Guild Wars 2

Heya,

Recently Shock Shield (hammer #4, block) has got it’s damage nerfed by a heavy amount of 50%. I agree that it is or was rather op to have a skill that a) blocks and b) causes a big amount of damage at the same time, altough this was mere an issue for pvp / wvw and not pve.

Accordingly I agree with the nerf, yet instead of just flat out reduce the already crippled damage output of the Scrapper, I’d like to see Rocket Charge (hammer #3, leap) buffed or rather changed.

A few patches earlier Rocket Charge was nerfed aswell in terms of leap finishers. Now it’s kinda weird to use it, leaping 3 times but only activating 2 leaps while also being completly vulnerable during the channel. I think the ability feels clunky and could become more useful like this:

Rocket Charge

• Reduce the number of leaps from 3 to 1.
• Reduce the cooldown from 12 to 6. (also easier to use with Electro-whirl in a rotation)
• Increase the the damage of the single leap by 66%.
• Affected by Quickness!

These changes fix or work against a few of the issues we are currently suffering from:

• Hammer / Scrapper damage gets buffed due to the recent nerfs to maintain overall balance.
• The leap won’t feel clunky anymore and will no longer leave one vulnerable to counterattacks for such a long time (2.25s).
• The leap finisher will actually match with the leap itself again.
• Letting Rocket Charge be affected by Quickness alone wouldn’t make it stronger than the bomb aa in terms of dps, neither does the damage increase of 66% on it’s own, but together they will result into a worth to use skill for the pve rotations.
• The cooldown of 6s (instead of 12s / 3 = 4s) will prevent it to be op in wvw / pvp and will makes it easy to fit into the pve rotation due to the similiar cooldown of Electro-whirl.

Thoughts?

Greez!

for me hammer is ok as it is now … i also like the leaps for combos. it would be a loss imho , it is better as it is now

I really like this idea, then rocket charge can actually be used as evasion skill like Warrior GS3 in PvE rather than being a liability.

This does sacrifice the unique multi leap aspect of scrapper hammer but I don’t mind if it increases the overall DPS of scrapper. The multi leap finisher concept was flawed from the beginning anyway since anet didn’t want to split skills for PvE and PvP.

You’d have the same amount of leaps/time overall though PierPiero, just they’d come every 6 seconds rather than 2 in 2s+ every 12s.

I like it though. Considering it’s hardly worthy of being called a movement skill (no distance) I think quickness working on it should be fine. I’d also be ok with no quickness but an increase on the distance though.

I don’t like the idea of reducing the number of leaps at all, sorry. The whole point of Rocket Charge, at least to me, is that you get three finishers in quick succession. Engi lets you play with combo fields and finishers more than any other class and reducing that skill to one finisher on a shorter cooldown has some merit but ultimately takes some fun synergy away. Maybe 2 leaps on a slightly shorter CD with a lower damage buff? But in my opinion 1 leap is less cool.

Totally agree that it should be affected by quickness though. But for the sake of full evade frames I also like the idea of increased distance instead, especially if there are fewer leaps.

caerulean.4837:

I don’t like the idea of reducing the number of leaps at all, sorry. The whole point of Rocket Charge, at least to me, is that you get three finishers in quick succession. Engi lets you play with combo fields and finishers more than any other class and reducing that skill to one finisher on a shorter cooldown has some merit but ultimately takes some fun synergy away. Maybe 2 leaps on a slightly shorter CD with a lower damage buff? But in my opinion 1 leap is less cool.

Totally agree that it should be affected by quickness though. But for the sake of full evade frames I also like the idea of increased distance instead, especially if there are fewer leaps.

You already only get 2 leap finishers, the middle leap’s finisher was removed.

Jerus.4350:

caerulean.4837:

I don’t like the idea of reducing the number of leaps at all, sorry. The whole point of Rocket Charge, at least to me, is that you get three finishers in quick succession. Engi lets you play with combo fields and finishers more than any other class and reducing that skill to one finisher on a shorter cooldown has some merit but ultimately takes some fun synergy away. Maybe 2 leaps on a slightly shorter CD with a lower damage buff? But in my opinion 1 leap is less cool.

Totally agree that it should be affected by quickness though. But for the sake of full evade frames I also like the idea of increased distance instead, especially if there are fewer leaps.

You already only get 2 leap finishers, the middle leap’s finisher was removed.

I never noticed! My bad.

From a PvP perspective :
I dont see a good reason to change it (besides animation with 2 finishers looking odd). Hammer doesnt need any damage buffs as scrappers can already put out huge sustain damage in comparison to their defenses. The fact that you are locked in an animation is a good thing IMO. You want to leap that waterfield? The enemy has a nice timing and can burst you in your leaps, its a concideration that is healthy.

But again, I cant talk for a PvE perspective

What about a charge (call it fuel if you want :P) system, just like mantras, yet reloading automaticly:

For example, you can have up to 2 or 3 charges of “Rocket Charge” and you gain 1 charge every ~6s. So if you want to multileap, you could still do it, yet with a longer overall cd.

The current leap finishers on Rocket Charge are also not matching the animation or other leaps at all. Normally a leap finisher gets it’s effect on landing, yet with Rocket charge you get it right at the very beginning.

This means, if you leap into a field, you won’t proc a finisher at all. It also means that your target can very well be out of range for a daze finisher in a lightning field, since the daze happens at the start, not after the leap.

I really dislike the design of rocket charge in it’s current state. I like the animation, but that’s about it. Maybe just buff it’s damage in pve and leave it the same in pvp? Would that be an option?

The point is, there is only hammer #2 and #5 for a dps increase in pve at the moment, even if quickness would affect Rocket Charge, it’d still be worse than the bomb aa. Paired with absolutely 0 damage increase from the Scrapper line, we are atm in a rather bad position.

Scrapper is more a defensive/utility line isn’t it though? I guess you could say the same about tools, but I think Scrapper gives a bit more, and that includes the hammer as well(block, evade, reflect). I think Scrapper overall is one of the better Elite specs in that it’s good in some situations and not just something we’ll always use like many others.

So I like this suggestion not for the damage increase but because it fixes the clunkiness of rocket charge. The damage is just icing. And moreso I’d like to see a damage increase on Rifle to make it worth using those skills.

Great Idea love the second one with the charges gives more control based on what the user wants and honestly doesn’t interfere with pvp/wvw or pve. The only downside is I highly doubt this will ever happen like I could personally see your idea for giving engs a special party boon like other classes coming before something like this.