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Wahooo!!!
I just had a nice tought about gyros and how to make them feel unique! The solution is a fuel system!
I try to keep it short and let you guys talk about the idea:
For instance, Medic Gyro. Right now it has 15s duration, 20s cd and heals periodicly aoe and has an initial heal on summon.
Suggestion: Medic Gyro is now a toggle and has a 20s duration. You have a yellow 20s on your gyro where normaly the cd would be. Now this number goes down to 0. Onces it reaches zero they gyro despawns and the number starts rising again, up to 20. You can start or stop the gyro at any time and so play with the duration and cd.
The initial heal transfers to the toolbelt skill ofc :P and a 3s internal cd for the on / off switch is recommended too. If a gyro dies, they cannot be resummoned until the fuel is full again (20s)
How to balance it with traits like final salvo etc is something different. It’s just about the concept for now, what do you guys think about gyros working like that?
Greez!
- Ziggy
if this means gyros not being attackable im all up for it , heck shave sneak gyro’s duration to 15 seconds as long they worked this way
or better have them work like signets and simply pop up floating around the engi like function gyro does when its cooldown is up
Still attackable imo, but you can “hide” them at will and they get repaired on resummon.
And yea I’d shafe sneaky too to 20s fueltime.
The fuel idea is nice – actually, i kinda expected them to be something like that to begin with, given how they were described. But i would tweak it a bit.
As in, making their fuel and hp a single thing and making them recharge their hp once toggled off instead of having a proper cooldown.
In doing so, damaging them would directly influence their uptime. They would probably need to be made a bit sturdier if it comes to pass, though.
Killing a gyro could lock it at 0 for some seconds, and prevent its deploying until it gets at a certain percentage yet again (like, 25% or 50%). A sort of soft cooldown so to speak, to discourage people from spamming them as soon as available.
It would also be possible for players to call them back, but they would have to physically get back to the engineer to do so (thus consuming some fuel while doing so; this is important for a couple of them).
While they seemingly lack a cooldown in this design, they would still be balanced taking in account different rates of recharge, and given that once destroyed they have to wait until they get to a certain percentage, it would mean they indirectly have a cooldown anyway (one that has to be balanced over a partial efficency rather than a full one, though).
It could also make for some interesting interaction with some gyros.
Blast Gyro’s damage could depend on their current fuel at the moment of the explosion, for example. So players could have the choice of launching it at full hp from close range in order to deal full damage (albeit, if reflected, it would mean the scrapper gets the full damage instead). He could call it from a distance, dealing lower damage, but having the option to call it back to bait some reflect (but still consuming fuel and having it eventually damaged in doing so – this is why i mentioned them having to get physically back to the engineer before). Or he could try to capitalize on the CC and use them asap, but given the low fuel it also means they would have to call them closer to the target (and making it easier for them to be destroyed before reaching the target).
Likewise, Shredder Gyro could see interesting plays this way, especially if its damage sees some decent increase (even better, just give it some bleeding and/or torment and scrap the whole whirl finisher thing; it is awful anyway).
In this case calling it back would make it a neat circular saw that moves toward the scrapper. With the added effect of rewarding intelligent positioning.
About the Medic Gyro, its initial healing could depend on its current fuel, thus making calling it at low fuel less worthwhile (as doing so would lessen its uptime, and thus the gyro healing as well). If they wanted they could just remove the initial heal entirely and adjust the gyro healing instead, too.
Final Salvo would indeed need to change. It could technically work like it does now, but if it did so, it would encourage people to spam them asap, and that would be detrimental.
What could be done instead is making it work only when gyros are completely fueled and maybe improve the rate of recharge. Call it Charged Salvo instead (yes, the wordplay is intended).
This sounds really good! It would definitely help gyros.
What about an elite mechanic though? If it would be also somehow bound to the fuel and actually offer more useful functionality, I’d be so happy.
An issue with Gyro’s is they don’t really replace kits. Even if they worked as ‘intended’ they’re still not that great.
Some kits are picked for one skill only. I mean when do you ever need anything else than acid bomb in raids? :P If the skills are strong enough they’re viable. Look at bulwark, great for fotm.
I’d like to see a fuel system too.
Say you as a Scrapper have a new little bar above the toolbelt with 100 “Units” of fuel. And the bar works so you’ll start at 100 at all times but activating a gyro would then start consuming fuel, with each gyro consuming a different amount. As having gyros out you can’t regenerate any fuel so all the gyro skills will be toggle skills and the way to get fuel back in combat is however much fuel the gyro you despawn consumed is how much you’ll get back.
So for example Medic Gyro consumes 5 fuel per second (fps), so it could last 20 seconds. If you toggle on Medic Gyro then you will start draining 5 fps, if you decide to toggle Medic Gyro off at 50 fuel remaining, you will get 50 fuel back because that’s how much the Medic Gyro consumed.
If you were to have more than one gyro up then it would be as such:
You have Medic Gyro and Purge Gyro out which is consuming 10 total fps so you could have them both up for 10 seconds. At the 5 second mark you will be at 50 fuel as both gyros consumed 25 each. If you decide to toggle off Purge Gyro then you will get back 25 fuel and will be at 75 again, Medic Gyro will still be up and consuming fuel but now only at 5fps, so in 5 seconds from 75 fuel you’ll be back at 50.
Each gyro has a different amount of fuel they consume per second:
Medic Gyro: 5 fuel per second
Sneak Gyro: 10 fps
Bulwark Gyro: 5 fps
Shredder Gyro: 5 fps
Blast Gyro: 5 fps
Purge Gyro: 5 fps
All gyros will be just minion-esque and follow you still but they won’t be targetable/killable. To combat them being OP they would have to have some mechanical change of course to numbers. Like Medic Gyro heal would have to be brought down to combat toggle spamming to get a 5k heal for example. So maybe Medic Gyro could be a 1k heal over time with no extra heal on activation, but it would heal as soon as you activated it, and maybe make it a 2 second interval, so its similar to heals like warrior’s Healing Signet. And also since it isn’t permanent like a Healing Signet is for wars make it heal extra per gyro you have out, but only like 250 per gyro so if you did have 4 other gyros out it would be a 2k per second heal, but being that 5 gyros active would be consuming 25 or 30 fuel it wouldn’t be up long, maybe 1 or 2 ticks if you’re lucky.
Just a fun idea. But if Anet is reading, change gyros to be more responsive/faster/stick closer to Scrapper and make Purge AoE cleanse and not have to go to each player. Also change Shredder cause it sucks. and add more to Function Gyro cause its meh. Ya’ll made Reaper Shroud but can’t think of anything for Engi besides a passive finish/revive when we already have revive skills and stability.
Wahooo!!!
I just had a nice tought about gyros and how to make them feel unique! The solution is a fuel system!
I try to keep it short and let you guys talk about the idea:
For instance, Medic Gyro. Right now it has 15s duration, 20s cd and heals periodicly aoe and has an initial heal on summon.
Suggestion: Medic Gyro is now a toggle and has a 20s duration. You have a yellow 20s on your gyro where normaly the cd would be. Now this number goes down to 0. Onces it reaches zero they gyro despawns and the number starts rising again, up to 20. You can start or stop the gyro at any time and so play with the duration and cd.
The initial heal transfers to the toolbelt skill ofc :P and a 3s internal cd for the on / off switch is recommended too. If a gyro dies, they cannot be resummoned until the fuel is full again (20s)
How to balance it with traits like final salvo etc is something different. It’s just about the concept for now, what do you guys think about gyros working like that?
Greez!
- Ziggy
Cool idea.
It would also help their survival.
One question though. With which button do you desummon the Gyro?
Because you also need a button to make them explode for a daze.
Cool idea.
It would also help their survival.One question though. With which button do you desummon the Gyro?
Because you also need a button to make them explode for a daze.
Well, technically, you despawn them with it
Yea that’s what I meant by “just an idea”. You wouldn’t be able to explode them on your own grrr… But then – maybe you don’t want to anymore. It’s a different playstyle. You could change final salvo to a trait with ICD that dazes, grants stability and super speed on summon (10s ICD~). Something like that.
Anet, please hire Ziggy to rework Scrapper. These ideas are great!
I have only one question: What would you do with the fuel bar if you weren’t using the gyros?
Maybe use “the new trait” gain 1% damage per 20% fuel? Or smthing like that … give the scrapper a trait that benefits from having full fuel, but not too strong so you would lose massive damage using gyros.
You could also modify other traits like “Rapid Regeneration” to have a small HP boost at full fuel, or the opposite – at low fuel. Maybe a trait that works with RR → gain super speed for 1s while under 20% fuel, 1s CD.
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