Guild Wars 2

What are your thoughts on how a Deadeye might play in a pve setting what build do you think would be optimal in terms of just raw single target sustained DPS do you think the rifle will see any use or will some other weapon always be a more optimal choice?

When you say PvE, what exactly do you have in mind? General open world exploring mostly solo? Large scale meta events? Running fractals and raids?

The range on rifle is good and since many fights rely on range, rifle feels better compared to shortbow. Then again, bigger fights usually involve constant movement, and deadeye needs to stay on one spot for best damage.

Personally I’d go with full zerker and the #1 skill.

Rifle in PvE is a very situational weapon. In Open world, dungeons, fractals and even some raid-areas you face a lot of trash-mobs. These mobs usually die before you can build up any malice. Aoe-dmg is king in PvE and rifle lacks that completely. On bosses it’s a different story. So I would expect any Deadeye in PvE to use a cleaving weapon (dagger or sword) mainly and rifle only on bosses.

I wonder if 4 spam with auto attack filler + 7 malice would be better than daredevil against bosses, probably not but waaaaaaaay safer

But… D/D and Rifle Deadeye rotation would be interesting to see…
Start with dual dagger auto until you build 7 malice, switch to rifle and throw 3 or 4 rifle 4, then switch back to dagger auto… repeat.