Guild Wars 2

Lets be honest, some of other specialisations have also quite bad utilities. It is hard to make always 5 skills and not double some stuff, or some stuff being underwhelming.

The problem that I see with gyros is that they look like moving turrets. Anet promised something truly special, but all I see are turrets that live up to 15 seconds (compared to few minutes of their stationary counterpart).

Also lets be honest here. There shouldn’t be any skill type that promotes slotting every utility slot with such type of skill (like kits are now in PvE).

Lets begin with change of that TERRIBLE CD that starts after death thingy. CD on gyros should start on casting (if it lives long enough then better for you, because it will have less down time).
healing Gyro – is simply bad, but with healing turret there is really not many things that are good.
bulwark gyro – nothing new (phantasmal defender 2.0), but thematically nice. Probably the one that I would be most interested in using. Of course it could use much more passive defence → especially against AoE skills that he was not target (circle casting skills, cleave attack that it is not primary target).
Blast gyro – another terrible one. battering ram 2.0. I would say scrap it completely and think something new. And even if. Why this one don’t have AoE explosion and is not BLAST finisher like I don’t know “IT NAME SUGGEST”.
Shredder gyro – could probably stack nice stacks of burning/vunerability/leching when you place it on (Very) long lasting field. But lets be clear it would still be using cheese tactics (when you place it inside big, preferably motionless boss).
Purge gyro – the amount of conditions it cures is nice, but really it should be doing it at distance (at least 500), otherwise it will die too fast.
Stealth gyro – accualy I am not interested in changing it much. It was clearly desingned to WvW, as kind of side diversion. For sure it should keep up with you (even if you jump down the cliff etc). It could also hide a bit more people. For sure I see it having it own niche in WvW.

honestly the only thing that annoys me is the elite – not because i necessarily think its super bad, i just wished we get FOR ONCE a “normal” straight forward elite skill with a short cooldown to make use of runes that proc from elites…

And say that the gyro is under tuned and under the radar at release and that arenanet slowly buff them up until people start noticing them actually meaning a difference between victory or death in combat. Upon which the complaints roll in. Do you not think arenanet will find it easier to wipe them out and let them once more go so low under the radar that you will have to search for them with a shovel than to balance them properly because they weren’t important anyway and none cared?

The turrets where wiped out because none cared before about them in any gamemode before so it was easy to just go back to “no one uses them” since they only saw use from spvp anyway. It wasn’t worth the effort to balance them and simply going back to null was safe and tried. They were under the radar as a sort of gimmicky minipet before and there they were sent back again. So now its back to being a neat flavor thing.

Had turrets been “over the radar” since launch had things been different? Possibly. Strong turret builds are nothing new in conquest modes like we have in teamfortress but there you expected turrets to defend a point with ridiculous firepower and you had characters who excelled at taking them down (take demoman and switch it for an ele). But its hard to tell i suppose.

If its an important mechanic for the scrapper and really have a heavy impact on the fight at release (and we do not mean once in a blue moon, do not balance reflects around reflecting kill shots) arenanet sends a message that this is a mechanic you have to play around both as the enemy, the engineer and the ally. You tell people that the shredder is dangerous, bring reflects and try to kill it safely. You tell people that you need to really need to watch out when people drop because that scrapper will really lay down pressure and just cleaving a bit like usual wont keep you safe. Killing the function gyro should buy you seconds, not half a minute because this is the timescale of downed fights. Focusing the bulwark, medic or cleaner needs to be a priority and not something that just accidentally happens.

I hope the chances are arenanet will be more gentle with tweaking it down if it is important than if its no big deal anyway so why bother making an effort? “Its a neat flavor thing” or what ever.

But what is funny is that every once in a while even now after the turret nerf you can still find players clinging to their turrets insisting that they are useful. Good thing they are under the radar now so they wont get nerfed.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Lets see flamethrower do a whirl finisher. No? Ok how about kit…Elixir gun…Right.
Lets see turrets mitigate damage….

Hammer already gives whirl and mitigates damage, the gyro isn’t need for that, also hammer can’t be killed before it does it’s job. Your scenario only works if the gyro survives.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Or how about tool kit reflecting a barrage of attacks to its source while helping teammates
Healing turret giving protection? Sure its heals are better but does it help you live through 5 seconds of burst? Pop it before battle and Survive long enough to be able to push the fight into your advantage.

That’s a toolbelt skill, not the gyro itself, we could have the toolbelt attached to a non-ai utility and lose nothing. this argument says nothing about the usefulness of gyros.

iKeostuKen.2738:

The gyros offer unique styles of play. Its great because its not a Min/Max thing. It just fits into many different playstyles.

It would fit into playstyles, if they were worth taking. Right now they’re triple-gated and easily killed before they can do their job. That’s not an alternative playstyle, it’s just cluttering up your already limited utility slots, something engineers simply cannot affor to do.

iKeostuKen.2738:

I think the one thats more reliable is the one that can blow the enemy off the side with range if your being kited.

So Throw Mine then or airblast? The gyro could only “blow your enemy off the side” if it hits. IF. Pathing, survival, AI. Right now Anet can’t even get pulls like magnet to work, teleports, shadowsteps? They all have trouble with terrain. AI’s have just as bad of a time of it. Why on earth would we believe that they gyro won’t have exactly the same pathing issues as several moves and all other AI?

At work, so I’ll answer everyone’s replies in time.

wolfyrik.2017:

iKeostuKen.2738:

Lets see flamethrower do a whirl finisher. No? Ok how about kit…Elixir gun…Right.
Lets see turrets mitigate damage….

Hammer already gives whirl and mitigates damage, the gyro isn’t need for that, also hammer can’t be killed before it does it’s job. Your scenario only works if the gyro survives.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Or how about tool kit reflecting a barrage of attacks to its source while helping teammates
Healing turret giving protection? Sure its heals are better but does it help you live through 5 seconds of burst? Pop it before battle and Survive long enough to be able to push the fight into your advantage.

That’s a toolbelt skill, not the gyro itself, we could have the toolbelt attached to a non-ai utility and lose nothing. this argument says nothing about the usefulness of gyros.

iKeostuKen.2738:

The gyros offer unique styles of play. Its great because its not a Min/Max thing. It just fits into many different playstyles.

It would fit into playstyles, if they were worth taking. Right now they’re triple-gated and easily killed before they can do their job. That’s not an alternative playstyle, it’s just cluttering up your already limited utility slots, something engineers simply cannot affor to do.

iKeostuKen.2738:

I think the one thats more reliable is the one that can blow the enemy off the side with range if your being kited.

So Throw Mine then or airblast? The gyro could only “blow your enemy off the side” if it hits. IF. Pathing, survival, AI. Right now Anet can’t even get pulls like magnet to work, teleports, shadowsteps? They all have trouble with terrain. AI’s have just as bad of a time of it. Why on earth would we believe that they gyro won’t have exactly the same pathing issues as several moves and all other AI?

They thing is, gyro is usable even if you don’t use hammer. Rifle and pistol don’t have any whirl abilities which is why it can be useful for those types of builds.

Toolbelt or not, it’s tied to the bulwark gyro which makes it useful to take.

We have yet to see these things performed in actual combat to know if they are going to be dieing before performing their task. Engineers can take a number of utilities and be useful if played in the right way. We’re not pigeon holed into choosing what our utilities will be.

Idk what pathing issues you guys are talking about tbh as its usually uncommon when stuff like that happens. When I fight a Rangers pet, they can stick on me like glue at times.

iKeostuKen.2738:

At work, so I’ll answer everyone’s replies in time.
They thing is, gyro is usable even if you don’t use hammer. Rifle and pistol don’t have any whirl abilities which is why it can be useful for those types of builds.

Toolbelt or not, it’s tied to the bulwark gyro which makes it useful to take.

We have yet to see these things performed in actual combat to know if they are going to be dieing before performing their task. Engineers can take a number of utilities and be useful if played in the right way. We’re not pigeon holed into choosing what our utilities will be.

Idk what pathing issues you guys are talking about tbh as its usually uncommon when stuff like that happens. When I fight a Rangers pet, they can stick on me like glue at times.

Try actually using ranger, then. If you have no experience of using anet’s AI, then you’re hardly in a position to claim that it’s fine.

Being tied to the gyro doesn’t mean that the gyro is good, why would we settle for something wasting a utility slot, for the sake of the toolbelt alone? That makes no sense at all. Engi is more limited in choice of utilities because our weapon swaps share the same slots. We cannot afford to have them wasted on bad skills.

And yes, we do know how they work in combat, we saw the bulwark, the toughest of the gyros, get wasted after taking a pitiful amount of damage from a single source. How’s it supposed to be any better against multi source damage, cleave and AoE?

And yes in a way we are pidgeon holed. We have to be able to take kits because we have no weapon swap. At the very least most Engis are down to two slots before we even start adding in other skills and tying them to traits. Then there’s the traits themselves…

We pretty much have to take alchemy because it’s our best source of defence and Condition Cleanse, and on top of that the other trees have so many terrible traits that drag them down. So that leaves us with one optional tree, assuming we take scrapper. Even the scrapper tree is pidgeon holed to some extent, if we want to make sure gyros and the function gyro, and our first two minor traits aren’t utterly worthless in PvP and WvW (lets face it in PvE there’s no hope for the first two minors), we have to pick the traits that directly affect them.

Other than the hammer, scrapper is in a pretty bad place and we have only one BWE to sort it out. Now is not the time to be complacent and try to pretend that bad design isn’t bad.

miriforst.1290:

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1)The first problem im seeing here is that your focusing on SPvP when you say fighting on a point. This game should not be balanced around that mode. Also, Scrapper can range anywhere from Melee to Range, its not truly a melee elite spec when you still can benefit form using both ranged and melee options.

Your drones can offer help, not only on point, but in the outfield to support others. Melee range is where your tool belt skills shine. Mid range -> Long range is where your gyros would function best. When your upclose, your hammer acts as a support utility weapon in a way, the toolbelts as some decent utility options.

Another problem is that for some reaosn, you have all your gyros summoned at the same time in range. And they should be killed a bit easier up close. Reason for that is, they take up numbers when it comes to max hitboxes per attacks.

3) When i said mesmers clones could last a while. I meant, when i am using a staff mesmer in fights. My clones could stay out for periods of time unless im extremely pressured or shatter them myself. Imo, it would be the same for a few of the gyros.

miriforst.1290:

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Guessing this one was directed at me. When i said under the radar, i meant:
“I would not want the overreaction to cause them to over buff the gyros to a point where they are the focus where other classes are calling for nerfs, then causing the gyros them self to receive a over the top nerf and become unplayable.”

Saying no one paid attention to turrets is a bunch of load. Maybe no one paid attention to them in SPvP, but im sure they were used in WvW and even in PvE.

wolfyrik.2017:

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Used Pirate runes, works like a charm. Immobolize, Movement impares, stuns. All help with the issue of pathing onto a moving target. and yes, i have played ranger.

Here we go again with “Gyros are bad, but i have no experience using them”. The only one that probably needs to be looked into is Medic Gyro tbh because the math does not lie. Also, if your going with weapon kits, those have built in utilities so your not really limited to anything. You dont even have to run weapon kits to be a successful engineer.

I want to run this scenario on the bulwark gyro, say if it was “buffed”:
-Bulwark gyro recieves a hp buff to 30-50k.
-Roaming engineer slots on bulwark and dukes it out 1v1.
-For 15 of those seconds, half of the damage goes into the bulwark.
Result Engineer literally has 15 seconds of 50% Damage reduction, base.

—Now add a Elixir gun that can continuously spam weakness onto that foe while bulwark is up.
——-Now add protection ontop of Weakness and Bulwarks uptime

It starts to get a bit out of hand as you can see because the damage reduction becomes a bit to high, causing the engineer to literally become a tank.

Also with build diversity comes to the mode your trying to play. It seems like your describing SPvP in which you must take Alchemy to deal with condis atm. I agree that we must take this for SPvP, but we can also take 2 other trait lines depending on our build, we arent pigeon holed directly into 2 trait lines, and if you are using Elixir (C?) it clears all condis on you as well as its toolbelt. Add purging gyro to this and we would possibly have some pretty decent condi cleansing on our hands.

iKeostuKen.2738:

miriforst.1290:

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1)The first problem im seeing here is that your focusing on SPvP when you say fighting on a point. This game should not be balanced around that mode. Also, Scrapper can range anywhere from Melee to Range, its not truly a melee elite spec when you still can benefit form using both ranged and melee options.

Your drones can offer help, not only on point, but in the outfield to support others. Melee range is where your tool belt skills shine. Mid range -> Long range is where your gyros would function best. When your upclose, your hammer acts as a support utility weapon in a way, the toolbelts as some decent utility options.

Another problem is that for some reaosn, you have all your gyros summoned at the same time in range. And they should be killed a bit easier up close. Reason for that is, they take up numbers when it comes to max hitboxes per attacks.

This is getting a little far fetched. Scrapper is very clearly a melee oriented spec. If you watched the POI it was clear that the design intent is for us to use gyros in close combat, and every single one (save the heal and elite) is most useful in melee range… Blast has less time to travel making it easier to land, Bulwark and Purge actually have something to do if you’re actively taking damage. If you’re on the backline not being hit they have no purpose. Shredder obviously needs to be right in the thick of it for maximum effect. I feel like you’re projecting what you wish the gyros were rather than what they really are and what they have been designed for.

Guessing this one was directed at me. When i said under the radar, i meant:
“I would not want the overreaction to cause them to over buff the gyros to a point where they are the focus where other classes are calling for nerfs, then causing the gyros them self to receive a over the top nerf and become unplayable.”

In my opinion this is a really weak reason to hold off on feedback. This is 100% Anet’s job to manage, not ours. Our responsibility is to give honest feedback to make the Scrapper as useful as possible. It’s Anet’s job to take our feedback into account and make it balanced with the rest of the game. If the Scrapper becomes so OP that it has to be nerfed into oblivion someday (seems pretty hyperbolic but let’s go with it) that will have absolutely nothing to do with the suggestion’s we’re giving to improve it today.

Here we go again with “Gyros are bad, but i have no experience using them”. The only one that probably needs to be looked into is Medic Gyro tbh because the math does not lie. Also, if your going with weapon kits, those have built in utilities so your not really limited to anything.

Math doesn’t lie for the healing gyro, just like it doesn’t lie for the rest of them. I really don’t get why you’re so opposed to this, we already know what happens to turrets. Gyros have basically the same health. What do you expect to be different?

You dont even have to run weapon kits to be a successful engineer.

This line worries me. You can make it work in PvE where anything works, but anyone who has played significant time on the Engineer will tell you that you are gimping your Engineer by choosing not to use kits.

I want to run this scenario on the bulwark gyro, say if it was “buffed”:
-Bulwark gyro recieves a hp buff to 30-50k.
-Roaming engineer slots on bulwark and dukes it out 1v1.
-For 15 of those seconds, half of the damage goes into the bulwark.
Result Engineer literally has 15 seconds of 50% Damage reduction, base.

—Now add a Elixir gun that can continuously spam weakness onto that foe while bulwark is up.
——-Now add protection ontop of Weakness and Bulwarks uptime

It starts to get a bit out of hand as you can see because the damage reduction becomes a bit to high, causing the engineer to literally become a tank.

Textbook strawman argument right here. Who said make it last 15 seconds with 30k-50k+ health!? I’ve seen people say it needs more health (30k has been thrown out there), I’ve seen some say it should be shorter so it can be buffed to more meaningful levels, and I’ve seen various ideas for direct damage reduction to the gyro itself. What you’ve done is take the most powerful of all suggestions, put them together with no downside, combined every possible beneficial skill combination to it, and called it OP. Give me a break…

iKeostuKen.2738:

Also with build diversity comes to the mode your trying to play. It seems like your describing SPvP in which you must take Alchemy to deal with condis atm. I agree that we must take this for SPvP, but we can also take 2 other trait lines depending on our build, we arent pigeon holed directly into 2 trait lines, and if you are using Elixir (C?) it clears all condis on you as well as its toolbelt. Add purging gyro to this and we would possibly have some pretty decent condi cleansing on our hands.

This paragraph makes me question your experience with the Engineer. Please understand that this does not mean you are any less deserving of giving your feedback and opinions and I’m not saying that. It just seems like from your posts that you haven’t played a whole lot of Engineer and you may not realize why some of us around here can already say with pretty good certainty what is wrong with gyros. We’ve lived it for 3 years now.

Adamantium.3682:

This is getting a little far fetched. Scrapper is very clearly a melee oriented spec. If you watched the POI it was clear that the design intent is for us to use gyros in close combat, and every single one (save the heal and elite) is most useful in melee range… Blast has less time to travel making it easier to land, Bulwark and Purge actually have something to do if you’re actively taking damage. If you’re on the backline not being hit they have no purpose. Shredder obviously needs to be right in the thick of it for maximum effect. I feel like you’re projecting what you wish the gyros were rather than what they really are and what they have been designed for.

In my opinion this is a really weak reason to hold off on feedback. This is 100% Anet’s job to manage, not ours. Our responsibility is to give honest feedback to make the Scrapper as useful as possible. It’s Anet’s job to take our feedback into account and make it balanced with the rest of the game. If the Scrapper becomes so OP that it has to be nerfed into oblivion someday (seems pretty hyperbolic but let’s go with it) that will have absolutely nothing to do with the suggestion’s we’re giving to improve it today.

Math doesn’t lie for the healing gyro, just like it doesn’t lie for the rest of them. I really don’t get why you’re so opposed to this, we already know what happens to turrets. Gyros have basically the same health. What do you expect to be different?

This line worries me. You can make it work in PvE where anything works, but anyone who has played significant time on the Engineer will tell you that you are gimping your Engineer by choosing not to use kits.

Textbook strawman argument right here. Who said make it last 15 seconds with 30k-50k+ health!? I’ve seen people say it needs more health (30k has been thrown out there), I’ve seen some say it should be shorter so it can be buffed to more meaningful levels, and I’ve seen various ideas for direct damage reduction to the gyro itself. What you’ve done is take the most powerful of all suggestions, put them together with no downside, combined every possible beneficial skill combination to it, and called it OP. Give me a break…

This paragraph makes me question your experience with the Engineer. Please understand that this does not mean you are any less deserving of giving your feedback and opinions and I’m not saying that. It just seems like from your posts that you haven’t played a whole lot of Engineer and you may not realize why some of us around here can already say with pretty good certainty what is wrong with gyros. We’ve lived it for 3 years now.

Well if your really that tunnel vision about it. Sure it may seem that way. Just because it received a melee weapon mean it revolves around close range play. The traits and skills shown say that it is effective in either ranges. The reason why we can give superspeed to our blast gyro is so that it can move that much faster at our target, so it basically can do well in either ranges as well.

Scrapper offers teamplay, it isnt always about the “Me, Me, Me” Parts. Bulwark is still useful for the team even if you arent being the one getting damaged. As well as purge going from mate to mate to clear condis. Shredder, along with water field, can offer some really decent support even if its not in battle. Throw it on your teammates to boost support for the team, or even a light field. Just because it can do damage doesnt mean it has to be attacking a target.

I would hope that its not anets job to cater to people who havent even tested the changes being made. It may be honestly how you feel but its not 100% right. And no one knows that because we have not actually seen what the gyros can “Truly” do in game. No, watching a livestream of someone purposely getting hit does not count as true play. There was no work to keep the Bulwark up and alive, there was no boons and debuffs happening, until that kind of action is done to test its true capabilities, none of the feedback about how useless they are matters because it isnt valid.

Theres engies that use static discharge builds or HgH Builds that do not need to rely on kits. Its a option to take kits, but not mandatory to do well.

Ok, what would you call a buff to Bulwark then? It seems people want it to have increased hp. If it had shorter CD, people would still kitten about it saying its useless because it dies to fast. I listed a scenario that would work and possibly would happen.

Years of experience doesnt always mean that there way is the best way. Maybe half of people who played engie for these “3 Years” have been using metabattle to run there builds for meta play.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Scrapper offers teamplay, it isnt always about the “Me, Me, Me” Parts.

Classic strawman argument. No one is arguing for solo only play, no one is advocating “me,me,me”.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Bulwark is still useful for the team even if you arent being the one getting damaged. As well as purge going from mate to mate to clear condis. Shredder, along with water field, can offer some really decent support even if its not in battle. Throw it on your teammates to boost support for the team, or even a light field. Just because it can do damage doesnt mean it has to be attacking a target.

If they survive. IF. There’s that word again. That kitten ed reality creeping in. HP under 12k = dead drones. When they’re down, they do nothing. Then there’s the other gating, the cooldown. Those cooldowns are not short.

iKeostuKen.2738:

I would hope that its not anets job to cater to people who havent even tested the changes being made. It may be honestly how you feel but its not 100% right.

It’s Anets job to learn form their previous mistakes and provide better gameplay mechanics, using the 3 years of feedback and evidence available to them. A triple-gated Ai -based skill is the exact opposite of a good idea according to the lessons we’ve learned in that time.

iKeostuKen.2738:

And no one knows that because we have not actually seen what the gyros can “Truly” do in game. No, watching a livestream of someone purposely getting hit does not count as true play. There was no work to keep the Bulwark up and alive, there was no boons and debuffs happening, until that kind of action is done to test its true capabilities, none of the feedback about how useless they are matters because it isnt valid.

Are you serious? No work to keep the bulwark alive? It’s a utility skill! Why in the seven kittens would we want to be expending valuable resources and skill, resources and skills which should be keeping our team alive, on an Ai instead? The very idea is ludicrous. These aren’t ranger pets, these are our utility skills, the slot of which costs us access to other utility skills and kits. Oh and while on the subject, a kitless engineer? Really? And your assesment that taking alchemy still elaves us 2 slots, no. No it doesn’t. If we’re taking scrapper, the whole subject of the debate, it leaves us one trait slot. Scrapper + Alchemy + X. We are so pidgeon holed.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Theres engies that use static discharge builds or HgH Builds that do not need to rely on kits. Its a option to take kits, but not mandatory to do well.

Huh, you can either kitten yourself or you can take a kit. Is that really an option?

iKeostuKen.2738:

Ok, what would you call a buff to Bulwark then? It seems people want it to have increased hp. If it had shorter CD, people would still kitten about it saying its useless because it dies to fast. I listed a scenario that would work and possibly would happen.

A strawman argument is not a valid counter to reasonable suggestions. You took all the most extreme examples out of context and lumped them together, just in order to have something to argue against. If your positions is really so sound, why would you need to do that?

iKeostuKen.2738:

Years of experience doesnt always mean that there way is the best way. Maybe half of people who played engie for these “3 Years” have been using metabattle to run there builds for meta play.

No it means that we have 3 years experience in what works well and doesn’t work well through trial and error. Sure some people may have used pre-defined builds, that doesn’t mean they continued and it doesn’t mean that they failed to learn anything. It absolutely does not negate or invlaidate the experience of the rest of us.

The main thing is, we have to look at it in the next BWE. I dont believe they have adjust something but it can be.

And while the BWE is going we need to test and report quickly cause it is the only BWE we have . So put your energy in testing and reporting .

For me the best thing would be to make the gyros invincible besides suicide and stomp gyro.

I got to say that gyros are extremely bad. No way in hell will they stand a chance vs kits.

First and foremost… CD should start at the moment of usage, not at the moment of destruction. Also they should be strong enough to compete with kits. I kinda dislike that we are the only class with so many AI based skills (turrets + gyros).

Medic gyro… 30-44s CD depending on how long it lives. Has absolutely nothing on HT. Make it do that 820 heal per sec and increase radius to 360 and then we can talk whether that is enough. It simple needs more stuff going on for it and/or more throughput.

Bulwar Gyro – it’s bad because it gives that protection to enarby allies so everyone who gets hit will share 50% of the dmg and kinda make it instantly die or soon enough. This would’ve been 10x better if it simple gave protection. Toolbelt on it is pretty good though but the main skill is bad.

Blast Gyro – lol this is literally the worst imo. Long CD, AI based, CCable, killable knockback. It needs to be a launch and apply some nasties. Why would i want to use it? Ram is single target but does launch, has 25s CD, also does hefty damage, can’t be killed, has good toolbelt with a daze and great dmg. IT should have superspeed the moment it is spawned. Why should I use toolbelt skill just to make base skill work ?:P Also it should apply something more like burning (2stacks 5s), bleed (6stacks 10s) or anything really. IT’s just bad. Toolbelt skill… make it 1/4 cast instead of 3/4 and reduce CD to 20s or 25s tops.

Shredder Gyro – cool idea actually and I like it. Problem with it is how many fields will alst long enough? Between fields it does pretty much nothing great. There’s also the fact that fields are something others often do and it can get random to the point of not getting effects we even want. Direct Dmg is also pretty terrible. Make it Cripple/Weaken with each hit at least. Toolbelt skill is good.

Purge Gyro – Interval 3s → 2s. It’s not aoe like many skills so why not make it stronger? Toolbelt is okish, well if you take blasting evasive keg to go along with rocket charge.

Sneak Gyro – this is simply terrible. Just delete this skill. Tollbelt skill is cool but base skill ? It’s bad. PvP? You can see it and yes, you know how many are there because in every single organized spvp you will have people calling it over voicecom how many there are, where and then you pretty much know what’s hidden there. Also PvE usability is pretty much zero, stealth that has flying crap around yourself that will pull everything on top of your head. Can we ever have a good elite that does not suck ? Right now I would take mortar + Shredder Gyro and pop 1 field after another to have it proc it rather than ever use Sneak Gyro.

Overall I am very disappointed with the Scrapper (with the exception of hammer which does too little dmg imo). There are some good traits there too but our 6-0 skills are mostly undertuned by a lot.

Simple solution:
- make all gyros invulnerable
- increase healing on heal gyro

Killyox.3950:

Can we ever have a good elite that does not suck ?

Are you kidding right? Look at ele elite skills.

Avador.8934:

Killyox.3950:

Can we ever have a good elite that does not suck ?

Are you kidding right? Look at ele elite skills.

We have one of your elite skills you know. I would gladly take fiery greatsword too:P

I would really like to see the original concept of the scrapper. I don’t believe what they gave us was what they had in their mind first.

Icons look like we were supposed to get group defensive mechanics like aoe aegis and such things.

I’m sad because I think a really amazing elite spec got dumped because they have choosen that these electric theme would “fit better”.

Yep, considering the datamined name and icons, i would guess the original concept was, indeed, scrapped.

wolfyrik.2017:

If they survive. IF.

IF. Does not mean a sure thing.

wolfyrik.2017:

Those cooldowns are not short.

The cooldowns arent bad, not the best but they arent terrible. Look at elementalist, those cooldowns are long. With shorter cooldowns, some gyros would be a bit to strong for the reason that we can now push out a ton of daze and kite for a duration of fights.

wolfyrik.2017:

It’s Anets job to learn form their previous mistakes and provide better gameplay mechanics, using the 3 years of feedback and evidence available to them.

A lot of their mistakes could have been from listening to specific feedback for a class. People like to jump the gun on what they think is bad without giving it time to figure out ways to first work with it.

wolfyrik.2017:

Are you serious? No work to keep the bulwark alive? It’s a utility skill! Why in the seven kittens would we want to be expending valuable resources and skill, resources and skills which should be keeping our team alive, on an Ai instead? The very idea is ludicrous. These aren’t ranger pets, these are our utility skills, the slot of which costs us access to other utility skills and kits. Oh and while on the subject, a kitless engineer? Really? And your assesment that taking alchemy still elaves us 2 slots, no. No it doesn’t. If we’re taking scrapper, the whole subject of the debate, it leaves us one trait slot. Scrapper + Alchemy + X. We are so pidgeon holed.

Well, it seems everyone is throwing out the fact that there is damage mitigation when it comes to combat, so every attack is critical against gyros. Also, why isnt the team also able to the use AoE team skills to boost the gyro as well as the team? And yes, these are utility skills, meaning we have a option to take these skills. If you feel like another option would be fine, then you take that skill. Your not being forced to slot a gyro on every utility slot. As Irenio said, you can have X gyros and take up a kit if you want.

A kitless engineer can work. Maybe if your not good with kitless, it doesnt mean that others arent. Its all about the way the player plays and how efficient that can be with a certain build.

And about the build thing, I cant even take you seriously on this one. Every class will have that trait line in which they need to take for a specific mode. Alchemy isnt needed for PvE, and it may not be needed for WvW. So no, we are not pigeon holed.

wolfyrik.2017:

A strawman argument is not a valid counter to reasonable suggestions. You took all the most extreme examples out of context and lumped them together, just in order to have something to argue against. If your positions is really so sound, why would you need to do that?

Like people saying that every encounter will be intense cleave and AoE. I gave a build idea that could work and would show how effective it is to look at the full picture.

wolfyrik.2017:

No it means that we have 3 years experience in what works well and doesn’t work well through trial and error. It absolutely does not negate or invlaidate the experience of the rest of us.

3 years experience in core Engineer play. No years experience in Engie + Scrapper.
3 years experience driving a car. No years experience driving a manual.

You have experience of the core, but you have no experience when something new is added to it.

iKeostuKen.2738:

…a group knock back that moves at a high speed.

You mean kind of like throw mine, but with twice the cooldown?

I’m going to give gyros a fair test when they come out; I’ve thought of the roles you mentioned, but when I start to really think, these are not the “big picture.” The useful scenarios you mentioned are a few very nice opportunities in which certain gyros are useful, after which you have to wait another 30+ seconds before doing it again. Ai boys with health are ok if I don’t have to worry about them dying (I.e. have a short cool down). I’m extremely dubious of them with a 30 sec CD starting after they die.

Goosekilla.2796:

iKeostuKen.2738:

…a group knock back that moves at a high speed.

You mean kind of like throw mine, but with twice the cooldown?

I’m going to give gyros a fair test when they come out; I’ve thought of the roles you mentioned, but when I start to really think, these are not the “big picture.” The useful scenarios you mentioned are a few very nice opportunities in which certain gyros are useful, after which you have to wait another 30+ seconds before doing it again. Ai boys with health are ok if I don’t have to worry about them dying (I.e. have a short cool down). I’m extremely dubious of them with a 30 sec CD starting after they die.

Yeah, but a throw mine doesnt need a target and can also serve as a stealth detector. Well thats the way I use them sometimes lol. Im also thinking that the Blaster gyro does the kind of launch a BoB, Rifle 4, or Gaurd Hammer will do. Where the mine is sort of like a staggering push.

As for the Cds on activation part. I think the reason for that is because theres a part 2 to the skill. So having that happen wouldnt really work unless you get rid of the daze effect on the gyros, so its a bit more of a heavy CC. Chain Rifle 4 into a blaster gyro. I can see this working well on Skyhammer xD.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Saying no one paid attention to turrets is a bunch of load. Maybe no one paid attention to them in SPvP, but im sure they were used in WvW and even in PvE.

On the contrary, they were at their strongest in pve due to some of the following factors:

1) Condi immunity. Condiplayers did close to no damage against them meaning the engineer did only need to worry about himself. This is also true in wvw, but well get to that later. In PvE mobs rarely deal any threatening amount of conditions.
2)Crit immunity. 2 of a glassy players stats down the drain when targeting turrets.
In PvE mobs are based around hitting hard and slow non critical attacks against sluggish targets, with their performance dropping heavily against people on the move.
3)Killzones. The most point blanch of the bunch, that being the thumper turret still could be upgraded to attack in a big area, but the second shortest upgrade was 750 range in a wide cone, meaning you could drop them out of the aoe hotspots and still secure hits against people in the killzones made up by the controlpoints with the enemy being afraid to leave the cap to wipe them out depending on their focus on close ranged combat. In WvW even the smallest of camps had means of staying out of the line of fire, and in sieges where more narrow killzones like gates exists the turrets wont last long.
4)The goal. Related to killzones the largest measurement of success was not in the number of players killed but in how long it took players to wrestle that point away from it and take it for themselves. This often boiled down to fights against one or two players, where your CC combined with that of the turrets could make life hard for the player you focus. In wvw fights are either way too mobile or end up with enough aoe pressure to ruin your turrets without effort.
5) The meta. The bulk consisted of decently rounded build that where not glassy enough to gank the engineer, and not bunkery enough to sustain against the turrets. This was the primetime of celengis and celes.

And here is the twist. I have played a lot of turret engineer, in pvp as well as wvw (really there was not much of a point of them in pve). No, not the throw-up-your-rocket-turret-on-a-ledge-and-go-afk kind but ironically by using them like they seem to want us to use gyros, like deployable gadgets. No greater feeling than saving an ally in down state by running up to him while 2 people are finishing him/her and the rest are cleaving the downed body in melee and using flameturret->overcharge FT->thumper turret->overcharge TT->detonate TT->detonate FT and securing a impossible stealth revive that would have made any thief green with envy. And i always had to judge if it was best to pickup/detonate my turrets for blasts/reflects/final burst or whether to leave them out to squeeze every drop of pressure i could. It was a interesting play style i will fully admit. But for one thing i knew this wasn’t optimal, i knew that the majority of the time i could simply finish fights way quicker and securely by using parts of our more reliable kitten nal.
And this even though we had bigger trait support as well, the traited turrets reflected when deployed, knocked back when they died or where detonated, gave blast finishers when they where detonated and pulsed boons like protection in a aoe. They could even be repaired with toolkit and got a cooldown reduction if you pick them up.

Now over the course of these 3 years how many turret engineers outside of healing turret and supply crate did you see in wvw? (For that matter how many engineers did you see in wvw compared to other classes? But that is not the focus of this discussion.)
Have you tried playing dungeons or fractals with people not already on a friendly basis and deployed a turret? And in pve the nerfs haven’t hit them nearly as bad as in wvw and pve so why do we not see more turret engineers in pve (indeed the developers response was that they didn’t think it would affect pve that much anyways)?

My experience through the years, most of the time you see turrets deployed its in some open world area, and they usually belong to someone yet to be 80 in a pirate hat.

And i am not i assure you a “read it on metabattle” kind of player. I’ve tried a lot of ridiculous builds since the betas, you have to if you stick to a profession as much as i have done for the years since. What do you think about a full gadget P/S barbarian engineer for example? Been there done that, but i never had any illusion of it being good. Even i gave up on medkit after the patch despite liking the supportive role and nothing have so far convinced me that medical dispersion field is good (a trait we could see from the preview would be bad, and turns out it was).

I realize that this is off topic and focusing on turrets as opposed to gyros, but i have to wonder if you are secretly a thief that has come to bring vengance for the sneak gyro or if you are a time traveler sent back from a dystopian future where the war with the gyros have all but wiped out humanity in which case i better go rehearse my Schwarzenegger quotes this very minute.

iKeostuKen.2738:

IF. Does not mean a sure thing.

No, it means that it’s unreliable. Unreliability that we cannot afford.

iKeostuKen.2738:

The cooldowns arent bad, not the best but they arent terrible. Look at elementalist, those cooldowns are long. With shorter cooldowns, some gyros would be a bit to strong for the reason that we can now push out a ton of daze and kite for a duration of fights.

Gross exaggeration at best and that Ele’s have long cooldowns is completely irrelevent. They’re a different class, with different skills, different mechanics and different weapons.

iKeostuKen.2738:

A lot of their mistakes could have been from listening to specific feedback for a class. People like to jump the gun on what they think is bad without giving it time to figure out ways to first work with it.

Bad feedback? That is just pure speculation and nonsense. When has Anet ever felt the need to run changes by players before this? They get an idea, they implement it, it doesn’t work or works badly. We complain. That’s how this normally works. As for the gyro information, we think it’s bad because AI that you have to support has been proven to be bad. Turrets. The idea of supporting an AI is not new to Engi, why do you think toolkit repairs turrets? Why do you think turrets received an overhaul? why do you think they were nerfed again afterwards? Because this model of utility skill simply does not work. It’s been tried, it’s been tested and it has failed every single time.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Well, it seems everyone is throwing out the fact that there is damage mitigation when it comes to combat, so every attack is critical against gyros. Also, why isnt the team also able to the use AoE team skills to boost the gyro as well as the team?

Team skills have a limit on how many they affect. Capped at 5. If this operates for the gyro, a player misses out, if players are prioritised, the gyro gets nothing.

iKeostuKen.2738:

And yes, these are utility skills, meaning we have a option to take these skills. If you feel like another option would be fine, then you take that skill. Your not being forced to slot a gyro on every utility slot. As Irenio said, you can have X gyros and take up a kit if you want.

And again you’re relying on a straw-man argument. No one said that we have to take them. That’s not the problem here. The problem is that engi has been lumped with a useless utility skills with the new “elite” spec.
We want to get good utilities, not throw away slot fillers and HP point sinks that add nothing to the class. We don’t need more worthless Ai, we don’t need turrets V2. Of course, given that we’re almost at launch and have only BWE, the chances of getting something else are basically zero. So what we’re doing now is damage control. Why would we want to try “work with” a bad utility, when instead we can try make it a better one? Your argument makes no sense.

iKeostuKen.2738:

A kitless engineer can work. Maybe if your not good with kitless, it doesnt mean that others arent. Its all about the way the player plays and how efficient that can be with a certain build.

Ok prove it. Take a kitless engineer to the Finals.

iKeostuKen.2738:

And about the build thing, I cant even take you seriously on this one. Every class will have that trait line in which they need to take for a specific mode. Alchemy isnt needed for PvE, and it may not be needed for WvW. So no, we are not pigeon holed.

Now you’re contradicting yourself. You admitted that it was necessary for PvP and qualifying WvW with “maybe”.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Like people saying that every encounter will be intense cleave and AoE. I gave a build idea that could work and would show how effective it is to look at the full picture.

That’s another strawman argument, no one said that every counter would be intense cleave and AoE. We’ve all pointed out that Cleave and AoE, which all classes have access to is all that’s necessary to stop gyros. That’s a fact. Sure, we could achieve the same result with single-target DPS as well. I don’t get what your point is though, because either way, the gyros is easily eliminated before doing it’s job.

iKeostuKen.2738:

3 years experience in core Engineer play. No years experience in Engie + Scrapper.
3 years experience driving a car. No years experience driving a manual.

Another fallacious argument. That we haven’t played scrapper yet doesn’t invalidate our experience with Ai in GW2, particularly Ai which is reliant on being supported or utility skills which lack the versatility of kits.

iKeostuKen.2738:

You have experience of the core, but you have no experience when something new is added to it.

We have plenty of experience of new things being added to the core class, with countless patches and trait overhauls. Mortar kit for example. Turret reflect traits for another. Then there’s the fact that we had to learn how to play the class in the first place, when it was new to us. Have you ever tried to drive a manual car like an automatic? No? So how do you know it wouldn’t work very well? How? You can work it out from experience.

Main thing that is gonna suck with gyros is the simple fact the can be killed by AoE easily. The big thing I love with my MM is that if they die, they leave behind that AoE poison field and explode, so I get some area denial and poison. And plus, to put this in perspective, I play a reaper. Your gyros are just going to let me gravedigger you repeadetly in the dang face, or recharge my cool downs with reapers onslaught. And your bulwark is just a crappier version of Rise.

I like the ideas of gyros, but the way their being implemented is just sorta…..bad. And I know the whole selling point of the stealth gyro is the fact you don’t know how many people could be hiding in their….well sorry if I see a stealth gyro I’m just going to AoE it with my marks or pull you all out with my reaper’s grasp, and I will have some idea of how many people are in there thanks to the way my shouts scale.

miriforst.1290:

-snip-

Im honestly not sure what your getting at here. Is it how powerful they used to be before they were buffed into a overpowered brainless build.

Concerning the blast gyro, it is in fact a launch despite the tool tip claiming knockback. The mixup in tooltips between launches and knockbacks as well as daze and stun is surprisingly common.

I can actually see that gyro being usable due to its fast redeploy rate compared to other gyros.

What i hope to see for scrapper is:

1) The cool down of gyros starting in the background when deployed (this was done with mantras, if only for a while) so that the longer you keep it alive the shorter the downtime.

2) Massively increase the healing on healing gyro, id almost go so far as letting it tick almost much as it does now every second, or increasing the strength of the ticks the longer you have had it out. Keep in mind that if this is strong, people will start counterplaying you with killing/cc locking your gyro. And for allies to participate in the full heal they need to hug you for the full duration (if it heals 600/second it will pass one deployment of the healing turret after about 5 seconds of being alive with twice the cooldown (that is if we start the cooldown at deployment as suggested), without the conditions cleared and in a much smaller aoe)

3) Shredder uptime is increased. Here i would say 100% uptime. Its a frail stationary deployable which does whirlfinishers (which you have to feed fields to be useful). There are three limiting mechanics in place outside of arbitary durations and cool downs here. Health, fields and placement. If a shredder is bothering you, kill it. If you want to use its potentially massive uptime of whirls, you have to bring the fields to use it and place them at your already deployed gyro (keep in mind that the gyro might not always be in such a position that the enemy is truck by both the gyro and the fields). If the combat moves on, you have to destroy it in any case.

4) Either super speed needs to stack or the cooldown on the super speed combo have to go. Lightning fields are a rare resource as it is (outside of gyros which can be traited to provide aoe lightning fields on death which themselves already provide super speed which do not stack already stack). I wonder a bit, outside the engineer who benefits from the healing with the right trait, whats the idea behind short, short duration pulsing super speed fields when super speed do not stack? For the engineer that’s fine, he can stay in the field and benefits from lots of healing but the mobility is kinda lost when you keep circling around in the aoe. If super speed do not stack i would recommend removing the ICD for the minor lightning leaps to aoe super speed. This increases not only synergy with eles and other scrappers but with the jalis revenant as well (which in turn can provide us with aoe stability for mass momentum and etc).

5) Reduce cooldown on function gyro. By a lot. We should still be limited to one at a time, and keeping some short recharge of 10 second tops would be reasonable. To compensate the gyro might no longer be deployed on top of your enemy/ally but instead originates at your location similarly to blast gyro. This means that the enemy have a greater chance to react, that we have to consider our pathing to the target (avoid sending it through aoe hell) and that we have a higher uptime on our special mechanic in one of the two situations where its even available to us. Further we can then increase the range, possibly all the way to 1200 as this is offset by the time it takes for it to reach its target ( a competent team might have already revived their ally by then) which in turn increases internal synergy with super speed sharing as well as granting your gyro some initial stealth from the sneak gyro.

6) The clearing gyro needs to clear conditions from itself as well when clearing allies. In a condibomb your gyro might not even last a couple of seconds (your condition clear dying to conditions), and counterplay to the gyro would include hard and soft crowd control to keep it from the engineer (it needs to touch an ally to clear him/her) long enough or until its dead

7)Something done about the bulwark (this might apply to IDefender as well). Lowering the damage reduction to 30% and then removing the transfer part means that it scales better as a non selfish support tool, and once again forces the enemy to rethink and refocus on the bulwark (instead of continuing to fire on you and kill your gyro in any case). Now you want it to live as long as possible instead killing it for doing its job. I say this because the alternative would be to buff the bulwark up to over the top levels to remain useful in a team, while this means its useful on your own as well as in a group (sort of like how water fields healing is not divided by the number of players affected).

These tweaks and the scrapper would look a lot more attractive. Of course the hammer and a lot of the traits already are, but utilities are what defines us, and i do not want to wait until the next expansion (if there will be any) and hope that this time we will have better luck this time. We have been using these other skills for a long time by now, and while the engineer is still jolly good fun, a bigger repertoire would be appreciated.

wolfyrik.2017:

No, it means that it’s unreliable. Unreliability that we cannot afford.

Counterplay? Are elixirs unreliable because theres boon stripping and condition reapplications? Or Traits that deal more damage for the more boons you have?

wolfyrik.2017:

Gross exaggeration at best and that Ele’s have long cooldowns is completely irrelevent. They’re a different class, with different skills, different mechanics and different weapons.

Its not irrelevant, thats an example of long cooldowns, most of them double ours.

wolfyrik.2017:

Bad feedback? That is just pure speculation and nonsense. When has Anet ever felt the need to run changes by players before this? They get an idea, they implement it, it doesn’t work or works badly. We complain. That’s how this normally works. As for the gyro information, we think it’s bad because AI that you have to support has been proven to be bad. Turrets. The idea of supporting an AI is not new to Engi, why do you think toolkit repairs turrets? Why do you think turrets received an overhaul? why do you think they were nerfed again afterwards? Because this model of utility skill simply does not work. It’s been tried, it’s been tested and it has failed every single time.

Yes, speculation. Like people saying Gyros will die under a mass amount of AoE. Also repairs turrets took a utility slot specficially for repairing turrets. Gyros can be helped from basic game mechanics from each class. The were nerfed because they became to powerful after people cried for buffs. Then people cried for nerfs. It was truly a brainless spec that had very high reward for little risk since people couldnt really destroy turrets.

wolfyrik.2017:

Team skills have a limit on how many they affect. Capped at 5. If this operates for the gyro, a player misses out, if players are prioritised, the gyro gets nothing.

Enemy skills also have a limit. Which means, not every aoe will hit your gyro if it was placed in a radius for more then 5 targets. Your gyro may not be hit. It works both ways.

wolfyrik.2017:

And again you’re relying on a straw-man argument. No one said that we have to take them. That’s not the problem here. The problem is that engi has been lumped with a useless utility skills with the new “elite” spec.
We want to get good utilities, not throw away slot fillers and HP point sinks that add nothing to the class. We don’t need more worthless Ai, we don’t need turrets V2. Of course, given that we’re almost at launch and have only BWE, the chances of getting something else are basically zero. So what we’re doing now is damage control. Why would we want to try “work with” a bad utility, when instead we can try make it a better one? Your argument makes no sense.

Until it comes time to test, no one can judge the true worth of Gyros. Meaning, how can you say you want to make it better when you dont truly know how good/bad it is in the first place. Your going on tooltips and not actual gameplay. Everything changes when it hits the actual field because it becomes true experience and that is what they really need feedback on. Not people who have no experience on gyros saying it needs to be changed.

Ok prove it. Take a kitless engineer to the Finals.

How about i take it some where it matters. PvE and WvW. The game is in a terrible spot balance-wise because its focused on SPvP. Feels like a wanna moba game with 5v5 as well. Not my cup of tea, I run in SPvP if I want to test builds only.

wolfyrik.2017:

Now you’re contradicting yourself. You admitted that it was necessary for PvP and qualifying WvW with “maybe”.

Ummm no. Im not, it means the situation varies. You may need it for WvW, you may not depending on what your doing. If your in a zerg, you dont need alchemy. If your roaming, you may need it.

wolfyrik.2017:

That’s another strawman argument, no one said that every counter would be intense cleave and AoE. We’ve all pointed out that Cleave and AoE, which all classes have access to is all that’s necessary to stop gyros. That’s a fact. Sure, we could achieve the same result with single-target DPS as well. I don’t get what your point is though, because either way, the gyros is easily eliminated before doing it’s job.

Its implied when people keep saying “Melt from aoe”.
Sigh. Just wait till beta. Feel like a broken record saying it over and over to people now.
“Wait till Beta to tell what its true worth is. "

wolfyrik.2017:

Another fallacious argument. That we haven’t played scrapper yet doesn’t invalidate our experience with Ai in GW2, particularly Ai which is reliant on being supported or utility skills which lack the versatility of kits.

Can you stick to talking like a real person? When words like that are used I seriously just stop taking the person seriously because they believe it makes them sound more intelligent.

It invalidates your views of the scrapper playstyle. Earlier you stated that scrapper is melee oriented, which it isnt. Its a hybrid spec, even stated by the designer itself. Our Ais come with a toolbelt skill which is added utility to help us and teammates unlike the rest of the Ais in game whichc an open up some really unique areas of play.

You have experience of the core, but you have no experience when something new is added to it.

wolfyrik.2017:

We have plenty of experience of new things being added to the core class, with countless patches and trait overhauls. Mortar kit for example. Turret reflect traits for another. Then there’s the fact that we had to learn how to play the class in the first place, when it was new to us. Have you ever tried to drive a manual car like an automatic? No? So how do you know it wouldn’t work very well? How? You can work it out from experience.

Tell me, what is your experience on core engie when a new traitline with new skills and a new weapon are added.

And actually no. If you tried to drive a manual like a automatic your going to stall the car and probably grind the gears. Your going to have learn it from a new perspective over again.

iKeostuKen.2738:

miriforst.1290:

-snip-

Im honestly not sure what your getting at here. Is it how powerful they used to be before they were buffed into a overpowered brainless build.

Im addressing the point you made that they are apparently frequently used somewhere in pve and wvw (okay, used is one thing, i have activated avatar of grenth once to see the effect, that does not mean its “used”).

Then i do my best to explain why people don’t and i explain the reason for them being viable at all in pvp, and which strengths does not carry over to wvw. This is more directed to the specific quote provided and can be considered nitpicking. But the turret catastrophe and the analysis thereof serves (or should serve) as a grim reminder how to make these kind of skills work in different environments and how not to make them work. That is why i try going over them strength by strength and gamemode by gamemode while also making a comment on why it was just then (turrets really hadn’t been that buffed and the buffs that where like the reflective shields where not used in the version frequently complained about) that the thing became popular (more widespread celestial builds amongst other things). I am sorry to have gone so off topic, i guess i “trigger” to easy when people discuss turrets in general.

We stand here with a new utility type which share some similar traits and we can’t help but cross compare a bit. And while these are more mobile (with the exception of shredder) they still have long recharges, are as killable statwise as the turrets that are not considered for serious use at the moment and have a duration slapped on just in case people didn’t figure out you can kill that spinning bot over there.

And the reason we are loud are because we want to show that we care, and that there are other options. Silence can be taken as acceptance when it comes to development of things such as these, and that’s why people (me included) get on a bit of an offensive when the wait and see argument come up when we have a lot of the numbers, we have a lot of experience with similar mechanics and we are afraid that its going to end up like the biweekly balance patches after the single greatest revamp of our character building system yet. Like medical dispersion field. We said it was ugly and it was. Now we have proof of the other professions receiving lots of updates during this rare period (and some professions will have gotten twice or triple the number of public testing opportunities) and we naturally want an equal piece of the cake when it comes to feedback because we don’t trust arenanet to keep this up after the scrapper is shipped, and we would rather have blatantly obvious design misses addressed before the weekend to not waste the very precious time we got.

On an unrelated note for people who are interested in why i considered turrets stronger before they were buffed to brainless levels or whatever, here are some things that had been tweaked down long before turrets where literally all the rage, some compensated with the targeting fixes (which worked to varying degrees, and foremost against professions like mesmers):

Net turret immobilized for 3 seconds.
Net turret overcharge fired 2 nets.
Rocket turret fired 2 overcharged shots.
Rifle turret overcharge bled instead of vulned.
Rifle turret permanently firing faster when activating overcharge on deployment.
Rocket turret burned (for a little while even in a big aoe, one of those rockets could strip a lot of hp)

iKeostuKen.2738:

Counterplay? Are elixirs unreliable because theres boon stripping and condition reapplications? Or Traits that deal more damage for the more boons you have?

Now you’re just conveniently forgetting the numerous other problems we’ve already listed beside HP. You’re just being dishonest now and I suspect you are a troll afterall.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Its not irrelevant, thats an example of long cooldowns, most of them double ours.

It’s completely irrelevent, each class is seperately balanced on different mechanisms. It’s like comparing Satsumas to tangerines, then arguing that tangerines must be better because granny smith’s apples take longer to ripen.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Yes, speculation. Like people saying Gyros will die under a mass amount of AoE. Also repairs turrets took a utility slot specficially for repairing turrets. Gyros can be helped from basic game mechanics from each class. The were nerfed because they became to powerful after people cried for buffs. Then people cried for nerfs. It was truly a brainless spec that had very high reward for little risk since people couldnt really destroy turrets.

Now I’m sure you’re trolling, since you’re bascially making my point for me while rehashing previously discussed ground. The weakness of gyros isn’t speculation. It’s experience. We’ve seen the nubers on their health, we’ve seen how other Ai with similar health works in game. They die. Fast. No specualtion required. We’ve seen it on this class and others.
Yes, turrets were buffed, then nerfed, proving that Ai Simply doesn’t work in GW2. It’s either to be too powerful in order to overcome the massive flaws or too weak because of the massive flaws. We’ve been over all this, we’ve experience all this, that’s how we know it’s a bad idea.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Enemy skills also have a limit. Which means, not every aoe will hit your gyro if it was placed in a radius for more then 5 targets. Your gyro may not be hit. It works both ways.

Which is another nonsense. Enemy players can directly target specific opponents to receive damage, player AoE boon burst cannot, barring oddities such as Fumigate, a kit skill.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Until it comes time to test, no one can judge the true worth of Gyros. Meaning, how can you say you want to make it better when you dont truly know how good/bad it is in the first place. Your going on tooltips and not actual gameplay. Everything changes when it hits the actual field because it becomes true experience and that is what they really need feedback on. Not people who have no experience on gyros saying it needs to be changed.

You really are trolling, we’ve already covered why you don’t need to experience a thing to know it’s bad. You haven’t answered that, just ignored. Just another act of dishonesty on top of the strawman arguments. We know how Ai’s work in the game, we know how quiclky low health Ai’s die in the game, we’ve calculated their effective times and compared them to existing skills. We can see where they are weak and what the dangers to them will be.

iKeostuKen.2738:

How about i take it some where it matters. PvE and WvW. The game is in a terrible spot balance-wise because its focused on SPvP. Feels like a wanna moba game with 5v5 as well. Not my cup of tea, I run in SPvP if I want to test builds only.

Sorry, that’s not a valid excuse, there haev been several engi’s in the tournaments, you should be able to out-do them or keep up if your claim is true.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Its implied when people keep saying “Melt from aoe”.

No it isn’t. Implication is the subtext in a phrase. What you did was deliberately take what other peole said and create and exaggerated example for you to attack, rather than challenging their actual positions. Classic strawman argument. QED

iKeostuKen.2738:

Sigh. Just wait till beta. Feel like a broken record saying it over and over to people now.
“Wait till Beta to tell what its true worth is. "

You sound like a broken record, that’s the problem. You keep repeating the same, non-arguments no matter hwo many times you’re shown to be wrong. That’s your failing, not ours.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Can you stick to talking like a real person? When words like that are used I seriously just stop taking the person seriously because they believe it makes them sound more intelligent.

People proving you wrong by pointing to the failures in your reasoning are just trying to make themselves sound intelligent? That’s just an ad-hominem. That’s not really necessary is it?

iKeostuKen.2738:

It invalidates your views of the scrapper playstyle. Earlier you stated that scrapper is melee oriented, which it isnt. Its a hybrid spec, even stated by the designer itself. Our Ais come with a toolbelt skill which is added utility to help us and teammates unlike the rest of the Ais in game whichc an open up some really unique areas of play.

I haven’t said anything of the sort, you’re either mistaking me for someone else or making assumptions on my position. The toolbelt skills we’ve already discussed as well, as I said before, the toolbelts are not the gyros. They could be removed and attached to different untilities without losing anything. The toolbelts are not an argument for the effectiveness of the gyros, they’re toolbelt skills.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Tell me, what is your experience on core engie when a new traitline with new skills and a new weapon are added.

this is just a plain red-herring, we’ve experienced changes to the game mechanics, that’s sufficent, to claim otherwise is absurd exaggeration.

iKeostuKen.2738:

And actually no. If you tried to drive a manual like a automatic your going to stall the car and probably grind the gears. .

How do you know if you haven’t done it? That’s right, experience.

Your going to have learn it from a new perspective over again.

If you have to re-learn how to drive from scratch, just because you’ve changed from one to the other, there’s something very wrong. Having a manual doesn’t change the speed limits on the roads, it doesn’t change your maneouvering, doesn’t change the engine, your speed, doesn’t affect your understanding of driving on different surfaces. It absolutely does not negate your previous experience. Whether you have auto or stick, you still know how and when to use your breaks. You still know what consitutes a potential hazard.

To claim you have to relearn everything because one thing has changed, is absurd.

Gyros may be slightly different to turrets and other Ai but they’re still Ai, with all the same limitations and affected by all the same combat mechanics. They still have HP, we know how that works, they still have internal stats, just the same. The only thing to learn is their specific skills and what they combo into. We know how combing skills and traits works too. Exactly what do you think we’d have to relearn?

wolfyrik.2017:

-Snip-

You nitpicked through nearly every little sentence trying to squeeze out any arguement you could possibly make. I honestly would not like to keep going back and forth in this type of way cause its just to time consuming. This discussion wont change any thing cause we see two different ways of how things should be so im just going to end it here.

miriforst.1290:

Im addressing the point you made that they are apparently frequently used somewhere in pve and wvw (okay, used is one thing, i have activated avatar of grenth once to see the effect, that does not mean its “used”).

Then i do my best to explain why people don’t and i explain the reason for them being viable at all in pvp, and which strengths does not carry over to wvw. This is more directed to the specific quote provided and can be considered nitpicking. But the turret catastrophe and the analysis thereof serves (or should serve) as a grim reminder how to make these kind of skills work in different environments and how not to make them work. That is why i try going over them strength by strength and gamemode by gamemode while also making a comment on why it was just then (turrets really hadn’t been that buffed and the buffs that where like the reflective shields where not used in the version frequently complained about) that the thing became popular (more widespread celestial builds amongst other things). I am sorry to have gone so off topic, i guess i “trigger” to easy when people discuss turrets in general.

We stand here with a new utility type which share some similar traits and we can’t help but cross compare a bit. And while these are more mobile (with the exception of shredder) they still have long recharges, are as killable statwise as the turrets that are not considered for serious use at the moment and have a duration slapped on just in case people didn’t figure out you can kill that spinning bot over there.

And the reason we are loud are because we want to show that we care, and that there are other options. Silence can be taken as acceptance when it comes to development of things such as these, and that’s why people (me included) get on a bit of an offensive when the wait and see argument come up when we have a lot of the numbers, we have a lot of experience with similar mechanics and we are afraid that its going to end up like the biweekly balance patches after the single greatest revamp of our character building system yet. Like medical dispersion field. We said it was ugly and it was. Now we have proof of the other professions receiving lots of updates during this rare period (and some professions will have gotten twice or triple the number of public testing opportunities) and we naturally want an equal piece of the cake when it comes to feedback because we don’t trust arenanet to keep this up after the scrapper is shipped, and we would rather have blatantly obvious design misses addressed before the weekend to not waste the very precious time we got.

On an unrelated note for people who are interested in why i considered turrets stronger before they were buffed to brainless levels or whatever, here are some things that had been tweaked down long before turrets where literally all the rage, some compensated with the targeting fixes (which worked to varying degrees, and foremost against professions like mesmers):

Net turret immobilized for 3 seconds.
Net turret overcharge fired 2 nets.
Rocket turret fired 2 overcharged shots.
Rifle turret overcharge bled instead of vulned.
Rifle turret permanently firing faster when activating overcharge on deployment.
Rocket turret burned (for a little while even in a big aoe, one of those rockets could strip a lot of hp)

Used to be used. And I understand what your saying. And dw, its cool to read about some experiences ^^

I get that people dont want another turret catastrophe. But These also have something turrets didnt before. Roles instead of just dps numbers. Turrets were limited in a lot of ways ontop of having very limited team support. But gyros come with many options that tie in with a ton build diversity and team support. You cant basically look at these and say Turrets 2.0 because they share nothing in common besides being AI. Turrets couldnt gain boons, Gyros can, meaning there is a chance theyl be a bit more tankier if they receive things like Protection and regeneration.

Im not saying dont give feedback, but a lot of if truly sounds like nonsense when people havent really put a ton of thought into the full picture and are just looking at the skill in general. In the old days, would a turret build run with just 1 turret? Or would it take a bit more then that to build up a turret build? Hopefully youl understand what i mean by this and if not i can go into a bit more detail.

I know what you mean, but at the same time most time you saw turret builds they where indeed using more than one turret. They where investment heavy.

And i do remember the time before turrets where used in spvp, that’s why we find the incident so interesting. They where considered a joke in wvw and pve the same way a wammo was considered a joke in gw1 with no one taking them seriously and suddenly pvp tells us they are overpowered. It turns out the gamemode and meta can make all the difference in the world.

As for protection and regeneration you had the equivalent of permanent protection (on top of crit and condi immunity) from one trait and permanently regenerated a lot of health from another (with the option to restore 10% of their health per swing or wrench), both these traits considered a requirement if using your turret for more than a blast finisher.

The bulwark gyros interaction with protection (in that it works first on you (if you have prot) and then on the gyro (if it has prot)) is interesting, on the top of my head does that not take us from 11k maximum negated damage (divided by the number of players) to 18-19k or something? That is if nothing ever hits the gyro itself of course, but its a noticeable difference. But half of that protection might have to be attributed to the protection itself i suppose so more like 14k.

And about experiences, anyone remember ( not such a long time ago, last year maybe?) when rocket turret where bugged to only fire overcharged knockdown rockets at its normal firerate? I expected chaos in wvw but it didn’t find any. :/

Xyonon.3987:

The hammer 1-5 and the bulwark are good. The rest is absolute garbage.

Yeah hammer is amazing, gyros need a serious overhaul and traits are sorta nice. That’s exactly why we were concerned about engi being revealed so late…not much time to fix things at this point……