It’s a damage loss. AA is better unless you’re trying to bypass some kind of hp-based proc trait or enemy proc that depends on them being hit (repeatedly). On D/P especially, it’s usually wiser to just Shadow Shot to end stealth and deal some good damage + blind + gap close and follow up with AA.
Huh? How is just Shadow Shot into AA better than stowing Shadow Shot melee hit and going into Backstab?
You don’t have to stay on rifle if you need to AoE. Switch to SB or S/P or something. Not any different from P/P.
I’d wait a bit before declaring DE good or bad at any given role. Sure, we can definitevely say that it deals high damage, but it also has good CC skills, easy access to stealth, some techie stuff with chaining unblockable dazes and stuns with Mercy+stun trait, support through might sharing (you can almost instantly buff your whole group with 20 might with Improv, that’s not bad). It will take a bit of time to really figure out how to play the class to its full potential and whether or not it can truly compete.
You can play through solo PvE with a single pistol. You can also kill some players with a single pistol. It’s just really bad and not worth using.
Rifle is a burst weapon, not a DPS weapon and works fine for that. When it comes to PvE the spec is like a mix between DPS and support through the new Steal effects and Might sharing.
Saying that SB does the same damage is… what? Clusters hit hard, but they take a while to arrive. You can cluster shotgun and it works fine, but it’s a niche thing you do in PvP. You can’t single out and burn the target down with a Shortbow, certainly not from great range.
If they buff Glacial Heart in a good way it could lead to the resurrection of the old Hammer medi Guard. Don’t know about you but I’d love that.
I just don’t see how Spellbreaker alters Warrior’s playstyle at all. You don’t even dispel boons that well tbh, so it’s not like you become a hard counter to certain Ele builds or something. You just do the same thing as ever, slot the same utilities as ever (because SB utilities are pretty bad) and just melee stuff, except now you have a pretty cool defense/CC skill. The optimal way to play the spec in PvP is very similar to the age old core power Warrior. I think this is the biggest problem. The spec just isn’t different or flavorful enough.
And yeah, the spec is basically worthless in PvE, which is a real shame, since it’s the most supported game mode.
The spec is only good in zerg v zerg PvE. You suicide into the enemy zerg to put the Elite up which becomes invisible thanks to effect culling, the enemies lose Stability and your buddies can CC them to death. Wow, what a great role to have.
Some of your suggestions are insane. Making #3 cost 3 initiative? #2 unblockable? Jeez, slow down, mate. #3 is your main source of damage and you want to make it that easy to spam?
What they need to do is nerf #3’s damage and then lower its cost and maybe increase the Might duration slightly. Then they need to make #4 move faster so it doesn’t get sidestepped at 1000+ range. Maybe it even needs to be Unblockable at full Malice, although it sounds kinda insane. Rifle is clearly meant to be about setup for the perfect #4 crit, but then #4 needs to be extremely good, since large single hit attacks are notoriously bad in GW2 because of Aegis, Blind and a ton of on-demand invulnerability effects.
Deadeye Mark needs to be instant, you should be able to cancel Kneel by movement and it needs to be faster.
The stolen skills are kinda weak and are clearly meant for group support, for the most part. Still, they’re not totally useless. Steal Blood is okay, you can get Protection, Resistance etc. I totally agree that stolen skills shouldn’t expire when Mark expires though.
I like Rifle well enough but something needs to be done with Death’s Retreat. It’s just broken. “Invalid terrain” bug just destroys the skill. It needs to port you at least a bit even if your back is to the wall, otherwise using this skill in combat is often suicidal.
Daredevil was clunky and got buffed so it became good. Deadeye has nothing besides damage, but the damage is ridiculously high. Which means they will nerf it before PoF release and it will be a bad spec, which they will then buff in 6 months or so to be probably still bad. Deadeye needs either a deep rework or to get carried by his 10k critting Rifle #3.
Deadeye just doesn’t have anything broken about him outside of the damage. The traits are mild, the stolen skills are mild, the utilities are mild. Shadow Meld is the only potentially broken thing about it since it might make permastealth thieves even more obnoxious.
I mean, imagine the current Deadeye but with #3 being nerfed by 50% to be a pure self-buff skill and all the shots fixed to be reflectable. It’s going to be a total joke.
In PvE it’s going to be worse than DrD as well because you can’t make a good PvE condi build with DE. Lotus Training is too good. Does Malice even affect condi damage? You can have some 22k DPS zerker DE that shares buffs though, but I’m not sure how that’s any good.
Instead of complex reworks I’d just change how Attacker’s Insight works. Make it so it no longer triggers when you CC the enemy but only when you strip a boon, but instead make it cap at 10 stacks instead of 5. Spellbreaker sucks at boon stripping (outside of the Elite) and would require massive changes to become good at it. Instead he needs to convert boon stripping into his own power, so that the theme is preserved, but instead of weakening the enemy you empower yourself when stripping boons.
Plus I think Loss Aversion needs to be a bit stronger, that trait barely stings. Either make it deal more damage or also heal on boon strip.
Actual boon stripping is Scourge’s job, that class is amazing at it.
(edited by YuiRS.8129)
Here’s a shocker: not everybody plays in a high level team against other high level teams. DE is great for pubstomping and blowing off steam when you occasionally enter PvP… which is how PvP in GW2 should be played at this point.
Death’s Judgement should never be used unless you build specifically for it. I think SA Thief can have some success with it by initiating, surviving until he has full Malice and then double-tapping #4 to kill someone. Overall a generalist Deadly Arts Thief is probably better. #3 is cheaper, buffs you with might that enchances your autoattack, clears Aegis/Blind, tags people in the end of their dodges sometimes and is harder to see, because it’s a stream of little black pellets and not a giant doom lazer.
I’ve found some reasonable success with this build. What does Rifle do best out of all weapon sets on Thief? That’s actually stealth. So I built my Deadeye around it. The role of the build is general skirmishing and harassment, teamfighting, team stealth via Shadow Refuge, support via stealth rezzes, decapping with SB5.
Traits:
Deadeye – Iron Sight / Silent Scope / Maleficent Seven
Shadow Arts – Shadow’s Embrace / Hidden Thief / Shadow’s Rejuvenation
Equipment:
Rifle / Shortbow (DPS, stealth, mobility)
Mara Ammy / Scholar Runes
Exploitation / Parting Sigils on Rifle, Cleansing / Energy Sigils on Shortbow
Heal: Withdraw. Still solid, especially with the reduces recharge and cleanse.
Utilities:
Shadowstep
Mercy. Extra initiative for Rifle 3 spam or emergency stealth and a stun break.
Shadow Refuge. New and improved. This baby from 2012 no longer inflicts Revealed when you exit it, becoming much less punishing to use in the middle of a fight.
Elite: Shadow Meld. Your “get out of jail card”. A set of two, actually.
It plays like you would imagine. DPS people, steath up to recharge resources, run away or sustain up, Shadow Refuge on downed people and rez them. The main thing to remember is that Rifle 4 is a trap. Both of them. The shadowstep is really wonky and requires you to memorize all of the spots where it doesn’t bug out or it simply gets you killed. Death’s Judgement is easily avoided and costs too much. Your bread and butter is Rifle 3 for damage and Rifle 2 for pinning targets down in a team fight. I mark someone, spam Rifle 3, use Mercy, mark again and spam 3 some more. Rifle 4 is only worth using if you have 7 Malice and you know it will hit, which is rarely the case.
You lose Steal when you go Deadeye. So… no.
Great for PvE. Sure, bud. All of these “skilled” people crawling out of the woodworks, ugh.
First impressions are pretty bad. That being said, we gotta test it some more. What I have discovered is that you have to step away from Trickery, at the very least. Shadow Arts is where it’s at for Deadeye, since you get a lot of access to stealth and can use it to slip away easily by Kneel cancelling. It’s actually kinda fun to hunt people that way by stacking stealth, using the Mark and following them around waiting to pop out.
kitten , this is pretty tragic. So much needs to get buffed to make Deadeye even remotely viable in PvP.
Steal needs to be PvP/PvE split, Mark should be instant and grant old stolen skills in PvP. The new Steal is… wow, I have no words.
Death’s Retreat needs to be faster and remove 2 condis. Rifle 1 is weaker than Engie’s Hip Shot, which is pretty hilarious. The heal is extremely bad since it’s too slow. The spec has poor condi clear, no mobility, no sustain. The spec seems to be based around Rifle, since the main thing is Death’s Judgement, but Rifle is really bad, it needs some Unblockable mechanics, be made faster and less clunky.
What is DE’s role supposed to be? You can’t roam on DE since you’re too slow, you can’t fight on point because you’re still a Thief, you can’t 1v1, you get hard countered by projectile blocks, which are abundant. I just don’t get it.
I can’t not go Radiance on Firebrand. All that juicy damage plusTome of Justice recharge on enemy death. If you go cancer, go full cancer, I say.
So here’s my version:
Virtues/Radiance/Firebrand
Axe/Shield – Smoldering/Whatever
Sword/Torch – Smoldering/Whatever
Balthasar runes. Gotta go Balth runes if you want to deal good damage with burns.
Sigil of Agility might be quite useful to cut cast times on demand and trigger Imbued Haste more often.
Heal: Mantra of Solace, but if it’s bad… well, Shelter it is.
U1: Mantra of Flame. Damage.
U2: Judge’s Intervention. Damage, mobility, stun break.
U3: Mantra of Lore or Contemplation of Purity for cleanses.
Elite: Renewed Focus. With virtues being stronger than ever, this one might become even more of a staple. Triple stunbreak on the Elite Mantra looks pretty nice though, not gonna lie.
Traits:
Adept: Archivist of Whispers. Need more charges of that delicious Burning from ToJ.
Master: Legendary Lore. Now, I don’t know how that works exactly, but if it works like I think it works… yeah. More burning and spammable AoE Aegis? I’ll take that.
Grandmaster: Loremaster. Retaining ToJ passive (even in its nerfed state) is very valuable with Permeating Wrath.
Or they can nerf the hell out of Channeled Vigor.
Seriously, some of y’all need to chill. Just leave your feedback after you play the spec during the demo. There is still a crap-ton of time to change what they need to. Stop being salty.
This forum is like this they did the same for Daredevil, it’s going to suck, no damage wtf these dodges etc etc etc and now it is probably the best elite spec in the game.
Nobody knows if a spec is gonna be op or weak until you actually test it, let people say whatever they want. I’m sure DE will work with or without rifle and if it doesn’t then we still have daredevil so people just need to chill out.
Well, they buffed the hell out of Daredevil too. Removed aftercasts from dodges, gave Vault evasion… It will be a bit more difficult in Rifle’s case because it’s bad by design in PvP. It can still be good in PvE if they just crank the numbers up through the roof, sure.
Death’s Judgement is 1500 base damage with whatever unknown power number from the wiki. With proper damage modifiers and 7 Malice, DJ is doing closer to 9k. Add in an auto-crit from a dodge and DD runes, and you’re looking at 25k damage every 6 seconds. Rifle Deadeye is a countdown timer. You have at least 10s before those 7 malice stacks are built up and you need to have a plan because some serious pain is coming soon.
That’s a perfect sniper-like interaction for both parties.
DJ is 1500 with Marauder Ammy and probably power runes. With 7 Malice (let’s assume we’re running the trait) that’s 126% on top of that (15*721 from Malic itself) so we’re looking at 3390 damage attack. Basically, the maximum powered DJ has Killshot damage. Is that good? Well… kinda? It’s not amazing. You don’t need to have a plan to deal with this kind of damage, you either hard counter it by projectile block/reflect or just counter pressure the squishiest class in the game that can’t move. Or you can apply weakness to the Thief and now he can’t do anything.
But alright, let’s say you can start shooting a target with your Killshots. Killshot crits for like 10k. 7k if the target has Protection, even less if they have Frost armor active or are running some toughness. Now, you what Killshot has that DJ doesn’t? It pierces. DJ will be stopped by pets, minions, other players. Also, and this is a big one, Killshot can be used with Signet of Might, but DJ can’t. Killshot is still terrible by the way.
1 out of 10 DJs will end up killing you, 3 out of 10 will get blocked, 3 out of 10 will be obsctructed. The rest 3 out of 10 will hit, but one of them will not crit and deal like 2k damage.
DE Rifle will be awful.
I mean… look at the traits and abilities. It’s a pure PvP spec. Not only does it not have a lot of DPS related traits, it is, as you have said, not a condi spec, which means it’s not viable in PvE. Dagger seems like it deals Sword level damage while having some utility and no condi component.
Here is my feedback: the utility skills are trash. Imminent Threat might be the worst ability in the game. Even if the cooldown was halved it would still be bad. Actually no, that’s not the worst ability in the game, the Spellbreaker’s heal might take that spot. Completely unusable in PvE since it dispels your protection/aegis/regeneration and all of those might stacks AND completely unusable in PvP because it takes too long and you have to wait until you’re almost dead to use it so you don’t waste it on overhealing, not even talking about the cooldown.
As it stands now half of Spellbreaker’s kit is maybe good in PvP and totally worthless in PvE while the other half is totally useless everywhere. It may be a good duelist spec that outlasts people. Push far all game, go something like Longbow/Hammer with Paladin Amulet. Boon rip might allow you to win 1v1s against Ele/Engie/Mesmer and not just stall.
Weird. It all worked fine before. Did they just break it? I remember using SoJ in the crowd of golems in Heart of the Mists and everyone gets 10 burning stacks through the passive SoJ burn and sharing Permeating Wrath with each other.
Deadeye will be good 1v1, with sword or d/p.
Riffle will be a good +1 weapon.
I don’t see how. Deadeye will have weaker stolen skills (look at WP’s video, something called Steal Precision that deals 120 base damage and gives you fury for 3 seconds or some crap), and will lose combo potential because Steal will no longer gap close. Rifle won’t be used for the same reason pewpew Ranger isn’t used – insane projectile blocks/reflects, obsctucted on flat ground, LoS objects everywhere and general squishiness of the build.
It’s terrible even without ICD, with 5 sec ICD it will do absolutely nothing. Thief has a 15% crit to heal trait and it’s unusable in PvP and only really helps in solo PvE, since bosses 1-2 shot you anyway, you can’t outheal that.
It means that your projectiles will have… higher velocity. They will fly faster.
Other spirit weapons beside the Sword might need slight buffs, yeah. Shield should be instant considering how short the duration is, the Bow needs to be a bit faster (I still kinda like the Bow, I think it has potential even in its current state), the Hammer probably needs to be slightly faster. The Sword is totally fine imo. Sure, you can’t hit a moving target with it, but it has devastating potential. It does like 12k damage by itself to a single target on a condi build. You throw it into a team fight and it gets noticed too late – it just devastates people with permeating wrath procs.
SoJ burn Guard is meme worthy. It might be a relatively glassy build but kitten does it hurt. SoJ in a team fight = 10 stacks of burning on everybody thanks to Permeating Wrath, just by itself. You stand in that thing – you die, feels like it’s as strong as Plaguelands lol. Zeal/Virtues/Radiance has very little sustain though and I think you need all 3 GM traits from those lines so you can’t drop any one of those.
Anybody of you guys at high level in PvP tried going Hambow? I tried it a couple of times and it seems surprisingly good. I suspect if Cele was still a thing this build would be nuts, but even now it seems like a good 1v1/teamfight build.
Something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQJASTjMdQVI2FCmdAnIG6BMtNE+SDWAoFu0wdXPIGA-TpRHQBM7CAQi9HQ4DAAAHBA7VGAgHCAA
I suppose you can go Demolisher, but I found that the extra HP saved me a few times and gave me enough time to ramp up and stay alive even when outnumbered.
With new Merc Hammer and Brave Stride (the new Peak Performance might be better since I’m using Bull’s Charge). Merc Hammer is a beastly trait, it just gives you so much.
I suppose it’s possible to go with the new Cull the Weak instead of Doggy March and become a total weakness dispenser. The new Bull’s Charge is just a good skill and it synergizes with the build since it gives Fire Aura and helps setup hammer combos.
I can’t really see Daredevil surviving vs Deadeye in sPvP tbh. Deadeye 2-2-2 with Assassin Signet + Malice -> Unload -> Basilisk -> Unload and GG, you just downed a Daredevil.
That would down any glassy build unless they’ve got passive defenses. Nobody uses P/P in sPvP because it’s too glassy itself, slow, offers nothing unique and gets destroyed by projectile denial. It’s a 1-trick pony. A Daredevil will down this build in 2 Vaults as well, but so what.
Vaults are easily telegraphed and require much more positioning. Staff is in a worse place than p/p right now.
But Hasted Unload is actually a very good source of burst at the moment. It will be even better with Be Quick or Be Killed, you can stack 15 seconds of quickness at a go (BQOBK -> Haste -> Mercy -> BQOBK).
Staff is worse than P/P? Well, that’s certainly a unique perspective. I just don’t see P/P being good. Projectile block/reflect makes you totally useless for the whole duration of it and there’s a lot of those in the game. Furthermore, you miss Unload 2 or 3 times and… then what? P/P does zero damage with it’s autos while staff, sword or dagger can still apply good pressure without having to spend initiative. Staff can use Vaults to move quicker and to disengage, plus it has Debilitating Arc (which I’m not good at using, but some Thieves are great at actively dodging with it). P/P has nothing.
I can’t really see Daredevil surviving vs Deadeye in sPvP tbh. Deadeye 2-2-2 with Assassin Signet + Malice -> Unload -> Basilisk -> Unload and GG, you just downed a Daredevil.
That would down any glassy build unless they’ve got passive defenses. Nobody uses P/P in sPvP because it’s too glassy itself, slow, offers nothing unique and gets destroyed by projectile denial. It’s a 1-trick pony. A Daredevil will down this build in 2 Vaults as well, but so what.
They actually seem alright. Sure, they’ve lost some of their flavor, but I really don’t miss those glowy things awkwardly floating around me. We might have an actual new build on our hands and even if they turn out to be undertuned, they can buff them later because it’s just about numbers now, not about a broken mechanic.
So here are some things about the new SWs:
1. Their base damage in unaffected by your own stats while being resonably high. That means even total support builds can slot Sword/Hammer to have some additional bite. Their damage isn’t affected by Unschathed Contender.
2. It seems that they will track down enemies even if they enter stealth in the middle of the cast.
3. Same with teleports. The spirit weapon will always track the targets.
4. Looks like the spirit weapons share their spawn mechanic with shadowstep. Meaning the place you want to spawn them needs to be reachable without having to jump (and having no bugs in geometry). That makes them quite a bit less useful than normal AoEs, unfortunately.
5. Eternal Armory burning is bugged. It just doesn’t work. When it is fixed, Sword of Justice will inflict 4 stacks of burning in AoE for 3.75 seconds with Balth runes and Smoldering sigil. Plus it will also deal around 4k normal damage. Might be good enough to include into Burn Guard builds.
6. Bow of Truth is affected by healing power. The impacts aren’t random, the whole AoE pulses 15 times across its total size. With 1050 HP (Mender’s Amulet) it heals for 390 every pulse. That’s 5850 healing for up to 5 people inside the area, you can use it twice almost back to back, plus it’s a light field that just got a bit better through the light aura buff. Is that good? I think so.
7. Spirit Weapon hits do proc VoJ passive and active.
8. Shield of the Avenger dome lasts 2 seconds. This Spirit Weapon seems pretty bad tbh. The duration needs to be longer and/or the casting time should be instant if it’s meant to be a clutch block.
(edited by YuiRS.8129)
I wonder if Thieves Guild is any good now in PvP. Probably not, since to cooldown is gigantic. Still, a nice little buff for solo PvE and/or some cheesy 1v1 shenanigans. I wish they buffed Ambush a bit too.
Some weaksauce synergies there, which isn’t necessarily bad. I see Spellbreaker as a standalone spec which can be used with anything, even Condi builds (no more Resistance for you), since it’s not like Attacker’s Insight will be wasted on those, it’s still free damage.
I feel like at the very least the synergy with Strength is very good if you want to go hybrid damage. Heck if you want to go glassy you could try Strength-Arms-Spellbreaker. The only interesting thing we really got from Berserker was Rousing Resilience and Eternal Champion – and still people mostly took CI.
The only problem is that I really don’t see anybody replacing Defense. Is Strength good enough to be used in place of Discipline on Spellbreaker? I doubt that. Warrior needs all the speed he can get to have map presence, so if you’re losing Warrior’s Sprint you HAVE to slot speed runes, which is a DPS loss. And then there’s Fast Hands. Something tells me the new warrior is going to play pretty much like the old warrior. Same traits, same U-skills, same passive healing. Except now warrior will be a bit better against eles or other boon spamming classes.
Honestly, I’m more excited about the core warrior changes that Spellbreaker. Bull’s Charge with evade? Triple Kick like mfing Liu Kang? I really hope it’s good enough so we can finally replace stances with some cool active skills.
Some weaksauce synergies there, which isn’t necessarily bad. I see Spellbreaker as a standalone spec which can be used with anything, even Condi builds (no more Resistance for you), since it’s not like Attacker’s Insight will be wasted on those, it’s still free damage.
We already know all skills and traits Spellbreaker will have. The answer is no.
We don’t exactly know how the PoF open world will look like – Spellbreaker will be pretty fantastic in PvP and WvW but I wouldn’t call it complete crap for PvE
Might be good for the open world but for group pve its gonna be useless
Pretty sure they’ll have lots of bosses with lots of boons.
Then just use Mesmers, since they bring a ton of other useful stuff.
Spellbreaker is totally useless for PvE and we really don’t know if it has any chance in PvP either. Most of the utilities are horrible.
10 seconds of no boons at all is outright deadly to those classes.
So he’s basically pre-hot rampage warrior? He has a damage combo that takes “skill” (see: enemy that doesn’t have stunbreaks) and an elite skill and that’s it.
I mean if you guys figure thisll be op then go ahead and run it, but it’s basically a free kill to my thief.
Free kill to a thief 1v1? While I agree that Spellbreaker will probably be meh, Thief isn’t typically a 1v1 class and it will not be able to easily beat anything. Thief isn’t a 1v1 class, unless you’re running specific builds, but you will have to leave the point and spend a lot of time killing anybody with that, which isn’t optimal for sPvP. WvW is a clownfiesta and I can’t discuss that.
rifle thief is slow thief every thief that doesnt have mobility is meat for most of classes out there.
Except you can build rifle thief no not be slow… there are options out there, and in Tuesdays patch we may well see speed become baseline if they remove speed signets.
I don’t think you can afford to go Rifle/SB and rely on the rifle to do the killing, not in sPvP. LoS and projectile denial will destroy Rifle.
Honestly, I don’t think you can afford to lose Unhindered Combatant. Deadeye seems like a dud for PvP.
Have you never heard of the Irish Shillelagh? Or even a Quarterstaff? You can really kitten someone up fighting with a staff. Daredevil’s staff was great. Spears are nothing more than a staff with a blade on the end, and the blade is completely optional to ruining someone’s day, simply from the physical force magnified over the weapon’s length and focused on the tip.
Or Bo staffs. There is a reason they are parts of most eastern martial arts training.
The English loved their staves as well. A staff is a good self defense weapon. Still, a staff to a spear is what a club is to a sword. A much cheaper, but inferior alternative.
To be honest the spellbreaker looks weak. A warrior is dead meat without endure pain and berserk stance! A warrior is forced to play with those 2 utility skills or else the warrior is easy prey in PvP or WvW.
The new dagger skills have kitteny mobility, the spellbreaker warrior will be easy prey for all the range classes.
I am not surprised!
One of the new Spellbreaker utility skills (Featherfoot Grace) is a decent alternative to Berserker Stance. It’s quite similar to Balanced Stance vs Dolyak Signet – it gives Resistance upfront and a bit less of it, but in return it has half the cooldown, breaks stuns and gives Superspeed.
Zerker Stance doesn’t get quite as buttblasted by boon rip though, which is kind of a big deal.
Question for any that can answer.
Granted the tooltips might be incomplete but I am looking at snipers cover. This indicates one will get an increase in projectile velocity while kneeling along with range to 1500.
It does not state it Rifle specific. Would this suggest that pistol and SB can get range up to 1500 with this trait and that the arrow velocity out of SB will go up?
Except that Kneel is a Rifle skill. So unless you can kneel, weapon swap and keep the kneel state… nope.
Daredevil ended up boosting Thief’s role as a decapper and +1 bot, so it ended up being good. Deadeye is just about damage. It’s a MUCH slower build than Daredevil with UC, and that alone reduces its chances of ever being used seriously.
Rifle will obviously be terrible for sPvP and probably terrible for group PvE, so it will be a meme WvW weapon and maybe used for solo PvE or something? That’s a shame.
Deadeye has some neat stuff, but the fact that Steal no longer brings you to your target makes it a lot weaker for D/P. The utilities are… okay? At least some of them are, but they have some heavy competition. There’s a real possibility that Deadeye is a dud by design, just because Thief needs very specific tools to succeed in PvP and no amount of tweaking numbers will change that.
Why do you believe the Deadeye will be bad for group PvE? It doesn’t look ideal for highly mobile combat, but it seems like it would be good for anything where the Thief can remain reasonably stationary. The third trail line seems based around group play, passing boons to allies.
Why do you believe that Steal not teleporting you is a huge concern for D/P when they already have #3 to work with on no CD? Just on paper, it looks like Deadeye brings a lot of punishment to the Thief class, high damage attacks and debuffs.
I’m saying that Rifle will probably be bad for group PvE. It looks like a burst/utility based weapon, not pure DPS like Staff. It’s also not condi based, which is the direction Anet seems to be moving towards. Deadeye itself will probably be meta in PvE because of the traits.
As for Steal and D/P, you use Steal to land pre-cased backstabs, BP+HS+backstab combo, HS+steal to quickly finish somebody off and possibly follow with autoattacks, steal+cluster bomb for a quick burst if you’re stuck in shortbow. Thief’s really only dangerous when he has Steal up because he can chain it into devastating combos, which is pretty much impossible with the new steal.
Rifle will obviously be terrible for sPvP and probably terrible for group PvE, so it will be a meme WvW weapon and maybe used for solo PvE or something? That’s a shame.
Deadeye has some neat stuff, but the fact that Steal no longer brings you to your target makes it a lot weaker for D/P. The utilities are… okay? At least some of them are, but they have some heavy competition. There’s a real possibility that Deadeye is a dud by design, just because Thief needs very specific tools to succeed in PvP and no amount of tweaking numbers will change that.
I tried, guys.
As of now, it looks like the OHKO ranged-stealth burster people with a level head in balanced/fun gameplay are so fearful of.
And you know this how?
Just based on the leaked info, it looks very much like a low-mobility burst-oriented sniper or something similar.
I thought the only thing that got leaked were images?
I tried, guys.
As of now, it looks like the OHKO ranged-stealth burster people with a level head in balanced/fun gameplay are so fearful of.
And you know this how?
It can’t be deathmatch based, though. There are comps in this game that will never die to mere 2 people. If something like an Ele+Engie comp knows how to kite… how do you kill them?
Top stats matter since when exactly? It’s really easy to score top damage and kills if you have an AoE build and team fight a lot, even if you shouldn’t. It’s really easy to score top healing if you have even a sliver of healing in your build and don’t have any dedicated healing builds in the team. It’s easy to score top in offense if you have a mobile class. None of that means whatever you’re doing benefits the team as much as possible.
This game is remotely balanced because people are forced to stay in little circles. There are builds in this game that will never die if they don’t want to. Healing revs, kiting condi thieves, some mesmer builds… There’s a reason why duel servers ban a whole bunch of builds from participating.
Sword seems to have been designed as a hybrid power/condi weapon, but it doesn’t really work like that. MH Sword is used right now, but only because Flaming Flurry is busted. Let’s take a look at the other skills:
1. AA chain is fine, but pretty weak, especially on a power build. It could be left as is, but the rest of the skills need to do more raw damage.
2. Savage Leap is awesome, but only for it’s mobility. The damage component could easily be buffed, considering how telegraphed and slow the skill is.
3. Final Thrust is okay, but only for power builds. I think it should also add 3/6 stacks of bleeding or even torment.
4. Normal Flurry. Now, this one is just terrible. The bleeding it inflicts is weak, it takes too long to channel, it roots you in place, it does like zero power damage. Buff the bleeding duration slightly and increase the physical damage it inflicts by a ton so it’s actually something that’s worth casting for the whole duration.
5. Flaming Flurry. Extremely good, so much that it’s polarizing. The sword is nearly worthless without it.
As it stands now, only one skill is good for damage and only if you’re condi. At the same time, if you’re condi it has a dead skill and the normal F1 is nearly worthless regardless of your build. A good MH sword set might make GS/S hyper mobile builds a thing, it might make Arms something that people want to spec into.
Now we come to the OH Sword… I actually think it’s pretty simple. First, they need to decide whether it’s a pure condi weapon or a hybrid weapon.
1. Impale is alright, maybe a bit weak because it’s a projectile and we have a lot of projectile hate these days. The flip skill Rip is really bad though. It’s very slow and does nothing on a condi build and almost nothing on a power build. Rip needs to inflict bleeding/torment if it hits. Alternarively, if OH sword is supposed to be pure condi, you can cut the normal damage and make it inflict a ton of bleed/torment.
2. Riposte. This one needs to be a flip skill, not an automatic counter, just as the other skills of this type. The effect of the strike is weak, but it’s a defensive move first.