Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,

Here are my thoughts on the Deadeye, with youtube video included! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIW_vwXP4Z8&feature=youtu.be
TLDR
Stolen Skills need adjusting/buffing. Would like to see self cast instead of requiring a target.
The class needs more defensive options as it is easy to get jumped on.
The 3rd trait in each tier needs to be adjusted to stolen skills as they do not work very well.
Love how the class plays in small group fights. Doesnt work well for roaming solo or zergs.
May have some use in PVE with the malice mechanic but it is overall slow in WvW

What do you guys think?

Thanks.

Lucente.5071:

Hi everyone,

Here are my thoughts on the Deadeye, with youtube video included! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIW_vwXP4Z8&feature=youtu.be
TLDR
Stolen Skills need adjusting/buffing. Would like to see self cast instead of requiring a target.
The class needs more defensive options as it is easy to get jumped on.
The 3rd trait in each tier needs to be adjusted to stolen skills as they do not work very well.
Love how the class plays in small group fights. Doesnt work well for roaming solo or zergs.
May have some use in PVE with the malice mechanic but it is overall slow in WvW

What do you guys think?

Thanks.

I am very concerned, that deadeye won’t have any competitive place anywhere. Malice builds up too slow, and stays not long enough, new stolen skills are extremly underwhelming.
Rifle is clunky, and lacks nearly anything useful. Beside a very good spec like daredevil, deadeye won’t have an easy time beside trolling pve players in wvw. at any other place (except open world) daredevil does better and more safely.

I think Deadeye will find a place in the meta. Whether it will be dominant or less common remains to be seen.

Some thoughts:

• Malice builds up much faster if you build around stealth attacks.
• Like Daredevil, most competitive builds probably won’t use rifle as primary weapon anyways.
• Rifle is clunky at the moment but mostly that can be fixed with some minor changes. I’ll wait to see if they fix locking you into the kneel position.
• Condition builds for Deadeye are actually pretty strong. Both using and not using the rifle as part of the build.
• I think Deadeye is stronger than Daredevil.

saerni.2584:

I think Deadeye will find a place in the meta. Whether it will be dominant or less common remains to be seen.

Some thoughts:

• Malice builds up much faster if you build around stealth attacks.
• Like Daredevil, most competitive builds probably won’t use rifle as primary weapon anyways.
• Rifle is clunky at the moment but mostly that can be fixed with some minor changes. I’ll wait to see if they fix locking you into the kneel position.
• Condition builds for Deadeye are actually pretty strong. Both using and not using the rifle as part of the build.
• I think Deadeye is stronger than Daredevil.

LOL
even pistol outdps rifle by far, how will deadeye even come close to daredevil?
what makes deadeye stronger in your eyes? the new underwhelming steal skills? slow building malice?

I’ve seen rifle builds with higher dps than pistols.

Again, Deadeye doesn’t need to use rifle.

Malice helps power damage but isn’t a concern for condition variations. Malice can build up faster if you trait to gain malice on being revealed (aka doing a stealth attack or using DJ from stealth).

Deadeye has a lot of might stacking potential and other boons which make it preferable to Daredevil for achieving maximum potential burst (on all power and condi sets not just rifle).

New steal skills are, for the most part, not underwhelming if you build around using them.

Shadow Meld is everything an elite for a stealth focused class should be. Many stealth reliant builds that were harder for many people to play will now be more viable (think power D/D).

Lucente.5071:

Hi everyone,

Here are my thoughts on the Deadeye, with youtube video included! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIW_vwXP4Z8&feature=youtu.be
TLDR
Stolen Skills need adjusting/buffing. Would like to see self cast instead of requiring a target.
The class needs more defensive options as it is easy to get jumped on.
The 3rd trait in each tier needs to be adjusted to stolen skills as they do not work very well.
Love how the class plays in small group fights. Doesnt work well for roaming solo or zergs.
May have some use in PVE with the malice mechanic but it is overall slow in WvW

What do you guys think?

Thanks.

I had initially thought the steal skills as weak but after reflection and some theorycrafting have concluded here more there then meets the eye and in particular if you trait properly.

Things to remember

MERCY This resets your steal. You can get two steals in short order. Now Imagine this used with S/d in Acro also getting a reset. Thats three steals in a row with poison apps and mug and any other on steal traits.

RENEWING GAZE. Your steal is reset when you kill your opponent. This is huge as again you can instantly use all those on steal traits again. Very often if you are fighting in WvW you can be crippled early in a fight if you just expended your steal and resources to down an enemy and a second or thrid come around. You can hvae that steal available instantly rather then wait for it to come off cooldown.

So to the stolen items themselves and divorcing them from all the added effects they can apply when used (such as peripheral vision).

With a mercy reset and a renewing gaze reset, assuming one is traited in Improv and picking Steal Resistance (Revenant skill)

1>Condition and boon durations of the base skill are increased without any boon duration or condition duration in your build where the number of malice stacks gives a significant increase per.

2>Using Improv , and mercy and assuming an on death reset.

3>You are not traited in s/x wherein you can get yet another reset via Swinderls.

You get 4 applications of 3 stacks torment for 12 stacks total at 8 seconds each.
You get 4 applications of resistance at 3 seconds each.

This BEFORE boon and condition duration increased via malice stacks.

That is NOT sub par.

babazhook.6805:

Lucente.5071:

Hi everyone,

Here are my thoughts on the Deadeye, with youtube video included! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIW_vwXP4Z8&feature=youtu.be
TLDR
Stolen Skills need adjusting/buffing. Would like to see self cast instead of requiring a target.
The class needs more defensive options as it is easy to get jumped on.
The 3rd trait in each tier needs to be adjusted to stolen skills as they do not work very well.
Love how the class plays in small group fights. Doesnt work well for roaming solo or zergs.
May have some use in PVE with the malice mechanic but it is overall slow in WvW

What do you guys think?

Thanks.

I had initially thought the steal skills as weak but after reflection and some theorycrafting have concluded here more there then meets the eye and in particular if you trait properly.

Things to remember

MERCY This resets your steal. You can get two steals in short order. Now Imagine this used with S/d in Acro also getting a reset. Thats three steals in a row with poison apps and mug and any other on steal traits.

RENEWING GAZE. Your steal is reset when you kill your opponent. This is huge as again you can instantly use all those on steal traits again. Very often if you are fighting in WvW you can be crippled early in a fight if you just expended your steal and resources to down an enemy and a second or thrid come around. You can hvae that steal available instantly rather then wait for it to come off cooldown.

So to the stolen items themselves and divorcing them from all the added effects they can apply when used (such as peripheral vision).

With a mercy reset and a renewing gaze reset, assuming one is traited in Improv and picking Steal Resistance (Revenant skill)

1>Condition and boon durations of the base skill are increased without any boon duration or condition duration in your build where the number of malice stacks gives a significant increase per.

2>Using Improv , and mercy and assuming an on death reset.

3>You are not traited in s/x wherein you can get yet another reset via Swinderls.

You get 4 applications of 3 stacks torment for 12 stacks total at 8 seconds each.
You get 4 applications of resistance at 3 seconds each.

This BEFORE boon and condition duration increased via malice stacks.

That is NOT sub par.

How does Malice increase condi duration at all?

Warrost.4895:

babazhook.6805:

Lucente.5071:

Hi everyone,

Here are my thoughts on the Deadeye, with youtube video included! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIW_vwXP4Z8&feature=youtu.be
TLDR
Stolen Skills need adjusting/buffing. Would like to see self cast instead of requiring a target.
The class needs more defensive options as it is easy to get jumped on.
The 3rd trait in each tier needs to be adjusted to stolen skills as they do not work very well.
Love how the class plays in small group fights. Doesnt work well for roaming solo or zergs.
May have some use in PVE with the malice mechanic but it is overall slow in WvW

What do you guys think?

Thanks.

I had initially thought the steal skills as weak but after reflection and some theorycrafting have concluded here more there then meets the eye and in particular if you trait properly.

Things to remember

MERCY This resets your steal. You can get two steals in short order. Now Imagine this used with S/d in Acro also getting a reset. Thats three steals in a row with poison apps and mug and any other on steal traits.

RENEWING GAZE. Your steal is reset when you kill your opponent. This is huge as again you can instantly use all those on steal traits again. Very often if you are fighting in WvW you can be crippled early in a fight if you just expended your steal and resources to down an enemy and a second or thrid come around. You can hvae that steal available instantly rather then wait for it to come off cooldown.

So to the stolen items themselves and divorcing them from all the added effects they can apply when used (such as peripheral vision).

With a mercy reset and a renewing gaze reset, assuming one is traited in Improv and picking Steal Resistance (Revenant skill)

1>Condition and boon durations of the base skill are increased without any boon duration or condition duration in your build where the number of malice stacks gives a significant increase per.

2>Using Improv , and mercy and assuming an on death reset.

3>You are not traited in s/x wherein you can get yet another reset via Swinderls.

You get 4 applications of 3 stacks torment for 12 stacks total at 8 seconds each.
You get 4 applications of resistance at 3 seconds each.

This BEFORE boon and condition duration increased via malice stacks.

That is NOT sub par.

How does Malice increase condi duration at all?

When playtesting in the tooltips after acquiring a stolen skill there was a line that read Duration increases per malice stack.

Here is a link to the screenshots of each.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6ui69h/deadeye_stolen_skills/

Obviously subject to correction as they screenshots but I work with what I got and have to assume accuracy.

It sounds like we were playing different classes altogether, I’m gonna link a post a made some days ago if you wanna check it out, I explain things with much more detail there, but to sum it up, I played a large amount of matches during the preview weekend with DE, I think around 100 or so, I can easily say that I did not find myself stressing over anything that you guys stated above:
Rifle does insane amounts of damage, I’ve been able to bring down druids/necros/guard in around 10 seconds if they were not careaful, I was doing 3,5k crits with autoattack, and around 13k with Judgment.
Defensively, I’ve never been caught a single time when I did things right, I do kitten up here and there with skills (hitting a target while trying to get away in stealth, etc) and end up getting killed, but aside from those, I literally left even daredevils in the dust trying to catch me using stealth, shadowstep and retreat. For a detailed explanation please read the Defense part of the post that I made.
POST: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Deadeye-Build-Thoughts/first#post6714664

Shtark.7250:

It sounds like we were playing different classes altogether, I’m gonna link a post a made some days ago if you wanna check it out, I explain things with much more detail there, but to sum it up, I played a large amount of matches during the preview weekend with DE, I think around 100 or so, I can easily say that I did not find myself stressing over anything that you guys stated above:
Rifle does insane amounts of damage, I’ve been able to bring down druids/necros/guard in around 10 seconds if they were not careaful, I was doing 3,5k crits with autoattack, and around 13k with Judgment.
Defensively, I’ve never been caught a single time when I did things right, I do kitten up here and there with skills (hitting a target while trying to get away in stealth, etc) and end up getting killed, but aside from those, I literally left even daredevils in the dust trying to catch me using stealth, shadowstep and retreat. For a detailed explanation please read the Defense part of the post that I made.
POST: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Deadeye-Build-Thoughts/first#post6714664

I concur and your experiences much like my own. I did not find surival as bad as being stated as there ample stealth and other utility to effect such.

babazhook.6805:

Shtark.7250:

It sounds like we were playing different classes altogether, I’m gonna link a post a made some days ago if you wanna check it out, I explain things with much more detail there, but to sum it up, I played a large amount of matches during the preview weekend with DE, I think around 100 or so, I can easily say that I did not find myself stressing over anything that you guys stated above:
Rifle does insane amounts of damage, I’ve been able to bring down druids/necros/guard in around 10 seconds if they were not careaful, I was doing 3,5k crits with autoattack, and around 13k with Judgment.
Defensively, I’ve never been caught a single time when I did things right, I do kitten up here and there with skills (hitting a target while trying to get away in stealth, etc) and end up getting killed, but aside from those, I literally left even daredevils in the dust trying to catch me using stealth, shadowstep and retreat. For a detailed explanation please read the Defense part of the post that I made.
POST: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Deadeye-Build-Thoughts/first#post6714664

I concur and your experiences much like my own. I did not find surival as bad as being stated as there ample stealth and other utility to effect such.

But even there are a few necessary fixes I hope we all can agree on.
A trait for cantrip CD reduction for example. The CD’s are not low, and hardly justified for their effect (just think about healing skill…which is simply not worth taking at all). As addition to one in the chamber for example.
Personally I believe any cast time on kneel and mark destroys any flow, and I’d rather see them removed completely.
Some tweaks are also necessary, maybe thinking about the initiative for example, or velocity of the projectiles (and especially cursed bullet).
And malice…I think malice should also affect conditions (maybe not in terms of damage but…something) right now it’s doing nothing.
Also personally malice builds up too slow.
Furthermore I think it is unnecessary to remove all malice stacks AND stolen when your enemy dies/moves too far. Maybe a kind of over time removal, just like adrenaline of warrior (maybe not that fast).
Range should also be addressed. Increasing from 1200 to 1500 and kneeling too 1750 or even 1800, or 1200 mobile and 1750 while kneeling. It is…disappointing, that a Soulbeast can burst better at 1500 than a deadeye.
Last point, and most controversial I guess, I believe kneel should be sniper’s cover untraited. Maybe replace this with a cantrip reduction trait.
I hope there was no salt included.

Warrost.4895:

babazhook.6805:

Shtark.7250:

It sounds like we were playing different classes altogether, I’m gonna link a post a made some days ago if you wanna check it out, I explain things with much more detail there, but to sum it up, I played a large amount of matches during the preview weekend with DE, I think around 100 or so, I can easily say that I did not find myself stressing over anything that you guys stated above:
Rifle does insane amounts of damage, I’ve been able to bring down druids/necros/guard in around 10 seconds if they were not careaful, I was doing 3,5k crits with autoattack, and around 13k with Judgment.
Defensively, I’ve never been caught a single time when I did things right, I do kitten up here and there with skills (hitting a target while trying to get away in stealth, etc) and end up getting killed, but aside from those, I literally left even daredevils in the dust trying to catch me using stealth, shadowstep and retreat. For a detailed explanation please read the Defense part of the post that I made.
POST: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Deadeye-Build-Thoughts/first#post6714664

I concur and your experiences much like my own. I did not find surival as bad as being stated as there ample stealth and other utility to effect such.

But even there are a few necessary fixes I hope we all can agree on.
A trait for cantrip CD reduction for example. The CD’s are not low, and hardly justified for their effect (just think about healing skill…which is simply not worth taking at all). As addition to one in the chamber for example.
Personally I believe any cast time on kneel and mark destroys any flow, and I’d rather see them removed completely.
Some tweaks are also necessary, maybe thinking about the initiative for example, or velocity of the projectiles (and especially cursed bullet).
And malice…I think malice should also affect conditions (maybe not in terms of damage but…something) right now it’s doing nothing.
Also personally malice builds up too slow.
Furthermore I think it is unnecessary to remove all malice stacks AND stolen when your enemy dies/moves too far. Maybe a kind of over time removal, just like adrenaline of warrior (maybe not that fast).
Range should also be addressed. Increasing from 1200 to 1500 and kneeling too 1750 or even 1800, or 1200 mobile and 1750 while kneeling. It is…disappointing, that a Soulbeast can burst better at 1500 than a deadeye.
Last point, and most controversial I guess, I believe kneel should be sniper’s cover untraited. Maybe replace this with a cantrip reduction trait.
I hope there was no salt included.

Thanks for the feedback folks. I think there are definitely some things that we can agree on. I honestly didn’t spend much time messing with condition specs as I did not feel that it would be Viable with how the stolen skills are and how much investment is required to make them work. I’ll definitely look more into on release. I can say that Deadeye in Spvp plays a little differently than in WvW, my guess would be due to the variety of different stat combo’s and sigils etc that you can put together.

I am already theorycrafting a hyrbid build. I tested this build briefly in WvW using the DE spec and it outpermed anything from DrD and older templates.

This a p/d build utilizing steal to effect and ample stealth for sneak attack. Rifle is off hand.

Given the survival offered by all that stealth even using a pure power build, I concluded I could go with much lower armor and vitality in a hybrid and get the best of both worlds and while I did not test for hours on end it was very effective. It could hit pretty hard in rifle or in p/d and had the same condition damage potential of any pure condition build.

I do agree on many things you said, but not all of them:
1) The range is ridiculous as it is, why? Because if you have a more or less good build, and by that i don’t even mean a glass cannon build, take for example the one i stated in my post (not saying it’s good, i’m saying it worked for me at least), I was disrupting the mid teamfights with easy, even more, if a meele class tries to catch me, i just shadowstep away, keep shooting, when he gets near, shadowstep back, keep shooting, stealth, etc. The idea of range, is that you don’t do as much damage as meele since you have an advantageous position, but in this case, you have range and heavy damage.
2) As I described in the post, the delay on the stealth attack works well if you use it, and immediatly use another skill, since both skills will arrive at the target roughly at the same time, ensuring that he will not have enough time to react to it, and land 2 skills at the same time. But I can see the point tour point in the proyectile being slow.
3) The playstyle of the class is not meant to be like the regular meele thief (fast phased), for DE you have to be patient most of the time, and I assure you, it pays off, if you want to expand on this, check the “1v1” part of the post.
4) The cantrips, as you said, are meh, I only used 2, Shadow Meld and Shadow Gust, the other ones I found very useless, at least for the build I was going for.
5) The cast time for Sniper cover/Kneel, was not a problem at least for me, if you move cleverly you can confuse most enemies, I detailed more of this in the post I made.
6) The stolen being removed when the mark goes away is stupid as you said, it makes no sense at all, I hope it gets revised
Finally) I hear many people complaining about the class being underpowered, wich completely opposes to my experiences with it, actually, I’m VERY positive that it will recive some nerfs on many aspects of it before or shortly after release.

Sorry if I quote my post a lot, I sound like a advertisement lol, but I went over almost all the important points and aspects of the class/build with a lot of detail, and it took me quite some time, so I don’t really want to write all that again.

Shtark.7250:

I do agree on many things you said, but not all of them:
1) The range is ridiculous as it is, why? Because if you have a more or less good build, and by that i don’t even mean a glass cannon build, take for example the one i stated in my post (not saying it’s good, i’m saying it worked for me at least), I was disrupting the mid teamfights with easy, even more, if a meele class tries to catch me, i just shadowstep away, keep shooting, when he gets near, shadowstep back, keep shooting, stealth, etc. The idea of range, is that you don’t do as much damage as meele since you have an advantageous position, but in this case, you have range and heavy damage.
2) As I described in the post, the delay on the stealth attack works well if you use it, and immediatly use another skill, since both skills will arrive at the target roughly at the same time, ensuring that he will not have enough time to react to it, and land 2 skills at the same time. But I can see the point tour point in the proyectile being slow.
3) The playstyle of the class is not meant to be like the regular meele thief (fast phased), for DE you have to be patient most of the time, and I assure you, it pays off, if you want to expand on this, check the “1v1” part of the post.
4) The cantrips, as you said, are meh, I only used 2, Shadow Meld and Shadow Gust, the other ones I found very useless, at least for the build I was going for.
5) The cast time for Sniper cover/Kneel, was not a problem at least for me, if you move cleverly you can confuse most enemies, I detailed more of this in the post I made.
6) The stolen being removed when the mark goes away is stupid as you said, it makes no sense at all, I hope it gets revised
Finally) I hear many people complaining about the class being underpowered, wich completely opposes to my experiences with it, actually, I’m VERY positive that it will recive some nerfs on many aspects of it before or shortly after release.

Sorry if I quote my post a lot, I sound like a advertisement lol, but I went over almost all the important points and aspects of the class/build with a lot of detail, and it took me quite some time, so I don’t really want to write all that again.

Yeah I think we agree on a lot of things, although I will say that some of my issues may not be prevalent in Spvp but more so in Wvw. I tried DE in Battle of Khylo and loved it. WvW is significantly more open and has more lag issues than Spvp due to the number of players on the map at one time. Thus skills like Kneel seem a lot slower due to skill lag etc. Maybe thats more of an issue with the servers than the class though. I think it just comes down to WvW and SPvp being a different animal all together. .

good insights. my priorities from pvp perspective are:

1. faster malice generation. Currently it pops at max long after fights.
2. better defense from utilites and elite- lower cast times to 1/4 s on elite and cantrip blind powder.
3. rifle 2 should give swiftness on skill use instead of on hit target to help mobility.

The deadeye will find its place in the meta. Just not in the usual role that a thief will normally take.

My personal opinion, the Deadeye will see it’s self in basically the same position a sharp shooter would in real life. Normally nearby the team, and providing long range support by killing certain targets. Counter Sniping (Killing Deadeyes), Shutting down heavy fire support by killing artillary or machine gunners (Killing those kitten ed Elementalist, Necromancers, Engies). And when that’s done, just help with killing bunkered units (2v1 a warrior).

Someone even made a video showing how strong a Deadeye with his team could be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JWDICZBpbE

I think the -key- problem that people have when comparing Deadeye and Daredevil, is that they forget they both have completely different functions and playstyles. Apples and Oranges. Daredevil masks this mostly by being a strong extension to the normal thief game play. Where deadeye takes a complete 180 and makes it virtually a whole new class while still being a thief. Other professions have the same pattern with their specs. Warriors are still Warriors, but they took a 180 compared to Berserker. Rangers are Still Rangers, but they took a massive 180 as well (got my kitten wrecked a lot by one really good Soulbeast in the beta. You don’t feel like you’ve been maimed till you’ve been repeatedly machine gunned by a long bow, THEN body slammed for 60 percent of your health by a transparent semi-corporal bear).

Daredevil is very powerful in melee.
Deadeye is very powerful at range or when a fight drags on for too long.