Guild Wars 2

In current state gyros doesn’t fit the fantasy and playstyle of Scrapper. Fragile AI minions are not a good addition for a tanky melee brawler. Melee combat is all about cleave damage, it is very and dangerous for being there. There is no place for weak and vulnerable minions.
So I have a couple of improvements which can fix this problem:
1) CD starts on summon, not on death. Gyro`s duration already shorten then CD, there is no need in addition downside.
2) There is two different ways:
a) Easy and passive one: make gyros indestructible and limited only by their duration. It is a boring way, but it will fix gyro usefulness in melee combat.
b) Make gyros motto is: “Live fast – die with a blast”. Currently gyros only provide continuous effects which can be easily ended by enemies by destruction. There is no clever counter-play. I ask ANet and Irenio personally to add unique on-detonate (on-death) effects for each gyro. Gyro`s life cycle must look like this:
- Summon = initial effect if it exists (healing on medic gyro)
- Life = continuous effect during gyro`s existence
- Death = significant effect on gyro`s destruction or detonation

Just for example:

Purge gyro cleanses a lot of conditions on summon
It periodically cleanses some conditions during it`s existence
It leaves a field which provides resistance for allies if it is destroyed by enemies or manually detonated by engineer.

Shredder gyro creates whirlwind finisher on summon and during it`s existence
It explodes, damaging and immobilizing nearby foes if it is destroyed by enemies or manually detonated by engineer.

Irenio already shown his creativity with Druid – i am sure he is capable to create cool and interesting on-detonate effects for each gyro.

These effects will add more utilities for engineer and more depth to counter-play for enemies. Foes will have to choose between dealing with passive effect of gyros or trying to counter their detonation effects.

To sum up, each gyro will give us:
One summon ability with instant and continuous effect
One detonation ability with significant effect
One toolbar ability

I think it is fair enough to compare with how much cool stuff Druids get.

If you are agree with these improvements – type /signed.

I would go just a bit further on this idea. What ever effect they do should be increased by the amount of fuel left in them. So if at 20% fuel they are destroyed the effect would have it’s base effect upped by 20%.

I definitely agree Gyro cooldown needs to start when they’re first created. Adjust cooldowns from there if necessary.

Also they need something to protect them from getting blown up immediately. The more I think about this the less I believe it is as simple as just health buff or damage negation as both of those options do not scale well with increasing numbers of enemies. It’s either well balanced in group AOE fights with lots of damage flying around and overpowered in solo, or well balanced for solo and useless in group. This may just be a product of how the game works, if so this explains why it’s so hard for them to get turrets right. But if that is true why did they try again with Gyros?

Maybe each Gyro gets a “Gyro Armor” buff. This buff pulses on them every second, -X% incoming direct and condition damage for each enemy they can “hit” with it in 1200 range. Let’s say you 1v1 in PvP, the Gyro is only detecting 1 enemy with each pulse of their Gyro Armor so it is balanced. Then you move to middle point to join a team fight. Now there are 3 enemies, so it’s a little sturdier and you can still get use out of it.

To be honest I don’t think that’s a perfect solution either, but the more I think about this the more I’m just really confused why the decision was made to go with more AI and seemingly learn nothing from past mistakes. Frustrating.

Adamantium.3682:

I definitely agree Gyro cooldown needs to start when they’re first created. Adjust cooldowns from there if necessary.

Also they need something to protect them from getting blown up immediately. The more I think about this the less I believe it is as simple as just health buff or damage negation as both of those options do not scale well with increasing numbers of enemies. It’s either well balanced in group AOE fights with lots of damage flying around and overpowered in solo, or well balanced for solo and useless in group. This may just be a product of how the game works, if so this explains why it’s so hard for them to get turrets right. But if that is true why did they try again with Gyros?

Maybe each Gyro gets a “Gyro Armor” buff. This buff pulses on them every second, -X% incoming direct and condition damage for each enemy they can “hit” with it in 1200 range. Let’s say you 1v1 in PvP, the Gyro is only detecting 1 enemy with each pulse of their Gyro Armor so it is balanced. Then you move to middle point to join a team fight. Now there are 3 enemies, so it’s a little sturdier and you can still get use out of it.

To be honest I don’t think that’s a perfect solution either, but the more I think about this the more I’m just really confused why the decision was made to go with more AI and seemingly learn nothing from past mistakes. Frustrating.

I am willing to bet that the current devs are not the sames ones who had to deal with turrets.

lorddarkflare.9186:

Adamantium.3682:

I definitely agree Gyro cooldown needs to start when they’re first created. Adjust cooldowns from there if necessary.

Also they need something to protect them from getting blown up immediately. The more I think about this the less I believe it is as simple as just health buff or damage negation as both of those options do not scale well with increasing numbers of enemies. It’s either well balanced in group AOE fights with lots of damage flying around and overpowered in solo, or well balanced for solo and useless in group. This may just be a product of how the game works, if so this explains why it’s so hard for them to get turrets right. But if that is true why did they try again with Gyros?

Maybe each Gyro gets a “Gyro Armor” buff. This buff pulses on them every second, -X% incoming direct and condition damage for each enemy they can “hit” with it in 1200 range. Let’s say you 1v1 in PvP, the Gyro is only detecting 1 enemy with each pulse of their Gyro Armor so it is balanced. Then you move to middle point to join a team fight. Now there are 3 enemies, so it’s a little sturdier and you can still get use out of it.

To be honest I don’t think that’s a perfect solution either, but the more I think about this the more I’m just really confused why the decision was made to go with more AI and seemingly learn nothing from past mistakes. Frustrating.

I am willing to bet that the current devs are not the sames ones who had to deal with turrets.

To me that doesn’t matter at all, they work on the same game they have to know how unpopular turrets are.

All of the following is based on speculations, so grain of salt and all that.

I think one of the big problem of gyros is that there’s not much actual play being created around the skills.

• You have zero control over them, it’s fire-and-forget for you with inconsistent results.
• Enemies don’t need to think too much about them because they stay in cleave range already, so even if gyros are really powerful and you wanted to counter them, you don’t actually have to change the the way you are playing to do so. There’s also not a secondary ability you have to watch out for like most other pet skills in the game.

Another one is how they do not seem to synergize much with the rest of Scrapper. Some bruiser-specific benefits would be nice. I’m not saying they should only be useful for hammer engis, but at least not make being in melee disadvantageous. (we are mostly in mid~melee range for many builds anyways)

• Possible useful effects : A pulsing short-range, short-duration vulnerability/weakness? Ranged CC, both soft and hard variety? Combo fields useful for bruisers, like Ice field for Frost Aura?(mobile fields will make perfect sense on gyros) Position based offensive effects like PBAoE, tethers, directional push/pull, orbits, boomerangs, etc.? Combine some of them, like boomerang projectile that cripples on the way out and pushes towards you on the way back?

Re : On-death/manual destruction effects

On-death effect can be messy counterplay wise, and does not solve the issue of you not having control over how to use gyros.
Manual destruction effects can work, but the effects will have to be carefully thought out so there’s a meaningful use for both passive and active component. Having a persistent pet then to incentivize losing them can turn them into another case of healing turret, people will just summon them and immediately destroy them for reliable effect. Also, having an HP bar means if your gyro is under attack, it is always advantageous to destroy them when they get low, which then raises the question of ‘why not make them on-death effect as a QoL change?’
Maybe making them just overcharge abilities on a cooldown can work, meaning you don’t sacrifice them to activate secondary abilities. This can reward you for keeping them alive longer by letting you overcharge multiple times.

Ideas

I don’t see a way out of all these problems without making gyros invincible or giving you a lot more control over it. And given the time constraint I’d go with the invincible option. Maybe they can make it so that gyros are invincible but the opponent can ‘persuade’ you out of keeping it.

• Example : Medic gyro heals you over time, but you can sacrifice some of its duration for a quick interrupt/aegis/evade/stunbreak etc. (Secondary effect can be anything, my imagination’s running wild, but I don’t think anything crazy can be done in a short time.)
• It can either be a straight up sacrifice, or decrease the duration per use(since it’s now invincible, hp bar can be used for duration. 15hp, -1hp per second, additional hp damage when using secondary abilities. Fuel system without UI clutter, right there. boom!)

Some other thoughts and ideas.

• Shredder gyro. The idea of an on-demand long-term whirl finisher is interesting, but it will be very unreliable outside of niche situations until you make whirl finisher itself more reliable first. Also, what’s to differentiate it from a turret? The ability to move the shredder is definitely a good idea and will help a lot, but I think the base effect itself also has to be a bit more than just whirl finisher. Maybe apply conditions or cc around it, like cripple/torment or occasional pull on touch?
• Purge gyro. I don’t like the sound of a skill that cleanses condis slowly and automatically over a long period of time, both as a scrapper and as an opponent. I’d like to see it be given more active power and less passive power. How about a big condi cleanse on activation + short resistance pulse(1s of it every 3s or so)?
• Blast gyro. This feels like a jarring inconsistency. Also this seems way too easy to avoid. Maybe make the recharge very very low but the gyro slow and fragile? Or make the explosion be a field you cannot dodge out of, like Ele Air #4, so you HAVE to destroy it before it reaches you? Or… a crazy idea : give it slick shoes.

Not very happy about bulwark gyro either,(for similar reasons to purge gyro) but not sure what can be done about it. I think sneak gyro is pretty cool as is.