Guild Wars 2

Thanks Irenio, some may hate me for saying it but I like what you did with hammer (well at least the idea) rest I’m not really too concerned with >.<. Glad you’re keeping tabs, with only one BWE I’m sure you’re a bit more crunched than the other guys. GL

i (we?) really appreciate the communication!

It’s nice to see some changes and even better to see that you take a look at the forums AND react accordingly.

But the main flaw right now is about the CD the gyros have. The CD that starts when they die and not when they are created. You just changed the Medic Gyro to an even worse state than before when this isn’t gonna change. A high inital heal means you want to get rid of it asap to have a lower CD in order to keep up the heal over time.

I hope you get my point. I think – in my humble opinion – it would be a GREAT quality of life change for all professions, if spirits, weapons, gyros, mantras, elementals would start their CD when they are used the first time, not when they expire. Sure you could adjust some numbers, but those skills are just in a bad shape all together because of this system / mechanic.

I’m sure you’ve seen the positive feedback at the mesmers forums when this … unintended mantra change happened … you know what I mean

4.5K heal when activated sounds like a decent adjustment but was the amount medic Gyro heals over time also increased as well?

Also, a lot of us feel that the Scrapper is missing the ability to lower Gyro Cooldown from the Trait lines.

Thank you for talking to us, its really all the forums ever ask for. im hoping we get some armor besides magitech that looks, well, engi/scrapperish.

This put my mind at ease a little, the only thing I hoped for was a alternative to the power grenadier build. I absolutely hate that build and I just wanted some more variety for damage engineer builds.

For Bulwark Gyro,
Is it possible to up the armour on it but still take full damage (well 50% of other players hit) it absorbs?
IMO it’s alright if it dies quickly from aoe other allies are taking, but that doesn’t mean it needs to melt from aoe it takes directly does it?

Irenio, the invis dart on the gyro bothers me. Will that be a amination that you have to screenshot to see or will it be something that can be blocked and/or reflected?

I also want to comfirm two things ( if I may )
Rocket charge has 3 leaps each with there own evade frames on them?
Does the trait " Impact Savant " work with over charged shot? For CC’ing an enemy for longer.

I would also like to say great job with what you have shown us so far! The toolbelt move-able reflect, the invis gyro and the hamer look amazing and I can’t wait to achi great things in fractals with them plus the traits.

Sarah

Sarahfull.4930:

Irenio, the invis dart on the gyro bothers me. Will that be a amination that you have to screenshot to see or will it be something that can be blocked and/or reflected?

I also want to comfirm two things ( if I may )
Rocket charge has 3 leaps each with there own evade frames on them?
Does the trait " Impact Savant " work with over charged shot? For CC’ing an enemy for longer.

I would also like to say great job with what you have shown us so far! The toolbelt move-able reflect, the invis gyro and the hamer look amazing and I can’t wait to achi great things in fractals with them plus the traits.

Sarah

Reminds me to ask. Is it true that stealth gyro will agro in PVE? I mean I honestly think it would be OP in PVE 30s! wowza, but you do move on quite quickly usually, even pets that don’t agro in PVE usually trigger effects like traps, turrets and what have you. But I can’t help but feel the pulling agro kills it’s quality of use in PVE as I can always just slot smoke bomb and stack 15s of stealth if I want it, so why would I want stealth gyro? Use my elite slot and put it on cooldown or slot a kit use a skill and swap it out if I wanted to. Seems like an easy choice.

I’m ALL for it’s being seen in PVP, it’s a balance issue 30s of stealth completely unseen, yeah that’s OP. I just wish it worked like a normal pet. The PVE could be OP but again, you don’t just sit in one place for all that long, the only exception would be rezzing someone which if you’re using an elite… ehh… but I could see that concern. Just again, seems useless in it’s current manifestation as far as PVE is concerned which as you know if you read any of my posts, is a big concern of mine.

Thanks Irenio, I appreciate you doing this after you’ve already worked all day and are presumably on your own personal time.

• I actually just logged into the forums right now to change my mind about hammer damage in the thread that has been started for it. I agree it should not be top damage option, as long as it is worth using I will be happy. The weapon is far too awesome for me to say it needs to even be tied with grenades. That’s ridiculous. That you did any buff to the auto attack damage sounds great combined with some of the numbers people have deduced since last week.

• I am glad to hear Medic Gyro is on your radar. The initial heal sounds like it can work depending on how the pulse over time plays out, I’m eager to test it and see how it feels. Please consider changing gyro cooldown to start when they are deployed. Without that Medic Gyro will always be self destructed immediately as Healing Turret is, as will other Gyros once they have performed their initial function. We want incentive to keep them alive. Adjust cooldowns if necessary. I don’t like this on turrets, but I can see how they are long term so it is at least justified or you could immediately re use them. However Gyros are very short term I very much think the cooldown should start as soon as you use them.

• I appreciate that you want to see how Bulwark Gyro plays for us before considering changes. I hope that it has more health than what we saw in the POI. 11k is just not enough, especially with low armor. I fear it will get cleaved to death before it has much of a chance to do anything, just like turrets do. Except this one you don’t even have a choice to try and put it out of harm’s way. This makes me think the same mistakes that were made with turrets are being made again, and that is frustrating. I do agree that it shouldn’t last very long if it is soaking up damage for your whole party at once, but by the numbers that means (if it had 12k health) on average each party member has 2400 damage absorbed, at best. It will be far less than that in reality because the Bulwark Gyro will probably be hit with direct damage for a few thousand in the mean time. I am willing to be wrong (like I was with hammer damage) and I am willing to test it honestly and with an open mind, but I really don’t see a favorable outcome with what we know about the Bulwark Gyro right now.

• Thank you for reviewing feedback on the Function Gyro. I’m eager to see how this thing works, but as our elite spec mechanic I’m not thrilled about the scarcity of situations I’ll even be able to use it. I appreciate you looking into the cooldown and duration so that we can at least use it reliably when we do have to use it.

This type of post is exactly what I was hoping you would do when I started a thread on Scrapper Design Intent. Thank you again for taking some of your personal time to communicate with us and give us a little behind the scenes for some of your design choices.

BobbyT.7192:

For Bulwark Gyro,
Is it possible to up the armour on it but still take full damage (well 50% of other players hit) it absorbs?
IMO it’s alright if it dies quickly from aoe other allies are taking, but that doesn’t mean it needs to melt from aoe it takes directly does it?

This is a really great suggestion in my opinion. If you give it a ton of HP, it becomes really oppressive in 1v1 type situations. Giving it some protection against AoE and cleaves seems like a really good way to approach it.

Knox.8962:

BobbyT.7192:

For Bulwark Gyro,
Is it possible to up the armour on it but still take full damage (well 50% of other players hit) it absorbs?
IMO it’s alright if it dies quickly from aoe other allies are taking, but that doesn’t mean it needs to melt from aoe it takes directly does it?

This is a really great suggestion in my opinion. If you give it a ton of HP, it becomes really oppressive in 1v1 type situations. Giving it some protection against AoE and cleaves seems like a really good way to approach it.

+1… or 2? It should just explode and be useless in group fights, it should just die quickly due to taking too much damage from protecting too many allies taking too much damage.

To be fair, people would be pretty excited about a utility that said “heal yourself for 12k HP, instant cast, 30s CD”. Which is basically what the bulwark gyro does.

Knox.8962:

To be fair, people would be pretty excited about a utility that said “heal yourself for 12k HP, instant cast, 30s CD”. Which is basically what the bulwark gyro does.

I think there’s a difference between “heal yourself” and “protect yourself from”. Large enough burst after you’re already lowish and you’re still going down. It’s just a super protection which if I’m not mistaken they already gave to Ele? Just it’s group wide and HP capped so it goes down quicker with a group.

Knox.8962:

To be fair, people would be pretty excited about a utility that said “heal yourself for 12k HP, instant cast, 30s CD”. Which is basically what the bulwark gyro does.

well in most fight you’ll be sharing that 2k with a lot of people (and it will probably be taking direct dmg itself) so it won’t be all on you

Well dang auto damage increase will be nice, but I was planning on using electrowhirl as my filler burst I guess ill have too see how much of a reduction it got. Still good sounding changes so far!

Knox.8962:

To be fair, people would be pretty excited about a utility that said “heal yourself for 12k HP, instant cast, 30s CD”. Which is basically what the bulwark gyro does.

I think this is disingenuous. That’s not even close to what Bulwark Gyro does.

1) It is damage negated over time, inherently weaker than a direct heal.
2) It can take damage, thus reducing the amount it can actually absorb.
3) Following #2, it can die. In PvP smart opponents can hit it a few times and kill it so it doesn’t absorb anything from you.

I’m not even saying any of those points are bad, I’m saying it’s in no way similar to a direct heal for whatever amount of health it has.

Drastically increasing armor to reduce direct damage it takes is nice, but the health is still way too low I feel like. As I said above 12k absorbed by your party is really just 2400 each player. That’s an auto attack in PvP, or a fraction of a boss attack. To most level level 50 fotm bosses that’s actually less than a protection buff for a single hit. This makes this skill very tricky to balance, it becomes useless in group play and OP when you’re solo. There needs to be a creative solution beyond just health or armor increase I think. I don’t know what that is.

Adamantium.3682:

Knox.8962:

To be fair, people would be pretty excited about a utility that said “heal yourself for 12k HP, instant cast, 30s CD”. Which is basically what the bulwark gyro does.

I think this is disingenuous. That’s not even close to what Bulwark Gyro does.

1) It is damage negated over time, inherently weaker than a direct heal.
2) It can take damage, thus reducing the amount it can actually absorb.
3) Following #2, it can die. In PvP smart opponents can hit it a few times and kill it so it doesn’t absorb anything from you.

I’m not even saying any of those points are bad, I’m saying it’s in no way similar to a direct heal for whatever amount of health it has.

Drastically increasing armor to reduce direct damage it takes is nice, but the health is still way too low I feel like. As I said above 12k absorbed by your party is really just 2400 each player. That’s an auto attack in PvP, or a fraction of a boss attack. To most level level 50 fotm bosses that’s actually less than a protection buff for a single hit. This makes this skill very tricky to balance, it becomes useless in group play and OP when you’re solo. There needs to be a creative solution beyond just health or armor increase I think. I don’t know what that is.

In sPvP, you’ll get the full value out of it fairly often I expect. In a frontline for WvW, the 2k/person sounds much likely, which is still decent.

As for your points above:
1) preemptive elimination of the damage should, in almost all situations be better than healing the damage after it has been done. (Prevents X damage to foes under 50% health from triggering etc.

2) It can only take damage that was going somewhere already. Ignoring armor differences, having the gyro take 12k damage and then after it is dead, you take another 12k is probably better than having both of you take 12k simultaneously.
3) if your opponents want to attack the gyro instead of you, they’re still going to have to pile on an additional 12k damage that would have hit you instead.
4) you didn’t address this, but it is worth bringing up: even getting wrecked by AoE in a necro well bomb, the gyro is counting towards the target cap for the skills and is still absorbing 12k damage that would have hit someone else.

The obvious exception to this is when you have fewer targets than the target limit and you and the gyro are both eating cleave. That is effectively free damage on the gyro

Outside of the free cleave damage, the gyro will eat the 12k HP worth of damage for someone basically every time you summon.

Bulwark Gyro has a decent pool of health and low defense. If you and several allies are taking heavy AoE then it is going to die quickly; that is the situation where it should die quickly. This is a skill that has the potential to be very strong. I’ll be watching feedback closely, but I am holding off on any changes for now until you’ve have had the chance to play with it.

I’m still trying to understand the point of this skill when we already have it in-game with Mesmer’s Phantasmal Defender – which has no real utility in current medium/large group PvP/PvE. Sure, it makes for a nice small scale/solo build, but to be honest I think we have enough ways to build troll/tanky 1v1/2v2 builds, and I don’t see the need for anymore help getting around solo in PvE, as Engi has plenty in it’s current kit to do that with variety.

While the toolbelt function will be great, it just seems like a wasted utility slot potential over the rest. The Gyro is just gonna blow up in any 3v3 – 5v5 fight in Conquest/Stronghold (we realize this game is loaded with cleave by now, yes?), probably in one boss cleave fighting in PvE (doesn’t seem to change much with the champions in Verdant Brink), and have no chance of useful impact in medium/large scale WvW.

In my opinion the most if not only useful aspect of the skill in group situations would be the reflect, and even then I’d probably rather just take Elixir U for it’s 12 second duration + stun break + quickness.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Function Gyro requires a target. It appears at the target’s location when summoned so long as you have line of sight to create more gameplay options (across gaps or around obstacles). This summon happens nearly instantly so that you can be more reactive in resurrection situations and proactive in stomping situations. I am reviewing the recharge and duration currently.

This is great, but currently targeting friendly players is very difficult many times (no such thing as tab-targeting for team-mates). This is especially true in team-fight or group situations if an ally goes down in a sea of AI/other players. As an example, notice how few players are able to select the orb when downing someone in spirit watch, even though it can technically be click-selected. Is it possible to have some kind of “target next teammate” button option available.

This would also make targeted support in other ways more available, but is most important for allies.

If this is not possible, the team-mate res functionality may need to be tweaked. Perhaps it could be a ground-targeted res like elixir R or something…

Adamantium.3682:

Knox.8962:

To be fair, people would be pretty excited about a utility that said “heal yourself for 12k HP, instant cast, 30s CD”. Which is basically what the bulwark gyro does.

I think this is disingenuous. That’s not even close to what Bulwark Gyro does.

1) It is damage negated over time, inherently weaker than a direct heal.
2) It can take damage, thus reducing the amount it can actually absorb.
3) Following #2, it can die. In PvP smart opponents can hit it a few times and kill it so it doesn’t absorb anything from you.

I’m not even saying any of those points are bad, I’m saying it’s in no way similar to a direct heal for whatever amount of health it has.

Drastically increasing armor to reduce direct damage it takes is nice, but the health is still way too low I feel like. As I said above 12k absorbed by your party is really just 2400 each player. That’s an auto attack in PvP, or a fraction of a boss attack. To most level level 50 fotm bosses that’s actually less than a protection buff for a single hit. This makes this skill very tricky to balance, it becomes useless in group play and OP when you’re solo. There needs to be a creative solution beyond just health or armor increase I think. I don’t know what that is.

How about having the bulwark gyro scale per allies and/or enemies? Like if its only you, it has 11K health, but if its you and 4 other allies, it scales up to ~20-25k health. Same with enemies, if its a 1v1, it takes full damage from the enemy, but if its a 1v5, it reduces direct damage to itself by ~10-25%. Something like that since Protection can be applied to it. This wouldn’t make it OP solo or useless in group fights would it?

BlackBeard.2873:

Perhaps it could be a ground-targeted res like elixir R or something…

Ground target on the F ability? That would not work well for any other part of the game.

Are.1326:

BlackBeard.2873:

Perhaps it could be a ground-targeted res like elixir R or something…

Ground target on the F ability? That would not work well for any other part of the game.

The point is that targeting a team-mate is even harder. I am not sure what the best solution is if they can’t implement a “target nearest team-mate” option.

I like Scrapper quite a lot, which surprised me as my current Engineer build is very strained already. I’m reluctant to sacrifice any of my current traits, but Scrapper seems worth it. There’s some problems, however, that I’m not seeing you address.

I’m not going to use a heal with an effective 44 second cooldown, and if I’m hoping it dies early then there’s absolutely no reason not to use Healing Turret instead and continue either picking it up or self destructing it each time.

Sneak Gyro is completely useless in PvE. It cannot reliably and successfully follow me during a run. The livestream made that obvious. I’m assuming it will pull aggro, which will cause me or my party members to get hit when enemies try to attack it, putting us into combat and slowing us down. It was said in the livestream, if I remember correctly, that we can just wait while the Stealth charges up and then wait more while the Super Speed from a trait charges up. So… we are supposed to stand still for 30 seconds for stealth then let a good chunk of our stealth bleed away while we wait more seconds for the full Superspeed length? Shadow Refuge only takes 5 seconds, can be used on the run without pulling aggro, and heals with the only drawback being Revealed if you leave it early. Sneak Gyro needs to be useful either to prepare for a run or during a run, and right now it sounds pretty agonizing in either case.

In Meet the Scrapper, it was said: “the specialization traits were built to emphasize three overarching goals: sustainable survivability, concentrated lockdown, and mobile stability.”
This, strangely enough, is not at all the case. Don’t get me wrong, I like most of the traits, but this claim doesn’t seem to be true. We do have “sustainable survivability” in Recovery Matrix, Expert Examination, and Adaptive Armor, but where’s the “concentrated lockdown”? Where’s the “mobile stability”?

Stabilization Core can give us Stability, but this is only really useful in PvP. In PvE, very few enemies in the game have a downed state, the beta weekend events don’t appear to add any either, so the only time that would become relevant is to get a dose of Stability when reviving a party member. I’ve seen nothing in the BWEs yet that indicates to me this is something that will be in any way needed outside of a couple extremely niche encounters. So… what does that trait have to do with mobile Stability? Mass Momentum is related to Stability, but it aids neither mobility nor Stability. Finally we have Perfectly Weighted which gives us Stability on a successful evade. I guess that qualifies for the term “mobile Stability”? That one trait is hardly meets an “overarching goal” by itself, though.

The claim of “concentrated lockdown” seems especially bizarre to me as the only possibility I can think of is Shocking Speed, Rapid Regeneration, and Final Salvo encouraging us to use Rocket Charge as often as possible in the hopeful abundance of lightning fields. These traits don’t meet the supposed “overarching goal.” They just encourage something the hammer skills are already able to do, and once again only a single trait actually facilitates this goal in any way.

All that said, I don’t think the stated goals are all that important so long as the traits have some synergy and do some useful and interesting things. Ignoring the weirdness of this seemingly false claim, most of the traits are actually pretty desirable and neat. I’m having a hard time deciding on a build, and that is a good thing. A couple things do bother me, though.

As I mentioned Stabilization Core is only really useful in PvP and, depending on the situation, in WvW. Often times, the massive battles or the nature of encounters between roamers will make the Function Gyro kind of pointless, which in turn makes this trait also kind of pointless. Meanwhile in PvP, the trait is absolutely amazing to the point that a Scrapper would have to be out of his/her mind to take either of the other two traits. Seems more than a little lopsided to me.

Final Salvo seems a little disappointing to me as a grandmaster trait. On its own, it only really gives you Super Speed as a consolation for losing a gyro, and can allow you to use the Rocket Charge daze combo again before Thunderclap finishes cooling down. Of course in many situations, we can probably assume the field is NOT going to be on the enemy which means we probably aren’t going to get the full potency of the combo. This trait is pretty great when used in combination with Rapid Regeneration, but I can’t help but feel like these traits are only really great when taken together. Another claim in Meet the Scrapper is: “There is some strong synergy potential and stacking combinations between a few of these traits, but each trait also stands on its own.” That is clearly not the case here. Super Speed is just not useful enough on its own to save this trait, especially when many Engineer builds are already used to permanent Swiftness while in combat.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

Hey Irenio ,
I’m sure you see the endless concern about gyros getting caught in the cross-fire/cleave and getting ripped back into the scrap we tinkered them together from. Which gave me an idea…

Would you consider as a basic rule for the gyro skill type “If the gyro is destroyed before its fuel runs out you collect the scrap to reuse, reducing the cooldown of this skill.”?

If we get full use out of them, we get the full cooldown. But if their adorable lives are cut short, we scrappers bang em’ back together and turn them loose once more!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

Since the Scrapper reveal I’ve been up to my eyeballs in Druid development.

hey,

nice to see someone working on the druid :P

>.> I might have put together a full ascended set just for scrapper based on how awesome it looks. Just saying it looks like the thing I’m going to spend all my time trying out on BW3 when I mean to do in depth tests on Thief and Guardian.

One of my concerns is the mechanic for getting the stealth gyro to not lag behind or split off in a different direction. This happened on the actual stream, but I would prefer that to have some AI tether that stays within range of your Scrapper. That… probably isn’t easy to code, but it provides a minor amount of counter play (other classes who know how SR works can still find thieves quiet easily, this would be the same).

Also quick question? The knock back gyro… if the projectile is reflected and strikes you… does the gyro knock you back? We didn’t get to see that, and I personally think it would be hilarious. Worst red circle evade technique ever, but still hilarious.

I’ll have a lot more thoughts on it after BW3. While I did notice lackluster damage, I noticed we were not shown what trinkets runes and sigils you were rolling, so I could not make any assumptions at that time.

Main Point: Scrapper stepped in front of Daredevil as my ‘do want’ elite spec based on watching the POI and reading the articles. Keep up the good work.

A dev response ! First of all thanks for give us feedback!

My main concern is, that we will not have enough time to test and fix the engi in time, cause only one BWE is not enough.

Thanks for the communication. I think a large concern that many players are having with gyros is the fact that they will be useless in WvW. Like any pet class, they will die instantly.

BlackBeard.2873:

Are.1326:

BlackBeard.2873:

Perhaps it could be a ground-targeted res like elixir R or something…

Ground target on the F ability? That would not work well for any other part of the game.

The point is that targeting a team-mate is even harder. I am not sure what the best solution is if they can’t implement a “target nearest team-mate” option.

How do rangers do it? I don’t play ranger much so I’ve never used the pet revive.

I’m glad to hear you have tweaked the auotattack damage. I have multiple friends who’ve retired their engis because the pve rotation is just so taxing, being able to have the hammer as a base weapon and change out grenades for a different utility, maybe just using elixir gun and flamethrower for acidbomb and napalm/flame blast might be enough to tempt them back.

I am curious what role you see bulwark gyro filling if not shield the group from heavy aoe damage?

Knox.8962:

BobbyT.7192:

For Bulwark Gyro,
Is it possible to up the armour on it but still take full damage (well 50% of other players hit) it absorbs?
IMO it’s alright if it dies quickly from aoe other allies are taking, but that doesn’t mean it needs to melt from aoe it takes directly does it?

This is a really great suggestion in my opinion. If you give it a ton of HP, it becomes really oppressive in 1v1 type situations. Giving it some protection against AoE and cleaves seems like a really good way to approach it.

But we already have similar phantasmal defender which dont have any aoe protection

I appreciate the communication.

I think the best way to look at the issues with the Medic Gyro is to compare it to the one competitive heal engineers currently have – the Heal Turret.

At their core, both have the same functionality. They deliver an initial heal and then sit there applying an area-of-effect heal (in the case of the turret, mostly regen) to allies around them.

But, as you know, nobody uses the healing turret this way. It is always dropped, overcharged, and then immediately picked up or blasted. The reason is simple – the cooldown only begins to run when the turret is picked up or dead, and the gradual heal from having the turret out is never worth the loss of having the big initial heal ready to go again.

The medic gyro currently suffers from the same problem, but worse. Its cooldown is 30s, basically twice that of the turret. Its gradual heal is not that great that an engineer would consider having it out all the time to be superior to letting the cooldown tick down.

Your adjustment of the initial heal upward is nice, but it doesn’t address this fundamental issue – that is to say, it is almost always going to be better to use and then destroy the gyro ASAP so that the cooldown begins to tick down.

A cooldown of 30s will render the Medic Gyro ineffectual. Please consider lowering it significantly, or it will likely see no use in actual gameplay.

n.b. Even if you take into account the traits and toolbelt attached to both heal skills, the gyro remains uncompetitive. Yes, it can be traited to leave a lightning field and superspeed on death, but an untraited turret can blast its own water field on explosion.

Thanks for your hard work Irenio!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Function Gyro requires a target. It appears at the target’s location when summoned so long as you have line of sight to create more gameplay options (across gaps or around obstacles). This summon happens nearly instantly so that you can be more reactive in resurrection situations and proactive in stomping situations. I am reviewing the recharge and duration currently.

The LoS requirement sounds like it might create a few QoL related issues to do with existing bugs – all engineers know magnet’s very buggy at the moment and fails to pull most of the time. Other classes have similar issues with shadowsteps giving ‘no path to target’ a lot.

There’s speculation that this is due to minor bumps in the terrain and an overly-sensitive LoS algorithm (which got made worse in the last major patch). If function gyro uses the same system (ie. determine LoS directly from player, instead of from camera location), then I suspect we’re going to be in for a lot of disappointment.

More generally, does there need to be an LoS restriction at all? There’s already plenty of defense/restrictions against the gyro (interrupt/cleave/stealth, the engi has to be within 750 range, and the engi has to have them targetted). The one case the LoS restriction stops is stomping an ele who dies outside a tower and vapor-forms inside to save themself – but IMO this is something for which counter-play is long overdue.

Ok since function gyro has a LOS requirement I really advise lowering the cooldown. There would be really nothing more frustrating to waste that kind of thing for 30 seconds just because there was some scrap (hoho) inbetween you and the target making it say “obstructed”.

I would actually remove the LOS requirement. I would also find it interesting if the function gyro would be summoned in front of the scrapper and still have to walk towards the target before he can rez/stomp. This would have a cooler feel to it, more counterplay and you could actually reduce the cooldown a lot in exchange.

Did you consider letting the function gyro pick up turrets aswell (also an F key interaction)? Many people complained this “new engi class mechanic” would be too situational and limited to pvp.

In the reveal blog post it was stated about gyros that “If traited, they’ll explode in a larger area while stunning foes.”
Yet neither in that post or in the livestream such a trait was present.
Also, there were some discrepancies in some traits between the blog post and the live stream.
And thus the questions. Was that unnamed trait mentioned above scrapped after the writing of the blog post? And what is the current form of Final Salvo – the one of the blog post (with the gyro cooldown reduction), the one in the livestream, or something else entirely (related to the unnamed trait mentioned above, maybe)?

First of all :nice to hear an answer from you !

And hey ho at second

so far i enjoy your idea as scrapper,but i have some question at first :why you want to make them destroyable , when they are even timelimited ? Look how other player are playing engi’s .They using kits , because turrets show what happends , if you have stuff , that getting destroyed ,that easily + they almost do 0 support ,unless you place them well somewhere , but even then you have to hope they target the right target and not something else.
So … if you make gyros destroyable + 15 sec dura + cooldown of 30 sec ,WHEN they are destroyed or dissapeared.It doesn’t make sense to use them at all.Also if the bullwark isnt supposed to protect more or less.What is your mindset about those gyros then ?
Shouldn’t they be some handy support gyros , that makes the life of an scrapper easier ? No scrapper would use them , if they are that easily able to be destroyed.
Also in the stream ,i saw , that the stealth gyros wasn’t following you all the time ,even if you went a straight way,which means , if you would use a healing gyros or any other gyros , which support abilities and they stuck like that ,that would make them useless in my opinion.
Maybe you can explain us your mindset about those gyros.So far i think everyone is expecting gyros ,which are mobility and give some decent support ,also make them really usefull like a second alternative for kits or turrets,but if they have issues to follow the player + being destroyed that fast or having that long cd , then it’s kinda pointless to use them ,which means Kits>Everything once again.

Also im not here to complain.I also really enjoy those hammer skills they seems to be a lot of fun and that trait system seems to be great aswell.I’m so excited !

>but we were unable to get the updated build in time.

Is this why there was a “New version is avaliable!” during the stream?

Thank you for the continued communication, Irenio.

My biggest concern is that Hammer, as a purely melee option, must be stronger than sustained grenade attacks. Grenades are currently ranged and the strongest attacking option with huge sustained damage output, so much so that if Hammer is not the single best attacking option it will not see use in PvE at all. This is absolutely crucial, and has been echoed by countless players, so if you don’t see it in my post here you will absolutely see it again in my next Fractal/Dungeon report.

Will Super Speed stack?

I’m glad to see that something is happening to the scrapper.

But I think the biggest problem isn’t adressed yet.
The scrapper concept and utility skills are anti-synergetic. Scrapper theme is about heavy amount of mobility and gyros just don’t have the ability to keep up (as seen in PoI). But their effects need them to stay close to the scrapper. So, if I use hammer in combination with gyros, I will never have the full benefit of the gyros. Their radius is just too low and they can’t handle the great movement of the scrapper. I hope there will be some work for this.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Thank you for the continued communication, Irenio.

My biggest concern is that Hammer, as a purely melee option, must be stronger than sustained grenade attacks. Grenades are currently ranged and the strongest attacking option with huge sustained damage output, so much so that if Hammer is not the single best attacking option it will not see use in PvE at all. This is absolutely crucial, and has been echoed by countless players, so if you don’t see it in my post here you will absolutely see it again in my next Fractal/Dungeon report.

The bomb kit has the highest sustained damage output, actually.

The only reason grenades are still so universally loved is because of its vulnerability stacking ability. But with raids now capping out groups at 10 players, you won’t really need a dedicated vuln stacker anymore.

I also don’t think the concern should be how the hammer compares to the grenade kit but how the hammer compares to the rifle, pistol, and shield. It competes with other weapons for its slot, not kits; regardless, DPS shouldn’t be the only point of comparison, and there should still be reasons to run pistol/shield, pistol/pistol, or rifle over the hammer.

I imagine their aim is to have the hammer be stronger than a pistol/shield but weaker than a pistol/pistol or rifle.

A couple concerns here and ideas
1:Any chance of letting use reduce the cd of function gyro either by stomps or rez by a fixed amount so we can keep a decent uptime on it if we are able to send it out a bit more often?
2: If superspeed ends up not stacking will you level out the superspeed durations too all be the same amount too keep from overwriting the buff ? This is one of the more important ones.
3: The second minor trait only gives boons and superspeed on stomps and rez and not kills? this would kill its boon application in pve I dont see why it cant be on kill in addition and keep the 10 sec icd
4: Will there be any changes too perfectly weighted too effect hammer more than just a 10% damage boost? A nice change up would be if you could reduce cds of your hammer abilities each time you daze by 1 sec or something making you want to cc chain to bring your hammer abilities to maximum effectiveness.
5: Currently Final salvo feels like you just want to summon your gyro too die for the buffs it gives what if it gave a pulsing superspeed while its alive and give the lighting field on death with a gyro cd? Durations of gyros could be lowered if it would seem too powerful, but currently it doesn’t seem like they would stay up long.

What I wanna know is whether or not any thought has been paid towards making healing turret less of a “drop it and pop it” mechanic, and whether all turrets have had a look to see about making them less useless. Net Turret seems like an obviously strong choice for Scrapper, for example, because it nails things down for you to smash, but as it stands, turrets are pretty ineffective and die to even minor AoE so turret builds are just not worth it.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

stuff

Hey Irenio ! Thanks for the response and tweaks for Scrapper.

1) Hammer auto-attack boost is great, probably with that tweak it will be viable a-a option as Grenade if not better.Its a great thing for PvE.But in both PvP and WvW its really hard to land a-a in most situation, so we are up to our other skills mostly.Hope you won’t decrease Electro-whirl’s damage too much.Please consider it again.

2) 4.5k healing is fine.But still i can’t see why should i use Medic Gyro instead of Healing Turret.And its not only about healing number.Usage of HT currently like this; use it-overcharge-blast or pick up.It takes like 1-1.5 seconds and even with that low time sometimes healing turret gets destroyed in team fights (pvp, wvw whatever) But atleast we get a good healing which is still higher than Medic Gyro, condi cleanse and regeneration.

Medic Gyro needs some time to be effective and i don’t think it will live enough to complete its job.Okay you can say just use toolbelt skill and blast/leap on it.But there is no blast on Scrapper skill set and if i use my all leap finishers on healing field how am i suppose to daze targets with lightning field ? Or grant superspeed to allies with trait-leap finisher combination ? I am not sure how can you make it viable but this might work; make all gyros invulnerable to damage for 3-5 seconds when you spawn it.So still there will be counter play because enemy can CC them or kill them with condition damage.Atleast they will be usefull for a while untill their invulnerable buff ends and rest is up to player position and enemy.

3) ^ Same thoughts for this one also.It can be invulnerable after we spawn it for 2-3 seconds.I don’t really want to talk about Bulwark Gyro before trying it in game but there is Phantasmal Defender which almost does same thing with Bulwark.And it dies quickly in aoe and cleave attacks.

4) Like others mentioned; i hope it won’t have same problem as Toolkit’s #5 skill.It really fails a lot since the June 23rd patch.And i don’t want to see using Function Gyro on target then because of line of sight it doesn’t work and goes into cooldown.I don’t think that los thing is necessary, it should be removed imo.

Some other things i would like to point:

• Overall; gyros are underwhelming.I don’t want to go into details because i posted my thoughts about them in another topic already.But they have to be tweaked, i mean a lot.I don’t see the point of gyros at all right now.

Healing Turret does a better job than Medic Gyro.Purge Gyro looks usefull but why would i risk condition clearing with a gyro, HT-Elixir Gun-Elixirs all these cover condi clearing pretty well.Detonate Gyro, if i really need a damage on enemy + kd, i would use Flamethrower which has really low cooldown skills compared to that gyro.Plus enemies can evade Detonate Gyro 2 times because we have to throw a tag first then if it hits, gyro appears.Same things for Shredder Gyro, its evadable easily, if you put it into a group of enemies it will die because of aoe and cleave attacks.Even it doesn’t die, people will run away from it because it can’t move.Just Bulwark and Sneak gyros might be useful but they have their downsides already.

So okay, i am not asking for op-powerful-uncounterable skills on the Scrapper.Just i ask for some viable skills which can be alternative to kits.

• Traits; overall they are fine but wanna point few things.

Impact Savant; this trait should be like this: ‘’The duration of your outgoing dazes is increased, and the duration of stuns applied to you is decreased.’’ Because it doesn’t really make sense right now with outgoing stun thingy.Hammer #5 is stun okay, what else we have.Static Shield, Supply Drop and AED toolbelt skill.Stuns are all over the place randomly, so daze duration instead of stun would make more sense.

Perfectly Weighted; think this shouldn’t be a grandmaster trait.Okay stabi on evade (even with 5 sec cooldown) and %10 dmg boost for hammer are fine.But think it should to into Major Adept trait.Currently Stabilization Core gonna take spot on Adept trait because protection on healing is pretty meh and aoe superspeed won’t be usefull unless you revamp the superspeed boon.

• Lets talk about superspeed.Its a strong boon, no one doubts that.But it doesn’t stack and if you use 2 superspeed in a row; second one will replace the first one.Lets say you used a skill which gives 5 seconds of superspeed and if you use a 2 second one after that, you will just have 3 seconds of superspeed.Not sure how this can be fixed but you guys have to do something about it without making it super powerful.

Thats all for now, sorry for the wall of text but i wanted to tell everything that scratches my mind.Hope you guys consider all those points that everyone talks about and tweak some stuff.After all that time i don’t wanna stuck on hammer + kits again, not hating kits but we need something viable that we can use other than kits.

Kodama.6453:

I’m glad to see that something is happening to the scrapper.

But I think the biggest problem isn’t adressed yet.
The scrapper concept and utility skills are anti-synergetic. Scrapper theme is about heavy amount of mobility and gyros just don’t have the ability to keep up (as seen in PoI). But their effects need them to stay close to the scrapper. So, if I use hammer in combination with gyros, I will never have the full benefit of the gyros. Their radius is just too low and they can’t handle the great movement of the scrapper. I hope there will be some work for this.

I think you—and I until recently—were looking at the Gyros wrong.

They are not pets. Their design is not to summon them and have them survive multiple engagements.

I see two scenarios for their use:

-Summon them right before engaging the enemy: i.e. summon bulwark or purge gyro as you approach a point being held by an enemy.

-Summon them whilst in the midst of bashing someone’s head in: i.e Blast Gyro.

In both of these cases, there is a consistent theme: make sure the initial summon is good enough, such that gyro death is not really an issue. It is the expected result.

The medic gyro update definitely shows an understanding of this. Somewhat.

My suggested further fixes:

-Significantly improve initial effect
-Improve each additional pulse
-make detonations more impressive (more damage and a blast finisher perhaps)
-Lower all gyro cooldowns between 5 and 10 seconds. I am okay with not having a CD trait, but the CDs need to be more reasonable

The goal here is to force the question of how long the cooldown is to be for a given Gyro onto the player.

Glad to read a post from you Irenio, really love the work you did for the Scrapper.

Also thank you for explaining to the forum how bulwark should be. A lot of people cant seem to grasp the fact that if its hp is buffed, it would be to strong in certain situations. (1v1, 2+v1)

Medic Gyro seems to be up to par with the other heals now ^^ Well Elixir H and Turret. I feel as though bandage heal is also in a good spot but its just held down by the med kit itself. A.e.D on the other hands, needs some love.

And please let us know about Final Salvo. If it does indeed hold the Gyro CD reduction, it would be perfect for gyro users.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

Since the Scrapper reveal I’ve been up to my eyeballs in Druid development.

I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but it kinda sounds like Druid and Scrapper are going to be fighting each other for last minute development time, and both specs are going to suffer because of it…
Can you reassure us that you’ve got enough people working on this, and we’re not going to go unloved and overlooked for the sake of deadlines? I think both Ranger and Engineer players already feel like we don’t get as much love as a lot of other classes…
I love what I’ve seen of the Scrapper so far, and just want it to be the best it can be!