Guild Wars 2

Rhomulos.2089:

I say reduce damage by 15%, but let it apply 7 vuln + 2 stacks of 4s burning. It’s not too bad in pvp for extra delayed CC pressure, not optimal by any means but could do with a little more meat.

I’m sorry but the damage is already not really that much considering how easy it is to avoid, we already have tons of easy Vuln stacking, and no condi build is dropping real condi utilities for Blast Gyro 4s low burn.

I would rather it not be a Throw Mine clone and do something else entirely. After trying it I don’t see myself ever using this skill. Ever. I can think of no situation where I would want it. I can knock an afk player off a high ledge in WvW. Yay? I know it has 1500 range, it’s so bad it doesn’t matter.

Make it a gyro that locks onto your target and drops bombs every few seconds that are blast finishers with high damage.

I’m surprised how many people in here are honestly advocating for a weapon swap.

I don’t see it ever happening, and that’s fine by me. I don’t see a future in which we have no cooldown kits and weapon swap, so that choice is pretty easy for me to make.

Engi is simply balanced around kits and not weapon swap. Like it or leave it that’s just how it is.

Arantheal.7396:

Should be merged with the feedback thread…

But… but… special snowflake!

OP asking if it’s “still about stacking zerk gear and blowing things up” leads me to believe he’s talking about PvE. In this case there is 1 best condi build by a fairly wide margin. If you drop FT, bombs, or grenades from that build you’re losing a lot of damage. You can do it, and in fact you may have to in certain fights, but you do lose a lot.

Certainly in PvP you’re right Monkey, there’s a number of builds you could be using many of which can be very flexible. I’m not sure that’s what the OP was asking though.

philheat.3956:

Adamantium.3682:

I’m worried that if you make this active one of two things happen.

1) Scrappers who are tanking a raid are forced to spam whatever the active effects are, dropping their DPS considerably and putting more pressure on everyone else.

2) The trigger can’t be kept up constantly, or requires us to blow important skills (like stun breaks) resulting in a much weaker trait that exists now and one that could potentially hurt the Scrapper.

My knee jerk reaction was that this is a bad idea, but I thought about it more because the idea of more active defense is something I do like. I don’t think it would pan out though due to the reasons above.

Honestly it is sort of active, it’s just a very boring active. It makes you get hit for it to be effective, you can’t just take it in a damage build to survive the random big hits.

No wait, the active form is good when it promotes a reaction to something, not spam the skill random.

I did the trait war example because you get the heal and the toughness buff only when you use Your Break stun to break kb/daze/stun etc.

If you use Your break stun random you get nothing.

The break stun is only an example, it could be other stuff about your action or enemies action.

For example for engi could be you get a toughness buff if you knockback or interrupt someone.

It’s just an example, can be a lot of things.

In this example it’s a worthless trait if there’s no stuns to break. We’ve seen 1 raid boss and it’s worthless there, who knows what else it would be worthless in. Even with the occasional stun break that’s pretty bad uptime.

I realize this is just an example, but the reason I sort of picked it apart was because I feel these types of flaws will exist for any of these “on skill effect” type of activations. It wouldn’t be as good of a trait I don’t think. As it is now you do have to be getting hit, so tanking, for it to work. I just don’t really see a problem with it.

Is it boring? Sure, but not every trait can be groundbreaking and exciting, you have to have those stable reliable traits. This is the only GM Scrapper trait that works in any build as well, I would really hate to see it changed to only work with certain skills on your bar and limit the way a Scrapper can build.

I like the second one. Still not sold on FT personally. I’m wary of the low health pool, but it seems like there might be enough removal for the average build. Condi bombers might kill you fast?

Here was mine. I wouldn’t call it a bunker, but it sure annoyed the hell out of people. I would regularly jump onto a point with 2 enemies and end up taking it. It’s also great for 1v1s when other enemies jump in to try and outnumber you, I ended up killing both more often than not. It took 3 to reliably take me down.

I have on illusions that this is anything but lack of familiarity with the build and its weaknesses but it was pretty great.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASncoCFpilcBubBEqilJji+tr7+W8ZOgAY8Dqg4D-TJxHABXXGIgHAAAXAAR2fAA

Aside from the lack of flexibility you have with utilities to be top condi damage, the condi build doesn’t have a stun break. It doesn’t come up often but when it does it’s really irritating to not be able to break out of stun.

I use Reactive Lenses but it’s still bugged and doesn’t activate on most CC.

I’m worried that if you make this active one of two things happen.

1) Scrappers who are tanking a raid are forced to spam whatever the active effects are, dropping their DPS considerably and putting more pressure on everyone else.

2) The trigger can’t be kept up constantly, or requires us to blow important skills (like stun breaks) resulting in a much weaker trait that exists now and one that could potentially hurt the Scrapper.

My knee jerk reaction was that this is a bad idea, but I thought about it more because the idea of more active defense is something I do like. I don’t think it would pan out though due to the reasons above.

Honestly it is sort of active, it’s just a very boring active. It makes you get hit for it to be effective, you can’t just take it in a damage build to survive the random big hits.

Scrapper has the ability to be a very tanky spec. This is the GM trait that helps most with that. I don’t see a problem.

I spent about an hour in the raid late Sunday night when it reopened. Unfortunately none of our guild scheduled times we wanted to try it panned out, so it was a mix of mostly guild that was online and a few pugs.

My feedback

What I liked: The minibosses showed you the mechanics you would need for the big boss. I always liked that in raids. Trash that has no point but to slow you down is very annoying. This was good. Also the visuals of this part of the raid as a whole was pretty cool.

The Vale Guardian was a really cool fight, what I got to see of it (about half way). The mechanics were fun and interesting.

What I didn’t like: It wasn’t very apparent what the minibosses were trying to show us. Okay there’s one that needed condi damage, one needs a measly boon removal, and the other one I’m not really sure. There was something about blue orbs and red orbs but it was never really clear to me what they do. I body blocked the blue orbs as that’s what information I had ahead of time told me to do, but I didn’t really see anything happen when I didn’t block them. We were able to pretty much just faceroll over them on the first try, they felt, like an easy dungeon boss. I don’t want to spend all night on the minibosses, but I felt it should have at least felt threatening.

The Vale Guardian didn’t seem to do very much damage, I felt he could be more threatening. The fight itself was difficult don’t get me wrong, I didn’t beat it. My point is more that I was in about 50/50 offense/defense gear and he didn’t hit me very hard. I didn’t tank the whole time but I purposely stood in front of him most of the fight to test this very thing.

Suggestions: Following from what I didn’t like, I suggest making it more clear what mechanics we are learning. Maybe give lines in /say to the bad guys that hints at it, I don’t really want or need it to be told explicitly by the boss portrait or anything. I think they should be a bit more threatening as well, I just feel I shouldn’t be able to go in with a PUG and steam roll over these minibosses on the first try without really caring about what their mechanics are.

For the Vale Guardian I don’t have many suggestions, he seemed great. Only two things. 1) He didn’t deal very much damage I thought, I think this should be cranked up a little. I don’t want to see him one shotting anyone who happens to be in front of him, but something more than what seemed like 4-5k. Here’s a good way to put it: I was using Heal Gyro and never felt like I was going to die.

2) The first team to beat him did so with about a minute and a half to spare I think it was? That means they only needed just over 80% of the allotted time. Many other teams have beaten him since, probably some faster and some slower. I think his health should be tuned up just a little bit. This is not just because a team beat him, I expected someone to beat him and I’m sure you guys did too because of that message at the end! I just think that a team in the moderately limiting beta gear that probably has a few players on not the most ideal trait setups (to test the elite specs) shouldn’t be able to beat it within a day, at least not with a pretty comfortable cushion. I’m not pointing to any particular team because maybe they all transferred all their gear into their vault before hand, etc, and this isn’t a slight against anyone who was able to complete it I just think it should require a little more is all. If I’m totally off base because the later bosses will make me cry then that’s okay too!

Andrige.5609:

…

1. does only give its leap finisher effect when the each of the leap lands in a field, as opposed to just pass through a field. This leads to less successful leap finishers overall.
   …

I noticed I wasn’t getting leap finisher effects as consistently as I thought I should be. If you are sure this is the case please posts in the Scrapper Bugs thread as Irenio is looking there for misbehaving skills!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Thanks for the solid feedback and spotting some unintended behaviors that I’ll be going over and modifying or changing, including things like the hammer autoattack aftercasts.

I’ll be checking what we can do on the AI side to help the appropriate gyros keep closer to you – this feedback and that rocket charge felt erratic are high on my list for today and tomorrow as modifying animation and AI can take a lot more work than other changes.

I’ll also thread in as many more easily implementable tweaks and bugfixes as I can (to several things like rocket charge being affected by movement-affecting boons and conditions). I’ll review gyro durations/recharge start times as well.

Thanks Irenio, this covers most of my concerns regarding the Scrapper. That’s great to hear you’re looking at these things.

Any word on Superspeed stacking or minor traits?

Xyonon.3987:

Afaik Stabilization Core didn’t work … ?

Stabilization Core only affects Function Gyro when you try to revive/stomp. It has no effect on the other Gyros.

1k in full Berserker? I don’t think you’re doing full Berserker right. I am seeing 2k+ right now just soloing in my raid setup that consists of Cavalier/Knight/Soldier with a Berserker weapon.

Nerfing HT because our other healing skills aren’t good is backwards thinking. Power creep is a thing because you have to keep progressing and improving throughout the life of a game. No one is going to play your game if you just keep nerfing everything down to the lowest common denominator.

Haralin.1473:

Bacon.1835:

LunacyPolish.4602:

lorddarkflare.9186:

Uh, no? We have plenty of sources. More stability—especially more AoE stability—would actually be OP.

Yeah because screw anything that would actually create a viable alternative to GWEN, and screw anyone who realizes the pirate ship meta is worse than the hammer train. :p

Lets not also forget that we have pulsing stability on elixir X which is very handy in zerg on zerg action. Nevertheless, hammer block, tool kit block, elixir S and hammer evade all supplement your needs far greater than actual stability in WvW.

Hammer block only attacks infront of you, not sure but a line of warding you cannot run through with block and necro fear field are mostly unblockable, elixir s is good, but you cannot do anything while it is active.

Hammer blocks in all directions from any range just like any other block.

I’ve seen a lot of people say this, and nearly every time I go make sure that I am experiencing differently before I reply. I’m 99% sure what you and others are seeing is just the delay in when the actual block takes effect. It’s about halfway through the skill use, then it continues for awhile after where it definitely blocks normally.

HG most certainly doesn’t heal more upfront than HT. You should include the Cleansing Burst in the initial heal, as that is when it is used. Immediately on placement. I feel like anyone who has played Engineer should know this.

Additionally HT gives you a decent duration water field that you can use any blast or leap in. The toolbelt also gives a water field, but only long enough for 1 maybe 2 if you’re quick.

Lastly, go ahead and double the HT numbers since you can use that twice before Healing Gyro even comes off cooldown.

I don’t think HG is the worst gyro, but the cooldown just kills it. The toolbelt is great, the instant activation is great. The interval is a bit long in my opinion, it feels like I caught a stray Virtue of Resolve. It should be 400 every 1s or 500 every 2s I think. Seeing as it can be killed pretty easily I think that’s fine.

My feedback…

Hammer
What I like: It’s really fun to use. I feel like a bruiser that does good damage but is hard to take down. All the skills except the auto attack have nice visuals.

What I don’t like: A couple of the skills are really hurt by clunky aftercasts and functionality. The auto attack chain is a lot of unnecssary aftercast as I detailed in an earlier post. It’s practically the same amount of time as a Tool Belt auto attack chain, that’s bad. Rocket Charge of course has the problem of jumping past your target.

Suggestions: These fixes are (relatively) simple I think. Auto attack aftercast needs cleaning up and Rocket Charge should lock onto your target when your target is already in the leap range. Everything else about RC I like, even the zig zag jumps. It feels like the Engi kind of crazy of some other skills so I don’t want to lose that feeling, I just want better functionality. Honestly it would be icing on the cake if RC finishers were leap, leap, blast instead of leap x 3. Having no blast finisher anywhere in the Scrapper is weird especially since there’s a trait that synergizes with it. Please look into the evade frames though, there is definitely at least one gap in there during RC that I am consistently getting hit or CC’d in.

Traits
What I like: The major/GM trait choices. All GMs except Perfectly Weighted really feel build defining. I feel like many GMs in this game aren’t build defining and even though being a GM doesn’t really mean anything anymore, I think they really should define your build. I’m glad to see 2/3 Scrapper traits really do that.

What I don’t like: Function Gyro stomp so slow! And so is the recharge. Minor traits and a couple of the Adepts. The minor traits really force things on you that many Scrappers don’t want or need. And at least one of the Adepts forces you to make a choice that really should be baseline (Stabilization Core).

Suggestions: First and foremost roll Decisive Renown into Function Gyro baseline (i.e. first minor). I see no reason that needs to take an extra slot. Additionaly Function Gyro baseline really should have stability, in PvP it’s not useful without it. It might be able to get by without it if it would immediately try to stomp/revive after getting CC’d but it doesn’t. Also Function Gyro should stomp at the same speed as a player I think, and at a much lower cooldown. It also needs a moderate health buff, I was almost able to kill other Engi Function Gyros by myself in a 1v1 arena after being downed, and we know Engi downed skills don’t really do much damage. Add in a realistic PvP scenario with teammates and AOEs flying around and they die a lot before doing their job.

Need a new minor in place of Impact Savant. This to me is just a really boring trait that doesn’t even add much to the Scrapper. In any event after merging Decisive Renown with something we have at least one open minor. I would really like to see something that adds more to Superspeed, heck even if it’s just stacking. Ideally a modest attack speed buff. That’s unique and not boring.

Also I feel Perfectly Weighted needs a little more to it. A cooldown reduction would be perfect. If you take this trait it should mean camping the hammer for extended periods of time is more of an option. With a cooldown reduction it makes the Scrapper less dependent on kits to fill those downtime voids, so it would make this trait better and define a build by being less reliant on kits.

Gyros
What I like: Instant cast is nice, and some of the toolbelts really deliver. They look cool.

What I don’t like: Gyros don’t follow you well, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now. I’m not terribly worried about this getting fixed, a couple months ago Jungle Tendril mobs were fixed to follow the player much more accurately when attacking so I believe you guys can do this. Additionally health is low and the effects are not worth the cooldowns, they die way too fast if there’s anything around to attack them. I don’t like how Blast Gyro is basically Throw Mine. That seems really lame to me, I wish it were at least a unique skill.

Suggestions: First off, cooldowns should start when the Gyro is first used. This is not just a cooldown issue as those can just be lowered (though I think those are much too long across the board). This is an issue where Healing Gyro will become Healing Turret, not in terms of replacing it but how it’s used. Who would ever want to wait 44s after getting the instant heal when they could blow it up and only wait 30s? No one. Purge Gyro will be used to clear existing conditions then blown up, etc.

Which brings me to some of the gyro effects. Purge Gyro is a nice effect but it’s just so bland I never found meaningful use for it. For pure condi removal I feel Elixir C is far superior, and just by being in the Alchemy trait line you have condition removal that surpasses Purge Gyro. I’m not in favor of merging it with Heal Gyro simply because we don’t need to make it compete with Healing Turret. Make this unique instead. Make it pulse boon stripping as well (longer interval for balance), make it give resistance if there are still condis left after it clears, an aura that decreases enemy run speed and increases ally run speed. Anything. I also think this toolbelt is really weak, poison fields aren’t that great and we already have one in addition to many sources of poison. Chaos field would be unique, otherwise a fire field would be nice. Heck maybe this is where you add the boon removal. The Purge Gyro discharges its toxic cartridges, corrupting boons in an area (3 removed).

Blast Gyro I feel should be changed a little bit because it’s currently much too similar to Throw Mine. Make it lock on your target dropping aoe bombs in an interval. Remove knockback but make them deal good damage and be blast finishers.

Shredder Gyro really needs damage. I appreciate the thought that a whirl finisher was powerful enough but I don’t think it is. It also needs to be beefier since it is being dropped right in the danger zones.

Heal Gyro cooldown is really bad, otherwise it’s not a bad skill. I still think 3 second interval for a main healing skill is too long though. I would like to see 500 every 2s or 400 every 1s. This makes it feel more like a heal that’s keeping you alive and less like a random Guardian Virtue of Resolve.

Bulwark Gyro needs something starting with a decent health buff of 20% or so. 11k just isn’t cutting it. Also you mentioned it was low armor, but why is this the case? I feel that if this gyros sole purpose is to soak up damage that would have been on us it shouldn’t be as susceptible to cleave as the rest of the gyros. I think it should have a -50% direct damage buff. It was the gyro I probably used the most, but it just has such a disparity between solo and group play. If the tech exists for it I would like to see some sort of mechanic where it knows how many players it has applied Watchful Eye to. For each one it mitigates the absorb damage it takes by some amount. It doesn’t have to scale linearly, but something to make it worth more than 2k damage saved to each party member in an ideal situation would be nice.

Sneak Gyro aside from the pathing issues I like. It doesn’t really seem to aggro in PvE which is all I wanted from it. I don’t think it should reveal you when it blows up. If this is a counterplay thing I get it, but if it was just sort of an unintended side effect I think it should be considered if its necessary.

Miscellaneous
Last but not least, Superspeed. This really needs to stack. The Scrapper can be built way too heavily on Superspeed for it not to stack. It’s not only our own effects, but other professions can negate our own Superspeed with shorter durations! I would prefer this be a game mechanic update, but if it needs to be on a minor trait that also does something like a modest attack speed buff (10-15%) that would be acceptable.

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank you for taking the time to read the book that could be made from all of our feedback and the long hours you’ve probably already put in and likely have ahead of you. You’ve really got your work cut out for you, I know many Engis and Rangers were irked at being the last reveal but it probably doesn’t feel great to have the least amount of time to incorporate feedback either. Good luck.

guildabd.6529:

…

• Hammer #4: Blocking only works at front. Should block attacks from side and behind.
  …

I’ve said this in a few places, but the block is working normally for me. The problem is that it is delayed, but it definitely is working from behind and from range as well.

Try pulling a profession NPC in Heart of the Mists, turn around and run away from them a decent bit then use the block. You’ll block an attack, at least I did.

Arantheal.7396:

Xyonon.3987:

So after reading all 7 pages plus giving my own feedback at page 5, I see that everyone overall agrees with this:

• hammer is great, but we would enjoy a blast somewhere

Hammer is definitively not great at this point.
And if you had read all 7 pages you’d know that the vast mayority of people were complaining about either of the following points:
- AA too weak
- Aftercast on most skills (including AA) too long
- #3 behaving oddly, mostly not being able to connect all 3 hits, even if triggered on point blank & not being a true gapcloser since people with swiftness can actually outrun it, since the 2 breaks in between & the big one at the end slow you down quite a lot. Also many were complaining about the weid pathing on it, leaving you quite often in spots that you’ve never intended to go to.

And a good amount of posts were complaining about all 3 points above together…
The concept behind hammer is definitively great, and we can definitively notice it being present, but the execution of this concept still needs a lot of polish before HoT ships.

… funnily enough, not that many people were even asking for a blast on hammer, even tho a few did. Please don’t make false claims about the broad opinion on things to forward your own agenda.
Your feedback is as welcome & valuable as that of everyone else. Not more, nor less. In case a-net cares enough, the devs will have to dig trough these 7 (or more by the time) pages as well and will be completely capable of coming to their own conclusions.

You’re doing the exact same thing you’re calling him out on with your “definitive” claim starting with the very first sentence of your post.

Why don’t we just stick to giving our own personal feedback and let other people speak for themselves. If everyone is giving the same feedback I bet the devs are smart enough to connect the dots without us doing it for them and injecting our own agenda into it.

lorddarkflare.9186:

I think it is more productive to improve the current vision that A-Net has for the class rather than redesign it from scratch.

It is MUCH too late for such complex mechanic changes. Even with all the feedback that suggests that this is exactly what they should consider.

Expecting drastic changes is setting yourself up for disappointment.

Not only is it setting yourself up for disappointment, but it takes attention and time away from actionable feedback. I feel like there’s a lot of feedback coming through that is just soaking up time for Irenio and the team to read that has no chance of being implemented.

Definitely express your displeasure, and say it should have worked another way if that’s what you think. I certainly do, I think Gyros in their current state are lame but there’s no point in me coming up with a redesign for them. I just think writing out these long essays on completely reworking mechanics and adding UI elements is not helping anyone. It’s not constructive feedback, they’re not going to do it even if they wanted to.

At this point I think the best thing we can do is try to tweak numbers on existing Gyros and possibly some sort of buff for inactive Function Gyros like Chaith’s post. I very much doubt suggesting a full rework or adding in a fuel mechanic is helpful to anyone.

Twiggster.4320:

Does anyone here agree with making rocket charge, the 3 on the hammer, have 3 separate leaps like an auto attack chain but after expending the 3 leaps it goes on a cooldown. This would make it so you have more control over the leaps rather than the three sporadic leaps it currently has. In the Verdant Brink, there are enemies of many and sometimes they are close to cliff edges, I have fallen off these edges due to the nature of the ability just double leaping forward instead of leaping back and forth.

I would much rather just see the ability get fixed to lock to your target and not always go the same distance forward.

I don’t want it to be 3 separate button presses personally, it would just lead to more button mashing. Also it’s a unique skill I would like it to stay unique and just fix the random leaping by locking it to our target. I feel that making it 3 separate leaps is boring, it’s just the same leap as any other leap in the game at that point. I like how it is now I just want it to work right.

Changing the last finisher to blast would be great as well. Leap, leap, blast.

I played Druid and I couldn’t believe how much I felt like I could actually keep people alive. It’s so straight forward too, use this heal in this area. Done.

Ventari on the other hand is so clunky. My focus on the first couple BWEs was not healing it was on other things I feel I will use more often. This BWE I wanted to compare Druid to Ventari and it’s not even close. Druid is practically full time Celestial Form if they want to, it would have to be nerfed so hard to actually be burst healing I don’t see that happening. Even if it did happen Ventari just doesn’t feel fun.

As someone who mains an Engineer I am getting a pretty big Med Kit vibe from Ventari to be honest. That’s not a good thing.Trying to make the tablet fly through my friendlies is asinine, just like throwing Med Kit stim packs is. I’m worried Ventari is meant to be that heavy support role but it’s going to see just about the same amount of use as a Med Kit Engi (hint: none).

EDIT: I realize my feedback might not be that constructive and helpful so let me try to fix that.

1. The tablet is very clunky. To resolve this I think the tablet should not need to pass through allies to heal them. It should apply its heal in AOE when it reaches its destination. This way we can still aim it to certain areas but we’re doing just that: aiming to areas not players as they move and dodge around.

2. Protective Solace is great.

3. When Druid can drop thousands upon thousands of heals in AOE consistently, Natural Harmony starts to not look good. I would greatly increase this heal. I think the delay is okay. Until it causes my raid to wipe, then I will be sad.

4. I think Purifying Essence should heal more per condition removed or apply resistance or something else to make it more rewarding to use. I would rather see resistance than just more healing per condition because it would make the skill a little more unique. Everyone can remove conditions and spit out small heals that won’t really save you, but not everyone can apply resistance.

5. I don’t like the healing fragments because it feels like Med Kit again. It’s the same idea here for me. The wrong person might pick them up, they might expire before the person who needs them can get to them, they might go completely unnoticed in combat, etc. Many problems. I would like to keep what I think are great visuals for this skill but just turn them into ground AOE pulsing heal fragments. Of course healing amount would need to be balanced per tick, but this is the elite skill that destroys the tablet and uses 35 energy. It should heal a lot and players should feel like they want to run and be healed by them. I think base 800 per second for 5 seconds would be good.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Adamantium.3682:

dancingmonkey.4902:

I enjoyed the hammer for the most part.

Personally I would really like to see the #4 skill function quicker, but mostly I wish it was a 360 degree block. Maybe that comes from my love for the engie shield skills, but it would be a most helpful counter to those thieves and mesmers attacking out of stealth from behind.

It is. It’s a normal block like every other block skill. It’s just that the timing is weird.

At least that’s how it has worked for me all day.

Maybe it is just the timing issue then. I guess it is just the damage that is the only aspect that function the way you are facing only.

I agree with both of those things. The timing is really weird on it and the damage definitely is directional and on a very short range. I would like to see it raised a little, to 240. It’s very difficult to land sometimes.

This seems to be a pretty heated thread for some reason. I just don’t think the hammer needs more damage. I think it’s the only part of the Scrapper that is ready for launch and fun to use. I’m going to leave it at that.

I’ll try to address something that doesn’t seem to have a lot of emotion wrapped up in it instead. Are you guys sure you’re not getting normal block functionality from Shock Shield? Every time I have used it it blocks like any other block even after the skill is over for a second or so. I even tried it again just to make sure and it is definitely working at any range in any direction for me. I pulled one of the profession NPCs in the HotM (Engineer specifically) and immediately turned around and ran ~400 range away then used the block skill. I blocked the next two attacks.

coglin.1867:

Adamantium.3682:

I don’t think it’s fair to ask to change a weapon’s intent and purpose to fit something that you want it to be. The hammer is not broken which is why the comparison to Rev is not a good one. Rev damage was literally broken. It was terrible across the board

Hammer is good. It’s just not good at pure damage. This is not a fault of the hammer and why I don’t think it’s good feedback to try and change it into something it’s not. The problem is not hammer, the problem is that the hammer doesn’t fit into your expectation of what it should do. This is an important distinction to me.

What is the weapons intent and purpose? Why does your view of its intent or purpose supersede anyone else’s?

Sure, I agree the revenant may not be a good comparison. Though guardian hammer may be. it has similar defensive and/or CC functionality and similar auto attack timing, yet does 35% more damage.

Really? I feel like you’re just being argumentative.

I didn’t decide it was a defensive weapon. It’s not me trying to make it a defensive weapon. It is a defensive weapon. Irenio said as much on the stream and anyone who has had 30 seconds to use it can see that pretty easily.

Guardian hammer is not a good comparison. It does not have similar auto attack timing, in fact it might be as dissimilar as you can get. It takes nearly kitten to complete the Guardian AA chain 10 times compared to just about 32s for the Scrapper. I certainly hope it would do more damage because it takes almost 50% longer to complete even including the nasty aftercast hammer is currently suffering from.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I enjoyed the hammer for the most part.

Personally I would really like to see the #4 skill function quicker, but mostly I wish it was a 360 degree block. Maybe that comes from my love for the engie shield skills, but it would be a most helpful counter to those thieves and mesmers attacking out of stealth from behind.

It is. It’s a normal block like every other block skill. It’s just that the timing is weird.

At least that’s how it has worked for me all day.

Arantheal.7396:

Adamantium.3682:

Using the change notes for Rev as evidence the Engi hammer needs more damage tells me all I need to know about your intentions. You want a pure damage weapon (like Rev sword). That would be great, but it isn’t what we got. I disagree with changing what we did get into something else entirely. 50%-70% more damage on the AA? Seriously?

Yes seriously.
It doesn’t matter what you think my intentions are, I already clearly stated them. I want proper cleave-dmg for its AA, else its mostly long, defensive cd’s will not cut it in WvW. And yes, the revenant change-notes were meant as evidence – for the ludicrousness of the notion that dmg-increases of one skill HAVE to be accompanied by dps-loses on other skills.

And it’s definitively not our best dps option. rifle still cuts this by miles. 13k-14k from jumpshot and another 8k from blunderbus, both on rather short cd’s. Hammer was never intended to replace rifle for dungeons and thats clearly not what I’m asking for.

I would already be happy enough it it were on par with the warris hammer AA. You already stated yourself it would be awesome, so why contradict yourself? We have not “gotten” anything, this beta-weekend is there for us to find possible bugs & point out what went wrong in the design process, and the weak hammer AA is definitively one entry on this list.

I don’t think it’s fair to ask to change a weapon’s intent and purpose to fit something that you want it to be. The hammer is not broken which is why the comparison to Rev is not a good one. Rev damage was literally broken. It was terrible across the board.

Hammer is good. It’s just not good at pure damage. This is not a fault of the hammer and why I don’t think it’s good feedback to try and change it into something it’s not. The problem is not hammer, the problem is that the hammer doesn’t fit into your expectation of what it should do. This is an important distinction to me.

Due to the reports of hammer AA feeling clunky and slow, I wanted to see if there were merits to this feedback or if us Engis were just not used to using a big 2H weapon. I timed a few different auto attack chains. I started the timer as soon as I pressed “1” the first time, and let the auto attack run from there. I stopped the timer as soon as the final attack activation bar filled.

10 Hammer AA chains (1/2s, 1/2s, 1/2s) = 30.8s
10 TK AA chains (1/2s, 1/2s, 1s) = 32.06s
30 Hip Shots (3/4s) = 25.29s
30 Bombs (1/2s) = 26.33

Warrior Hammer AA chain (1/2s, 1/2s, 1/2s) = 27.13s

Some interesting notes:
If you’re not familiar with the Warrior hammer AA chain it has a horrible aftercast delay, but this only occurs after all 3 attacks. So it feels more like hit, hit, hit, delay, hit, hit, hit, delay when compared to Engi hammer which is hit, delay, hit, delay, hit, delay. While I would prefer no bad feeling delays, if it is necessary for attack speed balance purposes please copy the Warrior and put it at the end of the chain. Even still the Warrior’s entire chain is quite a bit faster than the Engi chain even though they are both 1/2s on all skills.

Over the course of 10 chains the Tool Kit is only slower by barely a second. This is the most evidence to me that something is wrong. Tool Kit has a notoriously slow final attack, but one chain is only about 0.12 seconds longer than the hammer.

Using the change notes for Rev as evidence the Engi hammer needs more damage tells me all I need to know about your intentions. You want a pure damage weapon (like Rev sword). That would be great, but it isn’t what we got. I disagree with changing what we did get into something else entirely. 50%-70% more damage on the AA? Seriously?

It would be great if the hammer were a damage weapon. It isn’t. It’s a defensive weapon that can put out some good damage and CC as well. If you want to do the max damage possible then don’t camp hammer. Just like you can’t camp any single weapon or kit for the Engi to get max DPS.

Looking at the utility for the hammer compared to the grenades it makes no sense to me that hammer should be even equal to grenade auto damage, let alone more.

Also Rev damage was horrendously low across the board after the first BWE, which is when damage was buffed overall. Since then damage has been brought down for some skills and up for others, making swords the intended pure dps option. This doesn’t mean the Rev staff is bad because it doesn’t do the same damage as swords. Options are good.

If we make hammer 50%-70% more damage on AA there are literally no options for Engi weapons. Hammer is best damage, best CC, best defense. Why choose anything else? Only for condis?

I don’t see a problem. The whole risk/reward argument doesn’t really make sense to me because hammer is by far the least risky weapon we have. Possibly in the whole game. Sure you have to stand in close which is inherently more risky, but you also have way more defense than any other weapon gives you. Standing in melee with a hammer is less risky than standing at range with a rifle, and you don’t even want to stand at range with a rifle anyays you need Blunderbuss and JS damage.

Bottom line for me: I would hate to see skills 2-5 gutted of damage to put on the AA. I could see the AA getting maybe a 5-10% boost by itself but if it comes at the cost of the other skills NO TY.

I’m not sure how valuable feedback is if it suggests entirely reworking to include new mechanics. At this point I think the best thing we can do is make suggestions to tweak numbers and cooldowns, possible add new effects. Certainly not a new mechanic that has to fit with the rest of the Engineer and needs new visuals and essentially throws the current concept of gyros out the window.

Like it or not (I don’t really) the concept of gyros we have now is the concept of gyros we will have in 3 weeks.

I don’t know about the comparison to a D/D Cele Ele, but this build was able to 1v1 with just about as much success for me:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUBFpilcBubBEqilJji+tr7+W8ZOgAY8Dqg4D-TJxHABXXGIgHAAAXAAR2fAA

I was even able to beat a Chrono 2/2 times in a 1v1 server and found myself downing people while outnumbered pretty consistently.

For added challenge use Medic Gyro instead of HT lol

lorddarkflare.9186:

RubberDougie.2750:

I’d say we tried our best. It is time to say goodbye for good to an amazing trait.

/me cries.

Amazing trait? Are we now to the point where we are re-writing history?

Look, it is a bummer that the trait is gone, especially since its departure revealed that it had a following.

Still, it is not coming back. Nor should it.

Agreed. Said more succinctly than I could.

Bish.8627:

Forgive me, but the linked build above, does it have any form of swiftness? I don’t think I could survive open PVE without run speed.

Elixir B and HAE both stack up some pretty long swiftness after awhile.

Can’t figure out a counter to a build the first time you’ve ever seen it?

OP! Must nerf!

dancingmonkey.4902:

Adamantium.3682:

Please. I’m tired of seeing posts about a mediocre trait you can’t use anymore.

It would be more constructive if you refrained pushing your subjective opinion as if it were fact.

Seems like the same thing y’all are doing in favor of EIB does it not?

Of course my view of it is subjective, saying otherwise is a red herring. Protip: when someone posts something on the forums you can safely assume it’s how they feel and it’s their opinion even if they didn’t explicitly say so.

What really gets me in this whole EIB obsession is how it was rarely discussed as a good build when it was in game. Most of what I saw was along the lines of “yeah it heals but you have to spam bombs, you don’t do a lot of damage, it’s sort of gimmicky”. That’s certainly how it felt to me when I used it, something I could use when I just wanted to mindlessly carry pugs through dungeons by spamming bombs. Now it’s gone and it has somehow nerfed the Engi gutting one of the best builds we had? I think it’s a little over the top.

It was a trait that some people liked and now it’s gone. That sucks, but it happens. Time to let it go.

warherox.7943:

I just want a hammer trait that isn’t a boring 10% damage trait.

Then use Perfectly Weighted, you also get stability nearly every time you evade (you don’t even have to dodge).

EdwinLi.1284:

Adamantium.3682:

I tried replacing Grenade Kit with a Gyro but it felt like an empty utility slot.

If you’re tyring to get the most out of gyros then it is best to use Gyros for their toolbelt skills instead of the gyros in general. Their AoE field toolbelt skills works very well with Scrapper’s melee nature and can open up a lot of combo field happy combat.

Since I focus mostly as a melee for Scrapper I mostly only use Mortar Kit for my long range and extra combo fields. The Shredder Gyro is so far the most favored Gyro for certain amount of players due to how much Whirl finisher it can dish out in a short amount of time with combo fields.

It’s true the only good thing about gyros are toolbelts but no toolbelt felt more valuable to me than grenade Barrage. The lightning field from Shredder was a distant second, a 24 second cooldown lightning field didn’t really excite me.

I will say the Shredder toolbelt field is good if you’re using Expert Examination. I tried both EE and MM in that major trait slot. Gives you another field to rotate with Thunderclap. However in PvE I prefer the extra might and power from MM because that persists between fights. The vuln doesn’t I have to start with a field every time or lose the benefit of the trait. Anything that lives long enough to make stacking vuln worth it already has 25 stacks from other people.

Yeah… that’d be great.

Rocket Charge evade frames aren’t very consistent throughout the use of the skill. There have already been quite a few times fighting champs in Verdant Brink where they are stunning me in the middle of using this skill. Also the aftercast is rooting me in enemy attack damage that I can’t get out of ankitten ot evading.

I get that this is probably 3 separate applications of a 1s evade frame or something, but it seems like there are gaps between the applications. If they could be chained together with no gap and the total skill duration could match the total evade duration that would be great.

Sounds like you may have your work cut out for you with RC Irenio

Azure.8670:

tried it, builds works 10x better than what I Was using ty. Also elixer B as a scrapper just works wonders

You’re welcome. I don’t think this is the best you can do as a Scrapper, but maybe it’s close. 25 might is easy with no need to interrupt your damage for long combo chains and you stack a good amount of vuln still with HAE and hammer. I was getting 4k, 4k, 5k for my auto chain against champs. 4.5k was about the best I saw for each hit of Rocket Charge. Shock Shield 2.5k+ each and Thunderclap is obviously awesome.

Please. I’m tired of seeing posts about a mediocre trait you can’t use anymore.

EdwinLi.1284:

Currently in Beta I’m running Alchemist Tree and Firearm Tree with Scrapper tree.

The reason is because of Elixir B does wonders in melee range due to the retaliation and swiftness buff. Firearm is for those increase crit chance at close range combat which works well with Scrapper due to being melee range with Hammer.

I agree, Elixir B looks like it will be a really good skill with Hammer.

• Toss B synergizes will with Mass Momentum
• All boons synergize well with melee combat
• All the benefits of the Alchemy traits and of course HGH

Here’s what I’ve been playing with so far. I think Alchemy adds more to a Scrapper than Explosives, I’m doing a lot more damage with Alchemy oddly enough. Healing Gyro is meh, I don’t really find myself needing a heal that often so the toolbelt water field + protection is what I use it for. It’s also the only way to proc Recovery Matrix instantly. I’m already just self destructing it immediately after casting as it is the most efficient way to use it… sounds familiar… sigh

I tried replacing Grenade Kit with a Gyro but it felt like an empty utility slot.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASncoClYhVXBubB0ehlJjCc6yuQieuz7/WsZGvAA-TBSBwAFV+Rb/hHXAA6m/ioE8m6Po0BA4BAQKgIGDA-e

So far Scrapper has really good sustain. Also you can harass with CC like a boss while doing decent damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUBFpilcBubBEqilJji+tr7+W8ZOgAY8Dqg4D-TJxHABXXGIgHAAAXAAR2fAA

I feel this build is pretty easily countered with kiting, but in my time fooling around in a 1v1 server I was able to block/reflect long enough to catch up to anyone or wait for Rocket Leap cooldown. Even a Chrono! Also spamming Elixir Gun auto isn’t really a bad thing if you’re stuck at range for a little bit.

I can’t really call it anything more than a gimmick build at this point, took me less than 5 minutes to throw it together. I’m sure the Engi community will figure out a better Scrapper build in the future.

Streamlined Kits for the TK has been nerfed to 2s Superspeed. That sort of sucks.

Been fiddling around for an hour or so since I got home, first thoughts:

Hammer
1 – Clunky. It’s hard to tell right away but I think the damage is okay. The aftercast is not though. This kills the nice 1/2s activation you have on them, it might as well be 1s each. Visually bland as well.
2 – Awesome. I feel the reflect lasts long enough, cooldown is good, damage is good. Really like the visuals.
3 – As others have said it doesn’t feel very good to use because it can miss pretty easily. Aside from that it’s great, I feel the damage is good, evade frames are good, and cooldown is good.
4 – The block feels weird and the cooldown feels long. Maybe the cooldown feels long because the skill doesn’t really feel like it’s blocking. Damage is great otherwise and it’s nice visually.
5 – Fun skill everything about it is good I think except the cooldown. Feels too long.

Gyros
I was hoping to be wrong about them but it doesn’t look like I was. Initial reaction is that they need a major overhaul.

Special shout out to Blast Gyro. It thinks it’s a gadget and that’s cute.

Traits
Function Gyro is even more weak than I thought it was. It feels more like a gimmick than a new mechanic. Needs work, namely Chaith’s feedback thread about it.

Overall there are a few good competing traits in Master and GM tier, the Adept tier is a little lacking but overall a good trait line. Superspeed needs to stack or that kills a lot of the trait choices.

lorddarkflare.9186:

I personally think the cooldown balance discussion is sort of backward.

Gyros should have effects that merit going on cooldown on death rather than just giving them cooldown on cast.

Would bring some interesting play and use of the utilities. Similar to Healing Turret.

Well Healing Turret works exactly the opposite of how they want turrets to work and it seems like Gyros as well to a lesser extent. They don’t want us blowing up turrets a second after using them, they’ve said as much. This is why they moved a lot of the heal off of the initial placement of HT awhile back, it just did nothing to actually solve the problem.

I don’t think blowing up a turret or gyro immediately after getting its initial effects is interesting play. At that point they’re not even minions for us they’re regular skills that we’re using for a one time effect. That’s not what turrets and gyros are designed for so I don’t think they should push us toward that direction with big death effects. We should want to keep them alive.

NapTooN.6283:

Adamantium.3682:

NapTooN.6283:

Xyonon.3987:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

This weekend you’ll be able to test out a lot of the theorycrafting (some of which had my eyes widening – in a good way) that you’ve been doing and offer even more awesome feedback.

Things you’ve brought up, like the Scrapper’s lack of a stunbreak on either their utilities or traits is getting acted on, as well as a few more changes to core Engineer and bugfixes.

please-let-gyro-cooldown-start-immediately, please-let-gyro-cooldown-start-immediately, please-let-gyro-cooldown-start-immediately, please-let-gyro-cooldown-start-immediately!!! >_<’’

That would totally not happen.

• Due to popular demand, we changed the Gyros so that their CD starts as soon as they are summoned. Congratulations Scrappers, you now have Perma Stealth with a well over 30s Duration on a 30s Cooldown.

Or, ya know, balance the cooldowns accordingly with making that cooldown start when the Gyros are first summoned. Like every suggestion that has asked for this has said.

Balance the CD as in making it 60s? You know that it would be the same like now, right? It would even be a Nerf if it dies before it runs out.

You’re too caught up in the specifics. Balance the cooldowns accordingly is all that is necessary. If you don’t like that number then think of a different one that makes you happy.