Guild Wars 2

- The TB skill of EG comes with a stunbreaker on just 29 sec cd, so you have 2 stunbreakers all of a sudden. and it applies regeneration, healing you for 1300 over time. Additionally, reactive lenses does not reveal your target, it just applies fury & gives you immunity against blind – that’s it.
- you still can pop your remaining gyros whenever you want, so you get your superspeed regeneration on top of everything else.
- sneak gyro is still part of the build I posted, so nothing changes about its characteristics & interaction with krait runes (even tho mortar would have similar, if not better synergy, still sneak gyro is nice to have)
- Bunker down relies heavily on crits to proc, and your crit chance on bleeding targets is 19%… EG #5 delivers higher & much more reliable healing than bunker down for you. It also clears a condition.
- The blast gyro cc is barely worth it, less so even when trying to deal with break-bars. immobilizes burn trough defiance bars much more quickly, and with the glue-trail from EG’s streamlined kits proc, you have plenty access to immobilizes, on the same cd as your former blast gyro. Using glue-trail instead of blast-gyro also solves the depositioning issue you get from it, and won’t fail due to its projectile being obstucted

Soon.5240:

My bad. I mean Incindary Powder….

Here’s the build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqancoCtoi9dBGpCEqiF2iiu3H+lH8DLxAIcpuoXD-TxhAABJqH4U1fi4EAIpSQAeAA8s/gYK/IEwi1A-e

One thing that I do is use Superior Sigil of Speed because it will proc a small, but constant Heal, when coupled with the Scapper Trait Rapid Regeneration. And the Final Salvo Trait also provides Superspeed which in turn proc’s with Rapid Regeration. So you can get about 475 heal per tick.

And since that passive heal will be up if you get pressured enough to loose your gyros, you’ll always have it when needed. Good thinking.
Still I’d consider the following:
switch blast-gyro for elixir Gun. and inventions for tools.

Taking tools automatically reduces your toolbelt cd’s so more rocket kicks for you, and more reconstruction fields + bubbles.

Streamlined kits will give you perma-swiftness so you could swap that speed sigil for corruption, also it would give you the immob-trail from EG’s kit-refinement proc.

Reactive lenses gives you a additional stunbreaker, that also makes you immune to blind (but saddly also triggers on blind), luckely EG comes with its own stunbreaker.

And the elite is open for your liking.
Adrenal implant would be the most straight forward option for more dodges.
But gadgeteer would greatly improve your mobility, while kinetic battery could give you double rocket-kicks to start the fight (dodge once -> double-kick), and double waterfields midfight, that you then can finish not only with rocketboots, but also with EG’s blast.

EG itself will allow you heal better, comes with a more powerful & useful AA than pistol, and further improves your mobility.

Yes, no-kit builds are interesting, but there is no shame in taking at least 1 kit
It would look like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqancoCtbh9dBGpCEqiF2iiu3H+lH8DLxAYMHHDA-TxhAABJcCASUPwpq/IpSQAeAA8s/gYK/IEwi1A-e

Nemesis.8593:

You have seen my videos with your own eyes and you know i do not start the clock at prebuffing… in addition to that I have told you 5 times already that i do not start the clock when buffing starts… i only did it once to show what kind of a DPS loss prebuffing actually is.

Nowhere have you ever stated that this is a one time thing, and when we had our little dispute yesterday you even tried to defend your method as valid once again…

Nemesis.8593:

You also saw the real DPS values of the world records, which you now claim no one has done… you also saw the real DPS values of icebow and how it carried people at bosses with a large enough hitbox.

Err, no. What i saw in your videos were you claiming this constantly verbally, while some random fights against mossman /bloomhunger were running in the background. Nor have I ever claimed that no one used icebows. What I told you way back is that linecasting was despised upon by the community when it came to record kills. You maybe mix me up with other people.

Nemesis.8593:

I have told you all of these a couple of times already every time you try to contradict me, besides the fact you have seen these facts with your own eyes…
You also have no records, no guides no nothing… you probably never even did any math on your own.

I have not tried to contradict you, I simply pointed out where the flaws in your method are. This has nothing to do with the person using these flawed methods. You make this a personal thing, and I still don’t see a reason why I should care enough about you to attack your personally. If anything, your behavior is worrisome from a observer POV.
Also yes, I don’t publish spreadsheets usually, but I have tons of build-recommendations in my post-history, mainly because I rather come up with individualized builds in PvP situations, a place where dps is only a small portion of your concerns. Feel free to look them up.
Besides, explain me what my publish-behavior has to do with the validation of my points? Why do I have to be a avid user of a method in order to understand & utilize it when needed? Does that mean you have even less of a clue than me, since you straight up refuse to use it?

All you do is contradict me with 100% false claims and provide others with misleading information… straight up teaching them bad things with 0 proof to back up anything you claim.

Nope, that’s solely your business.
- You start the clock at random times.
- Tell people your actual dps is what they can expect to meet always, instead of spreadsheet math (mistake here is that there is no one playing like you, since everybody has unique skill-levels & unique RNG outcomes, so no one will ever meet your numbers as well)
- Use RNG as argument why spreadsheets will never reflect reality and right after that try to use exactly this – theoretical calculations – to build the RNG of dodges into normalized calculation models.

Nemesis.8593:

Why isn’t this against regulations ?…

“Providing misleading information nonstop” should be against the rules on this forum.

It is, guess why you get banned so often. But misleading information is not what you think it is, it is constantly derailing threads with ad-hominems & public shaming attacks. Could you maybe stop using these vicious methods and rely on the content of you points only? I don’t know if you realize that, but you keep attacking those who disagree with you, constantly. Look up in the rest of the thread, where I had civil discussion with others. Have you seen me jumping their throat for disagreeing with me?

Here’s a question for you since you are so “happy to help”.

What’s the damage rotation behind the 25K DPS revenant ?
(I bet you are going to look it up right now and make a comeback…)

You have absolutely no idea what’s in those spreadsheets or how they reached those numbers or why… but you continue to make assumption after assumption after assumption…

You’re right, I don’t play revenant currently, so I’ve not looked up how meta-builds look like for it. But if you want to, I could give you my interpretation of what it says about sinister engi, since I was personally very interested in that topic.
As stated above, I don’t use the meta that often, still the content of the spreadsheets is very easily understandable. I mean, there are literally just the continuous calculation of 4 values, generated by your gear-choice + individual formulas for each condition type.
What is there, so complicated that I wouldn’t understand it unless I crunch the numbers 24/7 for 2 years^^

I think i’m getting a headache again, there’s simply too many “experts” who don’t even have the slightest idea what damage rotation were used in the spreadsheets but they continue to make claims… X is better then Y, this is better then that… you should do this and that…

No idea if you even address me with that, but if you do, read my posts again. You might learn a thing or two. Also, quit the constant ad-hominem. It just derails threads & leads towards infractions for both of us and anyone else who steps down to your level.

Just to remember you where I came from:
You compared your high-dps necro to a warri buff-support build, and told everybody that your higher personal dps on your necro build were reason enough to push phalanx strength warris out of the meta, using your flawed dmg calculation model. This was literally the point of your first video, and the first time I responded to you, because it seemed odd to me.
I challenged this, by pointing out the flaws in both your method and your final conclusion. You decided to call me troll, and ripped my posts out of context, even trying to publicly shame me in your 3rd clip by publicly posting them on youtube.
And this very behavior is prohibited by the CoC of these forums, sadly it didn’t happen on these forums…
Hence we’re sitting here, me defending myself against the public shame attack of a random youtuber, that is trapped in his own limited mindset of how dps-calculations and the meta in general have to look like.
And you… no idea what you’re up to still. Clicks? Money from dulfy for your builds? Just the comfy feeling of being perceived as right? I sincerely have no idea.
You wouldn’t get all these headaches if you’d not have attacked me – and others – personally in the first place.

PierPiero.9142:

Soon.5240:

Are.1326:

Soon.5240:

above me.

But, all in all, Pistols are in a pretty good place in HoT right now.

Correction: Pistol offhand #4 is good for condi specs. Pistol mainhand is horrible now and leaves no room for pistol+shield builds.

At least with Coated Bullets (the pierce trait) we could use pistol mainhand in power builds for the double hit when attacking from above, just under max range or when your enemies are up against a wall. It was a fun playstyle, not the most viable, but it did add some unique strategies for every encounter.

I’m not trolling you, but right now, in HoT, I’m running an Ascended Dire Pistol/Pistol build with Rocket Boots + 4 Gyros + Krait Runes.. I kid you not, I’m just bleeding and melting everything in my path. I don’t hesitate to solo Champs, herds of Veterans, etc. I’m proc’ing Bleeds at around 9 to 11 stacks and Burns from Rocket Kick, Incendiary Ammo and Blowtorch. I’m easily maintaining around 4,000 per tick damage from Condi alone – and it all bypasses Defiance. Often I take down enemy with the Defiance bar at 75% or better.

INcendiary ammo is not flame throwser ? how can you use it with 4 Gyros ? do you have 1 utility more than us ?

I guess it’s a typo, referring to the old incendiary powder trait, that is now part of napalm specialist.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqancoC9dhFpCepCEqiF2iiO4L+kH8DLxAIMFvoXD-TxxCABA8AAO+EAAoeAPV/JRlgzs/QWK/AA-e
I guess this is roughly how is build looks like, and yea, you can reach 4k ticks, but usually you are rather in the range of 2.5k ticks with it…

Altoid.9104:

I don’t agree with that, I think the best (or at least most accurate) method is taking a video and manually calculating dps the hard way. Spreadsheets have their place, but I think that place gets completely lost without a meter to keep them grounded.

Welp, that gives you your actual dps, but keep in mind that it is heavily influenced by
- your personal skill-level – the ability to execute the rotations perfectly to all times (or not)
- your groups skill level – the ability to keep you buffed and on +90% health to all time, while keeping the boss debuffed
- RNG – the amount of times you’re forced to dodge due to Gw2’s random agro system choosing you as its victim
- More RNG – the engine throwing dices for your current weapon strength modifier

While manually collecting data on your actual dps gives you 100% real numbers, they will heavily differ from person to person using the same build, ending up in a foggy mess of what has good synergy or not…

Yes, you are right about actual dps being needed to normalize spreadsheet calculations by actual testing, but completely disregarding theoretical build-analyzation, you strip yourself off the ability to make definite statements about the synergy of group-comps, and their performance when switched out with different builds.

If you ask me, both methods are needed.
…Just don’t make the same mistake as nemesis and start the clock in the buff-phase^^

Altoid.9104:

That’s the thing, do the listed numbers even reflect the difference in each classes effectiveness as people seem to be claiming? Can you really point to a Rev and say his cap is higher than a Necromancer by (let’s say) 10k, so that means the Rev for the most part is going to heavily out dps a Necromancer. Or is it more that the Rev might at most deal 1-2k dps more over the duration of a fight? That is a HUGE difference and is one reason I don’t like spreadsheets having so much sway when dps meters don’t exist.

I just saw in another thread someone say that Necromancers condition damage is weak compared to other classes, but is that backed up by anything other than spreadsheets? Again, is the difference slight or is it a huge gap as implied by Rev sheet dps?

Guess why we asked A-net for the implementation of dps meters so often…
The fact that spreadsheets are the best dps-calculation method we have so far, does not imply that alternative methods wouldn’t be greatly appreciated to complete each other…

Devils Pride.6208:

Hi everybody, I’ve been following these posts for quite a while now and there are some things that I don’t really understand.

First of all I would like to know what this context is we should use to look at the spreadsheets and the berzeker meta. Apparently it is the key to explain why the spreadsheets still explain a real DPS value of the builds. If we’d get a clear explanation of the context it could help people like me understand why both Spoj and Nemesis are right.

Second, I don’t really understand why Spoj didn’t release the different DPS values he says he already calculated. It could prove Nemesis wrong that Spoj’s spreadsheets are fake math. Unless he didn’t really calculate it. (I’ll probably never know…)

Third, I don’t really understand why Spoj doesn’t want to try explain his applied mathematics. A lot of people that play MMO’s and care to check forums do have a basic understanding of math. For Spoj it should be fun if you ask me because he likes making guides anyway. Only that guide couldn’t just be copied. You have to really understand it.

Fourth, I do hope Nemesis does realise that he has a lot of people right in his hands now. If his next build isn’t near to perfect in the situation he says it is best at, there could be a lot of consequences.

I do not mean any of this as a threat in any way, shape or form. I’m just observing and trying to formulate a new way of looking at the problem. I love the work of Nemesis and Spoj. They both helped me understand the necromancer more.

I hope someone wants to reply on my post explaining me at least one of these things.

I’m happy to help

First of, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by context. If you were refering to the basic assumptions behind the set values, then they basically just imply that, generally speaking, you’re always on full health, buffed by your group to a maximum, and the boss being debuffed by a maximum…

2nd, these are the formulas used for dmg calculations in all spreadsheets.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage
You can find the skill-specific coefficient on the associated wiki page of the skill you want to calculate, while weapon-stats for various tiers can be found on the wiki (or ingame) as well. The targets armor is always assumed to be 2600 (most commonly found armor value, also shared by heavy training golems in the PvP lobby). Everything beyond that is class/build specific.

3rd, no idea, I’m not him^^

4th, part of why he does that. He enjoys being in the middle of the drama, I guess.

kubetz.3058:

-snip-

Yes, running condi builds against bosses with drastic condi-duration reduction (or even immunity) is as equally bad as running zerker gear against bosses with perma-protection / stealth phases / invulnerability or generally high toughness.

The thing is that it really doesn’t matter – so far. Gw2 were always too easy as that we were forced to adapt to every single dungeon in the game individually. This does not mean that people don’t do it on their own, but the purpose of any meta in any game is to reflect what is the best way to gear your character in order to be prepared for the games’ content.
And lets be honest, there is not a single boss in the game – so far – that makes your life on power builds horrible. They don’t even challenge you. If anything, you’d save a couple of seconds if you’d come with condi gear, but in the end it really doesn’t matter since you still can bruteforce everything, even the horribly long-lasting dmg-sponges of HoTW.
So the Gw2 meta has a easy environment to work with, and since zerker (lately sinister as well) was so far the best answe to all encounter, people keep running their glass-cannons.

I personally hope that changes with raids, but we’ll see.

Anyways, nemesis is simply wrong in his assessment that the meta was “lying to people” or whatever tinfoil content he engineered within his perception of it. And even tho there are no formal studies about the hero syndrome, wouldn’t surprise me if he falls into that category. I mean, he’s fighting the windmills for 2 years already, and his recent drama-drum play is definitively worrisome…
Meh, I’m not his therapist, nor know him personally.

Altoid.9104:

If not then I don’t really understand what the point of the spreadsheets are.

I don’t care enough about the people involved in coming up with the actual youtube-footage to deny or testify that anyone ever came close to the estimated performance. Please investigate footage of world record runs on your own for that.

However, the process to calculate dps is clearly documented on the wiki (and on meta-battle as well?), so everyone can run the numbers, which I personally did occasionally as well. Therefore I can testify that nobody will ever be able to reach the estimated maximum in reality, due to the weapon-strength value in the dmg-calculation of power-skills.
Weapons in Gw2 have a dmg-value that reaches from x<->y, so the formulas include a RNG component, therefore will never match your actual dps, regardless how perfect you execute it.

Why do we still prefer spreadsheet calculations above dps-meters in Gw2?
Because A-net refuses to support dps meter, and there are cases known where people got accidentally flagged for account-suspension or even -closure due to Gw2 recognizing that you run the client with 3rd party software. This is prohibited by the TOS of Gw2.
And since nemesis’ manual method of calculating dps is not only flawed (due to him building in a logical flaw), but also extremely tedious and time-consuming (hence he updates so slowly), people rather use the comfortable process of setting up excel-documents, which can be adjusted for various builds rather quickly, once the dmg formulas for all the skills are included.

And since these calculations are done within a standardized environment, commonly used by everybody for calculating their builds, comparisons between them can be drawn quickly and efficiently.
Yes, having dps-meters ingame would greatly improve this process to let it match reality closer, but luckily actual dps-measurement only starts to matter when you want to improve your own skills (or show them off) on a given build after you’ve engineered it. Similar theoretical models are used in PvE elite guilds in WoW in conjunction to actual dps meters, as well.
The reason A-net refuses to support dps-meters for Gw2 is because they fear the community becoming toxic due to upcoming elitism. No comment from me on that.

Also, the reason nemesis has to fight the windmills constantly is because he seems to have some personal issues with some people involved in the meta-crafting process (someone made money with a build from him by selling it to a website over 2 years ago, or something along those lines, ask nemesis for details) – and 2nd – because he skews his own numbers, by calculating the dps of footage of opposing builds right from the beginning of their might-stacking-phase.
So to compare that with WoW, when a pali/priest/whatever starts to buff a guy before an encounter, nemesis starts the clock. This is what the discussion with him is about, nothing else, regardless what he might try to exaggerate of it.
Just click on his name & browse his posts-history, I guess that would be the best way of understanding what’s up with him, since his posts speak for themselves.

Ranatoa.4869:

Arantheal.7396:

3 raid wings, so at least 9 bosses per week.
the most recent 3 will have that unique buff for doubles rewards…

makes 24g minimum per week, once all 3 initial wings are released…

I used to make 40g per day from dungeons.
So hopefully not everything in there is acc-bound…
Or future wings have more bosses…

I’m pretty sure that’s per final boss, so 12 gold/week from the first three wings.

Edit: Also 4 gold is only for the most current boss. Otherwise it’s only 2 gold. So we’re looking at 8 gold a week from the weekly chests.

read the article again, each boss grants a chest + gold individually.

Crinn.7864:

Am I the only person that hates the pocket raptor herds?

I like these little xp piñatas.
Thunderclap -> hammer #3 -> hammer 4, results in up to 18 dead raptors (I love to pull these packs together)
and if something survives, FT #2 -> FT AA does the rest.

one of the few satisfying mobs they’ve implemented.
I also like to steamroll chak-herds.

ticks almost as much as 2-3 burning stacks.
does not stack in intensity.

If you are the only reaper around, good for you, but other ppl can overwrite your chill.

3 raid wings, so at least 9 bosses per week.
the most recent 3 will have that unique buff for doubles rewards…

makes 24g minimum per week, once all 3 initial wings are released…

I used to make 40g per day from dungeons.
So hopefully not everything in there is acc-bound…
Or future wings have more bosses…

The spreadsheets give out so high values since they don’t take the encounter (directly) into account – and that’s their advantage.
Since all builds are assumed to be played with perfection, environmental effects do not influence the analysis of any given build, allowing them to be displayed under equal conditions. That also excludes individual player-skill levels.

dps-Spreadsheets assume a boss-armor value of 2.6k / a perfect & continuous rotation / buffs from warri banners of strength & discipline / 100% fury uptime / 25vuln on the boss / 25 might on the player / no boons on the boss.

And since all builds are treated under the same, perfect conditions, the dmg-calculations are purely objective & display the maximum achievable potential for any given build on any given class.

Yes, individual boss-mechanics favor condi dmg highly over power dmg, but since the gw2 PvE content is so laughable easy, it is not reasonable to even start to care about these individual mechanics. On the opposite, there are bosses in the game that have extreme condi-duration reduction on them, causing you to run your head in with condi builds just as often as with purely power builds.

And while hybrid would be a nice all-rounder (hence engi is such a popular class for solo runs), people usually care more about a good bang for their buck, hence go for peak-performance comps on the power-side of builds.

Everybody with half a brain knows that dodging reduces you dps uptime, and that the values advertised in the builds are not always (if ever) achievable, but these builds guarantee that your actual dps is limited by nothing but your personal skill-cap.

If you find builds that you personally perform better on, congratulation, you don’t need the meta anymore. It is really just there as orientation for people who do not engineer their own, individualized setups.

Nemesis.8593:

… and this is the turning point where condition builds > power builds, not because the math shows it, but because the mechanics dictate it.

NOW… does the math resemble anything like this ? AT ALL…

Yes, it does.
Conditions have a formula that can be used to calculate their dps per stack, so you just go ahead and calculate how high & long they tick on your target, assuming that your target does not have any condi-duration-reduction on it.
Just as power-dmg, conditions get calculated in a normalized environment as well. This includes effects from traits for +duration, 25vuln, and 25 might, along with buff-food, if picked for the build.
Ofc the duration is capped at +100% max in the spreadsheets.

You can see that people add their condi-dps always as well, to the overall dps of their builds, since even zerker stats can produce a significant byproduct of condi-dps, especially if we talk engineer.

I play both, I enjoy both, I recommend both.

Engineer is my way of pushing myself always a bit more & becoming better at what I love, for literally all types of content, including WvW frontlining, while warrior is the perfect relax-class of that play, for moments when I just want to faceroll dungeons, or tank the frontline.
And then I have my ele & necro, rarely if ever used, when I feel like playing them… but I definitively suck at playing necro… have like 300h on him only. I guess I’m decent at ele, but definitively much space left for improvement…
And also I’m still working on ranger & revenant to get on lvl 80… Veeeery occasionally I have to add.

So yea, play engi, warri, or any of the other classes, it really depends on your preferences.

Sazukikrah.5036:

THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN TELL ME THATS NOT OVER POWERED.

Then any attempt to debate & educate you is pointless.

For the interested reader:
Opposing to what the previous poster propagated,
- the gyro is quite squishy and can be taken out easily, both from condi and power-builds.
- it has huge pathing issues, making its use quite annoying for the engineer himself. More often than not it stops for no reason whatsoever & forces us to manually run back for the stealth ticks, or leave it alone, resulting in very short stealth uptimes.
- it is a elite-skill, preventing us from either running moa+rampage, mortar+Orbital strike or supplycrate. The absence of moa alone reduces our advantage above necros / rampage warris quite heavily.
- Picking stealth gyro also makes us weaker against other engineers, since they can reveal us (and we them), so we kinda counter each other. Also dragonhunters are a surprisingly good counter against this gyro, if they pick their aoe reveal trap.

And yes, picking this skill obviously has advantages for us, else we’d not pick them:
- we can aoe-stealth to any time, allowing us to rezz downed team-members & execute stomps more safely.
- even if it gets destroyed in cleave right instantly, the few seconds stealth we get from activating it are good gap-closers, waiting time for cooldowns, or windows for repositioning.
- in combat it can become very effective IF our opponent is dumb enough to allow us to keep it up. Ofc attacking reveals us, but the gyro tick is on longer intervals than the reveal lasts, causing us to blink in and out of stealth every 3 seconds, which does a good job in messing with opponents targeting.
- prestacking stealth on a node while waiting for incoming enemies give us the advantage of the unexpected first strike, and thunderclap is a exceptionally good one at that. In some rare scenarios (that include the gyro not to kitten up, follow properly & stack up stealth on us) we actually can sneak past defenders by destroying the gyro before they can see it & cap the node while they already moved out to another one.
- The wonky pathing-AI of the gyro can work in our favor, causing it to run off in complete wrong directions, leading chasing opponents into utter confusion. Small tipp, if you see it flying away, don’t follow. chnces are that it got confused by the terrain and we actually wait (on the node or not) for you to run off / give up on your (maybe good) positioning. Just dps it ranged, wait & keep your fingers above your stunbreaker.

regardless what situation of the above you’re facing, destroying the gyro once it’s up, is your best bet. Even in the worst case (traited for final salvo) it will blow up in a lighting field, giving the engi superspeed to run away / close the gap.

question, do you run full zerker gear?

Daralii.8940:

If you don’t mind me asking, why shocking speed over recovery matrix?

This question got already answered in this thread.
There is no specific reason, since neither of the adept traits contributes to dps.
Pick whatever you like in that row.

So, someone kicked you out of a team in favor for engineer?
Or you’ve fought a engineer with as equal frequent stealth access as you?

Sucks for you, that the people around you either don’t appreciate you for the player you are, or that you got outplayed, but instead of complaining about a skill with massive counterplay, you should rather ask yourself why you’ve not exploited said counterplay, or why people rather have other players in their team…

I’m almost certain that the answer for both questions will be the same

no legendary effects on kits.
not a single one.
not even footsteps.

edit, here is what our legendary effects for kits should be:
- equiping a kit lets you keep your legendary aura / footsteps

predator:
grenade / mortar shots become orange energy-projectiles, still leaving the associated trail of their skill (so white particle effects for the cryo nades/shells. They also use the sound of the old grenade barrage effect.
FT #2 becomes a giant energy-projectile
EG #2 as well
Static discharge & guided missile become energy-projectiles

Quip:
same as the above, but turns projectiles into confetti with honk&pop-noises

Flameseeker prophecy:
Gearshield uses flameseeker prophecy as skin
shield #5 displays flameseeker prophecy when thrown
[no idea what else to do with it]

Juggernaut:
FT #1 & EG #3 spill quicksilver
EG #4 leaves a puddle of quicksilver
Gearshield becomes shiny & reflective
Box of nails releases shiny nails
Toolkit AA spills quicksilver like the hammer does

The stab on juggernaut must stay as is, or it becomes too powerful for WvW & PvP where people want to have the ability to stunlock you IF executed correctly.

However, the might tick-intervals are too long.
given that you run no boon duration for might, buffing up in FT takes 5×3 seconds already, so you’re forced to camp this kit primarely in order to get a decent might uptime from this trait. Given that we’re meant to swap often & cycle trough various sets, this trait behaves counter-intuitive to our class design.
While stacking might in and of itself is definitively quite awesome, usually the FT lacks group-support, beyond its thin & hard-to-finish firefield, and frequent access to a blast-finisher.

So I’d like to change juggernaut to this:
While Flamethrower is equipped,
- tick one stack of stability for 3 seconds every 3 seconds
- AoE buff “Juggernaut” every 3 seconds for 10sec in 480 range (equals HT) / this buff can not stack / Juggernaut grants 150 strength & 150 condition-dmg

This would
A) finally give us a unique, viable group-buff
B) open up FT builds for more rune choices than just aristocracy, hoelbrak & strength
C) reduce the minimum camp time in FT from 100% to 30%
D) reward us with a higher stat-cap IF we manage to stack 25 might with other means

leviathan.2148:

@Arantheal thank you for providing that build, I will definitely try it out. You don’t have any stunbreak though, doesn’t that pose a problem?

And I definitely don’t say that scrapper is worthless in pve, more like function gyro. I myself play as a scrapper and hammer and traits are just great. I hope that your build changes my opinion about gyros

I found myself to not care about stunbreakers that much anymore.
Bulwark, its toolbelt, FT #5 & sneak-gyro are instant-casts, so I can react decently even if I get stunned trough the permanent stability I have from flamethrower+juggernaut.

The engineer has currently the single highest DPS build (sinister nades), with the single longest & most complex rotation in the game…

It is arguable if the dps output is even worth the effort for most players, and even acquiring the high-end gear for this spec is literally a story of its own, since you have to complete all living story achievements for the chapters 5-8 of season 2.

Outside of the meta-game, engineer is generally a very complex class to play since we often utilize kits (utilities that have no cast time & replace our weaponskills with 5 different skills), in fact many builds are pure kit builds, resulting in up to 40 skills, that come with a literally wall of text of possible combos, since we can swap between these kits & our weapon virtually without any cooldown.
Of course there are viable & fun builds outside of kit-play as well, and with the arrival of scrapper we got a hard-hitting melee option, decently fitted for sustain, mobility & control.

We use medium armor, have no weaponswap (therefore we use kits), and our class-mechanic is our toolbelt, which gives us one extra skill for each healing, utility & elite skill we equip, so even if we don’t equip a single kit, we have at least 15 skills.
These are the weaponset engineer has access to:
rifle (2 handed) (power & control)
pistol / shield (condi & sustain (sometimes even used in defensive/supportive power builds))
pistol / pistol (condi & controll)
with the addition of scrapper:
hammer (2 handed) (power & sustain (if played well, also control))

and since kits are a weird from of class-related weaponswap, here a list & short description of kits:
- Flamethrower ( short range / defense, control & might-stacking. Less but existent use in condi-builds)
- Elixir-Gun (all ranges / mobility & support / comes with a valuable stunbreaker)
- Toolkit (all ranges / awesome control & defense)
- Grenade-Kit (medium range / condi & power dps. Comes with reasonable control)
- Bombkit (short range / condi & power dps with good control)
- Medkit (short range / takes the healing skill slot / bad healing, good condi-clear, good buffs)
- Mortar kit (all ranges (less accurate on long range)/ takes the elite-skill slot /support, dps & control / only elite in the game without any cooldown)

Additional utilities that we use are:
- Elixirs (very powerful self-buffs that can have various effects / their toolbelts generally allow for limited group-support with weaker versions of themselves)
- Gadgets (offensive or defensive combat-effects, like stunbreakers, cc’s or short-time mobility-enhancements)
- Turrets (originally designed as stationary aerial denial via dps spam (and local buff-dispensers), but long ago nerfed into the ground, turning them into drop’n’pop utilities, used for their blast-finishers or for really short uptimes, as long as their overcharges go, only)

Further, the scrapper uses these utilities:
- Gyros (mobile mini robots that mainly come with powerful defensive buffs, but also can perform offensive tasks. Currently they have huge issues with sticking to our characters, making playing them annoying, but if used with a brain, they allow for very high sustain. They can be destroyed, but unlike turrets, they all have very low cd’s)

leviathan.2148:

coglin.1867:

You appear to confuse your subjective opinion, with actual objective fact. You made a broad negative statement, that opposes what skilled players have previously stated, and you repost to argue against anyone who finds them useful.

Gyros have pathing issues. They need to make the active gyro effects work off the engineer similarly to how the tool belt skills from bulwark and medic gryo do. That way when the gyro pathing gets wonky we don’t lose out. But some of them do in fact bring very much to the table. They need work, absolutely. If you cannot find use for them, that is on you, that have some handy effects in half the cases.

How do I oppose what skilled players stated? What do I repost? If they bring so much to the table, please, provide a viable pve build using gyros. I would like to see that.

What I run right now for open world exploration. It’s not even fully ascended yet.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASncTB1ahVXBGpCEqil7iie1j9ZHcBjwAQ8g+hcA-TxBFwACuAAIV+xS9n06Aat/AgHAwVlgkCwchWA-e

And if you switch sigil of fire with strength, you can switch elixir H with Medic gyro or healing turret. Still Elixir H has a good chance for really high protection uptime, if the RNG is in your favor.

Regardless if you feel treated unfair or not by us, I personally have a blast in PvE with going full melee, since cc’s are not frequent enough to break juggernaut, dmg gets eaten up by bulwark / protection uptime / half knight gear, and incoming ranged pressure can be utilized offensively by bulwarks TB, or by simply poping sneak-gyro, waiting for c’s & reposition next to the ranged spammer, usually oppening with a thunderclap right from stealth again.
Mordrem snipers? reflect their killshot or goto stealth/reposition
Pocket raptors? thunderclap + hammer #3 + hammer #4. so much blocks & evades while pumping out dmg that even packs the size of 12 or more become free xp-piniatas.
Itzel archers? reflect their shots or goto stealth/reposition / clear condis with elixirs
mordrem husks or other high toughness / low HP mobs? Pop FT’s TB+napalm and reduce their health by a sizable chunk right away.
Want to chew trough a breakbar? Thunderclap + hammer 3 + FT #5 + FT#3 + 2xGyro daze. Haven’t met a open world mob that can deal with that combo so far.

And for events like wyvern, where melee just kills you, switch sneak out for mortar & enjoy spaming #1 for the next 15min…

So yea, your complaints are really just your opinion, not a listing of set-in-stone facts, and the fact that you can’t see beyond it is a pretty bad statement about the person behind your posts…
Don’t get me wrong, gyro pathing is abysmal, but with a bit of situational & environmental awareness you can plan for when & where to pop them to make it easier for them to do their job. Still, I’d like to see a update on that matter as well.
But even tho they can be improved, scrapper as a whole is far away from being “worthless” in PvE. Actually its the most fun spec to play for me right now. (Disclaimer, that is my personal opinion. I hope you already learned the difference between that and a broad, general statement)

Yes, the diminished drop-rates for ascended gear is definitively something that needs to be looked into.

But lets not forget that A-net spoke about a perspective shift from dungeons towards fractals as their endgame 5-man instanced content, and they directly stated that they want to reduce the rewards from dungeons, only to increase those of fractals to make this paradigm shift clear as water for the playerbase.

They completely failed to live up to this design plan since the current fractal encryption box system either yields very low rewards (5s per chest if sold directly to a NPC), or actually lets you loose money for the chance of less-than-valuable RNG drops.

Running fractals currently is not only unrewarding in terms of ascended drops, it also doesn’t give you anything worth noting to make up for the time you’ve invested there.

If it weren’t for the journal entries & the prospect of receiving a legendary backpiece at some day, there would be zero incentive to enter them currently, and even with this long-term goal in front of you, the amount of gold (and other currencies) you need to invest in ascended gear for running high-level fractals will get never compensated by said fractals under the current reward system.

I want to complete a path, receive my XP-boost at the end, open my loot chest, and collect direct cash in silver or even gold, so I get a smile on my face & humbly que up for the next fractal level.
This is a game. I paid for being entertained. Smashing into a brick-wall of (generally unrewarding) grind whenever I want to enjoy one part of this games’ endgame is not what I call entertainment.

I mean, I’m not asking to receive 100g & a red carpet under my feet wherever I walk, but I’m very certain that receiving visible progress on my currencies for playing the game is not too much to be asked for.

Since data shows now that the loot from fractal encryptions is abysmal and actually a gold-sink (or at least a huge waste of time, compared to SW farming), it is time to fix dungeon rewards:

Additional to all current fractal loot-systems (encryption-boxes, a.s.o.), each fractal-level rewards you with 30s+((fractal.lvl*1s)/2)
that means:
fractal.lvl 1: 30.5s
fractal.lvl 100: 80s
Also, each fractal-level rewards you with a XP chest, worth 100kXP+(fractal.lvl*1kXP)

That means, you get your daily chest by completing 3 fractals from a tier (f.e. t1), like you do currently, but if you run all levels from 1 to 20 inside that tier, you can get up to 7g05s00c extra from doing so, per day. And you’d also farm 2,21 million XP on that way…

Oh look mom, I fixed fractals.

To those who still think these nerfs are abysmal:

The traits still perform awesome for the reasons they got picked in builds:
HgH builds still cap on 25 might, even without any effort
Also it still reduces elixir cd & increases duration by 20%.
The nerf did virtually nothing for this trait.

Adaptive armor still reduces incoming condi-dmg by 20%, and still is unattractive for squishy builds, since they rather up the dmg from hammer & get free stab from perfectly weighted.
And IF you run a tanky setup, 200 toughness more or less don’t make a noticable difference in your incomming dmg anymore, since you are already way beyond the 2600 armor border.

If you really think these changes “broke” builds, you did not understand them in the first place. Actually we should be happy that a-net nerfed us in a way that we can totally ignore, while shutting down the OP PLZ NERF whinners for some time.
I for my part have a blast on might-stacking builds in PvP.

Mork vom Ork.2598:

Arantheal.7396:

Tank Scrapper
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqenUUBtbhVYBGpC0ehFDjiuxf8KPMAuv9SMdChNA-TxxGABAcCAwTJoBPAgYV/Zl9HeVPwvK/CAcAMf5DglXe5lXe5We55Xe+lLFgsatA-e

Rapid Regeneration without any source of swiftness or super speed?

Elixir F & Hidden flask.
And appart from this, these are builds for instanced group-content, not solo builds.

edit:
scratch the dps build, I accidentally posted a link to a experimental version where I directly compared hammer & rifle in the same build…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhSsYtWwdLQ7FLvFF9uH8HPYHGip13DOhBAA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdAAcBAy7BAQp6PmpEMAwBwv/GAO/8zP/8z73fP/3z/tUARM0C-e

This is the actual dps scrapper, and in a group-scenario it reaches the required 100% crit chance without any extra stats spend on precision, and actually reaches more dps than the traditional power nade build, since hammer has a higher weapon-dmg than rifle (altering all dmg-calculating formulas while wielding it, so it 1ups nade-barrage), better power-scaling on its own skills & more frequent, higher burst on lower cd’s than rifle (rifle #3 & #5 vs hammer #2 & #3)

Gonna work on a viper/sinister scrapper now.

edit 2:
Forget it, nothing on scrapper improves your condi application. I was thinking shredder + napalm could maybe be beneficial, but due to long-kitten cd’s, bombkit performs better on that spot.
Hammer, utilities or traits, none of these contribute anything useful to the condi-engi, so appart from updating the rune-choice & switching out some gear for viper (until your reach 100% bleed & burn duration), there is nothing to do.

DPS Scrapper
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUnUUBlYh1aBubBEqil3iie3D+jHsDDx067BnwAA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdA5dBAA4BAQp6PmpEkUARM0C-e

Tank Scrapper
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqenUUBtbhVYBGpC0ehFDjiuxf8KPMAuv9SMdChNA-TxxGABAcCAwTJoBPAgYV/Zl9HeVPwvK/CAcAMf5DglXe5lXe5We55Xe+lLFgsatA-e

Manuhell.2759:

Arantheal.7396:

Mortar, FT, Hammer.
Doesn’t take more weaponsets for scrapper to be cd-efficient.
And that still leaves slots for Elixir H + Elixir B + a utility of your choice (f.e. nades, slickshoes, EG, a.s.o.)

Except that mortar is primarly a support weapon. Whose output is even severely cut off without its grandmaster trait, and such a build can’t have it (hgh, juggernaut, scrapper line). Might won’t help much with it, aside from the autoattacks.
Same for the flamethrower itself, i should say. The only skill you could reliably use there is flame blast, especially given that the hammer itself is purely a direct damage weapon. So it wouldn’t make sense to use condition-related stats with it, making skills like napalm or the toolbelt itself relatively mediocre, even considering the might stacks. And its other skills are just situational, so you won’t just use them off-cooldown. Gotta wait for the right moment.
It leaves us with the elixirs, some of which are still situational – you won’t toss elixir b at random, gotta use it when stability is needed. Same for elixir h itself – you need it for healing after all, it isn’t like you can just spam it. You can do it to gain might uptime, but then we should take count of the opportunity costs involved.
And whatever non-elixir, non elixir gun utility that will end on the last slot won’t even be traited, so…

It may be cd-efficent, but it doesn’t mean it is actually efficent.

So, you still have a free spot.
Add nades…
or bombs…

Manuhell.2759:

It seems people aren’t realizing that now Adaptive Armor has the same output of Corrupter’s Fervor, while being more punishing than that trait. Since our version requires us to take damage, while corrupter’s fervor triggers on inflicting conditions (and necro do inflict a ton of them, of course – so they even get multiple stacks by a single attack, eventually maxing all of them in few seconds).

I don’t see how it can be fine now.

Regarding HGH, i still think it is completely unwarranted. Elixir builds already have the innate disadvantage of using up slots on a class that has to use those same slots to get weapons, with the only overlap of elixir gun. Making the functionality of HGH worse just means traited elixirs are even less useful than before. A good amount of might stacks isn’t much good if all you have to use those stacks with are autoattacks, especially if we’re talking of our main weapon ones’.
And even if we were talking of juggernaut/mass momentum flamethrower….well…that’s still flame jet that we’re talking about…

Mortar, FT, Hammer.
Doesn’t take more weaponsets for scrapper to be cd-efficient.
And that still leaves slots for Elixir H + Elixir B + a utility of your choice (f.e. nades, slickshoes, EG, a.s.o.)

Avador.8934:

As I know, some mobs (mordrem snipers) can target you even in the air.

Hm…
I was flying pretty close above them for a couple of times, still they never attacked me.

He will come back…
Remember the final cutscene where the leyline lightning strikes the egg & it starts to blink between golden & violet light?

Yes, mordremoth is trying to corrupt it, in order to get a new body, but the last thing trehearne told us is that mordremoth planted the seed of his spirit in trehearnes mind, right after trehearne “corrupted” mordremoths mind to allow us access.
I think trehearne & mordremoth are melted together as 2 souls in one terrible existence, and even tho Mord now tries to corrupt glints egg & is currently the dominant part, it’s not unlikely that we won’t defeat him physically(again), but cleanse his presence from glints egg, and preserve trehearnes existence, which then melts with glints spirit & hatches as a new, unified being.

That would also fulfill the prophecy of the pale tree, since then we’d still take on other dragons side by side. This time trehearne just will be a dragon (or part of a dragon) instead of a tree…
Also, since dragons have no use for swords, it also would make sense to make us into the bearer of caladbolg then (which we’ve technically become already).
Welp, at least that’s how I think the story will continue…

Hammer is obviously nice. Good defense for a melee weapon, and also packs quite a punch via cc-chains.
The traits are definitively nice.
Even after the nerf, adaptive armor performs quite awesome for buying me time against condi-builds (and 300 toughness is still noticable). Mass-momentum & recovery matrix both are awesome traits, and the other build-options the traits open are very interesting (gonna try out a superspeed, regenerating, knight build tonight).

The gyros…
Welp, me I’d say. Bulwark doesn’t care about our armor rating & eats full dmg, letting it die quite quickly, so I usually use it for its reflect & superspeed. And for that purpose its awesome.
Tried out shredder in the beginning, but after learning that its daze only pulses once, I abandoned it.
blast gyro is crap, and the stunbreaker on its TB doesn’t makes it better. I rather run slickshoes or elixir S.
Purge gyro? Gets killed by condis faster than me, and therefore often has only 1 tick when summoned… and the TB is pointless as well. Ironically its abysmal performance caused me to run elixir C in most of my scrapper-builds, a utility I rarely used before.
Medic? I actually like it, and if I’m not running elixir H for HgH builds, I see me often picking this heal, especially for the mobile, long-duration waterfield that aoe-buffs protection… Delicious.
Sneak? I came to love it actually. In PvP its the ultimate troll ability, both for active & defensive play (blinking in & out of stealth is so much fun ), and despite my worst fears, it doesn’t aggro npc’s in PvE, making it the ultimate skip-tool, if you can tell your party to follow the gyro rather than yourself.
So yea, so far I think the scrapper is okayish.
If we ever see a fix of hammer #3 & gyro movement, I guess it could become awesome.

Repost from the other thread.
Why would you even start a second one oO?

Just tested HgH & adaptive armor out:

I still cap might on 25 stacks (for the entire cd of my elixirs), and 200 less toughness doesn’t do a dent in my armor.

For those who say that adaptive armor was meant for squishies to toughen up: you’re not supposed to take hits as a squishy, you want to do everything to avoid them. Besides, your armor rating would have still been abysmal, so for marauder /sinister / zerker builds I’d take reserve salvo or perfectly weighted naturally anyways.
And for the purpose of heavy armored folks, adaptive armor still does its job, especially the -20% condi-dmg part.

So, Why do I don’t care about the HgH nerf?
Because this trait still reduces elixir cd, increases their duration, and the remaining might duration (with hoelbrak runes or similar picks) is still longer than Elixir H, Throw Elixir H & Throw Elixir B. So 6 stacks still get maintained permanently from these 3 skills allone(funfact, even pre-nerf they weren’t better, they just had an increased bridge-time if you forgot to get them on CD). So, now elixir B has a cd of 32 sec with HgH & just a HgH might duration of 22sec. But it also comes with its own might stack that is on a whoopin 54sec duration, meaning that you can stack it twice in the 2nd cycle, still giving you 2 permanent mightstacks from elixir B
So, by picking Elixir H & Elixir B, you achieve 8 permanent mightstacks, and 10 mightstacks for 22sec on a 32sec cd, per cycle.
Add this on top of the idle mightstacks of mass-momentum & juggernaut and you cap on 24-26 mightstacks. And since the engine drops your shortest duration stacks in favor for new ones, you cap on 25 might to all times… Just as pre-nerf.
So, what is a trait that still performs 100% AFTER it got nerfed?
A trait that performs 100%.

Keep in mind that these numbers don’t even consider Mortar #5, elixir S / throw elixir S, & Hidden flask.
There is so much might sources still going on, that it is almost impossible to not have 25 stacks of might to all times… And my build doesn’t even slot EG.
Just slot it instead of elixir B, for even more insane might-uptime. I personally prefer the extra stab from B’s TB, but do whatever you like…

One thing is sure, this nerf does not influence our build-options in the slightest. If anything, it removes brain-afk gameplay where the game forgives you way too much for not using your elixirs in opportune moments.

Just tested HgH & adaptive armor out:

I still cap might on 25 stacks (for the entire cd of my elixirs), and 200 less toughness doesn’t do a dent in my armor.

For those who say that adaptive armor was meant for squishies to toughen up: you’re not supposed to take hits as a squishy, you want to do everything to avoid them. Besides, your armor rating would have still been abysmal, so for marauder /sinister / zerker builds I’d take reserve salvo or perfectly weighted naturally anyways.
And for the purpose of heavy armored folks, adaptive armor still does its job, especially the -20% condi-dmg part.

So, Why do I don’t care about the HgH nerf?
Because this trait still reduces elixir cd, increases their duration, and the remaining might duration (with hoelbrak runes or similar picks) is still longer than Elixir H, Throw Elixir H & Throw Elixir B. So 6 stacks still get maintained permanently from these 3 skills allone(funfact, even pre-nerf they weren’t better, they just had an increased bridge-time if you forgot to get them on CD). So, now elixir B has a cd of 32 sec with HgH & just a HgH might duration of 22sec. But it also comes with its own might stack that is on a whoopin 54sec duration, meaning that you can stack it twice in the 2nd cycle, still giving you 2 permanent mightstacks from elixir B
So, by picking Elixir H & Elixir B, you achieve 8 permanent mightstacks, and 10 mightstacks for 22sec on a 32sec cd, per cycle.
Add this on top of the idle mightstacks of mass-momentum & juggernaut and you cap on 24-26 mightstacks. And since the engine drops your shortest duration stacks in favor for new ones, you cap on 25 might to all times… Just as pre-nerf.
So, what is a trait that still performs 100% AFTER it got nerfed?
A trait that performs 100%.

Keep in mind that these numbers don’t even consider Mortar #5, elixir S / throw elixir S, & Hidden flask.
There is so much might sources still going on, that it is almost impossible to not have 25 stacks of might to all times… And my build doesn’t even slot EG.
Just slot it instead of elixir B, for even more insane might-uptime. I personally prefer the extra stab from B’s TB, but do whatever you like…

One thing is sure, this nerf does not influence our build-options in the slightest. If anything, it removes brain-afk gameplay where the game forgives you way too much for not using your elixirs in opportune moments.

Trayzer.7268:

with such a hostile attitude.

Said the one calling everyboy on the forums super mario fanboys while engineering a artificial scenario where a-net was not totally open about the fact that they switched their design philosophy intentionally, LONG BEFORE they even opened the gates for pre-purchase…
You knew what you were ordering, and now you’re mad that you’ve wasted your money on something that you personally don’t like afterall. Tell me, is the lack of proper knowledge about your own preferences your issue, or a-nets issue?

There was no point in arguing with you in the beginning, we just come here for our daily ration of popcorn. Keep posting, m8.

Projectiles are always a bad idea, since gyros move quite randomly around you and are simply too stupid to take LoS into consideration when moving. I mean, they “improved” the AI for the HoT mobs, but even tho these mobs are quite a challenge now, the ranged mordrem feel like they were all cloned from the same sylvari… the one that fell on its head right after leaving its blossom. They charge their longshots even when I’m standing already behind terrain obstructions and keep shooting at me for minutes, before making up their mind and finally running around the corner.
Don’t trust A-net when it comes to AI design. I vouched for signets as scrapper utility, but now that we have this junk, we definitively want as little function as possible left to AI decision. And since their positioning is the big bane that makes them so horrible, people want them tidally locked to us.
A small anecdote: Turrets were worthless trash, before a-net decided to ditch the targeting AI of turrets and let them strictly attack the last target we dealt dmg on. Just because of this change, a buggy mess of scrap transformed into the bane of pug-queuing for over a year, filling countless buckets with scrub-tears, and plastered the PvP subforum with daily respawning threads of QQ how stupidly broken OP turrets are. Not a single stat got changed on them, nor a single bug being fixed. By just dumbing down the AI, and making it less independent, they turned pure turret-builds into borderline competitive.

Anyways, lets continue with your suggestions. Letting gyros teleport on you with each tick would definitively solve all mechanical issues, but be a rather ugly, and – more important – prone-to-bugging-out solution. You can be sure that they completely bug out and do nothing if they attempt to port to you, while your position is invalid (i.e. mid-air(gliding, jump-dodge)) or no valid path can be found (ehmagherd, he jumped over the fence, can’t find a way over this 20cm high obstruction).
Also, it would nullify the nice confusion we get from sneak-gyro in PvP.

Dramatically increasing their range also comes with big balance issues, especially with the sneak-gyro. I mean, confusing our enemies with its wonky movement is one thing, but usually they are able to at least cleave on us with their rather big aoe’s. If the sneak gyro applies stealth in a too big area, it just can stealth itself as well, since its visible presence will not even allow a rough guesstimation of our position anymore…

So IF A-net has some valid technical or balancing reasons against tidally locking sneak, bulwark, purge & medic to our character, my alternative suggestion would be this:

Create lines like the chak-pioneers do to the chak-vets. You can use the mechanics of spear of justice for that. If one of the above 4 gyros spawns, let them project thin beams towards us, that ensure that the gyros apply their effect to us, regardless of LoS or range. Additionally they still perform their effect for allies around their actual position. Just make sure that these lines are invisible for enemies as well, IF we have stealth, else you can tidally lock sneak gyro to us right away.

+1 for allowing adventures to be unlocked to all times.

ocirne.7915:

Arantheal.7396:

welp, for the zerker meta in dungeons you want rifle…

Thats only because nobody decent cares enough to update the dungeon meta.

Considering the now diminished rewards & how laughable easy dungeons always were, can you blame us?

welp, for the zerker meta in dungeons you want rifle…

Anyways, the new HoT content is quite engaging and while you’ll definitively mix some toughness into your power gear, zerker mainhand weapons are definitively ok. That also includes the new raid-content as far as I’m concerned

So it depends on your preferences:
If you like dungeons & the easy champ-trains / open world farming of tyria: Rifle
If you rather want to play the new HoT content and like scrapper for its defensive boost for powerbuilds, pick the hammer.

Malpractice.7850:

You went from being OP, to being stupidly godlike.

Lol, didn’t knew that we’re OP to begin with. And saying such thing at this state of the meta-shift just points out a glaring L2P issue on your side…

Also, nothing on this idea is “god-like”.
Breakbars have numeric values that can differ from enemy to enemy, so balancing can be applied quite simply by not allowing it to withstand more than 2 or 3 hard cc’s (something most classes are able to chain). Fear for example is melting breakbars quite fast, so unless we clear it in time, we are screwed, same goes for taunt & slow.
And even with stability (which regenerates this breakbar), easily available conditions
like blind, chill & cripple would just be merely stopped from depleting it.
If we use the superspeed from the traits to run ooc, we loose it along with our swiftness, health regen & toughness, since charge goes back to zero.
Building charge actually takes some time. You’d need to hit 3 targets with the FT to the same time, 3 times in a row (7.5sec) to build charge the fastest. It is never available from the beginning of a fight, and if you get stunlocked before you reach the maximum, you’re in downstate with less than receiving 100 hits. And since you aoe-buff swiftness, healing & protection, enemies have a great incentive to burst you down…

The purpose behind charge is to constantly increase our & allies tankiness the longer the fight goes, but it can be disabled rather quickly if our opponents are smart enough to focus us down. And in 1v1 situations it simply takes ages to build it (just look into warrior adrenaline if no trait is picked to support adrenalin regeneration, and their bar just holds a numeric value of 30 / Even with “coil core”, our bar needs 50 hits, 20 more than warri adrenalin), so relying on it too much gets you killed faster than you can fill it.

So, while it is slow to fill up & has massive counterplay, it finally feels like a class-mechanic that pronounces most of the core-principles of this elite spec: Tankyness, support, cc & mobility.

A-net designs a core-game PvE-experience that requires next to zero skill, relatively to comparable games in the genre, and virtually no stat-grind.
Community responds with:
“This game is too easy, I can even solo the hardest bosses”
“I don’t see the PvE endgame”
“There is nothing to do but to farm for legendary skins, or skins locked behind insane RNG”

A-net then designs a expanson with difficult & engaging PvE-content and a solid unlock system that will keep most players busy for a couple of months.

Community responds with:
“What the heg, this game is brutal hard. I can’t even solo champs in my Zerker gear anymore.”
“Why do I have to do map-completion in order to unlock my specialization!? Give me everything from day 1!”
“WTF A-net, this mastery-”grind" will keep me busy for the comming months…"

…next time you maybe should be careful with your wishes. You got everything you asked for & so much more. I for my part have a blast playing this expansion.
And for those who whine about the game being too hard for them now, I only can cite the dark souls community on that topic:
Git gud or get out.

Tossing a old idea from myself in again:

CHARGE
Charge is basically energy that we accumulate via combat, that can be used to activate & overcharge our build-in armor-augmentations.

-we get a additional, bright-blue energy bar above our endurance bar (artwork could contain some lightning effects)
-it holds a numeric value of 100
-it has black markers on 25%, 50% & 75% that turn bright yellow once we build enough charge up for it
-if the bar reaches 100%, it gets brighter & shows more lightning effects
-it goes back to 0 out of combat
-it gains 1 unit for each hit that we deal, take, evade, or block

each time charge reaches a threshold, it unlocks a permanent effect that stays active as long as we maintain the charge for it.

25%:
Our motivators get overloaded, causing them to aoe-buff swiftness for 5 seconds every 5 seconds (240 range)

50%:
Our build-in regenerators get overloaded, causing them to aoe-heal constantly for 200 per second (240 range)

75%:
Our ablative Armor is now active, causing it to aoe-buff protection for 2 seconds every 5 seconds. (240 range)

100%:
Our ablative armor gets overcharged, causing us to gain a break-bar. This negates the cc-effects of blind, weakness, cripple, immobilize, chill, slow, taunt & fear, but these conditions contribute to our break-bars’ depletion. We regenerate our breakbar faster if we have stability on us. CC’s do not deplete stability while we have our breakbar up & stability is not blocking CC’s from damaging our breakbar.
If our breakbar gets fully depleted, we loose all our charge & get stunned for 2 seconds.

Traits:
Decisive renown (Renamed into “Destabilized Capacitors”)
- If charge reaches 25%, 50% or 75%, aoe-daze opponents in 240 range for 1 second
- If charge reaches 100%, stun opponents in 240 range for 1 second

Stabilization Core (renamed into “Overcharged Mechalegs”)
- pulse 3 seconds of superspeed every 3 seconds if we are on 100% charge

Perfectly weighted (renamed into Coil Core)
- Increase Hammer dmg by 10%
- Gain stability on evading attacks
- Gain 1 additional charge per attack

Goosekilla.2796:

It would be a ridiculously long evade, too the point of being severely OP, if it evaded for the entire skill duration.

Welp, it locks us in an animation, so it makes us vulnerable artificially.
If the evade would be too long on its current version, get rid entirely of the aftercasts after each leap. That shortens its animation, therefore the duration of needed evades, and solves the mobility issues so many people have with it.

currently the skill goes on for roughly 2 seconds.
without all the aftercasts it would fit neatly into a 0.75sec animation-span (1 leap every 1/4 second),and that would bring it within the dimensions of unrelenting assault in terms of evade-duration.

Yea, I never cared too much about numbers in this idea. It was really just to showcase the general concept.

Hammer #3 still does not evade during its full duration, just on the first half of its animation (or even just the first leap!?). Please fix it to cover the whole animation with a evade.
Ty.

…Tidally locked to our character, exactly like the idle-animation from our function-gyro.

So, since that would mean that they always are on our characters position, a few things would need to change in general:

- while off cd, gyros are immune to dmg.
- while off cd, gyros have passive, weaker effects.
- while off cd, gyros orbit our character closly, like function gyro does.
- if activated, gyros move away from our character a bit, become damagable, targetable, but are still tidally locked on this “further away” position, ensuring that they will always strictly follow our movement.
- if they survive their uptime, they move back to their initial position & continue their passive effects while being invulnerable, but go on a 20sec cd (soft-cd)
- if they get killed, they go on 20sec cd’s without performing their passive effects (hard-cd)
- activatting a gyro a second time causes it to blow up with the usual skill & trigger all on death effects preemptively. It then goes on a 20sec cd without performing the passive effects (hard-cd)

Medic gyro:
passive: heals 150 per second for the engi
active: heals 5k initially for the engi & then pulses 300 aoe-heal per second for 10 seconds
TB: stays as as

Bulwark:
passive: reduces incoming direct & condi-dmg for the engineer by 10%
active: aoe absorbs 50% incoming direct & condi-dmg for 10sec
TB: reflecting dome is now also a light-field

Purge:
passive: clears 1 condition for the engineer every 5 seconds
active: aoe-clears 2 conditions every 2 seconds for 10 seconds
TB: The poison field is mobile and play-centric. It applies poison, torment & blind per tick. Renamed into exhaust fumes.

Shredder:
passive: gives all hits from the engineer a 33% chance to apply 5sec of vulnerability
active: whirl-finishes all fields the engineer is moving trough / hits as often as it whirl-finishes for around 100 dmg / each hit causes vulnerability / buffs 2 seconds of fury every 2 seconds / lasts 10 seconds
TB: stays as is

Blast (renamed into Speed Gyro):
passive: grants 5 seconds of swiftness for the engineer every 5 seconds (intentional synergy with vigorous speed (not that heavy armor exploit wouldn’t perma-trigger it already, or adrenal implant being perma-vigor effectively as well…))
active: aoe-buffs 2 seconds of quickness every 2 seconds for 10sec
TB: stays as is

Sneak:
passive: [see below]
active: aoe-buff stealth for 3 seconds every 2 seconds for 10 seconds (yes, a nerf to the current version, but if you ask me, 45sec stealth on a 50sec overall cd is too good)
TB: stays as is

[Passive on sneak-gyro]:
Since it’s a elite skill, I’d like it to have some more powerful effect than the others, so I’d give it 1 second of evading all attacks every 5 seconds. Would fit the theme of phase-shifting to become partly invisible. Or just give it aegis for 5seconds every 5seconds.

Alternatively I’d like to give it the following effect:
1st effect: apply reveal for 1 sec every second to the engineer
Yes, you heard right, as long as the passive is up, we can’t stealth, which also means that for us, the sneak-gyro will never buff more than 10sec stealth & if we pick it, it’s active phase is the only time where we can get stealth from any source. Ofc we can still stealth our allies with elixir S & smokefield blasts & if we go down, the passive ends anyways, so we can still get saved by allies. Also, the gyro itself will still stealth our allies for up to 15sec
2nd effect: apply insight for 1 seconds every seconds.
What is insight? An Idea the thief subforum came up with some time ago. Insight allows us to see all targets around us, regardless if stealth’d or not, but they still have the stealth effect on themselves & are invisible for the rest of our allies. So, where is the difference in just giving it permanently pulsing reveal? Well, first off having stealth on you is very important for many traits in the thief’s shadow arts line, and even tho engineers are the thiefs natural hardcounter, balance should never go so far as to letting a class automatically loose if it gets targeted by 1 skill of their hard-counter. If we reveal them, it doesn’t even matter if we engage into combat with them or not. Regardless who their opponent is, he will kill the revealed thief since the thief looses access to his main dmg-option & main-defense mechanic at the same time, effectively stripping him naked, mechanic-wise.
This means, as long as we have insight, we can see & target stealthed targets on any range, so they loose the option to juke us, reposition unpunished or ambush us unnoticed. Still they enjoy all the advantages of being stealthed, in the case of thief this means consi-clears, healing, access to their backstabs, a.s.o.
Still we have the option to reveal them to every time, if our TB skill is off cd, but since a) sneak gyro permanently reveals us during its passive phase and b) the insight buff appears on our buff-bar, thiefs & mesmers are warned that we know where they are and have the possibility of baiting & dodging our reveals.
Ofc, for WvW & PvP this option means that a scrapper can call out stealth’d targets to the group via TS, without revealing them ingame. But since both teams & zergs would have the same option, this levels the field for both parties & makes proper teamwork/communication even more important.

On the other hand, a scrapper can still choose to kill the gyro on the last second of its uptime to let it go on a hard-cd & therefore keep the stealth uptime & option to apply even more stealth to himself from other sources. He just trades the insight uptime for this…

Discuss.

I like the hammer so far (still has room for improvements, especially in skill 3).
The medic gyro is actually quite useful, especially since you have a mobile waterfield, guaranteeing finishers with hammer #3. I prefer it over healing turret in map-completion, where QoL goes over numeric performance for me.
Had no opportunity to test out sneak-gyro so far.

The traits are awesome for tanking, so have a solid spot for raiding & higher fractal-levels. And since mag forces you to toughen up, they’re also quite awesome for map-completion. In general they feel well rounded where you want to be tanky, and the bit of WvW frontlining I could do with my half-unlocked scrapper so far was actually quite amazing. Only had the toughness on heal one & mass-momentum equipped & still were wrecking focus parties that jumped me with thunderclap + rocketcharge.

All in all I like the elite-spec so far, and it definitively feels something I will run quite often. Unless I go condi. It sucks for condi.

Anyways, about gyros:
Even tho the function gyro is a useless piece of scrap, it showed us something very important: It appears to be no biggy to tidally lock the animations of gyros on our character. And even tho it was just its idle-animation, this is exactly what I want other gyros to be…

gonna make a post about this idea in a seperate thread.
Appart from gyros (including the class-mechanic): good work irenio. Still needs some improvements, but I can see it in a solid spot already.

pretty simple:
play powerbuilds WITHOUT stability, since that converts into more fear.
Also, keep in mind that necros don’t have leaps, so enjoy your ranged advantage (and dodge necrotic grasp)