When skills are nerfed...
You must be new to MMOs. I’ll fill you in.
Developers don’t like things in games that benefit players. If there’s a class that has countless bugs and balancing issues, that’s fine and can sit for an indefinite period. They’ll get around to it. BUT, if it is found that players have found something that gives them any sort of edge a “Nerf SWAT Team” hits it hard and immediately, without the burden of mercy. What you are left with is a nerf-to-balance formula because for some reason buffing to developers is like holy water to a vampire.
Because every game starts perfectly balanced and each buff respectively nerf has to be compensated by the other…
problem is that the engi bugs are well known since beta for months but for some reason none of the devs bothered to fix it.
(edited by CptCosmic.3156)
If something’s broken, the quick and easy bandaid is to simply disable it/nerf it. Fixing it properly, like in all things, simply takes time.
Patience, friend.
If the developers are nerfing an OP skill they are doing to lower its strenght and therefore buffing another aspect of said skill would defeat the purpose of the nerf.
The mine kit nerf, however, is an exception : the kit/toolbelt wasn’t OP to begin with and was only useful for its -abuse level- combo finishers. Having completely removed them should warrant us a considerable buff, hopefully soon. Else we are left with another non-viable kit ala Toolkit.
“We have no first-person view because stupid people would lock into it”
“You can’t have more than 10 HS decks because that would confuse people”
“30 fps is more cinematic”
“You can’t have more than 10 HS decks because that would confuse people”
“30 fps is more cinematic”
If it is that easy to “disable” the blast finisher on Mine Field, it should be just as easy to “enable” the blast finisher on BoB. So when is that coming?
The toolbelt skill was not meant to provide 6 blast finishers, this was a bug. The bug was fixed.
Mines still do solid damage, and remove boons. The utility mine still provides a blast finisher and a knock back.
You simply can no longer use the broken blast finishers to super buff might, or retaliation anymore.
Have fun! I’m out.
For someone who is “Out” your quite vocal and seem to be hellbent on sticking around, this is what, the 3rd post of you claiming your out?
Get on with your life already, lol.
“Super blast finisher combo” was the only thing the mines had going for them. As damage they’re inferior to other damage skill picks. As a boon ripper they’re incredibly inferior to other classes.
It was gimmicky, yes, but there wasn’t much else you could do with the skill. Only good for putting up 18 stack mights or 18 seconds of stealth.
I ran a 20 /30 /20/0 /0 build. Swapping double pistol and for pistol and board. PVE dungeons it is difficult to get a group as an engi. Warriors our DPS at range die less and have better condition DMG. Eles have better AOE and healing and better DPS single target with a Focus and dagger DPS and utility is better too. Rangers same boat as the Warrior better range and DMG. The list goes on. The only thing we brought to a group WAS the abusive stacking of Might or the Big heal or long duration retaliation. The fact is Pistol #1 is so broken it only deals 1/2 of its intended damage and the pierce trait does not stack the bleeds FURTHER reducing our DMG. Kits don’t scale.
The fact is that until our BASIC skills and Kits are fixed/ reworked Engi’s now offer nothing in groups…. Unless we want tokittenchuck nades all day.
(edited by Vocare.8610)
I JUST figured out I could stealth using mines yesterday….kitten
The toolbelt skill was not meant to provide 6 blast finishers, this was a bug. The bug was fixed.
Mines still do solid damage, and remove boons. The utility mine still provides a blast finisher and a knock back.
You simply can no longer use the broken blast finishers to super buff might, or retaliation anymore.
Are you saying mine field removes boons too?
Right now engineers are one of the most bugged, but also complex classes in the game. As the devs distinguish between bugs and balance issues, and lots of our problems fall in the former, but heavily affect balance (Sigils on kits, Flamethrower missing, some traits not working at all, etc.). So before they balance these, they have to fix the bugs first. Other bugs seem to be really hard to fix (I will assume Auto Attack in kits is one of them, as they still have not fixed it since BW1, and I will assume they ARE working on it).
I guess it is also easier (and much faster) to simply disable the blast finisher on the mines, than coding a new skill which throws 4 mines without and 1 with a blast finisher.
They also want to send out bug fixes as soon as possible, which suits the way they “found solutions” in todays patch (easy fix, temporary disabel, balance fixes? for currently not heavily bugged professions).
The developer who posted in all class forums to sticky a bug thread 3 days ago said that most issues will take some time/days to fix, and then an additional week of testing (btw: he mentioned in the warrior forum, that he plays a level 40 warrior, but that is a neutral statement, and I do not want to imply in any way that ANet would favor one class over another).
So I hope we will get some fixes for general bugs next week, and to the “Auto Attack” issue in the near future, which is really frustrating as we would be able to fix this issue temporarily with a small script, that we are not allowed to use.
Each mine should remove 1 boon. But I can’t honestly say if it’s working as intended or not. Sometimes it seems to and others it doesn’t. I haven’t done a through test since I typically use mines in a fire and forget capacity. Drop them in a narrow door way (so they clump better) and then kite / pull someone in. If they all hit and crit ~6k damage.
I know the fix is a big loss to engi group viability. I to used them as part of a group support build giving might and ret.
It annoys me a bit that it’s gone now and some builds have been weakened / lost because of it, but I can’t get to flustered when a broken ability is fixed. It was way to powerful. There was not another ability even close to it in game. Even if you detonated 4 turrets and dropped a supply crate you couldn’t get as many blast finishers as that one tool belt ability gave.
I see overly strong and abilities that are strong because they are broken as being as much an issue as abilities that are extremely weak or weak because they are broken. Often you might not find yourself using a balanced ability in favor of using a strong bugged ability.
Once all the bugs are fixed the dev’s will be able to sit down and access whats really going on. You don’t want them to balance around bugged abilities, because once the bugs are fixed they’ll become imbalanced. This leads to even more changes and re-balancing.
To balance mine field they should just look at the trap skills now.
Without a blast finisher, mine field is essentially the weakest trap skill in-game, in terms of recharge, damage and utility.
@Redfeather.6401: Note that it’s not 1 single skill, but two skills that you get when you equip mines though. minefield could use some adjustment, but I’d say a lot of other toolbelt skills are in more need of adjustment, like the absolutely random to the point of almost useless toolbelt elixir skills.
No kidding Psakyrn? We get 4 extra skills for our profession mechanic. That’s amazing. I shouldn’t be complaining then.
And other toolbelt skills are lame? I had no idea until now. Thanks for keeping me updated.
I’m being jerk, because I hate being told what I already knew. I can increase the length of every single post I make to create a disclaimer showing everything in existence I am already aware of when I make my point, but I’m lazy.
(edited by Redfeather.6401)
Well, my point is that you can’t directly compare to traps, because they aren’t supposed to be in the same league. Knowing that it’s the weakest trap doesn’t mean anything at all.
Okay, I will compare to weapon skills since minefield just happens to be above the weapon skill side instead of weapon swapping.
Let’s compare any combination of 4 toolbelt skills to the 5 weapon skills a weapon swap could yield.
Weapon swap is replaced with toolkit, it has nothing to do with toolbelt. You should be comparing toolbelt with the other function abilities.
Elementalist: Function keys essentially gives 4 weapon sets.
Ranger: Controllable pet.
Guardian: 3 signets. (essentially)
Thief: Weapon Steal
Necromancer: Death Shroud
Warrior: Adrenaline charged attack
Mesmer: Shatter
When you say toolkit, do you mean bundles?
Because other professions have bundles too. Bundles are utility skills that replace the whole weapon skill bar when used. Like elementalist conjures and warrior banners.
Elementalist conjures only have a very limited number of uses, so it not directly comparable (same with charzooka). Might as well add in the mention of transforms which also changes your skillset, but at the expense of duration and (usually) cancallation of usage of utility skills. Warrior banners does count, in a sense, though all of them have the same attacks save for one (along with a buff when placed). Slightly balanced out by that they have only one single function ability, and functionally different in that others can also use the banner. Well, and that usually no one would use the banner for anything other than the buff anyway.
(edited by Psaakyrn.5794)
I see your point now when exploring other professions more in-depth to see how they are balanced. But I just can’t help but feel there is something lacking with how engineer is setup. It’s probably a combination of many factors that are leading to this feeling.
I mostly play wvw and just feel so ineffective compared to other professions I run into. Stuff like mine field made me think I had to find more tricks like that to survive, but now I see those tricks are considered abuse and will be removed when found. What am I supposed to do then. I haven’t a clue.
Possibly because the signature skills of engineer is a little weak compared to other classes, along with some core issues with some of them.
Engineer signature skills:
Toolkits (I combine them all into one category, since they all function the same): Changes your weapon skills, along with granting a passive weapon stat boost. Issues: auto-attack toggling, no weapon stat customizability, flamethrower heavily bugged, grenade has no auto-attack function.
Elixirs: shorter than average cooldown for it’s effects.
Turrets: persistent stationary units which attacks, and has a unique skill (essentially deactivates toolbelt skill for this ability when used)
Now compare this with every other profession, and it’s a little more obvious why engineers seems shortchanged. Compare elixir to signets, which grants about the same sort of abilities between usage and it’s passive, though with a longer cooldown. Compare turrets with necromancer pets, which are admittedly squishy, and has some plusses and minuses compared to engineer turrets (along with one minion which is out of place cause it’s stationary… would be nice if engineers get a turret on wheels, don’t you think?).. but they DO get an elite minion (granted supply drop sort of counts… but that loses the core advantage of turrets of being persistent). And then toolkits, which though admittedly allows you to theoretically have more weapon swaps than other professions, but in exchange for a utility skill for each kit (and of course, all the issues associated with them).