Showing Posts For Jio Derako.7638:
The real question is will we have weopen swap or will we be locked in into one weopen for example the engineer . If so then we only have a small way to gain stealth unless the rifle skills have some form of stealth build into them. I have a feeling stealth wont exist with the new specialisation. I reckon itl be all knockbacks or the new slow .
That would be interesting, a specialization that removes weapon-swapping… I don’t think they’d do anything quite so big, but it’s a possibility, for sure (or even giving weapon swaps to Engineers or Elementalists).
I really doubt they would remove stealth from Thief, however. Remember here, the elite specialization will give us one new traitline, which will also grant changes to weapon availability and potentially change the class’s mechanics. You will still have access to your core specializations/traitlines however – your choice of two of them – and in the Thief’s case, multiples of those traitlines still contain traits that deal with stealth. Removing stealth with the elite specialization would be a detriment to the class as a whole, since it would also remove/nullify numerous existing traits and pretty much the entirety of the Shadow Arts line.
I don’t see how it’ll be hard to imagine it working, really. Just think how the standard longbow Ranger can manage to stay alive while running full berserker’s gear… but now, give them loads of stealth. If anything, I think a rifle Thief would have an even easier time of it than a pewpew Ranger, and probably have to sacrifice some sustained damage to balance them out.
Thief shortbow probably gives a good baseline for how resilient they can be at range, with its one evasion skill (#3) and mobility skill (#5) being more than enough. There’s pistol too, to a lesser extent, with an immobilize on #2 that can be spammed to kite a single target. Unless the Thief’s elite specialization changes their resource system entirely to be cooldown-based, any evasion/CC skills they might get would have no cooldown as well (and so knockbacks are pretty much a no-go, since it would be a one-skill CC chain).
You’d probably have to look at their pistol skills to get an idea of where they’d go with a rifle. Immobilize/cripple on a skill, probably vulnerability or maybe fury off something… daze/blind is another possibility, though the daze would need to be short like on Head Shot unless it also had a cast time, because of the no-cooldowns problem.Personally, I’d expect them to turn into something of a sniper, with a way to gain stealth, some mobility-impairing effects, and a charged high-damage shot kinda like the Warrior’s Kill Shot. I don’t know how much they’d want to let Thieves venture into territory already claimed by longbow Ranger and rifle Warrior, though.
Signet of Stone, that’s how pewpew Rangers survive.
That’s the thing, though, Signet of Stone is definitely a good skill for them defensively, but Thief can be doing the same role already simply by going stealth for pretty much as long as they please. (they’ll also get 50% damage reduction in stealth now, if they like.) What I’m trying to say here is that Thieves already have the tools needed to keep themselves safe, so giving them a weapon with little-to-no defensive options in its skills wouldn’t mean they’d roll over and die if they got in a fight.
I don’t see how it’ll be hard to imagine it working, really. Just think how the standard longbow Ranger can manage to stay alive while running full berserker’s gear… but now, give them loads of stealth. If anything, I think a rifle Thief would have an even easier time of it than a pewpew Ranger, and probably have to sacrifice some sustained damage to balance them out.
Thief shortbow probably gives a good baseline for how resilient they can be at range, with its one evasion skill (#3) and mobility skill (#5) being more than enough. There’s pistol too, to a lesser extent, with an immobilize on #2 that can be spammed to kite a single target. Unless the Thief’s elite specialization changes their resource system entirely to be cooldown-based, any evasion/CC skills they might get would have no cooldown as well (and so knockbacks are pretty much a no-go, since it would be a one-skill CC chain).
You’d probably have to look at their pistol skills to get an idea of where they’d go with a rifle. Immobilize/cripple on a skill, probably vulnerability or maybe fury off something… daze/blind is another possibility, though the daze would need to be short like on Head Shot unless it also had a cast time, because of the no-cooldowns problem.
Personally, I’d expect them to turn into something of a sniper, with a way to gain stealth, some mobility-impairing effects, and a charged high-damage shot kinda like the Warrior’s Kill Shot. I don’t know how much they’d want to let Thieves venture into territory already claimed by longbow Ranger and rifle Warrior, though.
Something else to consider here, RoS becoming a minor trait for Shadow Arts is actually going to be something of a necessary change for most thieves that utilize that line (needing resilience in WvW, for example). Trait lines will no longer grant any stats, so for all of those SA thieves, they will suddenly be short by a whole 300 toughness and healing power. Unless you adjust your gear to compensate – you could mix in some Soldier’s or a few more Valkyrie pieces maybe without cutting your offense too much, but the healing power will cost you even more offensive stats if you try to spec for it – you will just be straight-up squishier than before.
RoS will give a nice little compensation for that, and remember, while 50% reduction is a lot higher than the amount you used to get from 300 toughness, you won’t be in stealth most of the time and you’ll be hit in stealth even less. It will reward more strategic use of stealth to mitigate damage spikes and survive big AoE hits, in exchange for likely being a little less durable when out of stealth. (In theory.)
The only thing im worried about is if they nerfbat my recently crafted ascended celestial armor -_-
And besides, i see the granade change to be a buff. It was most useful in relatievly close quarters anyway. and 3 granades being baseline is awsome.
Regarding Celestial, I believe they’ve said they’ll fiddle with the numbers on the SPvP amulet, but no mention of the regular gear. Personally though, I think even with a small hit to the numbers, Celestial gear will still be a solid choice for Engineer and may actually go up in value, due to them losing the variety of stats they currently get from their trait selections. So you’re probably in good shape.
I’d actually be fine with Mortar Kit retaining its minimum range, simply as a balancing element. Make the kits a little more defined in their strengths, as opposed to the old (current) grenade kit being the siege AND melee kit, essentially.
Of course, if they don’t amp up Mortar Kit’s power a bit, the minimum range will just be more of a downside on top of that, but having a blast finisher on an autoattack – if they do let us have that – I could see them balancing that out by keeping the minimum range. (it should still be a short enough range that you can get the benefits of the fields you blast, but can you imagine sitting in a Heal Turret water field and point-blank blasting it multiple times with your auto + dealing heavy AoE damage to everyone around you at the same time? Seems like it could become abusive quickly, especially with the Inventions line.)
We’ll see! I’d rather see a super-strong mortar with a defined weakness than an all-round kit that takes damage/utility losses as a result – we’ll still have our ’nades and bombs for anyone who gets in our face – but it all depends on what changes they make to the mortar.
For me, aside from the massive excitement of Mortar Kit (I’ve always felt like Supply Drop didn’t really fit what my builds were trying to do, but couldn’t justify using the Mortar for anything better), and the disappointment of Juggernaut and IP+NS becoming mutually exclusive… I’m actually most excited for what some of these traits will mean for new, fresh builds. (though I do worry that ‘nades will remain glued to most skill bars, they won’t need to be wielded constantly, at least.)
Despite my disappointments around the Juggernaut build losing its best damage trait companion, I really like where this could go as a mid/close-range bunker build. Decap bunker is something that has been played around with before for SPvP – you take advantage of all the Engi’s knockbacks and sustain to just continually push an opposing bunker off a point, and thus cap it while they’re still there – and the FT is already a great boon for this thanks to Air Blast. Juggernaut granting stability only makes this better (and if that stability persists for a second or two after leaving the kit, you can even use rifle #4 without knocking yourself back). It takes on some potential for WvW frontlining as well, especially with Healsplosions traited and their FT #2 skill for more blasts, though retaliation will still be a problem. (maybe they’ll tweak that a bit along with the conditions rework?) There’s already a couple people I know who run a frontline FT engineer, and Juggernaut just makes it better.
On a different point, the removal of stats from traits kinda excites me, too. On the one hand, this could complicate gear choices; where the old 6/2/0/4/2 condi kits build had a nice little chunk of vitality and power to back up its condi/precision/toughness focus, these will be gone unless you’re mixing in some Carrion and (more) Dire to your Rabid gear. For the builds that used Inventions instead, you’ll lose that healing unless you gear for that as well.
On the other hand though? The fact that the Firearms line provided condition damage, but was so grossly overshadowed by the Explosives line due to Grenadier and IP and Shrapnel, meant that the most competitive condi Engineer builds actually had less condi damage than most of the other condi classes. Full Rabid/Dire/Carrion gear should result in higher condition damage overall, which is just great. Builds like Static Discharge can have their power, precision, AND ferocity where they want, without having to sacrifice on one of them due to all three being spread across three trait lines.
This of course goes for every class, but I think Engineer especially had a bit of a weird spread of stats on their traits, meaning that they would almost always have a few extra points in something they didn’t really need, and a few less points in something they did.
So I suppose I’ll hop in on this one! I for one am very excited to see how the final traits will fill out for Engis, and I’m optimistic (though somewhat of a minority in this thread it seems?) that the new system will, in fact, open up a bit more diversity in the Engineer’s roles. They are already fairly diverse in the options at their disposal – which I love – but the actual job they do tends to boil down to just a more limited selection of viable options, in my opinion. Mostly involving grenades.
My current builds actually shift a lot, but I’ll go over them in brief and mention which ones have retained their “spirit”, as seems to be the focus here, and which ones may have been dismantled…
SPvP
I usually just run turrets here (why not). This will be taking a hit, of course, but a deserved one I’m sure. I actually like how the new traits look for this, everything is still there in the Inventions line, with the only major loss being the self-repairing turrets trait. This is a really big loss actually, but probably one that had to come. And I do really like that we get all the turret traits in one line now, so a turret engi under the new system can choose their remaining two lines to further customize their role towards bunker or maybe a more offensive variation.
In conclusion: turrets got nerfed, but they needed the nerf anyway. They still do turret things.
The other build I currently run is celestial flamethrower, using elixir gun and rocket boots to round out the kit. This one would have benefited a lot from Juggernaut’s buff, BUT it also relied a lot on Incendiary Powder and can’t choose both of them together. That’s a really big hit, and honestly, since burning is so central to the FT’s damage output… I don’t know if I’d play this build anymore without access to both of these traits. The new IP is amazing and I intend to get a lot of use out of it, but that’s also the problem, Juggernaut is hard-pressed to compete with it and it would make more sense to just stick with IP and use a different kit entirely, which I suspect will be ’nades again.
In conclusion: this build’s probably dead, or more specifically, forced to split its focus too much and thus just turns back into the celestial rifle build that spawned it. Maybe Juggernaut will open up some options for FT bunkers, who knows, but that’s a different thing entirely.
WvW
I run two main shell builds here, power and condi.
Condi is your pretty standard Rabid roaming build, the 6/2/0/4/2 setup. Toolkit, Elixir S/Rocket Boots/Slick Shoes/Elixir Gun, and either Grenade or Bomb Kit. I think for the most part this will still function fine. Firearms will give a nice buff to the condi focus – improved IP is perfect, Robo Legs or the condi-crit conversion, etc – and the other two lines actually look pretty flexible now; Alchemy seems like a no-brainer, but even that could be swapped out to make it a more YOLO setup or paired with, say, Inventions to turn into a bit of a condi bunker with all that healing. Mortar might even reduce the need for grenades, since the one problem I always ran into was that if I used the bomb kit, I would always have to switch it to nades when I was defending or attacking a tower.
Power is honestly much of the same (same traits, even), though it’s almost always using the grenades rather than bombs, unless I’m diving groups and want to Big Ol’ Bomb in the middle of them (which is fun but I’m usually better off dealing similar damage from way off on top of a hill). Mortar can probably replace the ’nades for raining pain on zergs, and I would seriously consider a Mortar/FT build using a 6/6/0/6/0 setup to get the mortar traits and Juggernaut together, seems great for open-field fighting.
In conclusion: both of these builds retain their spirit, and actually gain some additional options. However, there is one big caveat here, and that’s out-of-combat mobility. This is HUGELY important for roaming in WvW, and as sexy as Robo Legs looks, it doesn’t actually do anything on its own out-of-combat. Power Shoes being gone hurts, because your only remaining option now is Speedy Kits, but it’s in a trait line that doesn’t seem to offer as much offensively or defensively as the other lines do. Those TBD traits in Tools will decide a lot though, possibly?
In summary:
-No Power Shoes and no easy 2-point investment for Speedy Kits could be bad news for out-of-combat mobility, something Engineers lack without their traits. (no signets, and their sources of swiftness are less useful skills and/or granted randomly.)
-Making Juggernaut and Incendiary Powder mutually exclusive makes the choice between them more interesting, but ultimately it just means less reason to use FT over another kit. (maybe Juggernaut would fit better in Inventions or Alchemy, since it is a more defensive trait?)
I wonder if they retained the 200 toughness for Juggernaut. As far as i remember, the original Juggernaut gave it was well. Assuming it is still a flamethrower trait, that is.
They did say that the Juggernaut trait still functioned the same as it did before, only with the pulsing stability added-on now, so I would assume so.