Id like to see this thread get more attention. Maybe we can make a petition? With the recent changes it would be perfectly fair to remove the target requirement from Solar Beam. The amount of healing Solar Beam does is negligible and if your team mates are taking damage allowing you to heal them and generate astral force then you’re likely in combat anyways.
Solar Beam really needs to be reworked, even the animation is bad, but at least remove the target requirement. This is something that can be easily hotfixed and won’t impact balance in a significant way.
Staff is the only weapon in the game with a target requirement on the #1 skill and it just feels awkward.
edit: Requiring a target has also severely crippled the action camera as you can no longer aim Solar Beam to hit multiple targets.
They probably did it so that you can’t build AF outside of combat which is a glitch that works and helps prep your combat. I don’t see the problem in this.
Make it so you can’t generate AF outside of combat. That would be the obvious solution.
Now it’s the only weapon in the game where you can’t spam your basic attack.
Edit: It’s clearly not even about AF generation because you generate it outside of combat much more quickly now with SotW, natural healing and regens.
I can’t be the only one who NEEDS to be able to spam my #1 just for the sake of spamming it…
Thee is nothing wrong with bulwark. Anyone claiming it is not viable is either over reacting for the attention to a perceived issue, or has a bit of a learn to play issue.
WvW Never had a 95% damage reductions, and this skill serves me great purpose there, and survives better the some of the claims here declaring a lack of survivability in PvE.
I was probably over reacting. I tested it out and here’s what I noticed: I play a zerker scrapper build, when I start to take damage I don’t have much time to react so I’m often using my “oh sh***” buttons in combination. Because the bulwark gyro can be healed and benefits from boons it works really well in combination with the healing gyro and the healing gyro’s toolbelt skill, just for example.
Having a %50 reduction in damage for the full duration of the gyro (15 seconds) is pretty kitten overpowered when compared to other defensive abilities imo.
This was the only thing that made my build viable. Now I’m just going to spend all my time running from waypoints.
All of the other gyros are lackluster. I guess they figured bulwark gyro should be too?
I was having a lot of fun with my engi, then I tried some of my other characters and was shocked by how much more effort went into their elite specializations.
