Lord Warfin.1209

It is buggy in that it doesn't trigger consistently on spirits . I don't know how it used to work and have only been testing how it actually works now. I agree that it's not very useful in any situation where mobility is essential and the intended targets won't be in the same place long enough for the pulses to add up regen. Keeping sprits alive is something it is useful for, so not triggering on them reliably can make a difference. In high mobility situations you probably won't be running spirits either, although they are slightly more viable due to their longer range effects and ability to teleport.

I think it is buggy. My guess is the order things happen isn't guaranteed so sometimes cultivated synergy happens first and may heal things completely before the trap check and sometimes the trap triggers first even though they will be completely healed with cultivated synergy. Likewise sometimes teleporting a spirit at less than 100% health into the trap triggers it and sometimes the check happens at the wrong time and it doesn't. In most content where there are multiple targets actually in need of healing and moving around there are probably enough triggers that it's not a problem, or there is so much going on it's hard to notice there is a problem. Testing with a single spirit doesn't simulate actual use, but it makes it easier to see the bugs.

I've started playing around with Druid and am having a little trouble getting Healing Spring to work reliably with spirits. Here is what I have found: 1. If the 'trap' is set and a target already inside the trigger circle goes below 100% health, the trap does not trigger. It just lets them die. 2. If the skill is cast when a target within the trigger radius is already below 100% (or has damaging conditions presumably) and is still below 100% after instant healing from Cultivated Synergy etc. then it triggers. This seems to be about the most reliable way to do it. 3. If the 'trap' is set and a spirit below 100% health is teleported into the trigger circle from outside, sometimes it triggers and sometimes it doesn't. It seems that it might be more likely to work the further the teleport distance but I'm not entirely sure. The last time I tried from just outside the trigger circle it worked and I've seen it fail from further. It does not trigger if they are teleported around inside the circle, which is consistent with #1. Is there some factor I'm missing, like a health threshold other than 100% that would make this make sense or is it just buggy?

I was very glad to see it not get nerfed. It would be nice if they put the range circle back in too as that was convenient, but if they are determined to reduce the range eventually and this is only a temporary reprieve that isn't going to happen.

That was it. Somehow I didn't know that and I've been playing DE for a while. The Wiki does say there is a threshold but don't always look at that and I always wait till the malice bar is full so it's never been an issue. When I was experimenting with dagger skills I just wanted to see how they worked so I wasn't racking up malice to go for damage. It works when I do.

I'm confused about something. Before this patch, using the stolen skill on DeadEye gave 3 seconds of stealth. I used that all the time for Death's Judgment or Malicious Ambush. It still says stealth for 3 seconds in the tool tip, but it no longer gives stealth. I don't see anything about that in the patch notes. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Sounds like Death's Advance had little to no testing before it was rolled out. And the tool tip does say it affects 5 targets and has both a range and distance of 600. Does it really teleport 5 allies or is that just an artifact from copying and pasting the Death's Retreat tool tip? I don't understand what range is supposed to mean there either. Death's Retreat has a distance and a radius since it has AoE effects. Distance makes sense for Death's Advance but what does range mean?

That's not new. You could always dodge while kneeling. That's mostly how I move around to avoid AoE's and gain stealth for death's judgement.

If you look at the changes they proposed and the ones they added that weren't in the patch notes there actually does seem to be a plan behind them, which is to replace stationary long range sniping with more movement and stealth and make DE play style more active and inline with core thief and daredevil. You may or may not agree with that change of concept, but the real problem is they completely failed to communicate that. Between the stream and the patch note preview it was just adding crawling and this is a good opportunity to nerf your range.

Interesting. Probably a bug where the code to remove the -75% movement penalty deletes all movement restrictions by mistake, although the description does says to "stop kneeling and move freely".

If you think that's buggy, try action cam. Instead of saying out of range it says you don't have a valid target. If you have a target that's in range but aren't pointing directly at it you also get a message that you don't have a valid target.

I tried it in the raid training area and it seems ok. Rifle 1, 2 and 3 all hit at the same range kneeling (while out of range standing) and I could see the damage in the combat log. There are some changes not covered in the notes though. As above, the marker circle at 1500 so you could see what is in range is gone. I guess since they were going to split/nerf ranges they figured it would be somewhere between useless and confusing and just deleted it. Either it was too much work to put it back in after they ripped out the code or they just decided there had to be some kind of range nerf. Also, snipers cover now works differently. You can place the barrier anywhere from on top of you to I think 600 away. I guess that lets you provide a smoke field to someone else close by but it does make using it slightly more complicated. If you place the barrier on top of your character you get access to a new skill called Death's Advance that lets you stealth and shadowstep 600 forward. That seems like an ambush skill added to make up for the range nerf. It's another source of stealth and a teleport so it will probably be called OP. We'll have to see how useful it really is. If you use action cam it doesn't seem like it's possible to get the barrier close enough to be considered inside the field, so you probably need to disable it at least temporarily to access the new skill. The consistent theme to these changes is that they really wanted Deadeye to rely more on movement and stealth but stay closer to the action, although they really didn't communicate any overall direction like that in the stream.

Either I am misreading this, or other people are. The proposed change is: "While kneeling, players can now move at a 75% reduced speed", which I read as -75% from normal speed or 25% of normal speed. That's enough to make minor adjustments to your position to deal with obstructions or stay just in range, both of which would be useful only at long range which they are taking away. I generally dodge in different directions while kneeling to avoid AOE's and gain stealth for death's judgement anyway so this would marginally helpful for fine position adjustments. Another complication with these changes is the range circle that appears at 1500 when the Deadeye is kneeling making it easy to see what is in range. If the range for marking targets and the auto-attack stays at 1500 while the attacks you actually need are now 1200 does the circle get reduced to 1200, stay at 1500 or just go away because it is confusing with split ranges?

As I understand it, right now Death's Judgement only damages one single target, and if a random mob happens to step in the way of the shot then it either takes the hit or just blocks it from hitting the intended target. With the change this attack will pierce through multiple targets until it hits the mark, doing reduced damage to the targets it goes through on the way to doing full damage to the actual target. This is nice, but it's more of a bug fix than an actual buff.

Whether or not something should exist in an MMO is a matter of opinion, but I think there is a valid point that the underlying problem with rifle Deadeye is the incompatibility of the sniper concept with the endgame PvE model in GW2, which is a pile of characters standing in the same spot next to the boss and all the players mashing keys in specific sequences given on the same web sites where they got the builds designed to maximize damage/healing/boon uptime. Yeah there is some moving around to deal with mechanics added to relieve the monotony and it's nice to have some range so you can keep attacking, but it doesn't need to be that much. The differences between classes/specs are just the specific numbers they pump out and how hard it is to remember the sequences of keys. Sniper doesn't really have a place in that, not to mention the devs really don't want players to be able to pick off their creations from a safe distance. That's cheating, so the longer your effective range the more work they have to put into map and encounter design to prevent you from taking advantage of it. Maybe there is a place for it in PvP and WvW where players will find ways of countering other players tactics, including using the same builds and tactics themselves. In open world you can do whatever you like because you don't need to meet benchmarks and don't care about maximum gold/hour, just having fun. Balancing this to make it work at least to some extent in all game modes and still have a unique fantasy flavor is not going to be an easy problem to solve, and maybe they should have thought that through a little more about it before they created the spec. Of course, reading the posts about other specs I haven't played and don't know much about, it seems it's not an easy problem for any of them and there's no way to please everyone.