^
But its not supposed to be “in line” with most other professions?
Not saying it can’t use tweaking but it’s marketed as a high risk, selfish, close range nuker with some CC.
If it doesn’t deal more damage than other safer alternatives with more supportive abilities and tricks up their sleeves why would people run it?
What i think will be the key is to spread out the power a bit, forcing you to rely on the entire holosmith kit to be able to dish out the grand numbers and preventing you from filling up your skillslots with the usual suspects.
As of now most toolbelts (except the arena pull) are completely lackluster and just serve as tool traitline fuel. And the extra projectiles on the sword are dwarfed by the swipe itself. In the end the holomode itself might be overpowered, but the skills supposedly scaling with heat might be in need of a revamp to compensate for nerfing that. For example look at particle accelerator. A unholy blend of surprise shot and glob shot from elixir gun. And what is the heat effect? Increased projectile speed…
(edited by miriforst.1290)
Really though if we want to reap the rewards we gotta take the risks, that is the only way we can defend our current powerlevel. To be glassy and selfish. Our defense lies in our damage output, and the combination of arena + spectrum can cover for a lot of our bursts if you really need it.
So far i found all three GM to have their place and builds.
GM1: This was the one i found myself falling back to, with a bit more toughness and vitality the extra healing from dodging and the fact you can use big hits more often was very useful, holosmash ftw. Also the burn in a condi build is nasty. Especially with tools and adrenal implant this means a lot of holomode.
GM2: This is the risky trait. Sure it has a large pool, but to use the might you will still have low margins with a longer cooldown if you overheat than GM1 (which can reduce heat even when overheated to speed up recovery and with a lesser overheat pool to begin with) and none of the damage reduction from GM3. And considering we already have a few sources of decent might, corona burst not the least of them i do not really feel the need to take this trait. It has its use for sure, but the way i play i prefer gm1.
GM3: This is the oddball. The strange delay makes it tricky, and while the damage is impressive 1 stack of burn feels a bit weak for condi users. The risk in this trait is not really self damage as a lot of it is negated (also thanks to heat therapy working with it) but in that it will inevitably lead to periods where you are locked out of holomode. And sword so far is more like the backup pistol you get in fps…
The 25 stacks build is heatwise the most risky one though and requires less spam in holomode to maintain the might bonus (no reduction in heat as in gm1 and no safe detonation as in gm3 + longer delay before overheating until you can access forge again). I found the heat reduction on dodge powerful as that allowed me to get more up time on corona with stability and more hammer time. And its also very potent in a condi build.
I just hope that when the nerfhammer swings they consider that the spec is just close range damage and not damage+ support or damage while evading/blocking everything. I hope that they instead shift some power to the toolbelts instead (only reason i don’t forget to use them is because of static discharge).
There is real risk, especially for the might stacking variant which doesn’t control heat as well as gm1 and do not negate the effect as well as gm3.
Same with engineer shield and holosmith reflect.
Okay after just 5 min of spvp, what a difference it is between modes. Much better.
Once again forcing players onto a point is very, very good for us.
The toolbelts are all completely forgettable tho.
(edited by miriforst.1290)
Is there a bug separating the damage between spvp and wvw? Because im a little bit disappointed with my fancy toothpick hitting for less than hipshot and the super charge laser beam critting for 3.9k.
And seriously i would much prefer if they nerfed holographic arena and made it apply to allies instead.
(edited by miriforst.1290)
I predict that we will kill Balthazar and Rytlock will take his power to become the new god of war, Kormir-style. Rytlock clearly already knows something that he will FINALLY reveal to us as he mentions it in the trailer, and who else is kitten enough to take that kind of power (besides the PC, but we all know Anet won’t let us do that).
You heard it here first folks.
Actually, I made that speculation shortly after Episode 5. It was a little tongue-in-cheek, but I can (and do) claim to have come up with the idea long before hearing it here.
Part of the justification was that having a charr replace the god who possibly started the charr-human war in the first place could serve as a form of apology, and given the charr liking for war and fire (even if the non-Flame Charr have stepped away from that a bit, they still appreciate its practical applications) a charr who’s demonstrated an ability to cooperate with humans would be a fitting choice. It’d also be a way to troll the Flame Legion by having a charr god of fire who isn’t one of theirs.
Only if spoiler necromancer can reanimate Gwen who then becomes the next khan-ur.
On a serious note though i’m sure arenanet are prepared to make rytlock the all seeing, all powerful master of the universes if that means they can release another rytlock mini/collectors statue (now with glowing wings). He is already close enough to defying the fabrics of time as it is so it shouldn’t be a problem.
On the other hand there is another chosen one destined for greatness. Introducing Swordsmaster fahren the war god.
Regarding the plausibility of its origins.
If everyone is okay with charr going from a shamanistic isolationist barbarian race living in huts to building guns, artillery, tanks, helicopters and submarines etc. Then i’m okay with elonians developing holotech in the same timespan given that they were already building both magical and non magical artillery and suchlike at the time of gw1. And it is also worth mentioning that the charr (or asura) did not “invent” engineers as people who solve practical problems (not problems like “what is beauty?” because would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy), they invented the playable class engineer. We had npcs specifically named engineers in kourna for one, and secondly its hard to say who invented people who invent technical solutions to things.
the miracle isn’t that elonians came up with holotech, its that krytans went fully medieval for 250 years while fighting an enemy rolling around in tanks and trading with allies stomping around in exosuits and programming robots.
While it is a relief to take a break from the massive planets of the hats that is invariably present as soon as you implement more sentient species in a fantasy setting there is one thing making this feel shoehorned. There simply aren’t any sign of the holosmiths in the maps other than one npc (as far as i could tell). Show us some holographic wonders in the city, let us stumble into workshops and so on. Finding just one holosmith hanging around under a tree makes the shoehorning apparent while it can easily work by just implementing a few props here and there (for example those holographic workbenches you got on the Lilly of Elon).
Sorry for my usual butchering of grammar and improper use of english.
When they announced mounts i was afraid that it would be the cliche instant movement speed buff reskin we have had in other games. Ideally i was hoping for something that wasn’t produced out of thin air as well and something that was more like a vehicle in the same way that you have vehicles in the battlefield series with different feel and purpose.
And while it does pop out of thin air the actual movement felt spot on. More like the horses in battlefield 1 than a big remodel of our character. And it does indeed give the mount itself character. Now maybe different mounts handle differently so if you are a strafing type you can go for the mantaray. As for the jumping puzzles there will be more mounts with different flavor (jackal was said to be all about precision for stuff like jumping puzzles) so we will have to wait and see.
Explosives has been utter trash in PvP pretty much since the core specializations update. The adept tier has all of a kittenty fall damage trait, grenade-kit exclusive trait, and a tiny damage modifier with a bad health threshold attached. The GM tier has kittening thermobaric detonate which is still utter trash and a condition trait that no one will take because the actual good condi traits are in firearms (and taking both is suicide). The only good things the line has to offer are niche kit-specific traits, the e-sports rocket, and accelerant-packed turrets which has been made a lot worse by changes to turrets since the core specs update.
^ You hit the nail on the head. Firearms used (atleast in my opinion) to be the fifth wheel under the wagon before elite spec changes (still boring, but now there’s some must have traits there like IP and chemical rounds which allows pistols to see some action) but now explosives is the king of mediocre in pvp.
In a way i still don’t know if i am to laugh or to cry at the realization that they managed to make explosives boring. Hell they even managed to make orbital strike underwhelming and meh in my opinion.
Pre HOT i wouldn’t have guessed rifle would be deemed nonviable for a long time. Non meta? Possibly. But nonviable? At the time i thought it had decent burst with range utility. It was the king of single target “cc” with a 2 sec immobilize and a short recharging launch. Of course projectile hate used to be an engineer counter in general but the rewards used to pay off.
But now it isn’t odd that we tend to avoid it. The defense of it relies on crowd controlling a target, thus why its more of a duelist weapon than the multitarget pistols. But even against a single target how do we fare against other duelist professions?
Take for example the daredevil, a prime example (in pvp not so much of a duelist but in wvw it certainly is). Not saying things are good, bad, balanced or whatever but consider this spec.
If we land our skill2 despite slow traveling time against a target with 3 dodges, the thief might just dodge straight out of it. And if we hit our overcharged shot and it has no autotraits it can reliably stunbreak and block the follow up burst AND CC us back on a similar cooldown with bandits defense. And if its using staff part of its autoattacks reflect meaning we have yet another thing to consider.
We can also consider the scrapper with its high evade uptime, low reliance on CC combos other than to keep targets in range, blocks, reflects and frequent (though not deep) access to stability should it chose to.
Or the berserker which can actually benefit from us stunning it or just shrug it off (not as much of a problem after the stab trait nerf on berserker).
Dragonhunter? Block, blinds, pulls, aoes, autostunbreaks.
Its a war of stab, stunbreaks and cremoval vs CC and this conflict has escalated with HOT.
And i’m not even sure what they should do with it, other than give it fair treatment in cases like the evade added to vault in beta but not to jumpshot (which also has a long cooldown and cannot be used multiple times).
Or how about letting high ticket costs represent how much you actually play, not have played?
Well every hour you spent in EOTM you didnt spend in wvw proper so the ranks gained there are “fake” then?
I suppose that’s the logic he is going for here.
Benchmarks are as perfect and ideal as it gets if im not mistaken. Its the top guilds providing the absolute most optimized rotation in an ideal environment. Thus, leaving interactions through things like epidemic (EDIT: and if relying on large amounts of confusion or torment vs certain targets) aside you will never beat that unless there is a special burnphase or similar mechanic (or once again non buff teammate interactions such as epidemic if you count your spread condis as your dps). That’s just how the benchmark works and why i find it silly to stare oneself blind on them. Even the “realistic” buffset is highly idealistic.
Its the idea of the roof, not the floor. Its not realistic and to be frank if it was then the raids and similar content are probably way to easy given that you play like it was a static passive golem with perfect boon up-time (meaning no dodging attacks, no play mechanic, nada, zilch).
This is just discussing the concept of what a benchmark is, and also what that means for different kinds of builds (depending on persistent aoes, combos etc).
Believe me i do like the nature of the condi engineer, and i find power bomb engi to be an embarrassment (A and B where left blank for a reason btw). But i will also be realistic.
(edited by miriforst.1290)
Engineer has problems but turrets aren’t it.
The real problem engineer has is the fact that kits are better in every situation because they are the generalist tool for the generalist class.
This.
We’re still severely hamstrung by kits. Our core weapons are underwhelming without assistance from kits (protip to ANet: Reverse the trend, and buff the hell out of our core weapons and reduce kit effectiveness). This limits our builds massively (practically requiring kits), making them significantly more complicated and less fun.
Last time I checked p/p kit engi is one of the highest dps specs in the game if played properly.
Don’t mistake benchmark tests for reality. Watch those benchmark tests and tell me you can reproduce them in a real gameplay scenario.
The other thing I would point out is to not miss the forest for the trees. Most other classes have options with build design on the high end (particularly warriors), while we’re mostly limited to 2 builds in high-end PvE and 1 build in PvP.
Well if benchmark isn’t reality, then this applies to all classes. And Engineer would still be one of the top dps.
That’s not what i think he means though.
Take class A with 5% more dps than class B in static large target benchmark.
Class A depends on a 20 skill rotation with situational combos, narrow persistent aoes with long cooldowns and few stunbreaks/blocks and little mobility
Class B depends on a autoattack chain with a heavy hit every now and then and got higher mobility and more blocks/stunbreaks than class A.
Against a target that moves around, spawns aoes you need to get in/out off and with large attacks that can be blocked it is very much possible for class B to realistically and reliably be ahead of class B because there is only so much you are loosing out if you miss an auto attack, while the target might just waltz out of a key aoe of A.
The more complex and situational the bigger the difference between benchmark and actual result as a rule.
You can not call yourself a serious WvW player if you have less then 1,500 WvW levels. I have 900 and been in WvW for less then 20 hrs for the past 2 years basically.
You can not call yourself a serious wvw player unless you dedicate half your day to upgrade a home keep from 0 to t3 with an army of enemy roamers ganking dollies left and right and keeping all camps permanently flipped while outnumbered doesn’t leave you for one second only to have the enemy flip it at 79/80 effortlessly while you haven’t seen a single rank up for all your toiling. /s
Since HOT (in particular) we have had the situation where you are either CCed to death or ignore it entirely (stability), and where you are rooted for years by a procing trait (which still apply twice as much imob as is listed) or just walk straight out of it without even noticing. Its a fight of measure vs countermeasure escalating to such degrees that if you don’t dedicate yourself entirely you risk being blown to smithereens (this goes for conditions/resistance/clears in general as well) which draws us to jack of all builds where the cost of specializing is too high.
Take for example the engineers rifle. This i would argue is a pretty well designed weapon for the engineer. Limited range capability with lots of single target control and some burst at the cost of risk (range/setup) using the previously mentioned control skills. It doesn’t evade while doing jumpshot (which is fine, removing the risk in the risk is bad) and its overcharge shot knocks you back as well (creating synergy with stun breaks and stability if you want to take this further) which is also a risk to consider in a teamfight. But that used to be fine.
So why do we not see rifle used much? Before you say hammer which i agree is a big factor it is also due to that it cant reliably function anymore against a lot of classes.
A lot of the time you are more likely to reflect a netshot (or heaven forbid overcharge) on yourself than you are to hit an enemy. And if you hit an enemy with netshot, they might just ignore it altogether or shrug it off (and applying immobilize is all the skill does). So then we have overcharge shot which might just trigger an autostunbreak with the net result that you CCed yourself and gave the enemy a buff. Or they manually stubreak. Consider also that we have stunbreaks with equal or shorter recharge than overcharged shot. And with the cast time of jumpshot you will frequently be blinded etc before you land. So that leaves blunderbuss which have a very short cast and decent damage.
So now we say “bring more Ckittenil he cant keep up with his stab/stunbreaks!” or “just spam more damage he cant evade/ignore/block/invuln everything, surely there is a frame where hes vulnerable!”. But thats the point. Then we end up with spam of everything.
This went a bit off the rails but to sum it up all elite specs and possibly some decisions before that ended up where you have a frustrating mess of throwing skills at the enemy to see what sticks. And that goes for immobilize as well.
They do seem set on removing scrappers from pvp, funny how they arent really used much in wvw or pve either.
What they failed to grasp was that the damage on most of them was already so low that you only kept them around for the overcharge anyhow*. What they need to do is to have them recharge while deployed if they are going to “fix” them this way. Now they truly feel like clunky gadgets or bombs with long recharges.
*When i say this i imply that someone somewhere might actually be using the kitten things.
I suppose its a buff for rifle turret in raid? Or something?
Heck id even say the thumper turret one (and certainly the rocket turret one) is a nerf.
Even when they try to buff they nerf.
EDIT: Only buff that is worth anything here is the medkit drop change.
Good jobb. Surely worth the wait.
Its like they are progressing at glacial speed and still think engineer is HOT release scrapper status.
(edited by miriforst.1290)
-Removes daze from gyros, adds a pulsing kitten aoe daze to choking gas.
GG
^
Thats the thing. Its unique in the way it works with a mechanic allowing us to get as close to single target ally healing as this engine allows. So why does other healing supports deal out way more healing in aoe? I have seen healing revs in action where they restore half my health with the click of a button, and not just me but everyone in the area, with a short cooldown. We arent even close to competing in that league, and we dont have to. But i dont want us to be in the D divison of healing instead of B or even C.
Before it was a tricky survivalist toolkit where you could build up stashes for you or an ally, but with the low duration and long cooldown on some skills it now feels akward to have to use it when you need them instead of when you can afford to place them.
Im not on the train to convert this to yet another spam heal in cone, the auto should only be strong in combination with the other skills. But the primary skills, that is the medkits really needs to be worth their cast time. The previous iteration with a bit of healing power and the 20% increased healing allowed you to place a 3 kit stack healing for 4-5k, equivalent of a lot of players self heal. With the new specializations and classes this is nothing special (especially considering the target limit and casttime). And a lot of us consider the old medkit to be superior to this one, now that they have reduced its burst, stacking and self healing potential and requiring even more time spent pushing bars. Not to mention the change to on heal effects triggering on kitswap (rip old friend, you would have been great with the new runes).
But in general arenanet have a hard time refining “purity of purpose”. They only use that to kill something doing more than it should, not to make something do what it really should be doing. I mean turrets making an area hard to capture for the mobile and glassy scout classes? Who would have thought!
All in all i find this to be a very good summation of possible solutions to problems regarding the engineer class. Of course some things are a bit strong and so on, but given the extent of this overhaul id say its pretty natural that some of the stuff happen to be a bit overpowered on the first draft.
Do note that i have no idea about raidbalance (though it probably IS healthy to move away from auto spam in the supposedly “endgame” content for pver’s) or competitive pvp and mainly participate in wvw where we are pretty uncommon.
But the most important points for me are:
Orbital strike: It has been bothering me since the release of this skill how unimpressive this skill is. Untraited it hits for about the same as a bomb auto attack with a 40 second recharge and a long cast time + delay to boot. Oh and a blast. even when traited with a grandmaster in a tree that is highly unviable in pvp it is about the same damage as jumpshot or rocket from rocket turret. Your idea of increasing the delay on the first strike gives more counterplay while increasing the reward for pulling off a combo. I like it. One addition id like though is for the trait “siege rounds” to actually make the mortar feel like a siege weapon. As it is now its a ranged support weapon masquerading as a offensive tool (i suppose in pve you can work the Poison shell into the rotation somehow but still). There was the idea to have the projectile from the mortar auto apply to all enemies it hit but that was quickly forgotten about. What if the trait added secondary effects or damage to the rounds depending on what finisher the projectile was? Id even settle for adding a fair cooldown to the auto if we could beef it up a little. Increased damage based on range at the cost of more arc?
Medkit: Yes, finally a good way to get rid of that horrible medical dispersion and help medkit at the same time. A lot of people simply want it to be a auto attack spammer, but its the kits that makes this… kit special.
Turrets: Scaling on power and suchlike shouldn’t be restricted to pve only. No really hear me out. I would have preferred a revamp that made the turrets controlled entirely by the player as a a sort of remotely operated siege/weapon kit but that will never happen so lets settle for this: Allow them to scale on all stats. And reduce their base stats slightly. This way a glassy engineer can set up a surprise nest that hits decently at the cost of himself being pitifully easy to take down and a tanky engineer might want to use the more crowd control oriented turrets while allowing them to last a little longer. Both he and his turrets will hit like a packet of moldy noodles though. Make the overcharges recharge relatively fast but keep a long recharge on the turrets. This means they are impactful but when countered-, well then they are countered. For the hard hitting rocket turret the normal attack should have a very very slow velocity. This means its effective against crowds and as a area denial tool without being opressive in a mobile duel. That should be the purpose of rifle turret. Finally for pve remove the damage reduction on aoe. If a turret now hits hard without the intervention of the engineer then it needs a weakness otherwise it might make the meta focus around turrets. With a weakness it should be more situational.
Gadgets and gadgeteer: Yes this is lovely. I too have been bothered that the mine is more of a explosive frisbee and that the minefield is more like a suicide c4 with this implementation it could be allowed to be more distinct and to fulfill its role as a minefield more effectively. I would like the minefield to strip a boon for each target it catches within the explosion though. This means it can help more in stripping a frontline in wvw from boons (even if the target in front dodges the target behind might still be hit). And the overcharged versions actually makes sense. Rocket boots working as a stun break when overcharged helps a LOT with bar compression. And given the amount of short recharging stunbreaks (outrage, bandits defence etc.) nowadays its hard to call it unfair when its the result of a grandmaster.
As for the healing turret nerf and the elixir buffs, ive always imagined the healing elixir taking over the water field role from the healing turret. So you would throw down elixir h, gain a water field and a short duration version of the boons (regeneration first tick, vigor second and protection last). The drink skill could be a inverse consume conditions and heal based on boons.
I havent had any problem with the hammer though and the fragmentation shot buff is nuts.
Okay. Ill give it a shot. It wont be a pretty one.
Kit skill changes:
1) Skill one now has a 10 second cooldown but heals for a significant amount with a cast time identical to fumigate (easier to interrupt)
2) Skill 3 (throw stimulant) now removes blind, weakness AND vulnerability. There is few cases where walking over to or even casting a pack on the ground is a better way to remove blind than just auto attacking once. Vulnerability is also mostly used as a cover condition (in the cases where you are actually bursted down because of vulnerability there are more favorable actions than stopping to maybe remove it.). Weakness is usually the most critical one to remove, so allowing it to do so reliably while cleansing junk conditions off you might make it more worth its cast.
3) drop antidote resistance duration increased to 3 seconds. Now you might notice it before its over.
In this change i removed the “auto attack” nature of skill 1. This is because you do not want it to be the go to skill of the kit without a cooldown (forcing it to be weak). Giving it a burst heal means you are also free to attack in normal fashion in between to defend yourself (better option than just slapping damage on it in my opinion.). You might also want to look into increasing the healing/healscaling of the bandages themselves.
Traits!
i) Medical dispersion field: Now changes the medkits to detonate in a small radius when picked up, meaning in a point fight you can support multiple allies and dont have to worry about a gyro picking up one of your packs cough medgyro with stimulant supplier cough.
ii) Stimulant supplier now also increases the duration of the kits. And it also increases the radius of all tossed elixirs by 50%.
iii)Remove automated medical response (smiters booning is when they nerf something so hard that it is clear that they do not want it to be a seirous option. This relies on that there are alternatives worth taking) and move health insurance here. New trait in alchemy to replace it: “Hazardous waste: Consuming an elixir leaves a broken bottle on the ground. Enemies threading on the shattered glass bottle are crippled and a boon is removed.” I dont know. We should start recycling those bottles.
Hey guys, in your opinion what is going to be nerfed / buffed tomorrow?
These are my thoughts based on the classes I play regularly:Soul Eater: Now this trait pulse Stability (1 stack for 4 seconds every 4 seconds) while wielding a greatsword..
I don’t like passive traits so nerf them all :p
Right.
Also people still think shock shield does too much damage. Having a higher damage, longer range version on a possible 10 sec cooldown instead of 20 might or might not be a popular idea.
While we are at it can we update the description of ancient seed to reflect the actual applied immobilize? Meaning 2 seconds of immobilize per pulse instead of 1 second (10 sec maximum instead of 5).
That’s kind of critical too.
Okay. Here we go.
Just to be clear this would never happen. They can’t even manage numerical increases. Yknow general purity of purpose stuff. But one can dream right?
One of the promises with the skillsystem in gw2 was that there would be no “false options”, no set of skills that had no use. So what about those rusty pieces of junk over in that corner?
Turrets:
The turrets suffer from the problem that if they ever are effective at anything at all, they will have to be nerfed again (except for healing “turret” which is more of a healing bomb).
But what is the purpose of turrets?
To emphasise our area denial nature
This is why we are hated in pvp, because we where a mixup of engineer archetypes that usually focus on this thing, to deny a specific area. The question is how can we have turrets that do their job without kittening off the entire pvp community again?
My suggestion is this.
-Remove the baseline auto attacks from turrets.
-Instead of the overcharge, we get a remote as long as the turret is deployed.
-The remote allows us to control the turret like a “kit”, with he twist that all abilities originate from the turret. This means that we get a new set of powerful kitlike abilities offset by their stationary nature and line of sight requirements as well as their destructibility and recharge.
Now for example your rocket turret could become your very own missile silo where you can designate heat seeking missiles, air burst munition or rocket barrages that knocks people around like the old mortar kit. Your net turret now becomes a general purpose launcher for your crowd control needs, not only firing nets but also possibly glue/oil slicks/what have you. The healing turret now provides a haven of healing and defensive boons (its current function will instead be transferred to elixir H divided over the heal and toolbelt which is now a waterfield).
Additional functionality could come in allowing allies to interact and use them or to give a trait that allows them to retain some of their current passive nature (for the few who use them for casual pve or something) if absolutely necessary but i would advise against it.
Yes the turrets would become powerful tools for holding an area, but this removes their passive nature. And after all holding an area is the turrets purpose right? One might even say their pure purpose.
(edited by miriforst.1290)
Rocket Turret (Power Build)
While weaker than the Rifle Turret dps wise (the utility slot, not the turret itself), it’s toolbelt still is a strong wide AoE, equally strong as Big Ol’ Bomb of the Bomb Kit. You want to use the turret itself for cc only. Place it, immediately overcharge it, wich launches a rocket with a wide aoe 3s knockdown (tooltip lies), then blow it up for more cc. It’s a good utility skill for long lasting wide stuns against trash or as a breakbar wrecker.
Wait. Hang on. So for as far as i remember the rocket turret used to only knock down one target (its also stated as a note on the earlier wiki pages).
Then they update the tooltip to specifically say one target only. And THEN it hits five targets?? Wow. After all these years and they still find ways to surprise me.
Druid
-I would like to see ancient seeds get a longer ICD, perhaps 15 seconds?
Maybe the first priority would be to make this trait function as indicated by its tooltip.
Tooltip says 5 seconds of mobilize total. Last time i checked it was not. At least in the lobby and wvw it applies about twice this amount. I thought it was weird that i got stuck in between pulses on my engi with – 50% imob duration. Thats because it applies 2 second of imob per strike and not 1 last time i checked. Even if you destroy the roots as soon as you get out of the cc that triggered it, thats a lot of imob (compare this to netshot for laughs).
To verify this take a druid with no weapon swap reduction and no condition duration
the daze on staffswap and just proceed to swap staff/staff while attacking the training dummy in melee and notice the upptime.
He is probably talking about condi scrapper with sneak gyro and protection injection or something. I think the burst is referring to the blowtorch. Well if that’s the case good luck to you and have fun with it.
Lets just hope this isnt the old “it says 10k (x5) so that means it does 50k damage” kind of build.
We could always do the one thing that i think should have been done from the start, have it work like prenerf but only knock down moving enemies. Meaning a stationary break bar phase wont be affected and in pvp enemies that do not panic can remain stationary and still use countermeasures like blocks and cleaves. Risk reward with potential big impact in spvp/wvw with a clear counter move. A skill that makes everyone think.
To be frank i used to roll rocket boots and slick shoes back in the days rocket boots where affected by super speed. Together the actual gain in mobility was worth it. Both gadgets felt like ace cards you used precisely instead of spamming whenever (oh the joy of flying over the head of that nike war only to reposition behind his back). nowadays they just feels like pale ghosts of their former glory. And this is for the category of skills that where even before the nerfs usually considered to be the second worst after turrets (or the worst if you dont even consider the existence of turrets as anything but this weird blind spot you get when you swap your skills, for which i don’t blame you).
But the priority for diversity (what at least for me is one of the absolutely most important aspect of the game, not only what you play but how you play it) seems to be very, very, very low. This goes for all classes. Smiters booning cannot be afforded with so few options. I remember the reasoning that since there where so few skills to balance compared to the original there would be no false options. That’s of course not realistic but they could at least strive for it.
I see it now….
It is all to justify the rocket boots Buff™.
Now you will have to use rocket boots for that purpose!
If i may comment of the style rather than gameplay for a little:
While i strongly dislike the name of the specialization (on par of giving thief the “paladin”, the mesmer “barbarian” or indeed the guardian “dragonhunter” spec in my opinion) the actual implementation seems interesting. The oroki-… i mean forgotten technology theme is a unique twist to the engineer who usually symbolizes progress and the future. Preservation of knowledge can still fit within the engineers realm.
I hate to be that guy who suggests changes to your baby, and indeed its hard to find fitting names that rolls of the tongue. Archaeologists is way long and clunky, archivist might work if you consider them preservers of history. Historian itself might sound a bit tame. Or we could simply call them Top Men.
Occultist is a perfect name for a necromancer spec. But in the same way that i would think it would be little bit odd with a “inventor” guardian or a “tinkerer” revenant (in before scarlet legend) i cant help but feel that the name occultist is a bit off.
I might be overguarding our theme a bit but in the same way i roll my eyes a bit when other elite specialization ideas turn up however briefly with high tech and gadgetry themes as if they forgot we are still here.
But as i said other than that the spec is interesting. Utilizing magical artifacts is, i suppose in the realm of concentrating and bottling magical effects in elixirs even if im not a fan (im even against implementing signets on the engineer as relying on magic rings is as far from the engi as it can be). Throwing powerful spells yourself is something i think should be avoided. It needs to be clear that whenever there is magic involved it does not originate from the engineer itself in any form (that’s why elixirs are borderline ok). Of course thats just like my opinion man.
And on a sidenote, the graverobber thing does seems awfully tempting for a thief spec when we get to the desert (what is there to steal there?). And that might open up for a support spec for them of which they are sorely lacking. Actually the more i think about it the more it makes sense for the thief (they got unused f keys after all) other than that they already got staff (scepter?). If anyone should be breaking into places and stealing things it would be those guys right? Following my own advice of placing the themes where they make the most sense.
(edited by miriforst.1290)
The bulwark gyro is already limited by the amount of damage it absorbs (due to it not having any armor and the way it “transfers” (takes) damage from you). In pvp it usually dies within seconds when its actually needed (i used to pop it in wvw for just that one pulse of 4 sec -50%, because it exploded instantly). Sure i could pop it up before hand but i wouldn’t really gain anything from it. You miss out on the initial stab, you lower your rapid regen uptime and the recharge still starts when it dies. So far i havent seen anyone stop attacking me for 15 seconds to wait out my bulwark so it changes little there.
As for the sneaky the counter is already to kill the gyro. Gyros got no armor and are pretty fast to kill for powerbuilds. Slower for condi though. But once again people are usually not going to wait out the full duration of your sneak gyro. I agree its the most problematic though.
As for the medgyro, thats kind of the point. In pvp situations where you want to push out those aoe heals (which usually involve heavy aoe pressure) the gyro is probably not going to last its current duration anyhow. If you land every single heal pulse on your allies (in a considerably smaller area) the difference at 0 hp to placing and picking up your healingturret (including regeneration) still isn’t super great. And its at the cost of rapid regen and stab uptime. And the healing turret cleanses 2 conditions aoe. Where i feel this might have an impact is in wvw when you restack but are still in combat.
Atleast shredder would feel more impactfull and reliable for your teammates (but please make it scale).
With the daze gone arenanet seems to want us not to pop them for the destruction effects so that kind of leaves us waiting for stronger support and a reason to have them alive in the first place and not only place and pop for damage, daze, stab and super speed/regeneration (the bulwark naturally being shortlived anyhow if it does its jobb).
Im not sure how much of an impact this would have outside of sneaky, but it would push them in more of a team support direction instead of selfish buffing.
If you want to get into replicas as well i would recommend gyros.
They would be about as effective as the “real deal”.
And if you put them in your pocket they certainly stick to you better than the originals.
For extra authenticity make them out of folded paper.
There’s an entire page of threads dedicated to the likes of you whining. Why can’t you leave completely unrelated and actually interesting threads alone?
Would be helpful, however, making the gyros isn’t such a bad idea, they would be pretty easy to make. In that regard, I still need blueprints
Actually i think a gyro standing on a transparent plastic stand would be a kitten cool desktop ornament. Even more so if its the sneaky with built in lights
200% critical damage is crazy, don’t you meant critical chance? Or do you mean that the critical hit of the ram itself would do much more damage (which would be interesting, like our own little headbutt)?
And i think it would be a shame to make mine into a grenade only, rather i would like to see it more effective at its “purpose” which is tactical area denial. To be fair making the toolbelt strip 1 boon from everyone walking over it instead of only one and have those detonations (not manual!) be unblockable might actually make it a serious tool for wvw. The problem is that right now its more of a sneak up, place and detonate in the same move kind of tool which is as far from how you would expect a mine to work as healing turret is from a turret. Making the explosions when the enemies walk or are pulled into the mines stronger somehow would allow more counterplay and make a mined area dangerous. But i absolutely agree on a fixed formation instead of a random pattern (which pattern is debatable, sometimes a “circle” would be preferable i suppose)!
I had sort of forgot AED had a toolbelt. The cast reduction would help, as well as cleave. But also it would be nice to not have it require a target, so you could get clutch interrupts against stealthed targets and such easier.
(edited by miriforst.1290)
Gyro detonation was useful in the same situations that the function gyro was. If not more. Enemies reviving the ally you are function gyro stomping? Daze and get that last second needed for a stomp. Enemy stomping the ally you are reviving in cleave? Use your heal to recover and time the detonate to reset his stomp. These are the things that make our class mechanic somewhat work. And to go on further-. Ele casting air overload with 1 stack of stab? Rip it with your gyro and chain it with another skill (since the ele will try to hit you it will be close enough for the gyro. Or the backline is nuking your frontline? Disrupt and spread disorientation. Removing the daze is like removing the stunbreak from elixir gun or the condi clear from healing turret.
I agree that the daze could be confined to manual detonation to lessen the feeling of randomness (even if you could argue that having the gyros detonate in your face for nuking the bruiser fits very well to the “take a hit, hit back” playstyle of the scrapper).
As for purity, the idea that we would want to let the gyros stay up for as long as possible, thats exactly what gyros weren’t marketed as. The gyros are arguably one of the most disposable minion type of all except for illusions, and in fact share more in common with the shatter mesmer than the turret engi or minion master. They are relatively short lived things with some passive effect while up and that can still be used in areas with heavy aoe pressure and focus (yknow like when a enemy or friend drops, or in the frontline or on the point) which made them useful even in a pvp setting. I actually think the original gyros might have had some thought behind them as to make a minion type thats viable in pvp without kittening people off as much (after the turret fiasco). Blast gyro and shredder gyro embody this kamikaze playstyle to its fullest but even the purge gyro can favor a manual burst between condi bombs to time it with the actual flow of combat (so you got it available earlier for the next bomb). And then theres the actual gyro trait, the grandmaster final salvo which heavily favors disposing of the gyros as fast as possible for maximum stability and regeneration. The bulwark used to be an exception but now that its 33% (and most of us got protection anyways (and no its not additive afaik)) i often found myself preventing more damage if i detonated it right when i got jumped in melee for example.
Also- Holy mother of gods, i was experimenting with a P/S scrapper and i equipped AA instead of final salvo. I had forgot how much more the function gyro sucked without the stab stack. When you forget you cant even leave your gyro to deal with stomping the guy after a 1vs1 and you have to walk back, apologize and stomp him manually anyway.
(edited by miriforst.1290)
Yesterday I was being attacked by an enemy in WvW, so I did what any modern engineer would do. I ran and stood next to them, then activated Rocked Boots! This didn’t actually kill them so I ran back, waited 20 seconds and did it again .. and again .. and again .. and again ..and again .. and again… and again .. and again .. and I actually got a crit that time, so it was enough to down them.
Pics or it didnt happen.
If you want to get into replicas as well i would recommend gyros.
They would be about as effective as the “real deal”.
And if you put them in your pocket they certainly stick to you better than the originals.
For extra authenticity make them out of folded paper.
And most of our gyros have a detonation cast time. Some with a cast time to spawn it as well (looking at you medgyro).
But yeah, it really feels like there is no point to medgyro anymore, no purpose, back to healing turret (which most people did before this i suppose).
Also do we even need to mention shredder?
(edited by miriforst.1290)
Also where the hell is the supposed pvp splitting? Cause i hardly saw any engineers in wvw before and is a block that only blocks that overpowered in pve?
I mean for crying out loud if they could split rev energy drain and even buff skills in pvp specifically. It feels like they gave the intern free hands on this one. They just didnt teach him to pvp split.
I dont give a kitten about Espuurts insert dorito ad here. They can bathe in mountain dew and nerf every single skill and trait to cinders there for all i care. Go on give healing turret 60 seconds cooldown, make sneak gyro apply reveal instead of stealth on you, make the hammer hit yourself (kitten) and make the fgyro stomp allies and revive enemies. But engineers are “rare as hens teeth” compared to other classes in wvw (take a look at your squad composition and average the number of engineers per other classes, hell even rangers are more common). Even in “roaming” these days we arent exactly swarming all over the place.
I couldn’t resist summarizing this patch in a dank way.
Next patch i recommend using utility goggles before making changes. ^^
If i inreased the direct damage by 10% of:
Fumigate.
Throw napalm.
Shockwave.
Blast gyro tag.
Static shot.
Napalm.
And then increased the recharge of healing turret to 40 seconds, the above buffs does not necessarily outweigh the single nerf. Especially if we are talking different gamemodes. All these kitten kitten damage increases is just to throw pve engineers a bone.
The one buff that mattered was the shield one. And even that buff was mild compared to its situation.
*EDIT*That translates into kitten?
You really shouldn’t use a smiley, they might skip reading and just think you are happy about the patch.
Well if this forum was read at all atleast.
Im so glad rocket boots do 25% more damage. I really need that for my sneak-up-on-my-foe-and-rocket-boots-burst-him build.