Guild Wars 2

As a user and fan of Adaptative armor and HGH, i honestly find these nerfs quite logical.

HGH affect more than the elixir utilities, so with Elixir Gun and Mortar (two kits I play), it can stack quickly.

AA nerf seems to get on par with necromancer’s Corrupter’s Fervor, that gain up to 300 toughness and 20% condi reduction.

Now that these nerfs happens, I think it can also give room for improvement.

As stated, the necromancer trait doesn’t have a cooldown, while adaptative armor have one, and activate on hit. I suggest that removing the CD would make AA more efficient.

As for HGH… Maybe making more skills “elixir”? I remember the deadly mixture trait that affected both the EG and FT, maybe make Napalm and elixir trait?

I remember Elixir F being considered as an elixir, too.

Chaith.8256:

These changes are more than fine. HgH and Adaptive Armor are still godly.

Edit: That’s how you know they were too good.

This.

Is anyone here, even the whiners, going to take other GMs from either of these traitlines? I certainly am not and I probably wont even notice these “nerfs” other than a couple less might stacks.

What Irenio/ANet SHOULD do is to buff some of our garbage level GM traits that cannot compete with nerfed versions of these. Seriously Perfectly Weighted is mediocre at best, Final Salvo is totally useless, Iron Blooded sounds cool until you realize that you NEED HGH to use it and Stimulant Dropper has zero synergy with its traitline. Why these 4 GMs don’t get a look is the real problem. Engineer currently suffers from an extreme lack of traitline diversity. There are clearly a couple overtuned lines (Alchemy, Firearms).

BlinkTwice.7932:

Is it so bad to for once be a tanky engie than doesnt hit like i have straw as a weapon? I understand nerfing it to a degree, but 60? It might as well not even be a grandmaster anymore.

I finally JUST settled on a build and now I have to find something else. hgh i didnt care too much about but man…AA didnt need that bad of a nerf imo

Yes, yes it is a bad thing to be tanky and have high damage.

Because when you can run a build that is tanky AND can do high damage, it negates the value of any glassy high damage build and any tanky, low damage build. We’ve seen this before with the last meta where a team could rock there way through tournaments with 4 eles on their team since they would all go D/D celestial.

When there’s no tradeoff in the strengths of a build, the number of viable builds drops drastically and gameplay becomes very homogeneous very quickly.

displacedTitan.6897:

Chaith.8256:

These changes are more than fine. HgH and Adaptive Armor are still godly.

Edit: That’s how you know they were too good.

This.

Is anyone here, even the whiners, going to take other GMs from either of these traitlines? I certainly am not and I probably wont even notice these “nerfs” other than a couple less might stacks.

What Irenio/ANet SHOULD do is to buff some of our garbage level GM traits that cannot compete with nerfed versions of these. Seriously Perfectly Weighted is mediocre at best, Final Salvo is totally useless, Iron Blooded sounds cool until you realize that you NEED HGH to use it and Stimulant Dropper has zero synergy with its traitline. Why these 4 GMs don’t get a look is the real problem. Engineer currently suffers from an extreme lack of traitline diversity. There are clearly a couple overtuned lines (Alchemy, Firearms).

I actually tried a Iron Blooded build that worked out fairly well last night. Granted, i was using a Wander’s Hammer + a Wander’s version of the scrapper helm. Ended up with a +30% bonus to boon duration and was mostly able to keep them up until i needed to use another elixer to refresh them. This was also coupled with dropping below 75% hp and then bringing myself back above it long enough to proc hidden flask between cool downs of Elixer U and B.

Maybe if we could just get a full set of Wander’s Gear, then Iron Blooded would actually be viable for something like PvE.

EroticAndHeretic.7398:

AA nerf seems to get on par with necromancer’s Corrupter’s Fervor, that gain up to 300 toughness and 20% condi reduction.

As stated, the necromancer trait doesn’t have a cooldown, while adaptative armor have one, and activate on hit. I suggest that removing the CD would make AA more efficient.

Necromancer’s one also doesn’t depend on you being hit, that’s the main difference. You’ve got to get sustained damage to stack it up, whereas necromancers just need to toss a few attacks. It is both faster and less detrimental.
And they aren’t an elite spec whole role is essentially tanking, anyway.
I don’t even see what’s the point of comparing them. We aren’t supposed to get the short hand of the stick by everyone else every single time, after all.

EroticAndHeretic.7398:

As for HGH… Maybe making more skills “elixir”? I remember the deadly mixture trait that affected both the EG and FT, maybe make Napalm and elixir trait?

So that they’ll nerf it again later because some specific build can get high stacks.
Not a good idea, imho.

displacedTitan.6897:

Is anyone here, even the whiners, going to take other GMs from either of these traitlines? I certainly am not and I probably wont even notice these “nerfs” other than a couple less might stacks.

Already switched to Final Salvo. Since a few days, actually. As long as rapid regeneration is used and the destruction is timed well, it is kinda useful for sustained healing. And it doesn’t even require you to get mauled, unlike AA.

Jinx.4619:

We need to be tanky to be able to hammer an enemies efficiently.
And now you take away GM tanking trait becus some stupid whinner dont want to l2p whinning engie is hard to kill in melee

People with half of they brain will be able to kite an engies

Adaptive is high risk Gm make it worth something or it will end up there and no one use it

What is risky about Adaptive Armor?!?! Do you understand that a trait that LITERALLY INCREASES ALL TYPES OF DEFENCE is the very definition of a safe and NOT RISKY selection. How can we take your seriously when you suggest that picking defensively is a high risk? Very funny.

It’s comparable because it’s basically the same result: 300 toughness and 20% condi reduction.

What’s important to compare is how we get it: Engis always get the 20% condi reduction, but it’s harder to get the stacks because of the CD and the on hit proc.

But with the lack of cooldown, the necromancer can get his 10 stacks almost instantly (just tried as I have a condi build, I got the 10 stacks with two ranged attacks), making it clearly superior, despite the 8s duration instead of 10.

Seriously, to be on par with it, especially for an elite spec as you say, we simply need no cooldown on AA.

Lol those #ineed200toughnessforfrontline
L2dodje

You can play it even knight/zerk in t1 easily. 200 toughness is nothing in zerg.

EroticAndHeretic.7398:

It’s comparable because it’s basically the same result: 300 toughness and 20% condi reduction.

What’s important to compare is how we get it: Engis always get the 20% condi reduction, but it’s harder to get the stacks because of the CD and the on hit proc.

But with the lack of cooldown, the necromancer can get his 10 stacks almost instantly (just tried as I have a condi build, I got the 10 stacks with two ranged attacks), making it clearly superior, despite the 8s duration instead of 10.

Seriously, to be on par with it, especially for an elite spec as you say, we simply need no cooldown on AA.

Even with no cooldown like necromancer’s one, we would still have to get hit to get those stacks. That’s what makes it inferior.
Necro just needs to land attacks to keep it up. We need to get hit constantly.
The first is a favourable outcome. The second isn’t, at all.
And that’s why i thought that giving higher stats was a good compensation.
But seemingly, we just have to get worse traits than other classes’ ones.

@Manuhell

I didn’t actually say that. That was someone who i quoted. XD

Karma.3064:

@Manuhell

I didn’t actually say that. That was someone who i quoted. XD

Oh, sorry, i mismatched the quotes. Fixing them asap.

My primary complaint here is that HGH has remained unchanged for ages. Gets nerfed within a week of HoT/Scrapper being introduced. It’s been nerfed because of synergy with Scrapper. Pay2Win FTL.

Unhinged Carrot.3849:

My primary complaint here is that HGH has remained unchanged for ages. Gets nerfed within a week of HoT/Scrapper being introduced. It’s been nerfed because of synergy with Scrapper. Pay2Win FTL.

“Ages” is now June 2015 I guess?

Also I don’t think Pay2Win means what you think it means.

My new Decap Engineer build was doing really well, probably because Adaptive Armor and the Minstrel Amulet were imbalanced ;D

Anet nerfing nice things I see. How likely is a sneak gyro nerf?

santenal.1054:

Anet nerfing nice things I see. How likely is a sneak gyro nerf?

I think we’ve got a bigger worry about having detection pulse being Nerfed. Thieves have been complaining about that ever since it’s been revealed.

archmagus.7249:

santenal.1054:

Anet nerfing nice things I see. How likely is a sneak gyro nerf?

I think we’ve got a bigger worry about having detection pulse being Nerfed. Thieves have been complaining about that ever since it’s been revealed.

HA

Revealed.

EroticAndHeretic.7398:

It’s comparable because it’s basically the same result: 300 toughness and 20% condi reduction.

What’s important to compare is how we get it: Engis always get the 20% condi reduction, but it’s harder to get the stacks because of the CD and the on hit proc.

But with the lack of cooldown, the necromancer can get his 10 stacks almost instantly (just tried as I have a condi build, I got the 10 stacks with two ranged attacks), making it clearly superior, despite the 8s duration instead of 10.

Seriously, to be on par with it, especially for an elite spec as you say, we simply need no cooldown on AA.

To be fair, it’s not like necro’s have better any sustain then an engie to begin with, even without these traits, engie has way better forms of sustaining.
And why does it need to be on par anyways? what if necro’s is better on paper? Maybe they need a better one?

when life gives you lemons, make lemonade… and srsly those shaves are ok and the GMs are still the best ones ind their line.
I see no problem.

Nerfs are fine, but not splitting changes across the game modes isn’t very cool. And I was trying to unlock scrapper. :S

ArchonWing.9480:

Nerfs are fine, but not splitting changes across the game modes isn’t very cool. And I was trying to unlock scrapper. :S

So, you’re not going to unlock scrapper based on this? This was a shave on a skill that’s still very strong. Seems a bit extreme to make a decision on unlocking the elite from this alone, lol.

Dahkeus.8243:

ArchonWing.9480:

Nerfs are fine, but not splitting changes across the game modes isn’t very cool. And I was trying to unlock scrapper. :S

So, you’re not going to unlock scrapper based on this? This was a shave on a skill that’s still very strong. Seems a bit extreme to make a decision on unlocking the elite from this alone, lol.

No, I still will be. I’m not going to spend all that time in the jungle or spending Heroics for nothing.

I’m just disappointed something’s getting nerfed globally because people are pointing fingers at engineers at pvp. Again.

Ok. I see why this nerf happened. Someone figured out the Firearms/Alchemy/Scrapper might stack build was too strong and nerf’d it a little bit. now HGH only gives 18 (NOT 15, 20% boon duration from 3rd minor) on 2 stacks of might. this coupled with a knights amulet/Maurader amulet meant too high dps + survivablity. Mainly to prevent us from becoming another Cele ele. With Runes of strength or hoelbrek and our trait lines, we gain too much might capabilities. MM + juggernaut gives 15-17 might stacks alone, plus the 2 might for 18 secs on elixers meant 100% 25 might stack uptime. AA just added to the power of the build and i see why it was scaled back a bit. The build remains unchanged, just its effectiveness was pulled back so it would be more pvp balanced.

Daralii.8940:

Phineas Poe.3018:

I understand why both of these traits were nerfed. I don’t have a problem with either of them.

PvP tears and ANet’s unwillingness to split skills.

You can still easily cap 25 might with an elixir build, and you can still tank as a Scrapper in PvE with Adaptive Armor.

Neither of these nerfs change anything for PvE.

When such a combination uses up two grandmaster traits, a master one and a set of runes just to put stacks of might, working well should be something given for granted, though. And even if we get such a might…we still lack a second weapon to use that might with, by default. It isn’t like we can do much with autoattacks.

And if they add traits and then nerf other traits that synergy well, there is no meaning in having such combinations to begin with.
We’re falling yet again in the usual vicious cycle of nerfing things for the “best case” scenario and making the normal uses mediocre at best. Something that continues to plague this class since its inception.

you must be scrub as hell if you think this the end for scrapper.
sky is not falling, nerfs were reasonable & deserved.
it’s fine AA is still good, & has great synergy with holebrak & HGH making you into an anti condi beast.
I’ll still be running perfectly weighted tho, & still be wishing it reduced hammer cds.

You don’t have to dedicate a ton of resources to stack might. I think i’m running Sigil of Strength on my weapon, HGH mostly because i want the elixer cool down for Elixer H but i helps with might stacks too. Lastly i’m running Juggernaut as well, mostly to start a fight with 12 stacks of might. By the end i’m typically at 25 stacks of might without using runes that boost the duration. So basically just 2 traits and a sigil to keep 25 stacks of might.

Bring back Adaptive armor !
As a hammer tanky engie spec, 300 toughness and take 5 time to stack up and 300 toughness doesnt worth taking damages to gain 300

Scrapper is a front line initiator & support class
We are also an off-tank which mean we can tank damges but not long enough
Nerf AA hurt us you might say just only an X% that not much

But X% what make you survive and heal back again

I will say this. In a game that uses dodges as the intended source of damage avoidance, as well as giving the hammer, skills that block, evade, and reflect, it does seem extremely counter intuitive that there are traits that reward a elite spec for taking hits.

coglin.1867:

Nubu.6148:

AA nerf is ok , i mean its only 200 toughness that means about 5% damage reduction .

That is not accurate in the least. When in gear with no toughness on it, it is very significantly higher damage reduction percentage.

Actually, I just calculated it out and it is an 8% increase in dmg taken if you wore no toughness gear at all. It’s higher than his estimation but not that much higher.

People equate it to the necro’s trait but we still have more base armor to work with as an “adventurer class”, making our trait inherently worth more (in terms of EHP added), although this is based off the assumption that you maintain 5 stacks (and it only amounts to about 5% increased reduction compared to necro).

Alteraphim.4629:

coglin.1867:

Nubu.6148:

AA nerf is ok , i mean its only 200 toughness that means about 5% damage reduction .

That is not accurate in the least. When in gear with no toughness on it, it is very significantly higher damage reduction percentage.

Actually, I just calculated it out and it is an 8% increase in dmg taken if you wore no toughness gear at all. It’s higher than his estimation but not that much higher.

People equate it to the necro’s trait but we still have more base armor to work with as an “adventurer class”, making our trait inherently worth more (in terms of EHP added), although this is based off the assumption that you maintain 5 stacks (and it only amounts to about 5% increased reduction compared to necro).

Then by all means, post the equation you used to calculate it out. I am interested to see how you came to that number.

Manuhell.2759:

Arantheal.7396:

Mortar, FT, Hammer.
Doesn’t take more weaponsets for scrapper to be cd-efficient.
And that still leaves slots for Elixir H + Elixir B + a utility of your choice (f.e. nades, slickshoes, EG, a.s.o.)

Except that mortar is primarly a support weapon. Whose output is even severely cut off without its grandmaster trait, and such a build can’t have it (hgh, juggernaut, scrapper line). Might won’t help much with it, aside from the autoattacks.
Same for the flamethrower itself, i should say. The only skill you could reliably use there is flame blast, especially given that the hammer itself is purely a direct damage weapon. So it wouldn’t make sense to use condition-related stats with it, making skills like napalm or the toolbelt itself relatively mediocre, even considering the might stacks. And its other skills are just situational, so you won’t just use them off-cooldown. Gotta wait for the right moment.
It leaves us with the elixirs, some of which are still situational – you won’t toss elixir b at random, gotta use it when stability is needed. Same for elixir h itself – you need it for healing after all, it isn’t like you can just spam it. You can do it to gain might uptime, but then we should take count of the opportunity costs involved.
And whatever non-elixir, non elixir gun utility that will end on the last slot won’t even be traited, so…

It may be cd-efficent, but it doesn’t mean it is actually efficent.

So, you still have a free spot.
Add nades…
or bombs…

I accept addaptive armor nerf. But if they nerf tough by 40% i reccomend to disable 1 sec cd or increase duration each stack (by 40%… ) about HGH, 5 sec might nerf is now for me too much nerf. I now use more viable builds.

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

It’s from the wiki, and leather armor wearers with no toughness added have an armor (armor = defense+toughness) value of 2064.

The first part of the equation doesn’t matter so much, we can sub 10000 in for ease of calculations.

2564 (5 stacks before change)
2364 (5 stacks after change)
10k/2364 = 4.23ish
10k/2564 = 3.90ish
.33 delta, divided by 3.90 = 0.084

8% increase in damage.

Its 5seconds…and there is armor with boon duration on it now.

Arantheal.7396:

So, you still have a free spot.
Add nades…
or bombs…

…that can’t be traited with such a setup, since we aren’t using the explosive line. Same issue as with the mortar.
And given that the scrapper hasn’t got much use for condition damage, bombs may not be a good choice. It can be useful for the smoke bomb, maybe to immobilize enemies with the glue one, but that’s it. BoB packs some good damage, but launching away isn’t something we usually want to do with a melee spec.
Guess elixir gun or even something like the bulwark gyro would be a better choice then.

coglin.1867:

I will say this. In a game that uses dodges as the intended source of damage avoidance, as well as giving the hammer, skills that block, evade, and reflect, it does seem extremely counter intuitive that there are traits that reward a elite spec for taking hits.

It becomes worse if you think that the purpose of that trait is to get hit repeatedly to maintain those stacks of additional toughness, as to get less damage.
Something that could be achieved as well by just not getting hit on purpose…

It could somehow make sense if the damage reduction was significant and stacks had a shorter duration and a non-linear incremental effect, as it would become a sort of protection from fast-hitting skills or multiple enemies hitting at the same time (but the shorter duration would make it so that stopping to attack for a few seconds and bursting down would mostly ignore the effect).
But with the amount of toughness it gives now, one could as well just ignore the toughness part of the trait and just use it for the condition damage reduction.

Mnemesis.8257:

Ricky Rouse.1583:

HGH Now grants only 15s of might instead of 20

Adaptive Armor grants 60 toughness per stack, instead of 100 (Now the exact same as Corruptor’s Fervor at max stacks)

This really came out of nowhere, is there any reason as to why?

Adaptive Armor was completely justified and expected (at least by me). We did not need 500 free toughness for literally doing nothing. It did not promote active play and still does quite a bit by providing 300 AND 20% condition damage reduction in the process. As for HGH, it is safe to say that we now have many different options for obtaining Might, making it insane to permanently maintain 25 at all times just for taking a single elixir along for the process of, once again, lack of active play through obtaining it.

What he said

Playing Engie myself for a fair old while now, I feel personally (yea Im a shoutcaster yadda yadda) it felt pretty strong. Might stacking was simply to easy as said about & the toughness, meh. 20% reduction on that condi, Im still sold!

Manuhell.2759:

It could somehow make sense if the damage reduction was significant and stacks had a shorter duration and a non-linear incremental effect, as it would become a sort of protection from fast-hitting skills or multiple enemies hitting at the same time (but the shorter duration would make it so that stopping to attack for a few seconds and bursting down would mostly ignore the effect).
But with the amount of toughness it gives now, one could as well just ignore the toughness part of the trait and just use it for the condition damage reduction.

It’s still a useful amount of reduction, ~12% (or 2.4% per stack) as opposed to the ~20% it was previously. Sometimes there are hits that you can’t avoid and this skill is good when they are in succession. You are still trying to actively avoid as many hits as you can

Alteraphim.4629:

It’s still a useful amount of reduction, ~12% (or 2.4% per stack) as opposed to the ~20% it was previously. Sometimes there are hits that you can’t avoid and this skill is good when they are in succession. You are still trying to actively avoid as many hits as you can

They don’t need just to be “in succession”. Sustained would be more correct, due to the cooldown. Five hits every 10s at least, each with at least 1s of time between the others, and a minimum build-up time of 5 seconds. For the best case, at least.
That is if we don’t properly defend ourselves and we get hit a lot. Cause if we play properly, this trait ends up being less effective.

Whereas the necro’s version can just get all the stacks in a few attacks. Beside not needing to get hit to begin with.

Manuhell.2759:

Whereas the necro’s version can just get all the stacks in a few attacks. Beside not needing to get hit to begin with.

They also have to trait into Death Magic to get it, which is kind of a kitten tree in general unless you’re running a minion build (and that has all kinds of drawbacks on its own).

To those who still think these nerfs are abysmal:

The traits still perform awesome for the reasons they got picked in builds:
HgH builds still cap on 25 might, even without any effort
Also it still reduces elixir cd & increases duration by 20%.
The nerf did virtually nothing for this trait.

Adaptive armor still reduces incoming condi-dmg by 20%, and still is unattractive for squishy builds, since they rather up the dmg from hammer & get free stab from perfectly weighted.
And IF you run a tanky setup, 200 toughness more or less don’t make a noticable difference in your incomming dmg anymore, since you are already way beyond the 2600 armor border.

If you really think these changes “broke” builds, you did not understand them in the first place. Actually we should be happy that a-net nerfed us in a way that we can totally ignore, while shutting down the OP PLZ NERF whinners for some time.
I for my part have a blast on might-stacking builds in PvP.

I have to agree with Arantheal here. Might stacking is still super easy to stack up to 25 stacks without using any kind of might duration boosting runes.

As far as AA, i actually don’t use it in PvE i find that its just kinda useless when you dodge and use the proper sustain skills, i’d rather have the stability granted from our other GM trait in PvE. I’d still take it in PvP though, the 20% reduction to condi damage is still really good and you see more condi damage in PvP then you do PvE. At least more easily stacked.

It’s nerfs like these that destorys build diversity,

wanna make a might build anet be like “pffft screw dat”

wanna be a tanky engineer for raids ha good luck anets like “lets makes you squishier”

Anet is still in my top 10 worst for the worst balancing teams for mmo ever (Korea takes the number one spot)!

Dahkeus.8243:

ArchonWing.9480:

Nerfs are fine, but not splitting changes across the game modes isn’t very cool. And I was trying to unlock scrapper. :S

So, you’re not going to unlock scrapper based on this? This was a shave on a skill that’s still very strong. Seems a bit extreme to make a decision on unlocking the elite from this alone, lol.

It was a shave on one of the very few things that was actually good for the Scrapper.

Hammer is okay, most traits are meh, gyro’s are garbage, profession mechanic is worthless.

The overall value of Scrapper is already abysmal, and it just got a little worst.

Terrahero.9358:

Dahkeus.8243:

ArchonWing.9480:

Nerfs are fine, but not splitting changes across the game modes isn’t very cool. And I was trying to unlock scrapper. :S

So, you’re not going to unlock scrapper based on this? This was a shave on a skill that’s still very strong. Seems a bit extreme to make a decision on unlocking the elite from this alone, lol.

It was a shave on one of the very few things that was actually good for the Scrapper.

Hammer is okay, most traits are meh, gyro’s are garbage, profession mechanic is worthless.

The overall value of Scrapper is already abysmal, and it just got a little worst.

What? That is an absurd assertion.