Guild Wars 2

I’m doing a full review of each class’s Elite Specializations here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/All-Elite-Specializations-Analysis/first#post5574892

The following is my analysis of the Scrapper.

I’ll be covering the following things in this review…
01) General Descriptions
02) New Traits Analysis
03) New Weapon Analysis
04) New Skills Analysis
05) Gearing Options
06) Rune/Sigil Synergies
07) PvE Usefulness
08) PvP Usefulness
09) WvW Usefulness
10) Overall Opinion

Engineer – Scrapper

General Description
The Scrapper is a class that really re-defines how we look at Engineers. Many Engineers rely on their kits or turrets – along with many other combinations of skills and traits. This class is, along with the Mesmer, considered one of the more complex and difficult classes to learn. Interestingly, the Scrapper elite specialization actually makes the Engineer easier to figure out and play. The Scrapper is primarily a melee spec. The most notable feature of the Scrapper is its mobility and control skills available during combat making it a very agile and powerful addition to almost any team.

New Traits Analysis

Minor Traits
Function Gyro:
Grants access to Gyro Skills, the Hammer, and the Function Gyro interaction skill. — 30s ICD
The Function Gyro is a unique addition to the Scrapper. This allows you to rez players or finish enemies from a distance of up to 750 radius if you have them selected. Activation sends out a Function Gyro that can be destroyed and controlled so it’s not a 100% rez or kill.
Decisive Renown:
When you revive an ally or finish a foe you grant Superspeed and Might
to nearby allies. — 10s ICD
This is a very powerful utility with great synergy with the Function Gyro.
Impact Savant:
Outgoing Stun durations +25%. Incoming Stun durations -25%.
Just a simple trait that makes your life easier and their lives harder.

Adept Traits
Shocking Speed:
Leep/Blast Finishers in a Lightning Field applies Superspeed around you. — 10s ICD
Powerful synergy with other traits and skills along with great team utility.
Stabilization Core
When a Function Gyro is activated, you and the Gyro gain Stability.
Mostly useful in PvP or WvW for rezzing or finishing players.
Recovery Matrix:
Using your heal skill applies Protection.
Very useful for recovering health.

Master Traits
Rapid Regeneration:
Regenerate independent amounts of health if affected by Swiftness, Superspeed, or both.
Has amazing recovery potential.
Expert Examination:
Stunning or Dazing a foe applies Vulnerability and Weakness to them.
Fantastic way to mitigate their damage and increase yours.
Mass Momentum:
Gain Power based on Toughness and Might while you have Stability.
This good synergy in many ways, but the most common use will be with the trait Juggernaut.

Grandmaster Traits
Adaptive Armor:
Gain stacking toughness when struck. Reduce incoming condition damage
by 20%. — 1s ICD
Powerful tanking trait.
Final Salvo:
Gyros grant Superspeed and create Lightning Fields when destroyed.
Great way to maintain constant Lightning Field combos.
Perfectly Weighted:
Increase Hammer damage by 10%. Evading attacks grants Stability.
Typical DPS trait with a little utility.

New Weapon Analysis
The Scrapper gains access to the Hammer.

Auto-Attack
The attack chain will net you 2 stacks of Might and land 2 stacks of Vuln on your target. This chain’s attack speed is a bit slow.
Electro-Whirl — 6s ICD
Decent damage and creates a reflective field around you for 2 seconds.
Rocket Charge — 10s ICD
Amazingly powerful attack. Execute 3 Leap Finishers towards or around your target while Evading attacks.
Shock Shield — 20s ICD
Block attacks for 2 seconds while striking foes in front of you causing 10 stacks of Vuln.
Thunderclap — 24s ICD
Stun ground targeted area creating a Lightning Field and apply 1 stack of Vuln per pulse.

New Skills Analysis
The Scrapper gains access to Gyros. Tool Belt skills will be linked via ‘||’.

Medic Gyro — 30s ICD
Deploy a Medic Gyro to heal nearby allies.
Powerful healing without Healing Power, but scales very well with Healing Power.
||
Reconstruction Field — 25s ICD
Gain pulsing Protection for 5 pulses while creating a Water field.
Great synergy with many things in this class.

Bulwark Gyro — 30s ICD
Deploy a Bulwark Gyro to apply Watchful Eye to nearby allies.
Takes half of the incoming damage from all affected by Watchful Eye. This Gyro will likely die very quickly.
||
Defense Field — 25s ICD
Project a reflective dome around you for 5 seconds.
Great way to keep keep projectiles off you or to cover an ally.

Blast Gyro Tag — 25s ICD
Hurl a tracking dart for your Blast Gyro to seek out and detonate at.
Huge damage and causes KB on impact.
||
Bypass Coating — 30s ICD
Grant Superspeed to nearby allies.
Good run around skill.

Shredder Gyro — 30s ICD
Deploy a Shredder Gyro to WHIRL at target location.
This Gyro combos with a Field 24 times if the field is present for all 12 seconds.
||
Spare Capacitor — 24s ICD
Set down a Lightning Field at your location that causes Daze on the first pulse.
Great skill to use to start off a fight.

Purge Gyro — 30s ICD
Deploy a Purge Gyro to remove conditions on you and allies.
Good way to heal party cleanse condi’s.
||
Chemical Field — 25s ICD
Generate a Poison Field
Decent way to apply area Poison and Weakness.

Sneak Gyro — 30s ICD
Deploy a Sneak Gyro to stealth nearby allies.
This can apply perma-stealth for the duration of 30 seconds, but then goes on recharge. The Gyro itself does not and cannot be stealthed. This is fantastic for Thieves.
||
Detection Pulse — 20s ICD
Remove Stealth from enemies in a 900 radius.
Amazing way to combat stealth users.
~!~ BUG: Will sometimes not remove stealth. ~!~

NOTE: All Gyros have a flip skill that allows you to detonate them causing light damage or other traited effects to occur.

Gearing Options
The following are acceptable gearing types to consider for a Scrapper.

NOTE: These are types that can work depending on the overall goal of your build. They are not all equal as some are much better than others.

Power: Berserker’s, Zealot’s, Soldier’s, Valkyrie
Precision: Rampager’s
Toughness: Knight’s, Settler’s
Vitality: Sentinel’s
Condition: Sinister, Carrion, Rabid, Dire
Healing: Cleric’s, Apothecary’s

Rune/Sigl Synergies

NOTE: These are types that can work depending on the overall goal of your build. They are not all equal as some are much better than others.

Superior Rune of (the)…
Power: Baelfire, Brawler, Fire, Flame Legion, Hoelbrak, Mesmer, Ogre, Pack, Strength
Precision: Eagle, Lyssa, Ranger, Theif
Toughness: Dolyak, Earth, Forgeman, Melandru, Mercy
Vitality: Exuberance
Condition: Aristocracy, Balthazar, Orr, Scavenging, Undead
Healing: Defender, Dwayna, Grove, Monk, Water

Superior Sigil of…
Attribute Bonus: Force
Duration Bonus: Debility, Paralyzation, Peril
Chance on Hit: Frailty, Water, Purity
Chance on Crit: Air, Blood, Fire, Generosity, Nullification, Rage, Strength
On Kill: Luck, Restoration, Speed, Benevolence, Bloodlust, Corruption, Cruelty, Life, Momentum, Perception
On Swap: (Must Use Kits) Battle, Cleansing, Doom, Leeching, Renewal

PvE Usefulness
Entirely useful. This class can now match the DPS of other Berserker speed run classes with decent sustain.

PvP Usefulness
Generally good all around.

WvW Usefulness
The Sneak Gyro will make zerging a very interesting experience for you .

Overall Opinion
I personally find the Scrapper very refreshing for the Engineer due to it now feeling a little more intuitive and fluid to play with. This has a lot of support, tanking, and damaging options making it rather versatile and giving it a fair amount of net worth in the community.

I would honestly suggest you amp up your reviewing a bit. Enjoyed reading it, but there is a looooot of space for improvements, to be quite honest with ya – it’s due to you not really going into negatives, being very short on positives, sometimes just stating the obvious, and a lack of comparison with other, existing specialization lines – Engineer in particular already got all new traits to play with before the Elite Specializations, more than most classes.

• You point out positives just fine! I enjoy that! That said, you are keeping all your points very very short, and oftenstick to the things that we already know.

• For positives, don’t be shy about pointing out some of the negatives too! Heck, check what your peers in the actual Scrapper Beta Feedback threads are giving.

• Some points I’m not so sure if you tested them out in detail before you wrote this: Sneak Gyro honestly is a less than helpful change for WvW. The thing is slooow. It’s always visible. Its hardcap is a max stealthed number of five people. Similar story for hammer, it is actually not very good at keeping up with zergs or chasing people as the #3 chain is less than someone running with swiftness.

• I liked that you listed Rune and Sigil synergies, but the list is a bit explanation-less, and I personally don’t see how these are much more helpful than the runes and sigils Base Engineer already uses. Plus, there’s at least one you forgot: Energy. A regular extra dodge together with the hammer’s tankiness would allow some great sustain.

Anyone notice that NONE of the new scrapper skills are available underwater? What would we do if we had to play the underwater fractal or exploring underwater stuff? Pretty much being a scrapper is useless while in water.

Should be merged with the feedback thread…

Aravind.9610:

Anyone notice that NONE of the new scrapper skills are available underwater? What would we do if we had to play the underwater fractal or exploring underwater stuff? Pretty much being a scrapper is useless while in water.

Same goes for FT juggernauts…

Guess why people hate Underwater combat.
It disables skills

Sold Out.7625:

• You point out positives just fine! I enjoy that! That said, you are keeping all your points very very short, and oftenstick to the things that we already know.

• For positives, don’t be shy about pointing out some of the negatives too! Heck, check what your peers in the actual Scrapper Beta Feedback threads are giving.

• Some points I’m not so sure if you tested them out in detail before you wrote this: Sneak Gyro honestly is a less than helpful change for WvW. The thing is slooow. It’s always visible. Its hardcap is a max stealthed number of five people. Similar story for hammer, it is actually not very good at keeping up with zergs or chasing people as the #3 chain is less than someone running with swiftness.

• I liked that you listed Rune and Sigil synergies, but the list is a bit explanation-less, and I personally don’t see how these are much more helpful than the runes and sigils Base Engineer already uses. Plus, there’s at least one you forgot: Energy. A regular extra dodge together with the hammer’s tankiness would allow some great sustain.

Thanks for your polite response – I’ll explain a bit more as to why my style of review was structured in this manner.

If you took the link at the beginning of the post you would have seen this statement in bold…

“NOTE: I will not be covering complete builds simply because I found it more educational for me to create my own builds as I learned more about the class and its overall synergy options that suited my personal play-style. I will be providing subtle suggestions for where to focus your attention within each specialization and may point a finger here and there to give you ideas for the basics of a complete build.”

I came in with a few assumptions. The first assumption was that before or after reading this thread you will have likely gone to the Scrapper Beta Feedback thread and seen everything else I didn’t cover. The second part was that when referring to Gearing Options in general I assumed a slightly higher level of understanding from the reader than may have been immediately present. I provided the break down on Gear and Runes based on their primary stat, but the selections were based on a 5/6 or 6/6 set of Runes that I deemed useful for any type of build you could come up with. Being as I wasn’t covering total builds I chose to opt out of full explanations, but instead provide you with which options would be best to look at. You could look at the gear line and say “I want a Power build” and then have your scope limited to the ones present. Then you could look at the Runes and say “I want Toughness” and see my suggestions for Toughness runes. The sigils is where it got a little more generic since these are things meant to tweak builds – not define them – so I just provided which ones would be worth looking at regardless of your build choices to help limit your researching.

Also, I left out Energy because I didn’t see it having a drastic impact on the overall performance of the Scrapper due to the lack of major “dodge” mechanics in the Engineer Traits in general. Energy can be an option, but I find adding a kit just for that sigil not to be worth it. That is not saying that adding kits in general is a bad thing – because almost all non-turret/elixir engi’s use them. I’d just rather gain an advantage that seems a bit more impactful on the overall fight by choosing something that provides me with health or damages/debilitates my foe. The Engineer comes with a few mechanisms that can be used to cover for the lack of that sigil in my opinion (shield off-hand, gear shield, hammer #4, elixir s and trait duplicate, etc).

As to having tested things. I did do a bit of testing in every game mode. The Sneak Gyro is slow – yes – but, there is a work around for that. It requires 2 Engineers to work – simply have 1 Engineer “lead” the group and the others follow a little behind. The lead Engineer will have to start and stop every so often, but the stealth field will always be in front of your team allowing for easier stealthing. Also as for the 5-target rule – you can break that. Ally targeting is dictated based on a few things, but the first of which is those in your Party and then those near you. Therefore, if you have multiple Engineers in different parties you can divvy up how that stealth is being applied to those who are in the Zerg more easily. Leaving 1-2 open slots in a party will allow for accidental additions like a party members pet or a few minions to come in too without being detected.

I didn’t go into much detail for the class due to not wanting to influence people based on my opinion of it. I also wrote up all 9 Elite Specialization Reviews in 12 hours before the beta ended so I had to pick and choose what I wanted to focus on. ^^;

im not gonna go into much detail because i already know everything youve said without even reading it since you arent exactly offering opinions on what changes you think should be made to scrapper and instead youre just saying everything i can see visually on gw2skills.net, but this really caught my eye:

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

Also, I left out Energy because I didn’t see it having a drastic impact on the overall performance of the Scrapper due to the lack of major “dodge” mechanics in the Engineer Traits in general. Energy can be an option, but I find adding a kit just for that sigil not to be worth it. That is not saying that adding kits in general is a bad thing – because almost all non-turret/elixir engi’s use them. I’d just rather gain an advantage that seems a bit more impactful on the overall fight by choosing something that provides me with health or damages/debilitates my foe. The Engineer comes with a few mechanisms that can be used to cover for the lack of that sigil in my opinion (shield off-hand, gear shield, hammer #4, elixir s and trait duplicate, etc).

prior to 6/23 energy was actually one of our best sigils, even in pve. in terms of practical usage, it easily beat out something dumb like force, because the no-icd dodge bomb made up for doing “5% less” damage. in addition, it stacks with vigor nicely and it offers a source of damage mitigation for a lot of builds that are especially lacking in it when blinds are essentially a nonfactor.

post 6/23 with the addition of a 10sec icd to dodge bombs, its not as great… but the builds that it was good with are more or less unchanged with respect to energy adding much needed mitigation. its still a go-to.

insanemaniac.2456:

prior to 6/23 energy was actually one of our best sigils, even in pve. in terms of practical usage, it easily beat out something dumb like force, because the no-icd dodge bomb made up for doing “5% less” damage. in addition, it stacks with vigor nicely and it offers a source of damage mitigation for a lot of builds that are especially lacking in it when blinds are essentially a nonfactor.

post 6/23 with the addition of a 10sec icd to dodge bombs, its not as great… but the builds that it was good with are more or less unchanged with respect to energy adding much needed mitigation. its still a go-to.

Actually, if you spec into Tools (which sadly is the main line that one would use to replace Scrapper) Energy has some of tis old value returned; Tools has a trait that gives us 10% more damage on full endurance. So a kit swap after a dodge keeps that trait up and going. I know, a bit offtopic. As for a reply to OP, it’s a bit late and I’ve got a cold, but I’ll write something up in reply if wanted.

Arantheal.7396:

Should be merged with the feedback thread…

But… but… special snowflake!

insanemaniac.2456:

post 6/23 with the addition of a 10sec icd to dodge bombs, its not as great… but the builds that it was good with are more or less unchanged with respect to energy adding much needed mitigation. its still a go-to.

My only qualm with that statement is that the 10s ICD is not really “visible” on the Engineer. Other classes with weapon swap will see the 10s ICD based on their weapon swap recharge (or a Warrior in Discipline just needing to count 2 weapon swaps). But, with kits you get a 1s ICD before it’s able to be used again. This makes it a bit more complicated to know exactly when the sigil’s ICD is ready which makes it a bit less reliable for someone who really isn’t good at monitoring these invisible ICD’s to accurately know when that option is now available to them.

We’ve recently seen some interesting QoL changes for other class traits so I’ll be interested in seeing if we get some QoL changes to our sigils too.

Small side note:
I was also omitting Energy because I felt the Hammer was almost too powerful to switch off of in its current state due to its low recharges. However, I’ll note that the Bomb kit does make for some very good combo options. I’m just not sure that Energy would be more useful in a situation where you’re trying for combos left and right unless you’re in Explosives and traited for your evasive blast finisher with Bomb kit and even then I’d almost feel like Battle or Renewal (depending on offense or defense) may have a better pay off. However, that is my opinion until someone can provide me with a strong counter-example. ^^;