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Source I'm Iskarel. I maintain the PvE Thief builds and guides on
Snow Crows With a PvE perspective, I'm going to run through the changes, discuss their impact, and talk about current meta builds and how they're impacted.
Want the build-by-build cliff notes? Skip to the bottom, search for "tl;dr"
I know this is a lot. Think of it as a reference document.
A LOT has changed. The builds aren't unrecognizable but the texture has changed almost across the board.
Flanking is Dead (for most endgame bosse)
To make them more reliable in endgame PvE content, all effects that benefit when the player strikes from the flank or from behind now always apply their benefits when striking defiant foes.
Not all players know that "flanking" or "from behind or the sides" just means—don't be in front of the target.
Ever used a build with Thief runes? Just don't stand directly in front of the target.
What fewer players will know is that there's a small set of skills that actually need you to be ~180-degrees behind your target.
- Thief Backstab (deals double damage from behind)
- Thief Sword Stealth Attack (only dazes from behind)
- Ranger Greatsword Hilt (dazes from the front, stuns from behind. This basically doesn't matter in PvE)
- Mesmer Downstate phantasm (deals more damage if the phantasm hits from behind. Hey it's like a Thief!)
Which way does Keep Construct face when it descends back to the arena after the orb-rift-push phase?
Which way does Sabetha face during her Flame Wall?
I'm not going to answer these questions because the answers don't matter anymore! This skill expression is now gone.
Just backstab from any angle.
Ah but "defiant foes"? What
isn't included there?
Can you backstab Primordus in the Harvest Temple strike if your group stays on the left vs right side, when looking from the center towards the dragon?
You would have to be on the right side. The left is the dragon's face.
Which way does Conjured Amalgamate face?
When approaching CA's platform, it is facing to your right. This also applies to the hands. Stand on the left side of the platform, and "above" the hands (closer to the portal leading away from this encounter).
Which way do the hands on Adina face?
2 o'clock (north), 5 o'clock (northwest), 7 o'clock (south), 10 o'clock (southeast)
No, I don't know why.
Just use your rifle and pierce two hands with Spotter's Shot + Death's Judgment! That's better than remembering these facing positions.
These are non-defiant "prop" type enemies. Also included here is Drakkar, the Octovine, and Tequatl. IIRC.
BTW Drakkar is made up 17 prop pieces, and you can only cast Deadeye's Mark on one of them. Don't play Deadeye here, you're trolling yourself. :D
Acrobatics Mental Gymnastics
Yeah this ain't it, chief. This is still a defensive and mobility-oriented traitline.
The damage modifier in Endless Stamina can't compete with Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes, even when combined with the Power in Swinder's Equilibrium.
The other stuff is maybe interesting for solo open world champions but Shadow Arts is already quite capable at that, and Condition Thief has a lot more toys to work with when solo compared to Power.
It's something but this traitline still feels ironically directionless.
Improvisational Theater of War
Interesting! We can now use this traitline predictably, resetting the cooldown of all or utility skills. On the surface that's good because it means we'll always get value out of the reset...unless our skill uses are staggered. More on that later.
Mag Bomb Delenda Est.
Currently this skill's damage-per-cast-time is roughly double that of Daredevil Staff 2, Weakening Charge. Notably, the cast time is short because it pulses damage.
The coefficient we have on the wiki, drawn from the Game's API, is 4.10. ANet lists a 1.50 (per hit, so 4.50 total) nerfed to 0.70. So... Uh...
Let's say Throw Magnetic Bomb's damage is nerfed to 50% of its current damage. Or there about.
So next patch, one Throw Magnetic Bomb is close to the damage of one Staff 2, but the damage comes out over time (during our Assassin Signet burst) and the cast animation is faster than Staff 2.
But is it worth losing Executioner?
Probably not. Executioner is approximately 9.52% damage on a fight that spends 50% of its time above 50% target HP and 50% of time below (due to Ferocious Strikes).
That's a lot of damage to be made up by another use of a stolen skill!
Daredevil's Bound to be Good
Bound: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 3.5
This ratchets up the damage of our dodge so that it beats the damage-per-cast-time of Punishing Strikes (skill 1 part C) and Staff 5, while still losing to Staff Strike and Staff Bash (skill 1 parts A/B), Staff 2, and Fist Flurry/Palm Strike.
This damage increase is valuable because
- (A) it makes dodging better for damage, on top of the damage modifiers provided by Havoc Specialist and Bounding Dodger
- (B) if we get excess endurance from our helpful allies, burning it off to maintain our modifiers hurts our DPS less on the future patch.
Auto chain go brrrr
Staff Strike, Staff Bash: Increased power coefficient.
... Uh oh.
This increase the DPS of the first and second part of the chain well beyond the last hit.
The optimal DPS rotation now involves interrupting the chain after the 2nd hit.
That's not easy to do on most professions, which have a limited number of viable interrupts, but we're Thief, baby!
Staff Strike, Staff Bash, Weakening Charge. Repeat. Throw in a Fist Flurry. Save your Palm Strike. Yeah. This sort of thing.
Calculations done by REMagic42 (
training-accident-36 ) show the following
A not insignificant DPS increase provided by this (unintended?) balance predicament.
You could just not do this. That's up to you. The build is getting buffed by ~4,000 DPS next patch but it still has all the old problems. Don't know those?
Read here Let's Get Physical (Lights out, follow the noise)
Various Physical Skill cooldown reductions
These are neat and strictly a positive.
Left, a great player who provides benchmarks for Power and Condition Daredevil, already tested Condition Daredevil with cooldown-traited Impairing Daggers and found them simply worse in group content vs Devourer Venom. You can read more on his
benchmark.
So the Impairing Daggers cooldown reduction (CDR) doesn't matter to us.
A cooldown reduction for Channeled Vigor would've been cool!
This skill basically gives you a get-out-of-jail-free dodge if you're ever scared that burning all your dodges for Havoc Specialist will leave you vulnerable. You can get a dodge with Withdraw on a shorter cooldown but that travels backwards from your facing direction which can be scary.
This skill is also very useful for maintaining Lotus Training uptime when playing Condition Daredevil. If you can't keep hitting the boss with your auto-attack chain and F1 Steal, you will run out of endurance and lose your condition damage buff. Use Channeled Vigor to maintain buff uptime when you can't hit the boss. (This tip comes from Left!)
Impact Strike is still worse defiance-bar to cooldown ratio vs Basilisk Venom, but any improvement is nice. This skill is good when you can't guarantee all hits of Basilisk Venom will hit your target, or when you need to CC more frequently than Basilisk's cooldown allows.
Death-onate Plasma and "Boon Thief"
Farewell, Boon Thief. Without Quickness, we can no longer role-compress all those shiny boons in Plasma into a Quickness Build.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the damage of Detonate Plasma will not be worth its cast time purely from a DPS perspective, especially on a Condition Build, but you might still get some boon uptime from Daredevils on fights like Matthias and Twin Largos' Kenut.
You can now permanently sunset your Celestial/Ritualist gear for Boon Thief. Will you use it for Alacrity Specter later? I don't now, I don't know how much Alacrity is given by that trait. We'll talk more later. :)
Also Icebrood Saga exists
These really don't matter. Unstable Reagent is maybe a DPS increase, I don't have a log with it for cast time.
This is NOT Unstable Artifact BTW. That skill is still worth using for both Power and Condition DPS.
Cursed Artifact is like throw-Plaguelands, and an Ethereal field at that. It's free real estate on the Condition Build.
Time in a Bottle is squad-wide alacrity AND quickness. Take that, Chronomancer! It's only found in Cold War and randomly in EoD strikes. :)
Dumbed-down-eye
Deadeye Stolen Skill splash support
Stolen Skills now grant their beneficial effects around the caster.
These are mostly "splash" uptimes of boons, but you can also get superspeed and a modest heal. Neat! Deadeye providing a token amount of squad value beyond its DPS and CC output.
Deadeye Malicious Intent buff
Malicious Intent: Increased Malice gain from 1 to 2 in PvE only
This is actually big!
Firstly, this increases the damage dealt by the lower difficulty
Be Quick or Be Killed Dagger Deadeye rotation (if you've ever heard someone described Dagger Deadeye as 5111151115111, that's this).
1 more Malice pip after each Mark and Stealth attack boost the damage modifier of Malicious Backstab. I don't have a quick estimate for this increase yet.
Secondly, this is wonderful for the Dagger-Dagger Maleficent Seven rotation.
All Power Dagger skills (Heartseeker, Dancing Dagger, Cloak & Dagger) are single-damage packet skills (with the exception of Dancing Dagger when bounced from your main target, to another enemy, and back to your main target). This means they have only one chance to score a crit, and thus only one chance to earn 2 Malice instead of 1.
Power Thief derives 15% critical chance from Critical Strikes' Keen Observer trait, which demands the player stay above 75% HP. You won't have 100% uptime of this trait in many raid fights, especially if your healer is slacking. If the current Dagger Deadeye benchmark was performed at 75% player HP, without drastically altering gear to accommodate for the missing critical chance, the benchmark could lose up to 12,000 DPS!, dropping it nearly into support territory.
This Malicious Intent buff gives you a safety cushion for one of those Initiative skills to score a non-crit, making the rotation more robust in endgame encounters. It does NOT reduce the minimum number of Initiative skills needed to reach maximum Malice: that is still 3 with Malicious Intent and 4 without. It does reduce the maximum needed by 1 skill, which is also great!
Quickly Fire For Effect
This trait no longer requires a target to grant boons to allies.
Er, it doesn't require one right now. Specifically, if you Mark a target, you can use your F2 and gain boons even if your stolen skill is obstructed by terrain. If you have your enemy targeted while outside 1,500 range you will get an
out of range error that stops you from casting F2, but simply untargeting the enemy will let you use the skill to get boons. If you are obstructed or out of range, you don't hit the target.
I assume what this means is that if you do NOT have a marked target, you can cast a cantrip to get a new F2. That's cool and rather handy for the new Quickness build.
Shadow Flare isn't real, it can't hurt you
Shadow Flare: Reduced cooldown from 30 to 20 seconds. This skill only damages once instead of pulsing. Activate the flip-over Shadow Swap to trigger another damage instance from your original location.
Deadeye dumbed down. Navigating self-reveal with pulsing damage skills on DPS Deadeye has been a hallmark of modern builds for several years—Shadow Flare for Power, Thousand Needles for Condition.
That problem is now eliminated for Power. You don't need to know the timing, you don't need to know where to throw Shadow Flare. Just Do your backstab, cast Shadow Flare for one damage packet, cast it again, go for another Backstab. No fuss, no skill expression, no frustration, no learning curve.
I don't like this change, I understand why other people like this change. I think it's dumb to change this. If you don't like self-reveal, consider not playing the class that uses Stealth and Revealed for its DPS output.
Fun in the Chamber
One in the Chamber: This trait now also increase the damage of F2 Stolen Skills in addition to its previous effects
In case anyone is unfamiliar with Deadeye—it doesn't have access to any core Stolen Skills. No Mag Bombs here!
This is a nice perk. The important thing is that this trait gives us an extra F2 charge every time we use a Stolen Skill...That's for Quickness.
This trait is also valuable to Condition Deadeye builds (particularly since there's a 4/9 chance they get a stolen skill that applies damaging conditions!) and to Power Pistol-Pistol Deadeye. See more of that
here.
Binding Shadow, my beloved
Binding Shadow - Reduced cooldown from 30 to20 seconds in PvE.
Cool! I love—
This skill now immobilizes marked targets instead of knocking them down
Oh. Uhhh it already immobilized them. I assume it immobilizes them more? That sucks, this was an amazing breakbar skill, particular on Condition Deadeye where it applied several poison stacks (natively, and via Panic Strike with Immobilize) and gave an extra F2 charge from One in the Chamber.
It's lower cooldown on boonstrip which is neat? Matches No Pain No Gain time in Fractals, I suppose.
Just use a Power Mesmer, they passively breathe boonstrip.
Quickness Deadeye builds
Three options!
Oops! All cantrips This option will spam out cantrip like nobody's business to meet the voracious demand of Might uptime.
Fire For Effect grants 8 stacks of Might for 12 seconds. The with-Alacrity cooldown of Cantrips are: 16 (Binding Shadow, Shadow Flare), 20 seconds (Malicious Restoration heal), 25 seconds (Mercy, Shadow Gust). When using Mercy, the cooldown of F1 is effectively the cooldown of Mercy, plus minimally the cast time of the F2, plus the cast time of F1 again.
So some of our Might is locked behind 25+ seconds. Building for 100% Might Duration would be devastating for our DPS output. We could cover 100% Might uptime with a single trio of F2 casts anyway—Binding Shadow, Malicious Restoration, Shadow Flare—but that would not take tactical advantage of the natural Deadeye's Mark cooldown.
Instead, we'll cover Quickness with two sets of F2 casts, staggered across the duration of our Might stacks. Left has an old benchmark demonstrating this technique.
So that's our 24-might upkeep option. It's not pretty, and it's Cantrip spam. ANet said we wouldn't have this in the game anymore.
Well, what if we don't have to generate Might?
Then we have two options:
3 cantrips with no Improvisation This option will maintain a burst of 24 might as we apply quickness, or we can space out the stolen skills to maintain at least 8 stacks indefinitely. Sounds pretty good!
Improvisation We'll probably still be using Shadow Flare because it's just good damage, and Improvisation selects for builds that use active utility skills, not passive signets. We might even be able to use Malicious Intent instead of One in the Chamber for this build, earning us more damage on Malicious Backstab.
So we have options.
Quickness Deadeye weapon options (We don't have those! )
Maleficent Seven is the only equalizer at work that allows bad weapons to do somewhat okay, and without that, we're back to shopping with the to the usual harsh restriction of "the best single skill out of all these weapons crushes the validity of all other options".
Stealth attacks? Naw, just spam F2s without Malice.
"Filler" initiative skills used to build up to an Initiative reset at max Malice? Nope, don't care, whatever has the best initiative-to-damage ratio is what we're running.
Thief Dagger is about matched with Thief sword for auto attack damage but Dagger is home to the centralizing Cloak & Dagger → Backstab combo. This does huge damage from any direction—flanking is gone!
Sword, by contrast, suffers a DPS loss when using any dual wield skill, Headshot, or Black Powder. The only DPS gain skills are Cloak & Dagger (but the stealth attack for sword is BARELY worth using, you could actually just cast Cloak & Dagger twice in a row and do just as well), and Sword 2...without using the return-to shadowstep. Meaning Sword 2 has a 15-second cooldown. Just to do slightly more than the auto-attack.
Need CC? Pack an off-hand pistol and fill time with auto-attacks, they're very good.
What about Pistol?
It's just weaker.
Shortbow?
It sucks really bad against single targets.
Rifle? This is the sniper spec!
It sucks if you don't have Maleficent Seven for infinite Initiative and either stealth utility skills or Silent Scope to unlock Death's Judgment.
Specter, rant about single-target/ally-target support
Ally-targeted scepter skills now also grant a lesser effect to additional allies in a radius around the target.
I don't know why ANet is so obsessed with single target support for PvE Specter, but they'll learn its untenable eventually. They've been gradually walking back the single target focus ever since release, and we are now about 15 months past Specter's official release and coming up on 2 years since it's beta.
Ally-targeting is clunky.
Single-target support is nonviable. We have encounters that apply arena damage to all players, and each player in the squad can take damage from the same AoE and it's the healer's job to keep the whole team up.
A "lesser effect". Reduced duration? Great, what's the point of that? You might as well just make it all the reduced duration.
Does "splashed" Shadow Sap not even grant protection to the other allies? Great, we won't use it.
Hopefully this will just be something like reduced Barrier or Healing, and the Boons are intact, but it's already been confirmed by the new member of the design team, Trig, on a Twitch Stream (Mighty Teapot's?) that Endless Night will not give Quickness to "splashed" allies.
Maybe this skill shouldn't give quickness at all. Why is the design team not skill splitting? What are they afraid of?
The Dark Side of Scepter Splash
If you paid attention to Specter during its beta testing, you might be aware of a
very weird build that used Endless Night (Scepter Pistol dual wield beam skill that granted quickness and 7-packets of Barrier to 3 allies, if you could pierce through the allies).
This rotation was initially theorycrafted by Left when Specter was first showed off. I did some early proof-of-concept on the build, then Left took it over and improved it to around 51,000 DPS.
That's a lot of damage!
Watch that video briefly, and notice how I swap between the enemy and my allies, applying one skill to the target then the Endless Night beam to my allies.
When Specter applies barrier to an ally, they receive a stack of Rotwallow Venom, which applies a short-duration stack of torment to a single enemy just like normal venoms.
Each cast of Endless Night back then was 21 applications of Rotwallow Venom, with more Torment duration than we have now.
ANet killed that build back during beta by making the beam target a single enemy, nerfing the quickness application, nerfing Rotwallow Venom duration, nerfing Specter's Torment damage modifier, nerfing Consume Shadows to require charging up.... The list goes on.
Why do I bring this up?
Scepter Autos on Allies
Currently the scepter auto chain applies 54 seconds of Torment (in the form of multiple stacks). If the scepter auto chain can instead apply barrier to 3 allies, then this balloons to 72 seconds without Strength of Shadows, or 108 seconds with Strength of Shadows.
Yes.
The auto-attack chain will be twice as strong when targeting allies, vs targeting the enemy.
Endless Night is not worth using against an enemy target, but it might be worth using on allies. This rotation won't have room for auto attacks, so I'm not pinning any hopes to this.
No, the optimal damage rotation will probably be Twilight combo, Siphon, and Shroud skills on the enemy, then filling time with Scepter skills on allies. We will probably spend less time in Shroud because those autos are just so cracked...
Second Opinion, moving away from Consume Shadows
Ever since beta all forms of Specter have run Consume Shadows—Alacrity, DPS, Heal. This is because Consume Shadows can apply barrier to allies, giving them Rotwallow venom. The other adept traits are purely defensive, so they're not used by the DPS and Alacrity builds...and Consume Shadows is an extremely potent healing tool. So potent, it's been nerfed repeatedly!
Charged time reduced from instant to 4 seconds, maximum shroud cut by more than 50%, conversion ratio reduced from 100 to 50%
Second Opinion will grant bonus Condition Damage, more with a Scepter. This should be, at minimum, +80/+80, which will beat the ~800 DPS provided by perfect Rotwallow Venom application from Consume Shadows.
Perfect?
If your allies are too injured and Consume Shadows only heals them overflowing into Barrier, you won't give them Rotwallow.
Traversing Dusk no longer gives Alacrity
This is just a heal trait now. That's just what it does.
Shadestep is the new Alacrity trait
Oh. Uh. I'll keep it quick.
- This reduces our gameplay from 2 separate rotations with their own quirks and different Shroud lengths, to 1—the DPS rotation.
How do you give alacrity? Just go into shroud and push buttons.
How do you do DPS? Just go into shroud and push buttons.
Alacrity Specter's Well cooldowns were inaccessible inside Shadow Shroud because we inherited a shroud, not just a kit like Druid's Celestial Avatar or Holosmith's Photon Forge.
Druid Spirits off cooldown while in CA? Don't care, you can push em.
Specter wells off cooldown while in Shadow Shroud? You might be gaining DPS from shroud skills, or healing from Consume Shadows, but you're losing Alacrity uptime. Is that tradeoff worth it?
Doesn't matter anymore. Just do the benchmark DPS rotation.
You're too slow? Then your alacrity uptime will suffer. You need to be on pace with going in and out of shroud, just like the DPS rotation. Difference is, if you're bad at this, it's going to frustrate other people.
This is not the hardest rotation in game to optimize and you of course have the option to make it easier with Ritualist gear (which you should do anyway if you plan to still run Consume Shadows, will be a two-fold personal DPS loss).
\2. Ever been kicked out of Shroud by incoming damage in a raid/strike/open world meta? No more Alacrity uptime for you. Better refill your Shadow Force quickly—and Larcenous Torment generates Shadow Force FAR more slowly than Traversing Dusk
Fun fact: Traversing Dusk's 1% Shadow Force per ally in your shadowstep scales indefinitely, not just up to 5 players. That gives you colossal Shadow Force generation in crowded metas and even raids.
Want to use your Siphon on ally? No you don't, that's valuable Shadow Force generation you need to maintain tempo for Alacrity.
Again, you can wear Ritualist gear to soften this loss.
Want to have the utility of Well of Bounty? Well, previously that utility was tied to your Alacrity uptime, your DPS uptime (lingering outside shroud for Well of Bounty was a loss), and your healing output (Traversing Dusk, and maintaining tempo in/out of Shadow Shroud for Consume Shadows).
Now you can take Well of Bounty and have it on demand, at a DPS loss.
Previously you could have just take advantage of the long Stability duration to cast this well early, or delay it slightly to cover the mechanic.
How much DPS will ANet allow this build to have?
We don't know. And now it's DPS is very closely tied to the DPS build because they're doing nearly the exact same thing.
This has never happened to Firebrand, trust me.
tl;dr It's dangerous to read all that up there! Skip to here!
Condition Daredevil
Unchanged by Impairing Daggers cooldown reduction
Power Daredevil
Buffed to ~38.6 if you do the old rotation.
Buffed to 40.2 if you do the new degenerate 1a 1b 2 1a 1b 2 rotation that interrupts our auto chain.
Still screwed by all the usual stuff.
Mag Bomb damage normalized. Cool. Still amazing utility on that skill.
Boon Thief
Dead. Deadeye killed it.
Power Dagger Deadeye
Much easier to play. Splashes some cute boons onto its subgroup, at random. Have to see if Shadow Flare is still worth using. Hopefully, right?
Power Rifle Deadeye
Silent Scope uses Shadow Flare, I hope that's still worth using.
No need to flank with Premeditation Rifle is nice. Swapping Impact to an Accuracy sigil (or not doing that, and losing crit chance) was ~1,200 DPS loss, so that's avoided. I don't mind losing flanking here that much because Flanking wasn't make-or-break adrenaline pumping like dagger. It was just a boring loss.
Quickness Deadeye
I hope you like pushing 5 and 1 a whole lot because that's almost all this is. Also pushing cantrips for F2 charges to provide quickness.
It will play okay, but pretttttttttty similar to utility-spam builds that people hate, with the added bonus of casting TWO skills for every application of quickness.
You can tune this to your liking BUT
IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MANY WAYS THIS GAME'S ENEMIES CAN APPLY REVEALED TO YOU THEN YOU'RE IN FOR A TREAT WHEN YOU PICK UP QUICKNESS DEADEYE NEXT PATCH :D
It won't really prevent you from applying quickness but it will tank your DPS and fracture your soul.
One of us. One of us!
This is getting no changes, by the way. It'd be a huge amount of effort from the studio's programmers for one elite spec, for one profession, largely in one game mode (instanced PvE), with a small player base.
Probably just not happening. Not a question of "want to", it's a question of resource management AND doing this right.
Remember stealth-tanking Old Lion's Court? Because they didn't apply Revealed, then they only applied Revealed once and Deadeye just Shadow Melded out of it?
DPS Specter
Buffed by Second Opinion, dubiously buffed by targeting allies with the auto chain.
You can still run Consume Shadows for team healing/barrier.
Alacrity Specter
I don't know. Presumably the shroud skills will allow us to provide at least 50% uptime with a non-degenerate rotation (one that doesn't have us spending all our time in shroud). Said degenerate rotation is naturally policed by the fact our shroud absorbs incoming damage.
Will it run Consume Shadows? Not for optimal damage anymore.
Alac Share Specter
Just change your grandmaster from Strength of Shadows to Shadestep and do the normal rotation. Should do at least 50% uptime, unless Alac specter is just nonviable and can't maintain Alacrity.
Just wanted to let everyone know that this is my first ever street fighter game (I'm more of an MK enjoyer) and how my experience has been going.
World tour: I finished the story mode and was satisfied after all those hard-fought matches and finally made it to the end and was very pleased with my progress, love the atmosphere and characters that Capcom has created over the years and introduced new mechanics and features keep new and old players coming.
Battle hub: Oh man, this was a very unique experience, nothing like seeing absolute abominations of avatars, fighting other players in cabinets, or even duking out with another player with your avatar, hubs like this in games have always been one of my favorites things in gaming, seeing people unite and just have fun.
P.S. won and lost of few matches, lowly learning each fighter by like 0.01% but still enjoying the journey.
Fighting ground: Dude, cool menu and nice background music, very straightforward and shows what you want instead of having to go through one or 2 sub-menus, Arcade has been fun, and 1v1ing my brother has been hilarious, and finally getting to know some of these iconic characters and see where they stand in the story and their journey, Ken was my first pick and bro what happened to him😭 judging from the dialogue he hit rock bottom and slowly coming back which is nice.
Pros: As a fan of the MK series and being newly introduced to street fighter, I like to say that this is my golden standard for a fighting game, highly recommend it to new players to try it because it's such a great package full of stuff that can please anyone from story mode players to the high skill ranked players.
The fighters: Wow, the designs are beautiful and badass, each design expressing each fighter's personality and fighting style in subtle ways I just love, the classic outfits(unlocked by bonding with masters in the story mode) are dope af, some thirsty but still cool and when I searched up Dee Jay and bro had major redesign which is awesome.
P.S. I would like to get Into the mechanics and all but this is already too long 🙂.
Cons (kinda bias but hear me out)
Getting slaughtered by veterans 🤣: Let me explain, even though I have some experience when it comes to fighting games, Street Fighter 6 was the first game that gave me the "new kid" feeling everywhere go and getting destroyed by players who have been playing way longing than I was probably born tbh.
Controls: My smooth brain is struggling, sure I could just use modern...but, something in my brain just wants me to use classic, and oh boy, me personally, I might need to order an arcade stick because moves that have the ⬇️↘️➡️ or ⬇️↙️⬅️ moves are tricky to me when trying to combo when having an opening in a match, I'll stick to the chopping block until I get the gist of it and I swear if modern is easier 😭.
Not a con but I need to research more on each fighter and where they stand difficulty-wise so I can slowly move up the difficulty ladder on each fighter.
Anyways that's about it, sorry for the grammar and leaving out anything worth mentioning, I'm enjoying sf6 and can't wait for any future content of this game.
There will always be sad people who don't want to actually like Madden and there have been very genuine reason to hate it in the past but franchise may be a genuinely good this time around for 24.
I have played the beta for a while now and thought I would list some additions I've noticed in the game
-Unique coaching tress: Every coordinator has scheme specific upgrades trees that are in unique combos making feel even more important to find a coordinator who's a good fit for your team.
-Xp and Regression sliders have even more customization: You can now pick exactly how much extra or less XP you earn at each age and position. You can also pick how bad regression affects players of a certain age and at a certain position allowing you to feel the short lifespans of RB and longer careers of QBs.
-Training Camp: Wk 1 of pre season allows you to go through mini games that earn your players skills points and offer extra snaps for your hidden dev rookies. It's a bit tedious but the mini games are challenging and very rewarding. You can also continue to do mini games with your focus trained players but I find it's not worth it and would just sim it.
-New Trading System: there is a slider that changes the difficulty of trading and putting it on Very Hard is very realistic. It's essentially impossible to trade for the number 1 pick without breaking the bank big time and the CPU seems to have a decent trade logic with some questionable offers at times. You can also put a package into the trade finder and it will show you if teams have any interest in you package. The trade block is quite a bit more organized to find players.
-Simulation Stats: The sims feel semi realistic and don't hold back rushing QBs anymore as Justin fields was a top 10 rushers for a few straight years in my sims. The right players always seem to be leading their categories and didn't see too many anomalies other than a weird Sterling Shepherd league leader in yards year. The playbooks don't seem to effect the teams but I did find that low ovr teams would make playoffs more often than they should. The sim also sims at a WAY faster rate.
-New Relocations: There are quite a few new cities to go to and new teams to pick from. The relocation is instant now instead of a whole season which is both good and bad imo. You also no longer have to be an owner to relocate which I find nice when I just wanna be a coach. You no longer get a jersey selection screen but are given an away, a home and an alt jersey to choose from most which are fine. You also get to have a home field advantage but they are not city specific and are often generic "gains more momentum" type of abilities.
-Updated News Feed: News feed looks cooler not really important but cool enough to worth noting
-Contracts Restructuring and Negotiations: You're able to negotiate with every player who needs a contract right away now instead of having to wait for a specific week and also 5th year option appear on this screen now instead of as a scenario which means owners can access them now as well. The contract restructuring is a bit lame imo as it's only a button push and you get no real say in how the money is actually divided out, but it does manage to free up cap so it's not totally useless. There is also slider for how much you want a players motivations to effect where they go.
-Player Customization: This was a bit buggy in the beta but from what I could the gear was quite customizable. It seemed like you were able to equip unique equipment that you unlock for your avatar kinda like The Yard. This means special mouth pieces and back plates with designs on them. It's hard to say if this will actually be the case as it was a hard feature to use without it crashing my system. Hopefully it's fixed but it shows potential.
-Off season: There are sliders to change how many player you can negotiate with in free agency at each stage but other than that the off season remains largely untouched.
Drafting and Scouting: This is exactly the same as last year but there is slider to change how strong or weak specific positions are in that years draft class.
Superstar Abilities: There are no new abilities in the game, but superstars can now have 3 abilities at 75, 85, and 90 ovr and XFac can have 4 abilities the last at 95 ovr. It's crazy the ability combos but also very fun to play with and against. WR can get acrobat which allows diving catches but I have yet to see it actually work. RBs can get goaline back which was in MUT last year and gets you better blocking within 5 yards of the goaline.
CPU difficulty: I play on all Madden simulation and am a very good player. The CPU torched me quite a bit as most of my games were shootouts and the great players really made a difference. It was a nice challenge that I wasn't used to.
Gameplay: This Madden offered some new tackle animations that are very cool but also make for some wonky plays. It's the right idea but a botched execution. LBs felt like they could actually make plays on the ball and corners were actually good a covering their zones even corner routes. I found that safeties drifted according to coverage and were helpful over the top rather than being so stiff. There's a few more drops than there should be and still some weird WCB animations when the ball is in the air but nothing that's galring worse than the past. The blocking is noticeably much better and every player on your team will try to find someone to block. The announcers are still mid and still some recycled commentary. Overall the gameplay is like a C to B range with a lot of cool additions but still some issues with how smooth every animation is.
Other Customization: play limits and cooldowns setting can now be specific to offense and defense
-Depth Chart auto reordering glitch was fixed
This is all I could think of but there may be more that I missed but this is everything that I've noticed while playing. If you're a big franchise guy and haven't bought the last few Madden I don't blame you at all, but this one seems worth it to me. I don't like EA as much as the next guy but they may have genuinely done something good here. Maybe wait a year for some of these features to get smoothed out but this is a Madden I will be recommending to franchise players who are tired of the same game every year. I'll have a hard time saying EA didn't at least try with this one.
-----A little update to this list that I have recently found is that the CPU takes full advantage of being able to relocate as 20 years in the future there are 9 different relocated teams
I had been a trading card collector for years, about 5 years now. Started just pre-covid as a fun hobby to share with my mother.
Well, I recently expanded on that hobby because I felt like I was missing something. So I started playing the game and streaming it. It was going pretty well. Each stream had viewers, I felt proud of my product, and I felt like maybe once in my rather secluded life I might be more then a nobody.
I work 12 hours a day as a truck driver, most days I wont talk to anyone. Often 6 days a week.
However this meant I was streaming 1 hour each day before work. That was the time I had previously dedicated to making my partner breakfast & sitting next to him while he gamed. I knew he was starting to miss me sitting with him. It just kind of sucks watching someone hang with their friends while I sit in silence watching which is part of why I got into streaming.
So rewind to a few days ago I had just started my daily stream. First pvp match. Chat was busy with people and I was trying to focus on both. This hour was important to me because it was the last day before the reward tiers reset.
My partner picked that time to insist I need to go to Taco Bell with him. He had been up for hours and chose to use that time playing his own game, I heard him talking to people. I told him, "I dont want to go", "I dont want taco bell", "Im streaming". I assumed he knew this was my last chance to get rewards (i wanted those pants for my avatar). He is supposed to be my number one supporter. He knows him making me chose between my hobby & him would overwhelm me. But he wouldnt leave. I know streamers often get interupted, but my partner was actively trying to get me off the computer and wasnt taking "no" for an answer. The pvp match was timing out, chat was rushing by un-moderated and bf is still talking.
So I shut the stream off. Cut off chat. Lost the last chance for rewards.
I havent been able to look at the trading card game app since. I feel shame, sad, frustrated. My mood had been irritable and reclusive. Guess I took on too much and I just dont have time for work, bf and streaming.
I know I messed up ending the stream the way I did.
My parents had noticed the change in my behavior, but I keep telling people I'm just tired. Figured I could post here to get it 'off my chest'. Peace.