So with this patch the bulwark no longer takes 95% less damage from transferred damage in pve. So if you find yourself wondering why it exploded on placement, even before it rendered properly its because someone somewhere was tickled or someone sneezed.
Just a heads up for people who used it for things other than the toolbelt.
So now the question is have they fixed the bug where the damage is transferred before armor calculation meaning it will take way more than half of our damage. Any bets?
Ill be back soon after some quick testing in the lobby.
EDIT: So of course they haven’t fixed that, still seeing numbers like this:
EDIT2: on second thought the title should be PSA- Bulwark, as the toughness bug applies in all gamemodes, if there is a mod around i would appreciate an edit in the title.
Wow it dies almost instantly now when fighting any SW champ, before it rarely if ever died before its duration was up. Can’t imagine it having much use against any boss/champ now outside the toolbelt skill. Thank you Anet for, once again, nerfing something nice that engis have that isn’t related to kits, instead of fixing any of the dozens of bugs that still affect the class. We really appreciate it.
Its a bugfix so to say, sadly this was actually something unique we could have contributed with in say, whats the name again? Oh raids, yeah that’s it.
As if the dps mentality and enrage mechanics didn’t already force engis into burn builds for that one already.
But the armor bug applies to pvp as well, this needs a change asap.
I really like playing support and i really like playing bruisers but this gyro isn’t support, its not even noticeable solo.
Currently i would much prefer if it simply dispensed protection aoe in a way similar to stealth gyro. The damage reduction you would gain both in solo and group play would far outmatch this current state in all game modes. The damage absorption is very much a gimmick when the gyro itself is so easily brought down.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Bulwark Gyro was really the only reason i continued to use Scrapper in PvE. It gave my engineer a great way to support a team and myself for a limited amount of time and now they’ve taken that away my making this thing incredibly flimsy and barely able to take a hit from a regular single trash mob.
I guess it’s really time to scrap the scrapper and go back to a regular power build.
This was the only thing that made my build viable. Now I’m just going to spend all my time running from waypoints.
All of the other gyros are lackluster. I guess they figured bulwark gyro should be too?
I was having a lot of fun with my engi, then I tried some of my other characters and was shocked by how much more effort went into their elite specializations.
Were any other gyros/pets/minions/illusions/generic summons hit with this change as well?
If this is true, Bulwark still has 95% dmg reduction from PvE mob cleave, it just doesn’t take 95% reduced damage transferred from players anymore. Summons and illusions should not be affected by this change.
Irenio said to prevent bulwark gyro from becoming too oppressive in 1v1s, it has low toughness and health, that if it were to protect a group taking AOE damage, it should die very quickly. It means that amazing utility that players have been reporting is due to a fluke; bulwark gyro was only taking 5% of the transferred damage it should have been taking.
I suggest that bulwark gyro scale its health and toughness according to the number of players it is protecting.
The 95% damage reduction on pets/summons was only intended to protect them from cleave and AoE. It’s a (poor) solution to the pets lack of active defence. Bulwark was only ever meant to absorb 50% damage from players near it, the 95% reduction was bug.
Bulwark is now functionally terrible? Working precisely as intended.
The 95% damage reduction on pets/summons was only intended to protect them from cleave and AoE. It’s a (poor) solution to the pets lack of active defence. Bulwark was only ever meant to absorb 50% damage from players near it, the 95% reduction was bug.
Bulwark is now functionally terrible? Working precisely as intended.
And thats the sad part, they did not see any conflict in making something supposed to take hits for you unable to take hits for you, not to mention anything in its aoe.
One solution i suppose would be to have it be very glassy (heck its already very glassy, in toughness gear as in the op picture it took 3 times as much damage as i did) and have it apply a pure damage reduction to non bulwarks within range, meaning you deal with it in exactly the same way you deal with phantasms. Kill them.
This would help it in all gamemodes. Of course i know scrappers are extremely tanky, but most of those builds have nothing to do with gyros do they? They slap on the hammer on our other good base utilities and traits and work from there.
Since our new mechanic is hardly something very exciting we end up as engineer but with a hammer, and on a profession thats supposedly all about utilities and less about weapon set its not bad, just sad.
And here it goes, my only reason of playing Zerk Scrapper in PvE goes away (besides hammer).
Brb, going to respec to Sinister/Viper Condi engie.
GJ Anet!
Limiting build diversity is what we need, especially in PvE!
And here it goes, my only reason of playing Zerk Scrapper in PvE goes away (besides hammer).
Brb, going to respec to Sinister/Viper Condi engie.
GJ Anet!
Limiting build diversity is what we need, especially in PvE!
Ahhh yes the nerfing continunes. First AA…then my beloved HGH and now the bulwark. Good sooo… lets see. Ah yea the hammer still is viable.. better get to it ireno, it aint gonna nerf itself….
Ahhh yes the nerfing continunes. First AA…then my beloved HGH and now the bulwark. Good sooo… lets see. Ah yea the hammer still is viable.. better get to it ireno, it aint gonna nerf itself….
Yeah, given that the hammer is essentially what makes the scrapper strong at the moment it will probably be next on the chopping block. This is what happens when you give a class notorious for its sustain a specialization focused on sustain. Either we become even tankier or we do not, and then the spec is pointless. At the moment the hammer alone carries the spec to a high degree (and the protection on heal which is better used with healing turret than with gyros).
And some of the traits are only strong because they stack with traits of similar purpose.
Speedy recovery stacks well with backpack regenerator and other regeneration traits for example, and should we really be surprised of our might generation capabilities when we got lots of firefields, blasts and 3 traits for might stacking (not including hidden flask and similar minors)? And with hammer might on autos.
Ahhh yes the nerfing continunes. First AA…then my beloved HGH and now the bulwark. Good sooo… lets see. Ah yea the hammer still is viable.. better get to it ireno, it aint gonna nerf itself….
Yeah, given that the hammer is essentially what makes the scrapper strong at the moment it will probably be next on the chopping block. This is what happens when you give a class notorious for its sustain a specialization focused on sustain. Either we become even tankier or we do not, and then the spec is pointless. At the moment the hammer alone carries the spec to a high degree (and the protection on heal which is better used with healing turret than with gyros).
And some of the traits are only strong because they stack with traits of similar purpose.
Speedy recovery stacks well with backpack regenerator and other regeneration traits for example, and should we really be surprised of our might generation capabilities when we got lots of firefields, blasts and 3 traits for might stacking (not including hidden flask and similar minors)? And with hammer might on autos.
and thats exactly why i smell the next nerf a mile against the wind… and this time its the hammer for sure
Thee is nothing wrong with bulwark. Anyone claiming it is not viable is either over reacting for the attention to a perceived issue, or has a bit of a learn to play issue.
WvW Never had a 95% damage reductions, and this skill serves me great purpose there, and survives better the some of the claims here declaring a lack of survivability in PvE.
Thee is nothing wrong with bulwark. Anyone claiming it is not viable is either over reacting for the attention to a perceived issue, or has a bit of a learn to play issue.
WvW Never had a 95% damage reductions, and this skill serves me great purpose there, and survives better the some of the claims here declaring a lack of survivability in PvE.
I was probably over reacting. I tested it out and here’s what I noticed: I play a zerker scrapper build, when I start to take damage I don’t have much time to react so I’m often using my “oh sh***” buttons in combination. Because the bulwark gyro can be healed and benefits from boons it works really well in combination with the healing gyro and the healing gyro’s toolbelt skill, just for example.
Having a %50 reduction in damage for the full duration of the gyro (15 seconds) is pretty kitten overpowered when compared to other defensive abilities imo.
Thee is nothing wrong with bulwark. Anyone claiming it is not viable is either over reacting for the attention to a perceived issue, or has a bit of a learn to play issue.
WvW Never had a 95% damage reductions, and this skill serves me great purpose there, and survives better the some of the claims here declaring a lack of survivability in PvE.
I was probably over reacting. I tested it out and here’s what I noticed: I play a zerker scrapper build, when I start to take damage I don’t have much time to react so I’m often using my “oh sh***” buttons in combination. Because the bulwark gyro can be healed and benefits from boons it works really well in combination with the healing gyro and the healing gyro’s toolbelt skill, just for example.
Having a %50 reduction in damage for the full duration of the gyro (15 seconds) is pretty kitten overpowered when compared to other defensive abilities imo.
Except you don’t have 15 seconds of 50% damage reduction, both you and the gyro take damage leading to the gyros very very early demise.
Either it takes half of the damage you would have taken, that is the damage that would otherwise have been dealt to your healthbar (the preferable version in my opinion, lets call it model 1) or it takes the damage before anything else is considered (model 2).
I did some testing with a friend and the damage is taken by your gyro before your toughness and even armor is put into calculation. I removed my armor, used zerker amulet and then i almost got the same damage that the gyro takes.
This means that if i run my build with high toughness and i use my bulwark what should happen with model 1 is that the damage between us is divided equally, so that if a pulmonary impact deals 1600 damage to me without bulwark i take 800, and so does my gyro. What happens now is that i take 800, so far so good but my gyro takes 2600. Maybe this is how its supposed to work and we are following model 2.
If i now go and use the mesmers phantasmal defender you get exactly the expected result of model 1. You take half the damage and so does your phantasm. From some quick testing it looked like the phantasmal defender seemed to kick into effect before protection.
Worth noting is that PD states that the damage is transferred to your phantasm while gyro states that it takes half of incoming damage. It is fully possible that this is a intended design decision in which case this is not a bug but merely a (in my opinion) very bad design decision in following model 2. Do note that the damage transferred to th PD can still critt independently as it did with the gyro.
In model 1 the gyro itself can be glassy and easily brought down, but the prevented damage will be the same on a toughness based character as a zerk character during if ended prematurely. In model 2 the redirected damage remains the same on a tanky character and a superzerk and while the gyro have then prevented lets say 5k damage on the bunker it has then prevented 10k damage on a zerker.
In its current iteration it would be more reliable if it only affected you and no other allies, especially considering we have other gyros who in turn are affected as well. It has little synergy with the entire idea of having other gyros, as the stats on the bulwark is balanced around not being to oppressive in a 1v1 and this does not take into consideration any cleave your other gyros take.
From our testing:
-The bulwark got, very, very, very little armor (like someone naked without toughness?).
-The damage is divided in two before anything else happens, following model 2 and this is then dealt to the glassy gyro.
-The critical hits are calculated separately (you can take a non crit while the bulwark takes a crit and vice versa, this is also true for phantasmal defender which blurs the line between the two models)
-phantasmal defender follows model 1 and takes half of the damage actually dealt to you otherwise (following model 1). This means that the difference hangs in the wording incoming damage taken or incoming damage transferred. As a result the damage taken by phantasmal defender is lower.
-Protection on you has no effect on the gyro or phantasmal defender.
Things i have yet to test:
-protection on phantasmal defender vs protection on bulwark
-more to be added(?)
Once again it is possible that they are supposed to use different models and that the damage transferred and damage taken is entirely different, in which case i criticize that decision, if nothing else then because of the confusion when going from one to the other.
And the reason this is a PSA regarding the 95% damage reduction in pve is that there is a playerbase that have been fooled in its effectiveness due to the bug and they might not realize what is happening. Due to it also not being in the patchnotes.
But id argue that the second issue is more important due to it affecting pvp as well.
Okay thats all for now, sorry for the wall. There might be a lot of errors and brainfarts, ill come back and clean it up in a while hopefully.
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