Guild Wars 2

This seems like one of the more interesting specializations being added in PoF to me. It is a skill set that seems to better fit the rifle then any other currently in game. I definitely want to play it when it gets released. Range and projectile speed could be increased while kneeling, I expected the range to be better. Will definitely play this spec.

JimT.7038:

This seems like one of the more interesting specializations being added in PoF to me. It is a skill set that seems to better fit the rifle then any other currently in game. I definitely want to play it when it gets released. Range and projectile speed could be increased while kneeling, I expected the range to be better. Will definitely play this spec.

To me it seems like one of the more boring specs.
Just because Warrior has better options than rifle and engineers rifle is even more weak…no wait, engineers autoattack is even stronger than deadeye’s!
I think it’s a broken spec. Designed during breaktime.

On the Rifle:

Kneeling and Marking needs to be instant for this to mechanic to be of any use, and kneeling should be canceled by either dodging or jumping along with it’s current method.

By the time you can fire, your target has either moved away, or will counter-play you with ease because of how obvious the tells are.

To my experience, Rifle becomes pretty much useless as soon as someone is aware of you, which doesn’t help the synergy it has with Mark Target… I think it’ll see very limited use… If any.

Now other weapon sets are pretty great. The amount of boons you get with S/D this time around is awesome, and the quickness and power boost on activation from mark target can cause some hilarious results with P/P, and does far more burst than the Rifle could just dream of.

I admit it’s pretty hard to master, but Deadeye is a lot of fun, especially because of its unique playstyle. It’s all about positioning. I even already managed to 1v1 many players once I figured how it all works.

I love it.

Anet said they’d love to see Deadeye shoot people with gliders out of the air? You’re gonna have to dramatically improved the knelt range then. I was thinking that 1500 range is a good distance. It really isn’t. Hell, all of the mobs in Bloodstone Fen will show you how to do that, their range is much further than that and they HURT.

For a character with limited mobility for range and power you’d think you’d be taking advantage of high ground more often, or sitting further back like what the Necrospec’s can do.

The base projectile speed of the rifle is too slow for comfort.

And Anet, for the love of god, if you do improve the range, do not do a compensation nerf.

On a side note… THANK YOU FOR LOWERING THE COST ON FIVE WITH SHADOW MELD

TwiceDead.1963:

On the Rifle:

Kneeling and Marking needs to be instant for this to mechanic to be of any use, and kneeling should be canceled by either dodging or jumping along with it’s current method.

By the time you can fire, your target has either moved away, or will counter-play you with ease because of how obvious the tells are.

To my experience, Rifle becomes pretty much useless as soon as someone is aware of you, which doesn’t help the synergy it has with Mark Target… I think it’ll see very limited use… If any.

Now other weapon sets are pretty great. The amount of boons you get with S/D this time around is awesome, and the quickness and power boost on activation from mark target can cause some hilarious results with P/P, and does far more burst than the Rifle could just dream of.

Exactly this. If arenanet does anything about this, make mark target and kneel instant cast.

Avador.8934:

I admit it’s pretty hard to master, but Deadeye is a lot of fun, especially because of its unique playstyle. It’s all about positioning. I even already managed to 1v1 many players once I figured how it all works.

I love it.

When you do get the hang of it to reliably 1v1, I’d love to see a video of it. Just sayin’.

This isn’t snark, I am just curious to see how you made it work in action.

Hidden Thief Bug: When using Deadeye Mark while auto attacking the auto attack doesn’t stop after entering stealth and fires one last normal bullet after Deadeye Mark animation finishes which immediately breaks stealth. I cant even use Sheath weapon hotkey while I’m kneeling to stop the auto attack before/after stealthing because it cancels the Kneel. If you’re fast enough you can fire the Cursed Bullet before the forced auto breaks stealth but would be nice if it was fixed. :>

After testing it a little bit I’ll put my suggestions.

Try to make it easier to get out of kneeling. I love the idea and feel behind it, however if we need to get out of dodge it feels very constraining. I think it would be helpful to have movement keys or jump knock you out of it.

Let the AA be a little bit faster. They are currently too slow.

My last suggestion is just an idea and i’m not sure if it would be good or not. How about inverting the marked mechanic. When you mark a target start off with max malice and have it slowly degrade as the duration shortens. Maybe even have the time you have certain amount of malice go by quicker as well. Like first 5s have it at max, then next 4s will be at -1, then 3s -2, then 2s -3, then have it remain static at -4 for the rest of its duration.

What if they removed kneel entirely and made kneel skills baseline when running around kiting, while removing deaths judgement (nr 4) and keep that backward dash on default?

The rifle seems a little too slow, but its strong in certain situations.
It takes a while to get used to having no gap closer like steal though.

The lack of mobility hurts in wvw, without daredevil, although it seems to synergize pretty well with SA.

I personally feel that the trade off for being immobile is not enough. I kneel and instead of feeling like a killing machine that might be in a bad spot and having to plan my movements, I feel like I need to stay standing because the damage increase isn’t super worth it and the one big attack while kneeling is incredibly easy to dodge due to a big “you’re going to die” orange line telling the world to dodge. However, even when I am not kneeling and I feel somewhat useful, my damage is garbage. I would say I would like to see the following:

*Increase standing range to 1500 with lower damage (range consistancy is important imo)

*Increase rate of gaining malice (feels way too slow to take advantage of before mark expires)

*Lower the tell on our big rifle 4 ability

*Make the mark an instant ability (the cast time feels really bad)

*Overall, I feel we need more damage coming from somewhere to make the trade off worth it. Right now it feels like putting away the rifle and going back to staff Daredevil is the smartest move. Otherwise, it feels like I am crippling myself on purpose.

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

The rifle seems a little too slow, but its strong in certain situations.
It takes a while to get used to having no gap closer like steal though.

The lack of mobility hurts in wvw, without daredevil, although it seems to synergize pretty well with SA.

I get it but… its a sniper! either you’re melee and mobile or sniper and siting duck, you cant have the best of both worlds.

Volrath.1473:

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

The rifle seems a little too slow, but its strong in certain situations.
It takes a while to get used to having no gap closer like steal though.

The lack of mobility hurts in wvw, without daredevil, although it seems to synergize pretty well with SA.

I get it but… its a sniper! either you’re melee and mobile or sniper and siting duck, you cant have the best of both worlds.

That philosophy makes perfect sense in a world where deadeye does more damage. At the moment Daredevil does more damage and still is super tanky when they take the healing trait.

Rifle is pretty fun if used well and with SA, that aside..

1- mark needs to be instant, this is a priority.
2- rework #4 rifle, the idea is good but the implementation isn’t.
3- stolen abilities are gaining from rng and not from class specific, intended?
4- give us the ability to cancel kneel by moving (please)
5- 1# rifle stealth speed projectile is reaaaaaaaally but really slow, the only unblockable skill deadeye has and you can’t even land it.
6- increase malice stacking rate, it feels too slow.
7- marking a new target shouldn’t remove all the malice, instead it should decay 1 malice each 3s or something.
8- heal skill needs to be 25s and 1/2 cast time.
9- instead of lowering the heal skill add 20% recharge cantrip skills on One in the Chamber trait.
10- Renewing Gaze should be changed for pvp and be a based health number 2-3k instead of regeneration.

Honestly, I think what may help is guaranteeing a crit on Death’s Judgement. We will be immobile, it costs a lot of initiative, AND it has a giant tell on it. I think this will help a lot.

Elxdark.9702:

Rifle is pretty fun if used well and with SA, that aside..

2- rework #4 rifle, the idea is good but the implementation isn’t.

What’s wrong with Rifle 4 to need a whole rework?

My opinions of Deadey. As these posts are long, I need to break it up into parts due to message length limits.

Part 1:

<< Core Mechanics >>
Malice: Malice currently takes 10+ seconds to build it on a target you’re attacking, and 20+ on one you’re not. The latter means you’ve already basically burned your entire duration before you even get the full benefits, and the former you only get half. It taking that long means you won’t be able to build up high malice in 90% of content, as you or the target is not going to last that long. Bosses are the obvious exception, but then you face the issue of the fact that Malice completely resets when you Mark the same target as well, putting you back on the long build up process all over again. Unfortunately this all boils down to mechanics heavily reliant on high malice for proper utility or damage are screwed. Build up time can pretty safely be halved, but lowering of some kind is needed, such as the traited version being base, and 1s/2.5s traited.

Deadeye’s Mark: I’ve already went over the Malice aspect, but this ability has another big issue: the stolen skills being tied to the mark rather than being separate. This causes several issues. First is that in the face of quick combat that means a mark will be dropped in seconds if not less, so stolen skills lose all strategy. More frustratingly, the the Cantrip trait that gives stolen skills on Cantrip use becomes 100% useless on the Mercy Cantrip as it self-defeats itself by removing the Mark that the skills currently require. Simply allow the stolen skills to remain, and overwrite like it already does with normal stolen skills. This should allow you to fix the Cantrip trait for Mercy and as well as open actual strategic use of stolen skills (alternate openers, saving a specific skill theft for the proper time, etc).

Part 2:

<< Traits >>
< Adept Traits >
- Revealed Malice: Currently I find this weak. I do see the advantage of looking to start with more Malice, but only one is meh. I’d like to see this be 1 malice per 1.5s while you are revealed. I’d take losing the small amount of Might for that.
- Iron Sight: Straightforward, and likely the default trait in most cases until the others are changed.
- One in the Chamber: This refers back to the poor use of stolen skills being required to have a marked target. 100% useless on one of the skills this is meant to trait, and others generally too short to have a use. Break the Marked requirement, and this should be better. This should also trait Cantrip cooldowns.

< Master Traits >
- Renewing Gaze: This sole trait is where I can see Marks competing against Steals. You lose mobility, but gain constant uses against squishy targets, gaining nice utility with Steal traits.
- Silent Scope: I don’t believe Rifle 5 should lose almost all utility just to engage a mechanic – it basically makes a 4 skill two-hander. Stealth grant and the higher initiative cost should be base Rifle 5. Possibly have it grant 2 initiative on kill along with the 20% kneeling rifle crit? Or make all Rifle skills pierce? Though I think that should be default as well.
- Unforgiving: Does allow for a followup stun on a traited Mark or a CC type mark without having to go Trickery, but hard to escape trickery if you’re looking to use more than auto-attack regularly. Though I’d like to see this to tie in better with the Malice mechanic and have Unforgiving trigger on max Malice as well.
- Peripheral Vision: While this suffers from the Mark stolen skill lock that I think needs to be changed, I also consider the range to be a bit tight. 360 I think would be a better area.

< Grandmaster Traits >
- Perfectionist: This is currently capped by the slow malice build-up rate, but it’s own timer can easily be a balancing factor against faster Malice max possibilities, which this already has set at 8.
- Maleficent Seven: Is the max damage trait with the malice mechanic, but unless Malice buildup is changed, is likely a no-go outside of boss fights.
- Be Quick or Be Killed: Pretty strong against trash fights where you keep casting mark or when you have other sources of Quickness.
- Fire for Effect: I can see this being pretty strong in zergs that need a source of Might, or as a melee source. The stolen skill life being tied to Mark concerns remain, and also would want to see a 360 range, especially with it being meant to hit more targets.

<< Skills >>
- Malicious Restoration: This is a skill tied to Malice, and considering its longer cooldown, really will be tied to if they improve Malice gain or not if it really will see use. Outside of that, not bad.
- Binding Shadow: A nice little vuln burst, but should be range 1500 to match Rifle so a Rifle user will not be without their matching Elite Specialization abilities. That, or tie +300 range to the One in the Chamber trait.
- Mercy: I know that this exists so as to allow more dynamic Mark use and as a stun break, but a 30 sec cooldown for this is just silly. That’s as long or longer than the cool down of Marking in the first place, and can be considered a detriment if used as a stun break. This should have a cool down of 10 or 15 seconds. That would allow for more dynamic target switching if the need calls for, as well as the counter-play of making a thief want to take this for the stun break and conversely allow players to press a thief into dropping their Mark and subsequently built up Malice against them to break a stun.
- Shadow Flare: Strongly resembles Shadow Step, but with a much smaller window, only one port, and does damage instead of cures condis. While most cases utility-wise Shadow Step will be taken over this, the ranged AOE pressure always has its uses. This should have 1500 range though.
- Shadow Gust: I like this skill, though I do think it should count as a whirl or blast finisher.
- Shadow Meld: The ability to re-stealth no matter what is pretty strong, and didn’t do any testing to see how it works against things like Warrior’s Mage Teather. Would like to hear from those that have. This will be a tough choice against Basilisk Venom.

Part 3: (the weapon!)

<< Rifle >>
This is a weapon dipped in controversy, and the struggle the devs had with this weapon shows. I don’t feel it is in a good place currently, but feel it can get there and even like the trade-off kneel mechanic, assuming it is made to be worth it.

The kneel mechanic is currently very clunky and suicidal. Only +300 range is not a real range advantage, and is easily closed allowing for CC/gap closers/etc to easily step on you. Add in skill 5 being the only way to break out of the stance, and that extra button click is a breaking deal for PvP, Raids, or anything else with heavy mechanics that you need to react quickly too. Dodging and leaving kneel will cause you to pause or even completely stop (while still pressing a move key) at the end of the dodge roll, which needs to be fixed. Also WASD should break out of Kneel, but dodge alone should not. That allows for more active gameplay. If those changes cannot be made, then kneel will always be in a broken balance as it would take OP skills to justify a mechanic that won’t allow you to react to stimuli quick enough.

The ability to pierce naturally (or through trait) is a major factor that would help make the Rifle worth using without just flat buffs to everything.

My suggestions are with the consideration that dodge + WASD as well as WASD will be fixed to properly break out of Kneel dynamically.

< Skill 1 >
- Brutal Aim: I do feel that the damage of this ability falls a little short. I also feel that the projectile speed is too slow, especially for how obvious it is. The base damage should be boosted by ~10%, and the base projectile speed boosted a little.
- Deadly Aim: I don’t feel that this quite justifies the stance. But if the 25%(?) damage boost is applied onto a base increase of Brutal Aim along with the 50% projectile speed on a faster bullet, this will feel much better.
- Cursed Bullet: A slow and very obvious projectile being your stealth attack feels very counter-intuitive to me. Add in the mediocre damage of the move, I don’t see a two even unblockable boon corruptions justifying the slow and obvious tell. This should either be an invisible bullet to fit more thematically, or have a benefit that justifies the tell. Possibly taking away endurance or much more damage or something.

< Skill 2 >
- Skirmisher’s Shot: Adding no more damage than auto-attack, it means that this is more for the utility. I do feel that all of the Rifle’s attacks should pierce on its own, which would take off one of the main reasons to use this. Possibly having this bounce shot instead of pierce so to want to use this when you can’t line up shots would be a very good fit. Also as others have suggested, it would be nice to have the swiftness not be qualified by hitting a target.
- Spotter’s Shot: I do feel that Vigor instead of Swiftness is more fitting in the kneel stance. Bounce instead of Pierce if pierce is given to the rest of Rifle.

< Skill 3 >
- Double Tap: Feels a bit like P/P Unload, but I like the route they took with that, and that’s nice here. Though I don’t feel Double Tap is worth the 4 Ini cost – this should be 3.
- Three Round Burst: While the damage of this I feel justifies the 4 Ini cost, it comes with the penalty of requiring Kneel, so should also be 3 Ini.

< Skill 4 >
- Death’s Retreat: I like the flavor of this ability, but it faces the issue of Shadow Step’s poor pathing. You can easily find yourself only moving a tiny bit or not at all, which can be the death of you, especially considering it is target based rather than direction based. Simply make this direction based to leave the player enough control to keep the step effective.
- Death’s Judgment: This is the big move that on would want as a sniper… and then was given a massive over-the-top beacon along with a sizable windup that allows anyone with at least one eye-ball to easily see and dodge/block/reflect back to your face. This move is also strongly tied to Malice stacks which currently stacks too slow for true active combat, mean most uses of this will be weak versions. Any Malice changes making it easier to stack would obviously help the latter, but please take a step back from the hand-holding counterplay and make the tell more normal. I think the glowing star at the end of the rifle is enough of a tell that the move is happening, but at the very least make the line half the current width or less.

< Skill 5 >
- Kneel: I don’t think a skill slot should be given up for a mechanic. “Sniper’s Cover” should be base giving this the utility of a stealth ability. Also I question if the 10 second charge of Kneel is necessary. I realize this is meant to prevent an easy perma-stealth, but there are already multiple ways to get that – I don’t see why the class it would be most obvious to have it should be excluded from it. This could be balanced by making it cost 4 Ini instead of 3 so as to have perma-stealthing in most cases to outstrip ini gains so someone using that mechanic won’t have the ini to open up with.
- Free Action: While I do think it needs to be made to allow Kneel stance to be broken out of more freely, having this with the additional utility when you leave stance in a more controlled manner is nice.

Make an own thread for your changes. They look fairly good so far.

With regards to the malice generation speed, I did think it was too slow to generate to really get the benefit of the traits. Especially when considering it only builds when attacking one particular target. It is also disappointing that it only increases your damage against that target, because there is a trait which allows you to make your mark deal less damage to you, which I had thought very useful because it would enable you to mark say, a berserk warrior or another thief that poses a threat to you, while attacking a different target altogether with your team.

The utility skills I think are very good, they just don’t fit with the rifle theme. They would be more suited to a melee role, while the trait line itself is heavily geared toward rifle (or any strong long ranged weapon (of which there is only rifle)).

The elite skill is interesting, and I was initially keen to give it a go, but having actually slotted it, it’s like a light switch went on, and I realised it’s really not deserving of an elite skill slot. If, for example it was a utility skill, it would be competing with Blinding Powder for D/P. 2 charges countering reveal, but with a cast time, vs no cast time, blast finisher and AoE blind. Blinding Powder wins. In fact, if Blinding Powder was an elite, I can see it being picked over Basilisk Venom. For other weapon-set builds, it doesn’t break stuns nor does it offer any mobility, so it would lose to skills like Shadow Step, Roll for Initiative and even Infiltrator’s Signet. The Dead Eye elite skill only offers a brief defense against a counter to our stealth. If thief ever needs to slot it, it is in a very, very bad place indeed. Until then, it is not worth taking. It needs to offer more.

The heal skill is very nice. I’m not sure I will have need of it, personally, but it is great to know it is there as an option, and I’m sure it will see use in some builds.

I stand by my previous comments about reverting Dead Eye’s Mark to shadow stepping and using the stolen item skills, while giving players the option to trait it into a non-shadow stepping buff-stealing ability for rifle or P/P builds.

Going to repeat some things other have said for visibility

1.) The auto-attack is too slow with too little damage
2.) The auto attack should pierce and/or ricochet and bring ricochet back in the game for both pistol and rifle
3.) Stealth on kneel should be baseline
4.) Eliminate cast time on mark / allow it to be casted with no target
5.) The pathing on Death’s retreat is a little weird Depending on the surface, elevation, etc. it often wont teleport you backwards.
6.) Cantrips feel underwhelming
7.) Kneeling should be broken with WASD
8.) Kneeling #4 seems to be the only reason to kneel in the first place
9.) Deaths retreat could also be a small evade given that the distance traveled backwards is pretty minimal.
10.) Its weird to me that kneel is a weapon #5 ability instead of profession mechanic like “F3.” Despite having some new attacks in kneel, it feels like a weapon skill is being taken away from us.
11.) There’s no reason for stolen skills to disappear when combat ends.

The rifle maybe used in WvW, other than that it does not offer much. Though for PvE, P/P will be much better with Dead Eye line, but again that is open world PvE, so not much :/

After about 4 hours of pvp, I think it has promise. Running s/p rifle SA/Tri/DE, letting DE and trickery carry the offense, sa carry defense, and it’s seems pretty fun, if kind of clunky.

My main gripe though, is the needing a target to activate our effects off of steal. It makes it needlessly difficult to get that extra burst of speed/stealth/what have you that we have always had without a target or out of combat. Just feels like a needless nerf on something that’s not even out yet, lol.

Edit: Also remove the cast time on Mark. The rooting on Kneel i’m still iffy on, cutting speed by half would feel better, but it is easier to deal with than the things on Mark.

deadeye’s mark cast feel a little slow kinda chunky for thief i like to see it lower to 1/4 or maybe even removed.
——
Malice : it build way to slow i would suggest doubling it. thief kill most things before it even get 3
——
rifle.

Death Retreat: <- gotta say i love what you did with this skill.

Death Judgment need to be tone down a little b
——
utility
Mercy. Cooldown is alittle high i like it change from 30 seconds to 25 maybe even 20

Blinding Shadow. i would like to see this skill become an AoE hitting 10 players.

Shadow Flare CD again to high 20 second CD.
—-
Traits

One in the Chamber: i think this should trigger stolen skill then give a new one.

Sniper Cover should have a 10 second CD so it not used as a source to stack stealth.

overview on deadeye. it dmg output is alright for single target. mercy make some interesting build with out requiring trickery.

- Mark to have less cast time

- Mark generate malice faster by default if you are fighting in melee range (360)

- Movement speed reduced by 50% in kneel instead of 100%. When you can’t move at all, the 1500 range is actually much less than you’d think it would be. And when none kneeling the skills are just too average/weak to engage dynamically unless 4 takes much less initiative.

- Mark needing a target “is” kind of a nerf because steal lets you gain those effects/boons without target..

Bah been trying to test in WvW but it reset night and nothing but massive blobs on the map.

DE spec does NOT do well against them blobs. There little get away potential. This does not mean it can not help in a group fight, it just means when outnumbered The mobility of the Drd beats the stealth on DE.

That said I did manage to fool with it a bit and initital impressions are positive. I am sure there rough spots that need to be ironed out along with some tweaks , but this happened with DrD as well.

I DID want to test the Rifle and while I mentioned right off the bat I was not too keen on thief with rifle I forced myself to stay in it most of the night to see what it offerred.

Observations on the RIFLE only.

That needing to hit 5 to get out of a kneel is just too awkward. Allow some other means.

As others noted projectile speed slow So I would like to see a boost of around 30 percent.

All of the activation times are just too long. I can see some of the big hitters being at 3/4’s of a second but I think Brutal Aim should be lowered to 1/2 second and skirmishers shot to 1/4. This will allow the DE some measure of counterplay that can be used in a pinch and is not just interrupted. Thief still lacks stability so we tend to need to be able to rely on faster activation times on skills so as to do damage.

Increase range of kneel type shots of the attacks at 1500 to 1700 . These take a while to set up in comparative terms and that added range will allow a bit more chance to relocate and move away for the next. This will make the added INi worth paying.

My honest opinion: Deadeye design is wonderful. You actually FEEL like a sniper when kneeling, and the damage is great if you theorycraft your build properly. Please don’t change anything about kneel. It just takes some getting used to – and once you do – the entire fantasy and implementation is GREAT!

Now, for some constructive criticism:
- The stealth attack just does not feel good to use. There’s some hefty aftercast to it I believe, and that makes chaining abilities after a stealth attack feel very, very sluggish. Also, the animation of a swirling shot doesn’t feel very menacing. Change it to something that makes it obvious it is going to remove enemy boons so that enemies can counterplay accordingly and dodge what looks like an obvious boon removal.
- Add some UI to indicate whether the player is kneeling or not. In the light show that is Guild Wars 2 pvp, sometimes it’s not very obvious that your character is kneeling, which can lead to some button mashing when you’re in a pinch. This could be rectified by adding a kneeling person icon somewhere next to the F1 bar, that way you can check this really quickly and decide whether or not you want to get out of kneel stance.

That’s all I have for now. Keep up the good work.

1) Kneeling should give stealth without being traited.
2) Projectile speed too slow.
3) Heal cool down far too long for how squishy thieves are.
4) Mark should be instant.
5) Stop balancing initiative cost around the assumption that Trickery line is traited.

Changes needed to DE:

1. Most importantly: Mark should be instant.

2. Heal should be instant (It’s not big enough to justify a cast time.)

3. Binding Shadow should be instant

4. #4 (Kneeled) should be instant……OR….keep the cast time, but make it unable to be blocked or reflected, must be dodged. (It’s so bad I know people who just wont use this move…ever…. because with the delay it can just be reflected and 1 shot yourself.)

5. #4 (standing) should be instant.

All in all….it just needs all these darn cast times removed. Literally every move in this spec has a cast time too it…making the whole think feel clunky and slow. We are already sacrificing ALL of our mobility for some ranged damage. Now we have to sacrifice our fluid combat for it as well.

It’s like you took the slick master of deception and handed them a gun without any instructions and they are fumbling over themselves trying to work it…..that’s literally what I feel like my character is doing….is trying to figure out how the heck to put one in the chamber and pull the hammer back. It has made thief feel less like a professional hit man and more like a bare armed boot camp cadet.

BoX Legend.4027:

TwiceDead.1963:

On the Rifle:

Kneeling and Marking needs to be instant for this to mechanic to be of any use, and kneeling should be canceled by either dodging or jumping along with it’s current method.

By the time you can fire, your target has either moved away, or will counter-play you with ease because of how obvious the tells are.

To my experience, Rifle becomes pretty much useless as soon as someone is aware of you, which doesn’t help the synergy it has with Mark Target… I think it’ll see very limited use… If any.

Now other weapon sets are pretty great. The amount of boons you get with S/D this time around is awesome, and the quickness and power boost on activation from mark target can cause some hilarious results with P/P, and does far more burst than the Rifle could just dream of.

Exactly this. If arenanet does anything about this, make mark target and kneel instant cast.

I’d like it if Dodge kept you knealt. But jumping would immediately cause the thief to stand back up. To me it’s a lot easier to tap jump when I am knelt than to remember to reach up and press five again. I wouldn’t call this a buff, just a quality of life thing.

I will say though, that deadeye is surprisingly effective at just ripping apart blobs of people one at a time. It was pretty interesting. I blew up a squishy in a second. Relocated the mark onto the one who tried to pick him up. Dropped him too. Killed the third one who tried to come in. And sent the spellbreaker who came after me flying off a cliff. One auto downed him.

I thought the range was terrible at first, but now that I’ve put to use in WvW it’s not bad. It’s massively better than what the shortbow allowed. But it’s pretty fun to sit on a wall, and just start gunning people down in quick bursts.

You really did strike the nail when you wanted players to feel like a god kitten sharpshooter. Once you start getting really fast with your rotations, you can 1v5 without moving too much.

Now… to shoot gliders out of the air…

On a side note… like everyone else has been saying… why does deadeye have a cast time on some of her major abilities?

@Drawing Guy that was some solid feedback i hope anet takes note of it

I really think that a slight range buff to 1700 would be ideal, (keeping it 1200 when not kneeling, making mark 1700) plus the removal of the cast time for mark and kneel. The suggestion to make space pull you out of kneel is brilliant, it can be very difficult to even see if you’re in kneel so just tapping jump as you try to move would feel much more fluid. Besides this, give the 4 when not kneeling a small (1/4 s) evade, speed up all velocity by 50% both in and out of kneel, and increase the auto damage slightly. The 2 skill has very little use, and is boring to fire if I’m honest. I would love to see this reworked into a bouncing build-up ability, increasing bounces based on current Malice stacks. The 3 could get the pistol pistol change, refunding 1-2 initiative if all shots land. It’s too expensive for what it does, and focusing on landing it all instead of having to spam it would be nice.

Deadeye’s fun.

Anet should make it so that moving forward autobreaks Kneel.

WASD must break kneel.

martin.1653:

WASD must break kneel.

That is really what gets me every time, lol.

I’m a pretty poor thief in WvW. I have absolutely zero doubt a d/p/staff or bow gank daredevil is much stronger than a deadeye in pretty much any scenario but the rifle seem perfect for someone that’s teleport/stealth exploit challenged like me. I’ve never liked it. The rifle changes the style and I like it. I like it alot. The ranged style is great, the skills is ok and hell I even understand how to properly slip away with the rifle. Well, except I forget I’m in kneel mode and go “wtf why I am immobilized I have no condis I’m pressing all the buttons gaaaaaaaaah!” (swamped by 5 melees).

rifle 3 needs to turn us towards the target if hitting and target is behind, feels akward as ranger longbow 3 does that

To break kneel: just hit weapon stow. Would be nice if WASD or jump did (ahem, Anet), but yeah, you don’t have to hit 5, weapon stow works too.

Read the whole thread and didn’t see this complaint, so maybe it’s just me.

The sound coming out of my rifles may be one of the worst sound designs I have ever heard for a rifle.

It’s like a wet pop-gun toy with a whistling firework or shooting inside of a steel drum full of water.

I think it’s supposed to sound like ricochet(?), but not every bullet should ricochet and I don’t want to sound like I’m in toypocalypse all the time.

I would really rather it go boom. Or a more silenced cough. Or anything close to a gun sound.

I know, I know, get predator. That’s not going to happen until Anet let’s me switch sigils for free on legendary weapons. Until then, legendaries just aren’t worth the cost to me. Especially on rifle, which is used almost exclusively for power specs, so no need to switch stats.

You CAN toy pop gun skin, which is redundant considering the existing sounds, or SAB skin, which may actually be slightly better.

I tested Deadeye mostly on WvW, so this feedback mostly based on my WvW experience!

Visual Effects

They are not really helpful for deadeye but enemy! I generally didnt like any visual effects on deadeye. But here is some specific examples…

Deadeye’s Mark: Its very hard to see it especially from distance, yet enemy carries it over his/her head (also huge circle around his/her feet), so its a warning for enemy but no benefits for you visually.

Range Indicator: If there are some enemies around, you can easily lose it.

Death’s Judgment: It has a huge trail before hitting enemy, so enemy could reflect/block/evade it easily…

I also didnt like the Deadeye icon.

Sound Effects

Sounds effects feels cheap and copied pasted from somewhere. For example;

All rifle skills sounds like i’m shooting a birthday blaster…

Death’s Judgment skill have same or very similar sound effect with Shadow Assault (underwater spear skill).

I like the new voice lines when you activate Sniper’s Cover, yet deadeye doesnt really feel like a Sniper… yet.

Obstructed!

We are lowering our stance while kneeling/sniper cover, that causes way too much and absurd obstructs, even little steeps which never caused obstructs becomes a problem while kneeling.

Range

Neither 1200 nor 1500 range is enough for Deadeye. If this should be sniper spec, range must be unique to Deadeye. 1200 is typical long range weapon range for any proffession and ranger longbow also has 1500 range without any disadvantage.

If you are going to keep Deadeye immobile while kneeling range must be at least 1800. Marked target may have even more range…

Skills

(Rating)

F1 – Deadeye’s Mark (5/10): This shouldn’t be a projectile, since its a mark, whenever or wherever i have sight on enemy, i could put mark on it instantly, shouldn’t be obstructable.

1 – Brutal/Deadly Aim, Cursed Bullet (7/10) I’m ok with this skills, but attack speed must be increased they felt clunky. Cursed Bullet base damage could be increased, its pretty low.

2- Skirmisher’s/Spotter’s Shot (6/10): Clunky, attack speed must be increased. Spotter Shot’s base damage is too low.

3- Double Tap/Three Round Burst (5/10): Initiative cost is high, clunky, damage is low.

4- Death’s Retreat (4/10): Good concept but very clunky and very low damage.
4- Death’s Judgment (5/10): Because of visuals, its pretty easily avoidable/reflectable, high initiative cost.

5- Kneel (3/10): VERY CLUNKY! Causes obstructs… High initiative cost when you pick Sniper’s Cover for little benefits.

Healing Skill (1/10): Never used it, because even on tooltip it looks underpowered.

Binding Shadow (7/10): I really like this one, but malice could also increase damage.

Mercy (?/10): I cant say its good or bad, but i just dont waste my 1 skill bar for this.

Shadow Flare (3/10): Good concept, but very clunky and low damage..

Shadow Gust (2/10): Very high cooldown, very low damage.

Shadow Meld (7/10): Another good skill concept, yet recharge time way too high.

New Stolen Skills (3/10): There are some good ones and bad ones, but generally it felt broken since you cast it on your enemy, in my opinion once enemy is marked this skills could be activated anywhere no matter how far marked target is… (This change would also make “One in the Chamber” trait viable).

I’m done for now. I would like to cover traits too, but i need more testing on them.

In general, Deadeye looks fun, especially if you are testing it on dummies. Because dummies are static and you can see high numbers on it etc… But against players, once enemy learns what your skills looks like you are doomed.

Deadeye look very easy to counter atm, you can avoid getting damage from deadeye and its defensive capabilities already get killed by just picking Deadeye…

Miasmus.2364:

Range

Neither 1200 nor 1500 range is enough for Deadeye. If this should be sniper spec, range must be unique to Deadeye. 1200 is typical long range weapon range for any proffession and ranger longbow also has 1500 range without any disadvantage.

Indeed. A sniper is by definition attacking from a higher range than their opponents. It’s weird that being on par with other classes is called a sniper. What’s the difference of an Engineer that fires a rifle or a Deadeye range-wise?

The access to the stealth class mechanic is a major balancing factor here, and that is why there must be counterbalance through trade offs like mobility.

The range, projectile speed, and good damage are all fine considering the above.

Other classes rifle also have slow attack speed, obvious tells, and movement issues of thier own.

There is no comparison, deadeye is leaps and bounds better at the weapon and role.

They should really increase speed of stealth shot on rifle, like really drastically and Mercy should not reset your malice as long as you are in combat, because now Mercy will help you with additional boon steal / daze but will f-up your entire dmg potential

Mark doesn’t need to have a 1/2 second cast time. Building malice is so fundamental to the subclass that it shouldn’t be clunky to apply.

The effects of malice are interesting but I feel the mechanic makes DE somewhat underwhelming until it builds the malice and can hit the 20k+ hits.

I agree that movement and dodge should break the kneel. It is awkward to double tap 5 to gain stealth without being frozen in place (stealth and re-position being the idea of a sniper).

I dont know about you guys but Ive been having alot of fun with DE. All the positioning, the calculated attacks, the kiting and all that with the rifle really gives me that sniper feel.

Ive felt those issues above at first but I find that they’re actually manageable as i got familiarized with the spec, I could even win some 1v2 fights and got grief-whispered once too (i get rekt by DD thieves and mesmers tho).

sneakytails.5629:

The access to the stealth class mechanic is a major balancing factor here, and that is why there must be counterbalance through trade offs like mobility.

The range, projectile speed, and good damage are all fine considering the above.

Other classes rifle also have slow attack speed, obvious tells, and movement issues of thier own.

There is no comparison, deadeye is leaps and bounds better at the weapon and role.

Coming from experience, this is true for me except that the projectile speed of the stealth attack is stupid slow.

Im not without my own issues tho, Im mainly having problems with the visuals. I play an Asura DE and its easy to forget Im kneeling with that the Asura kneel is less noticeable during a fight. The projectile visuals are very unhelpful and the mark visual Isnt clear enough for me that I have to call target on my marks to track them better.

babazhook.6805:

Bah been trying to test in WvW but it reset night and nothing but massive blobs on the map.

DE spec does NOT do well against them blobs. There little get away potential. This does not mean it can not help in a group fight, it just means when outnumbered The mobility of the Drd beats the stealth on DE.

Observations on the RIFLE only.

That needing to hit 5 to get out of a kneel is just too awkward. Allow some other means.

As others noted projectile speed slow So I would like to see a boost of around 30 percent.
All of the activation times are just too long. I can see some of the big hitters being at 3/4’s of a second but I think Brutal Aim should be lowered to 1/2 second and skirmishers shot to 1/4. This will allow the DE some measure of counterplay that can be used in a pinch and is not just interrupted. Thief still lacks stability so we tend to need to be able to rely on faster activation times on skills so as to do damage

Its definitely not going to make thief viable in zerging, it could be quite cheesy in gvgs though. Berserker gunflame was way more OP pre and post launch, especially when it coulr double hit AND pierce.

For those who have been screaming for their “high risk high reward” spec, this is it. Highest damage is while immobile, which is about as high risk as it gets.

Played around with the Deadeye spec for a while.

Dont like it that much from the playstyle but it works for some i guess.

Would be great if Kneel would be an F-ability and not bind to the Rifle.

Rename it to ‘Perfect Aim’ or ‘Focus’ or ‘whatever’ and just make it reduce your movement speed by 50%. Give it a cooldown and not an initiative cost.

For all ranged weapons(Shortbow, pistol, rifle) it grants more range and higher damage plus a special action button when you reach max malice stack. Tadaaa! A viable choice for all ranged weapons.

Rifle gets the special bonus that it alters your rifle skills. So 5 normal skills and 5 special skills while you are in your stance + the extra interaction with malice stacks.

Would be a lot more viable. Grants more choices etc.

What do you think?

Best regards!

Shino

martin.1653:

WASD must break kneel.

Problem, some players uses the double tap option. I do as well.