiers that makes Staff daredevil/acro so fluid as a melee frontline build but with Malice and range because why?

>

> the idea is to generate malice and use it through your stealth attacks to gain the bonus and repeat.

>

> imo it's much better than having malice only as a % modifier and waiting for it to stack.

 

u will change your mind when u see:

+1% for every malice point to backstab dmg

+1 vuln stack for every malice on rifle sneak atack

+1 endurance for every malice sstack on sword atack

[shippage.1983]

the new Premeditation trait and the steal skill from Mesmers sound like a really broken combo.

[MUDse.7623]

> @"shippage.1983" said:

> the new Premeditation trait and the steal skill from Mesmers sound like a really broken combo.

 

why steal skill? deadeye has mark skill that is steal quickness: inflicts a little damage+ slow on the mesmer and quickness on the deadeye.

the consume plasma thing is from core thief or daredevil.

[Carighan.6758]

Well, this sounds interesting.

 

**But**, why are you replacing a mechanic as simplistic as *current* Malice with something which needs 6 bullet points to explain. You're making it **more** complicated. Not that the new one doesn't sounds interesting, but simplicity was clearly not among the goals, even if it is repeated like a mantra a few times. The current one is far more simple than this, because it's automated with a trivial but significant interaction. It beats the new version on both ease of explanation **and** interactivity.

 

Plus, the new bonuses from it sound even more complicated. It's used up **and** has a per-attack effect. So even more things to study and learn.

 

Of course, it sounds cool. But this is a **significant** extra amount of complexity, will there be a tutorial or at least a tutorial popup explaining these changes and new effects? Because otherwise I predict a lot of casual players who didn't hear about the change being massively confused when people tell them they're doing it all wrong.

[Blaze.4692]

Thief is my main, and all of this sounds very interesting and, in my opinion is make deadeye a much more complex and enjoyable spec to play. I'm very happy that instead of sitting in the back and spamming until I can get off deaths judgement, I will now be engaging in the fight and using stealth and other mechanics more fluidly(hopefully).

[Zlater.6789]

@"Robert Gee.9246"

How does this impact mark?

Does malice only build against a marked target or can it be on anything? If so what is the functionality of mark?

[Sarrs.4831]

> @"Carighan.6758" said:

> **But**, why are you replacing a mechanic as simplistic as *current* Malice with something which needs 6 bullet points to explain. You're making it **more** complicated.

 

You're overstating it. It's really pretty simple.

 

Spend initiative to gain Malice.

Spend Malice to empower your stealth attacks.

 

Done. The rest are details but they don't really affect the fundamentals.

[Theros.1390]

The most important thing : Will Death Jugement still reveal the sniper when activated ? (since it becomes a stealth skill)

[MUDse.7623]

> @"Theros.1390" said:

> The most important thing : Will Death Jugement still reveal the sniper when activated ? (since it becomes a stealth skill)

doubt there will be any DE build using extended periods of stealth on rifle if they remove stealth option on rifle and give such a malice build up, so them going into stealth will be pretty much be a : get ready to dodge. if you even survive the hits needed to build up the malice, as you gain it only from actually hitting the target.

i would prefer to still get revealed during DJ, to lose malice on a missed hit but to gain one additonal malice on any ini skill (without any further condition what you use that skill for) so up to 3 if hit+crit and keep stealth on rifle just on the new kneel 4 as addition.

then it would actually make sense investing into stealth. you wouldnt need to run many stealth skills as utility in your pve rotation and could just: TRB, TRB , kneel 4 , DJ with the mark + stolen skills as well as flare on cd and sometimes reposition( and AA to fill on low ini). therefore a little more skills to press then current lock auto attack + put weight on DJ skill rotation. and i think that would probably be higher DPS then now. because now you can use ini for TRB **or** DJ and fill with AA, then you would rarely use AA. this way DE maybe gets to a DPS lvl that people would take them willingly for some raid encounters aswell.

 

but at current state, dont get confused by 'the deadeye is already leaning towards stealth' . their concept doesnt really make sense with skill/trait information we got so far.

 

[Xarimath.4518]

I really do appreciate the time you are investing to change a profession that is not mostly popular to make it more appealing in its playstyle.

 

Speaking about PvP prospective, will other professions get a rework for some traits as well? For example some Elementalist core traits could use some love, or the Berserker elite spec for the Warrior is kinda underperforming at the moment... (I'm not asking about buffs, i'm speaking about actual changes to revamp the profession as you guys are doing for the deadeye). Since you had time to look and rework deadeye traits would be lovely and appreciated by a part of the community if you can make the playstyle of some unpopular profession more appealing and less clunky.

 

As usual, keep it up with the good job, can't wait to test these new features.

[Urejt.5648]

wrong quitezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[knyy.6427]

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

 

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

[Urejt.5648]

> @"shippage.1983" said:

> the new Premeditation trait and the steal skill from Mesmers sound like a really broken combo.

 

Skill stolen from mesemr by deadeye is not ALL MIGHTLY ALL BOON GLOBE, but silly 1 sec quickness 1 sec slow.

[Carighan.6758]

> @"Sarrs.4831" said:

> You're overstating it. It's really pretty simple.

>

> Spend initiative to gain Malice.

> Spend Malice to empower your stealth attacks.

>

> Done. The rest are details but they don't really affect the fundamentals.

 

Sure, but by the same token the current mechanic is:

 

* Gain malice automatically.

* Increases damage of your attacks.

 

The rest are "details". And frankly the details actually seem more intricate with the new system. But like I said, I like the new system, I just find it weird to tout it as "less complex", when it needs so many more minute details such as per-attack effects on the stealth attacks. You'd think a flat percentage modifier to your damage would be easier, conceptually.

 

[MUDse.7623]

> @"knyy.6427" said:

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

>

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

 

and again. **use shadow meld**, the reveal is long and applied at the the beginning but doesnt pulsate.

[Kain Francois.4328]

Just gotta say that reworking the profession to revolve around enhanced Stealth attacks is probably one of the better design decisions you guys have made. My initial reaction to Deadeye during beta was one of disappointment, since it didn't feel like it changed gameplay in any significant ways when not using Rifle. These changes changes were mechanically due, and I like how they sound of enhancing our Stealth attacks. Thief players LOVE their stealth, it's one of the most defining aspect of the profession. Good to see it being enhanced upon.