My humble opinion on the Deadeye's "feel"

[Falcord.3608]

I have been closely following community feedback on the deadeye for a bit, and while I do understand where people come from when criticising the feel of the spec, I have to say that I've really been enjoying the change of pace thus far. Please note that this post is all about how the class feels, not number balance. It may be that rifle skills need damage tweaks, but I'm not going to comment on that since I haven't played it long enough to have a concise opinion.

 

First, the cast time on Mark. I do honestly think the devs are right when saying that small cast time is important to put weight on the act of choosing a target, and that spending that time is essential to balance the range advantage. I thought I was going to find it clunky, but I've found myself really enjoying the feel of it, and very especially the sound effect. For something that you'll be doing on every encounter, I'm happy that the aural feedback turned out to be really good.

 

Moreover, I really like how the steal effects stack with Malice, because they cause an interesting dilemma: take them early and have them help on the fight for longer, or wait until they have a stronger effect? These time decisions are prevalent in Deadeye and I think they add a lot.

 

But what I find the most liberating about Mark, especially in world PvE, is the fact that it refreshes on enemy death. I was worried about Deadeye being terrible at AoE, but the ability to chain marks with all of the Trickery steal effects makes bringing down enemies a breeze. With the 2 initiative on steal, my P/P Deadeye just runs through enemy packs, and it's very satisfying. I've read complaints about Malice generation being too slow in most encounters. I see this as a balancing act with the strength of refreshing steal effects.

 

Now, the kneeling. I feel you when you say it feels clunky. Somehow, I think that clunkiness is essential. They say limitations foster creativity, and In my opinion this is very much the case with Deadeye. Being forced to stay put makes you think of terrain differently, I find myself looking for vantage points when I want to face a long fight, and considering my escape and dodge routes. Sure, there could be a built-in shortcut to leave kneel (dodge in place would be my suggestion) but really, how different is that from hitting 5 again? What I did is bind 5 to an accessible key and practice until kneeling and standing up became natural.

 

Altogether, I'm extremely happy to find out that I like how the Deadeye feels. It's a tactical, methodical class, not a power trip, so I think it's appropriate that you need to plan ahead and choose your terrain carefully. I have played it on PvP too and while positioning becomes significantly harder, I think it's well offset by the spectacular amounts of damage the Deadeye can dish out at range.

 

Thanks for the great design ANet, and while I won't try to demean the negative comments on the forum (everyone is entitled to their opinion, and detractors do make good points too) I for one would like to say that the Deadeye is an absolute blast, and exactly what I was looking for as a game changing Thief spec.