Mercy Deadeye

December 2022

Build Fundamentals

Power Deadeye is a strong roamer that takes advantage of Binding Shadow and Be Quick or Be Killed to lock down and eliminate targets quickly. Deadeye benefits from the baked in mobility of any thief spec, however is is vulnerable to focus and gets countered by projectile block from builds like Tempest or Catalyst.

Damage

As a roamer, Deadeye focuses on moving around the map and quickly getting kills. In order to do this, you need to lock down and eliminate your target as quickly as possible. Deadeye relies on a mechanic called malice to do damage. Whenever you mark a target, hitting them with an ability will generate stacks of malice. At maximum malice, your stolen skills will give you Stealth and Malicious Death's Judgment will do 75% more damage. Try to build malice as quickly as possible after marking a target for maximum effect.

Skirmisher's Shot is your best source of damage and building malice. Every critical hit generates 2 stacks of malice, and Malicious Intent gives us one stack for free, meaning two shots with Skirmisher's Shot will give you maximum malice.

Always make sure to precast a Skirmisher's Shot before using Malicious Death's Judgment . If you’re fast, your Malicious Death's Judgment will start casting before Skirmisher's Shot lands and reveals you, adding 3-4 thousand damage to your hardest hitting skill (see the Single Target Opener for more details).

Crowd Control

Deadeye has good single-target cc in its kit from Deadeye's Mark and Binding Shadow . Deadeye's Mark is a ranged version of Steal that gives you access to unique Deadeye stolen skills that inherits a daze from Sleight of Hand and can be used to interrupt important cooldowns or to focus a target. Deadeye's Mark can be reset with Mercy to let you ‘double steal’ on a target or change target and passively with Renewing Gaze when you kill your marked target.

You have other hard and soft cc, but it is used less commonly. Malicious Tactical Strike is a daze if you hit from behind, but it spends your malice for relatively little impact. Kneel gives access to Spotter's Shot which can be used in conjunction with Death's Advance to immobilize and blind a target.

Sustain

Withdraw is your best source of sustain both for its healing and cleanse. Keep in mind that Withdraw is also a mobility skill, and can be used with camera control techniques like About Face as a positioning tool. Mug doesn’t heal for much, relatively speaking, but it can be continually reset by your traits and Mercy , meaning you can heal considerably over time. Steal Health, Steal Durability, and Steal Defenses are also valuable as defensive tools, but they depend on your matchup.

For cleanse, you have Withdraw, which removes conditions, and your two mobility skills, Death's Retreat and Infiltrator's Strike which remove one condition each. If you’re struggling, you can take an additional Sigil of Cleansing or Sigil of Purging on your rifle, or swap Binding Shadow for Signet of Agility.

Your best damage mitigation comes from using Stealth to avoid damage. In addition to Cloak and Dagger , Deadeye has access to unique stealth abilities such as stealthing on dodge thanks to Silent Scope and removing revealed with Shadow Meld . Shadow Meld is especially valuable into classes with active reveals such as Soulbeast , Dragonhunter or Spellbreaker .