Rifle Thief: how does it make you feel?

Rifle Thief: how does it make you feel?

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Posted by: Sly.9518

Sly.9518

I’m looking forward to a new ranged option, though I am worried what type of weapon it will be. If it is a sniper type weapon it will be great to have a long ranged option, but at the same time I will be disappointed if it is another single target weapon like PP. For me personally, I would like another multi target ranged weapon. SB is good functionally, but I personally do not enjoy its playstyle as much as PP. PP is more fun to use, but lacks the utility of the SB. It would be great to have a ranged weapon that is somewhere in between. Decent multi target capabilities at long range with good utility.

We already have a sniper type rifle on Warrior and a shotgun type rifle on Engineer, so I am not sure what the Thief’s rifle could be. Maybe some kind of rapid fire assault rifle? But then will it just end up too similar in playstyle to PP?

Maybe, if it is a rapid fire assault rifle, it could focus more on multi target attacks rather than single target like PP. It could be a spray and prey weapon, firing bursts to hit 3 or more targets in a cone. But then, if the leaked info is true, and it is called deadeye, a more accurate sniper type rifle would fit that name better.

The other thing is, I really love the playstyle of the daredevil staff, so unless the rifle elite spec has a really fun playstyle, it will probably just end up as an occasional thing I jump on when I fancy something different. What would be great, is if (after we have a few elite specs released) I could equip two elite specs at a time. Then I could have a daredevil staff for close combat and deadeye rifle for ranged. That would be pretty awesome, but unlikely to happen. Balancing that would be very difficult.

To be honest, there just isn’t enough information available yet for me to make any kind of decision or give any real feeling on it. I’m looking forward to seeing what it will be like though. I think I am just looking forward to having more options to try out and build around more than anything

You will won’t be able to equip two Elite Specs, hence why they are called “Elite” Specs, just like why Elite Skills can only have one, it’s the reason why Elite Specs can only be slotted in the Third Specialization slot and nowhere else.

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Posted by: Rin.1046

Rin.1046

You will won’t be able to equip two Elite Specs, hence why they are called “Elite” Specs, just like why Elite Skills can only have one, it’s the reason why Elite Specs can only be slotted in the Third Specialization slot and nowhere else.

I know, that’s why I said it is unlikely to happen.

Simplicity is complex.

Good feedback is key to getting the developers to listen to you.

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Posted by: kash.9213

kash.9213

Like no one uses Staff at all? It gives up mobility or stealth but sees lots of use in all gamemodes, lots of players will use the weapon because it gives a new way to play, and it will probably be an effective way to play depending on the need of the player.

I have seen the posts you make so it’s clear why you ask such questions.

When I want to keep from getting locked down and stay moving I take staff and I already have Blinding Powder for stealth and most people take d/p on weapon switch. If staff gave up mobility no one would use it in current game build.

Kash
NSP

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Posted by: Sly.9518

Sly.9518

Like no one uses Staff at all? It gives up mobility or stealth but sees lots of use in all gamemodes, lots of players will use the weapon because it gives a new way to play, and it will probably be an effective way to play depending on the need of the player.

I have seen the posts you make so it’s clear why you ask such questions.

When I want to keep from getting locked down and stay moving I take staff and I already have Blinding Powder for stealth and most people take d/p on weapon switch. If staff gave up mobility no one would use it in current game build.

Compare Staff mobility to Shortbow they are sacrificing a lot of mobility when they give up Shortbow….. or if you give up d/p and keep Shortbow your stealth access is highly limited, it’s quite a no brainer….

Blinding Powder is 3 seconds of stealth on a 40 second CD wow Much stealth…..

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Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

You are under the assumption Stealth attack on Rifle is going to be high coefficient like Backstab, with nothing to go on that, people are crying before knowing anything concrete, it’s stealth attack could be pure control for all we know or a Condi Stealth attack, and againthief has to give up two of its main three survivability mechanics, without DrD it loses all the Evade potential and high mobility from a dash, without SB it loses its high mobility vertical and horizontal, if it doesn’t take D/P it loses its High stealth access, You are basing a combo that can only be done once every minute on baseless numbers…..

Again SR will not break a Rifle on Thief especially since Any good player can force reveal a Thief in SR with any number of Cc affects or Reveal skills.

And yes Druid burst with LB can easily 100-0 anyone from Stealth if built for it between The roots they can apply and pressure from their Rapid Fire and their main pets with Knockdowns and other CCs. It’s quite easy to do especially if you get the jump on someone. And they don’t have to sacrifice mobility or stealth access to do any of it.

A 1.2 coefficent is less than CnD. Backstab numbers on any skill on the rifle will straight up break the entire game. That’s what people are afraid of and why people are voicing their concerns.

I’m going even further by demonstrating why even fairly mediocre coefficients on the rifle can be absurdly strong with very low risk involved in playing it. That’s what all the contention is about; people want the spec to be rewarding but not cheesy and not overpowered. It’s almost impossible to do that by giving the thief’s rifle even respectable/middle-tier damage coefficients unless major tradeoffs are made. That’s why people are already expressing their concerns. It’s not that they think “OMG RIFLE OP” but rather that it can easily be overpowered or result in cheesy play, or be totally useless. It’s hard to make it a viable pick without breaking something.

My numbers were baseless, and quite frankly, very low, but just as baseless as suggesting people aren’t allowed to show their concerns with the design before release. See, it doesn’t matter if the set is even overpowered or underpowered. It matters if it is in any way useful or if we’ll see something stupid and cheesy like Ghost Thief V2.

Unless you play full glass, the druid plays full glass, does not run the roots for extra damage, you do not evade, and the druid full-combos with full boons, RF will not one-shot anyone. More than 20% of full-berserker SoTP stack core ranger which packs more damage than druid used to come from Fire/Air procs. RF hits hard but these days it’s a far cry to say it’s a 1HKO in almost any context.

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Posted by: Sly.9518

Sly.9518

You are under the assumption Stealth attack on Rifle is going to be high coefficient like Backstab, with nothing to go on that, people are crying before knowing anything concrete, it’s stealth attack could be pure control for all we know or a Condi Stealth attack, and againthief has to give up two of its main three survivability mechanics, without DrD it loses all the Evade potential and high mobility from a dash, without SB it loses its high mobility vertical and horizontal, if it doesn’t take D/P it loses its High stealth access, You are basing a combo that can only be done once every minute on baseless numbers…..

Again SR will not break a Rifle on Thief especially since Any good player can force reveal a Thief in SR with any number of Cc affects or Reveal skills.

And yes Druid burst with LB can easily 100-0 anyone from Stealth if built for it between The roots they can apply and pressure from their Rapid Fire and their main pets with Knockdowns and other CCs. It’s quite easy to do especially if you get the jump on someone. And they don’t have to sacrifice mobility or stealth access to do any of it.

A 1.2 coefficent is less than CnD. Backstab numbers on any skill on the rifle will straight up break the entire game. That’s what people are afraid of and why people are voicing their concerns.

I’m going even further by demonstrating why even fairly mediocre coefficients on the rifle can be absurdly strong with very low risk involved in playing it. That’s what all the contention is about; people want the spec to be rewarding but not cheesy and not overpowered. It’s almost impossible to do that by giving the thief’s rifle even respectable/middle-tier damage coefficients unless major tradeoffs are made. That’s why people are already expressing their concerns. It’s not that they think “OMG RIFLE OP” but rather that it can easily be overpowered or result in cheesy play, or be totally useless. It’s hard to make it a viable pick without breaking something.

My numbers were baseless, and quite frankly, very low, but just as baseless as suggesting people aren’t allowed to show their concerns with the design before release. See, it doesn’t matter if the set is even overpowered or underpowered. It matters if it is in any way useful or if we’ll see something stupid and cheesy like Ghost Thief V2.

Unless you play full glass, the druid plays full glass, does not run the roots for extra damage, you do not evade, and the druid full-combos with full boons, RF will not one-shot anyone. More than 20% of full-berserker SoTP stack core ranger which packs more damage than druid used to come from Fire/Air procs. RF hits hard but these days it’s a far cry to say it’s a 1HKO in almost any context.

Your whole combo you used as an example on a Rifle thief can only be done once every minute, if that is what you are afraid of because SR is too “OP” is ridiculous, you whole scenario required popping 2 large CD utilities and stacking stealth on a separate weapon set which is a farce from a 1HKO.

People are being over dramatic, throwing baseless concerns out saying Thief will be OP with Rifle.

Again

*Thief loses access to all the Evades it has with DrD
And
*Thief lose High Stealth access
Or
*Thief loses High Mobility

So what is going to be OP? Everyone claims Thief is the apex predator because High mobility and High stealth and Abundance of Evades, guess what with Rifle he loses 2 of those things right away, so are you afraid of High Burst build from stealth? Aka Power Mesmer, or Druid? Or a High mobile long range with low stealth access?

Again Thief lose a lot when if it uses Rifle, the things that Make Thief good it lose 2 of them no matter what.

So come up with reasons that have actual substance behind them to make your claims. I laid out the facts of what we do know will happen with Thieves taking Rifle(barring them adding any Direct Stealth or mobility to the Weapon, since we have no idea what the weapon will bring)

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Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

And the same kind of safe damage is applicable to every profession in the game when it comes to cooldowns though. Except the damage is safer than from most other professions in this case, and quite frankly, we don’t know enough about the rifle to determine if those other sets are required or not. Unless the weapon is a gimmick, it will have the capacity to replace elements of others essential to the thief. All depend on high cooldowns to get some kind of major effect. The defining line at hand is about risk/reward and safety of damage. If there was a skill with a 5 minute cooldown that auto-killed a target in sight, it would be stupid, no?

Again, you’re making assumptions about the rifle’s mobility and stealth access. We can’t confirm that this will be heavily limited, and it’s something people are advocating for ensuring don’t – particularly in conjunction with burst – to avoid cheese. And that’s precisely it; nobody has the ability to provide proof on anything but simply state concerns that things very well could get out of hand.

I paralleled this to Ghost Thief above, which while it wasn’t explicitly overpowered, was not healthy for the game. I express similar concerns about the rifle and burst damage without major tradeoffs. There’s really nothing to argue here because we’re talking about the potential for things to go awry, rather than what we expect to.

Expectations of the implementation being poor can only be based on ANet’s track record. I personally think theirs is terrible when it comes to profession design, including that of many aspects of the Daredevil and thief.

(edited by DeceiverX.8361)

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Posted by: Rukia.9860

Rukia.9860

Only confirms my fears as I knew they would choose the lamest possible weapon for Thief, pretty much guarantee’s I will not be playing the next xpac.

They need to add assassin specialization and bring lead, offhand, and dual attacks back with GW1 combo system but that would require actual effort on their end.

At the very least could have gotten shield or offh sword some way to stand toe to toe with a target without having to evade 24/7 sounded cool to me also but nah let’s give em a kittening rifle that will be useless and gimmicky in pvp, basically an afk weapon for open world pve.

And thief continues to be nothing but D/P

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Posted by: knyy.6427

knyy.6427

And the same kind of safe damage is applicable to every profession in the game when it comes to cooldowns though. Except the damage is safer than from most other professions in this case, and quite frankly, we don’t know enough about the rifle to determine if those other sets are required or not. Unless the weapon is a gimmick, it will have the capacity to replace elements of others essential to the thief. All depend on high cooldowns to get some kind of major effect. The defining line at hand is about risk/reward and safety of damage. If there was a skill with a 5 minute cooldown that auto-killed a target in sight, it would be stupid, no?

Again, you’re making assumptions about the rifle’s mobility and stealth access. We can’t confirm that this will be heavily limited, and it’s something people are advocating for ensuring don’t – particularly in conjunction with burst – to avoid cheese. And that’s precisely it; nobody has the ability to provide proof on anything but simply state concerns that things very well could get out of hand.

I paralleled this to Ghost Thief above, which while it wasn’t explicitly overpowered, was not healthy for the game. I express similar concerns about the rifle and burst damage without major tradeoffs. There’s really nothing to argue here because we’re talking about the potential for things to go awry, rather than what we expect to.

Expectations of the implementation being poor can only be based on ANet’s track record. I personally think theirs is terrible when it comes to profession design, including that of many aspects of the Daredevil and thief.

Well you make assumptions yourself too. At this stage we can only assume and theorize about what will be, cause we simply can’t. But from the same person who leaked some pictures it had been said that the new elite spec is all about positioning and not stealth.

I assume Thief didn’t had a long range weapon yet because thieves have high mobility and stealth. If you take away the high mobility and part of stealth, it is save to assume that high dmg wouldn’t be op on the rifle. There could be so many systems to avoid that.
For example: reveal buff on rifle skills or class mechanic, unique buff which increase the dmg for every second you are standing still etc.

Ofc you can write down your concerns, but you are just assuming rifle is high dmg at range with high mobility and stealth.

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Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

And the same kind of safe damage is applicable to every profession in the game when it comes to cooldowns though. Except the damage is safer than from most other professions in this case, and quite frankly, we don’t know enough about the rifle to determine if those other sets are required or not. Unless the weapon is a gimmick, it will have the capacity to replace elements of others essential to the thief. All depend on high cooldowns to get some kind of major effect. The defining line at hand is about risk/reward and safety of damage. If there was a skill with a 5 minute cooldown that auto-killed a target in sight, it would be stupid, no?

Again, you’re making assumptions about the rifle’s mobility and stealth access. We can’t confirm that this will be heavily limited, and it’s something people are advocating for ensuring don’t – particularly in conjunction with burst – to avoid cheese. And that’s precisely it; nobody has the ability to provide proof on anything but simply state concerns that things very well could get out of hand.

I paralleled this to Ghost Thief above, which while it wasn’t explicitly overpowered, was not healthy for the game. I express similar concerns about the rifle and burst damage without major tradeoffs. There’s really nothing to argue here because we’re talking about the potential for things to go awry, rather than what we expect to.

Expectations of the implementation being poor can only be based on ANet’s track record. I personally think theirs is terrible when it comes to profession design, including that of many aspects of the Daredevil and thief.

Well you make assumptions yourself too. At this stage we can only assume and theorize about what will be, cause we simply can’t. But from the same person who leaked some pictures it had been said that the new elite spec is all about positioning and not stealth.

I assume Thief didn’t had a long range weapon yet because thieves have high mobility and stealth. If you take away the high mobility and part of stealth, it is save to assume that high dmg wouldn’t be op on the rifle. There could be so many systems to avoid that.
For example: reveal buff on rifle skills or class mechanic, unique buff which increase the dmg for every second you are standing still etc.

Ofc you can write down your concerns, but you are just assuming rifle is high dmg at range with high mobility and stealth.

I’m not disagreeing with you. In fact, I support the notion and quite frankly, the basis of the Deadeye which I proposed was utilizing massive revealed uptime as a tradeoff for ranged damage.

Peoples’ fears, legitimately so, are that the profession won’t have major tradeoffs when gaining access to what could be a damaging weapon.

Basically, it’s people identifying what could happen and saying they’re against that specific possibility because they know such a combination would be too strong. I don’t think anyone here (at least not that I am aware) is making the strict assumption or guarantee the elite will feature high damage at range without consequence and outright calling the spec implicitly overpowered. At least not anyone with a shred of understanding of the profession. It’s just the speculation leads to concerns because it’s easy to break this concept without a fine degree of detail and very strong understanding of the thief as a whole.

That’s all I’m trying to say; if we make assumptions, we need to recognize they are just assumptions, and that the criticism of the elite can be specified towards those assumptions of concern.

The very notion of the thief getting a rifle or ranged isn’t worrying in it of itself. I wouldn’t have suggested the Deadeye to begin with if I thought it was.

The concern lies in implementation details of what can easily go wrong if proper attention isn’t paid to the profession in the context of the elite, and that its design be made to be healthy and interesting from all perspectives.

The overwhelming majority of suggestions involving rifle as the next elite spec for the thief all featured some kind of stealth sniper concept. That IS concerning because it isn’t healthy for the game and will likely be difficult to balance just based on the design alone.

The assumption from many, based on the past five years of playing thief, and design of the HoT elites, is ANet will screw up without some kind of input otherwise.

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Posted by: mazut.4296

mazut.4296

Makes me feel that I might finally play thief in pvp. Will see…

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Posted by: Elan.7523

Elan.7523

If they go pure power, high damage, high spike, it could potentially be a problem. I mean, base thief can be slippery enough as is. On the other hand, if they go control based with it, a la sword except with extreme range, at the sacrifice of raw gobstopping power (outside of, perhaps, an out of stealth killshot), you could have something magical.

Imagine, a 1500 rifle that could lay down a line of caltrops, denying a strip of ground to walk on? An honest to god knockback attack to help the thief maintain range? Shots that cripple or chill to slow their targets? One higher rate of fire attack would be nice, and a piercing AA skill would be welcome. However, the idea of a long range high damage build, let alone on a mobile class like thief would be a problem. Going for CONTROL, however, means you can leverage the range to limit your enemy’s mobility as opposed to just lololoneshoting people.

I greatly enjoyed the old control sword setup precisely because it was raw control. If I could get control at range? Oh my. I’d be happy!

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Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

Which is the exact mentality of what I went into with my proposal.