We’ve only been asking for evade and/or stun break for like .. I don’t know, three years?
It’s definitely sub-par compared to most mobility skills and escape skills. It doesn’t go far enough or fast enough to help you get away from your average warrior, thief, etc. It’s an unreliable escape because you’ll get hit mid-skill by cc/damage.
Compared to our other options, like Elixir Gun, it’s just not worth taking. I guarantee if it was designed for HoT, it’d have a built-in evade. Hell, even Rocket Charge, the Hammer skill that also does damage, has evades.
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From a great post by a League of Legends game designer: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=293417
Fun Fails to Exceed Anti-Fun
Anti-fun is the negative experience your opponents feel when you do something that prevents them from ‘playing their game’ or doing activities they consider fun. While everything useful you can do as a player is likely to cause SOME anti-fun in your opponents, it only becomes a design issue when the ‘anti-fun’ created on your use of a mechanic is greater than your fun in using the mechanic. Dark Binding is VERY favorable on this measurement, because opponents get clutch dodges just like you get clutch hits, so it might actually create fun on both sides, instead of fun on one and weak anti-fun on another. On the other hand, a strong mana burn is NOT desirable — if you drain someone to 0 you feel kinda good, and they feel TERRIBLE — so the anti-fun is exceeded by the fun. This is important because the goal of the game is for players to have fun, so designers should seek abilities that result in a net increase of fun in the game. Basic design theory, yes?
Perma-stealth thief is a pretty clear example of anti-fun because unless the opponent happens to be specifically built for countering it (with a reveal or aoe spam), they can’t fight back at all. This is only fun for the thief and no fun for their opponent.
Yep. I’ve been hit with epidemic at full health, then taken two 13k ticks while frantically spamming my heal/cleanse, but I was dead before it went off.
I don’t think it’s particularly overpowered. I’ve beaten ghost thieves lots of times, even with my poor Rifle Engi build (in dire need of buffs, and has practically no condi cleanse). However, that’s relying on Detection Pulse to un-stealth them, then burst them while they’re revealed.
Still, I think the build should be removed because there’s no real counterplay to it unless you happen to be running a reveal as part of your default setup. If you don’t have a reveal or stealth trap, it’s just pure anti-fun.
IMO, combat should be fun for both parties. Each player should feel like they could be doing something to win the fight. Unless you’re built for it, that’s just not possible vs ghost thief.
Never had a problem with it, but now that you mention it, my fingers are doing some kind of DDR-like shuffle on the keys when I’m using nades. Like, if I’m hitting a 1-5 skill with one finger that was on a movement key, another finger will slide over to cover it if I need to move in that direction.
I’ve never consciously thought about it though. It just happens.
Okay, so what is the counterplay for classes without stability then?
The initial spear is too fast for any normal human to react to, so that rules out reflects and dodges. It’s unblockable, so that rules out predicting when the DH will use it and preemptively blocking.
A few classes have invulns, but they’re on long cooldowns compared to spear. Some classes have auto-proc cc traits like Last Stand which cancel cc, but these are skillless and should be removed from the game.
What is .. for example, a base ranger supposed to do when facing a DH? They’re GOING to get speared. They’re going to get pulled, guaranteed, and they’re going to eat some traps. They can’t do anything about it.
WTB active counterplay
Skill/Build balance
Aside from the usual concerns about large group combat, I think the current roaming meta builds are waaaay too good at what they do. It is literally impossible to catch a thief that wants to escape. There needs to be some risk for a thief to engage rather than just being able to spam shortbow and dodge out of range whenever they take damage.
Similarly, Invuln Zerker is far too forgiving and strong in 1v1. With my Rifle Engi, I can’t CC them because of things like Last Stand, Eternal Champion, and their boatloads of resistance. Meanwhile, they’re healing 1k+ per second passively while putting out top tier damage and armour.
I’m not asking for perfect 1v1 balance, but I am asking for counterplay. I would like to be able to engage those builds and have a good fight rather than never being able to actually catch them (thief) or being forced to run (war).
The initial hook is just not dodgeable with human reactions at close-medium range. It might be dodgeable at max range if you’re paying attention and dodge as soon as you see the animation.
If you disagree, pm me and we can meet in game. We’ll stand at medium range. I’ll spear, you dodge.
Also note that you have to factor in ~100-200ms of lag. IMO, the cast time is fine, but the projectile should be slow enough to react to. Currently once you see the hook, it’s too late to dodge.
Basically, it needs active counterplay. Either make the projectile animation slow enough to react to or allow the pull to be evaded.
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Here’s a user story for you:
Today, I logged in to play some WvW.
T1. Home borderlands. Map is empty. I’m just about to leave when I spot someone flipping south camps. Hoping for a fight, I run down to intercept them.
It’s a roaming thief…
They do the usual thief things. Every time I deal some damage or reveal them, they break combat and shortbow to 3000 range. Every time I immobilize them, they instantly clear it with a dodge. Their escapes are on about 3-4x shorter cooldowns than my cc’s, so I’ll never catch them. After about 5 minutes of this, I’m bored.
I leave and go play Overwatch.
Yeah. I miss that. For the most part, skills did either offense or defense. Elite specs added tons of power to existing classes with no tradeoff. The fact that there has never been any response to these concerns despite ‘HoT power creep’ being the most oft-repeated phrase on forums suggest that it was probably intentional to sell expansions…
I bought the expansion happily, but I hate what it has done to the combat. It’s just less skillful now and build diversity has tanked.
I’d rather Necro not have more sustain, but other classes have less.
Some classes have absurd sustain from skills and traits. Warrior’s Adrenal Health trait, for example, is much better than most classes’ heals in the same time period. It also gets double invuln and like 20s of resistance on a pretty short cd. DH gets tons of long lasting blocks. Scrapper gets skills that defend while attacking, etc.
Here’s what I’d do:
- remove auto-proc-on-cc traits like Last Stand, Hunter’s Determination, etc. Defense should be active, not passive.
- reconsider the duration of blocks, reflects, invulns, resistance, especially if they allow the user to attack at the same time. 5 seconds is a long time in pvp. 20 seconds is basically an entire fight.
- see if it’s possible to bring HoT specs in line with pre-HoT levels of sustain.
- Necro pvp main. 1800
Does anyone know if the projectile origin height changes for different races? I keep having my Rifle shots ‘OBSTRUCTED’ by the smallest bump in terrain and can’t help but think if I was a max-height Norn rather than a min-height Asura, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Platinum 2, I think? can’t remember. 1803 rating.
I play condi Reaper in ranked, though I really miss my kits+rifle power Engi gameplay and would love it to be viable in pvp again. It’s just not right now (projectile hate, HoT power creep, etc.).
Anyway.. Balance feels all right. I think some classes offer a bit too much reward for how easy they are to play. I think the gameplay was better before the condi-stacking patch from last year and definitely before HoT.
Necro is focused SO HARD it’s comical sometimes. Players will come from halfway across the map to all jump on me. I get it. Necro is easy to kill because we have no defense aside from 2 dodges and shroud. Our team often ends up on top when they know how to rotate, but I don’t feel like I’m contributing much when I’m jumped by 3 people every time I spawn. Meh. That’s the game I guess.
Things I miss and wish would come back:
- Rifle Engi
- D/D non-healbot ele
- non-stance War
Things I am getting tired of:
- long invulns, long resistance
- auto-proc on cc traits. These are skillless and anti-fun.
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Nah, pretty sure it’s the build.
As a rifle Engi 1v1-ing a roaming Zerker, for example:
- They regen over 1k hp/s, so when I have to stop attacking them for a a few seconds (dodge cc, block, reposition), they passively counter any weak attacks I’ve sent their way, like Rifle auto.
- Adrenal health, a trait, heals more in the same time period than all my heals and combos put together.
- They get auto-proc stances when cc’d and at 50% health.
- They have stability while in zerker, so I can’t rely on Overcharged Shot or Net Shot to cc them.
This leads to a fight where they have stab, invuln, or resistance for enough time to keep the pressure up and regen any damage I managed to do.
Or worse, I’ll go for the Overcharged Shot when they don’t have stab, hit them triggering Last Stand (auto-proc balanced stance). Now I’m cc’d from the self-knockback. They follow up with Headbutt and burst me dead on the spot.
It’s just not possible to beat a good roaming zerker in a 1v1. (yes, you can kill bad players occasionally).
But that’s just the build. It’s the combination of all those things that make it too much to handle.
I guarantee if they were playing base warrior, I could take them with no problem. They wouldn’t have zerk mode with Eternal Champion, so that’s a larger period of time without stab, which means I can land Overcharged Shot more, which means I can bait their stances, then burst them down while everything is on cd.
If you take off Adrenal Health, they don’t regen enough and I can beat them by dodging their attacks and playing defensive when they charge in.
etc. etc.
sitting at zero because I got no engi changes I liked to even bother with pvp :I
WTB more base engi buffs and scrapper nerfs because scrapper screwed base engi.
MORE RIFLE BUFFS PLZ and quit nerfing things out of nowhere without any reason to.the rifle change was not a buff, it was more loss of dmg. which was the exact opposite if what they were trying to do (bring it up to par with hammer).
Too true. That Jump Shot change feels like a nerf given how hard it is to land such a long telegraphed skill. Maybe if it was faster or had evades..
Things that were (I think) designed to nerf Scrapper, but ended up killing Base Engi even more:
- Gear Shield 3s->2s – Base Engi needs a long block for defense. It is the only defensive skill in a lot of builds.
- Healing Turret 0.5s->0.75s – Base Engi can no longer rely on HT to go off when cast. There’s a very real risk of it being interrupted or destroyed before it finishes. This hurts Scrapper, yes, but it hurts Base more because of the lack of defensive weapon skills on Rifle/Pistol.
Ultimately though, It’s projectile hate and HoT power creep that are forcing certain playstyles on pvp. It’s far too easy to just sit on point and spam aoe.
tl;dr Play Hammer Scrapper like everyone else.
I think that would actually require doing work on the skills, rather than tweaking numbers here and there..
Still, I’m glad they’re at least trying. It’s more attention than Rifle has had in years (and has been sorely needing since HoT).
As we’ve said countless times elsewhere, it’s not just the damage on rifle that needs a buff. It’s a weapon with no defense, but requires getting in close range to do damage. The self-cc on Overcharged Shot is a massive liability especially with all the blocks/reflects/stab/evades that came with HoT. Jump Shot doesn’t evade. You know if it’d been designed for HoT, the mid-leap travel would be an evade.
Idk about that, Rev’s Mallyx skill Unyielding Anguish is also a movement skill (an expensive one too), yet doesn’t have evade on it. And Rev is HoT, that didn’t come from pre-HoT. So I think this might be an overstatement.
Yeah.. perhaps not every HoT movement skill, but many of them.
Surge of the Mists
Unrelenting Assault
Phase Smash
Ancestral Grace
Vault
I think Vault is a good comparison. It’s a movement skill that has a telegraphed animation and puts the user in melee range, so the target can easily counterattack. Vault protects the thief mid-air, Jump Shot doesn’t.
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But .. why? Why should they take 10x the retaliation damage of a Guardian using Staff auto (longer range, larger cone).
As we’ve said countless times elsewhere, it’s not just the damage on rifle that needs a buff. It’s a weapon with no defense, but requires getting in close range to do damage. The self-cc on Overcharged Shot is a massive liability especially with all the blocks/reflects/stab/evades that came with HoT. Jump Shot doesn’t evade. You know if it’d been designed for HoT, the mid-leap travel would be an evade.
Sigh.. I’ll go over the list of stuff again in case some dev reads this.
Rifle:
- Low damage compared to hammer, long cooldowns.
- No defense despite needing to get in close to deal damage
- Overcharged Shot is very unreliable given the prevalence of reflect, stability, block, etc. Self-cc hurts
- Jump Shot lacks evade frames, so is very often interrupted mid-flight. Difficult to land.
Grenades/Flamethrower:
- Are unfairly punished by retaliation compared to comparable aoe skills on other classes that only hit once.
Rocket Boots:
- Doesn’t do enough for taking up an entire skill slot (true for gadgets in general).
- Doesn’t go quite far enough
- Doesn’t evade, often interrupted
- Doesn’t break stun (maybe this could be on rocket kick?)
Condi Cleanse:
- There is practically none available unless you dedicate a valuable skill slot to it, but that’s not always an option given that engi builds require all their skill slots. I would gladly trade my elite skill for another regular skill slot to take purge gyro or another condi cleanse.
- Alternatively, you can use the Alchemy traitline, and practically every build does for this reason. It’s basically mandatory.
Sure, I may have dished out 5-6k aoe damage across 3 throws, but I took 12k in retaliation. Can you imagine if, say, Revenant took twice as much damage as they dealt with CoR? They’d 1-shot themselves every time. That’s a 1200 range non-projectile aoe that does more damage than grenade barrage on a much shorter cooldown.
The issue is that retaliation unfairly punishes certain skills more than others. Why should Flamethrower take 5x more retaliation damage per second than a greatsword swing?
Problem is, any defense they give to engi skills is also given to builds with Hammer, so they get all the defense from Hammer (which is a lot compared to rifle) and they also get the defense from utilities.
Then they nerf the utilities to try and balance Hammer builds, and pistol/rifle builds suffer even more. Eg. Healing Turret cast time increase, Gear Shield block duration decrease.
I see two ways of fixing this: Nerf HoT power creep hard. This would be really unpopular, but HoT skills/weapons/traits just do too many things too well compared to vanilla. The elite specs are strict upgrades to base classes. They swore up and down that this wouldn’t be the case before they launched HoT, but .. here we are. Alternatively, buff Rifle/Pistol to have similar defensive capabilities, like evades on Jump Shot and Overcharged Shot.
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I just don’t understand where you’re coming from here. It’s like you’re saying skills and weapons shouldn’t be balanced around pvp/wvw.. but .. GW2 skills and weapons are supposed to be balanced around pvp. That’s their stated design philosophy. I could go dig up the post from like .. 4 years ago where they said that.
You can bet that if FT’s 10x hit allowed for a broken hit-proc build in pvp, it’d be nerfed pretty quick. They’re just really slow to fix and balance certain things. They gave up on some of them – Med Kit, for example.
Throwing nades on 1 player without retal, then throwing nades on a group with retal. In 3-4 throws, my health drops 50% just from the absurd retal. Flamethrower is potentially even worse.
Seems the devs are looking at this thread.
I will talk about my concerns about engi rifle:
Rifle is in a bad spot now, you just have to look at the engis forum, there are a lot of suggenstions and ideas how it could be improved.Theoritical rifle damage isnt THAT bad, the problem is the fact that it is very hard to land any good damage.
Bluderbuss on a 10 sec CD and jump shot on a 20 sec CD is just to much to provide a good sustained damage during a fight.
In addition to that, HoT projectile hate is out of control (especially in wvw).
Overcharged shot is in most cases a self CC because to much random spam of stability, blinds, blocks or reflects, and I see auto attacks also often beeing destroyed or reflected.At the moment rifle needs at least one damage kit to be effective. That isnt bad, but this is a lost slot for an utility skill. You need to take grenades, FT or a SD build, but all of this are also suffer to projectile hate or retaliation damage.
Cool downs are too long to be a stand alone weapon without swapping kits.Hammer provides defensive aspects on 3 skills (reflect, evade, block) I know that a melee weapon needs more defensive because you stand directly in the fight. But spvp is about holding little points, so hammer is always the better choice. Hammer provides good defensives, low cool downs and good damage.
But nerfing scrapper wont solve the problem, the problem is the game mod itself in relation to rifle. That means only adjusting numbers for rifle is uselsess, it really needs an overhaul to its mechanics, defensives and cool downs.
I.E. net shot needs proper target landing, blunderbuss could be unblockable, overcharged shot needs to remove its self CC and it shouldnt count as projectile, and jump shot needs an evade frame IMO.Also I dont understand why the only rifle trait is in the condi trait line?
Firearms trait line either need more real rifle specific traits, or at least this single trait should be baseline.TL;DR: Engi rifle needs an overhaul. Only adjusting numbers will not solve the problem.
If I could pay 5000 gems to make a dev read this post, I would.
Yeah, that’s what I’d do. Baseline Skilled Marksman attack speed. Then change the self-knockback to a backward evade/dodge.
It really really sucks to Overcharged Shot a Druid, have the CC canceled by Shared Anguish, then have the druid turn around and shoot you triggering Ancient Seeds because you’re cc’d from your own attack.
It also really sucks to Overcharged Shot a Zerker, have the CC canceled by Last Stand, then have the Zerker charge/rush/murder you while you’re knocked back from your own attack.
It also really sucks to Overcharged Shot a DragonHunter, have the CC canceled by Hunter’s Determination, then have the DH drop all the traps on you while you’re knocked back from your own attack.
It also really sucks to Overcharged Shot a …
see where I’m going with this ANET?
also with an unblockable on overcharged shot and evade would be amazing, just think hey thats a nice reflect wall it would be a shame if someone knocked you out of it.
Unblockable Overcharged Shot would be too good. It needs some counterplay. it’s an instant knockdown. People need to expect that their defenses will work. If I pop Gear Shield (RIP. 2s nerf..), I want it to block things. I get sad about the direction the game is going when I’m running from a zerg and I’m close to safety and use the only defense skill I have on my build… aaaaand then a DH just uses spear of justice right through it – too fast to dodge, unblockable and perfect cc. Same thing with Basilisk Venom.
Those things aren’t fair at all. If they made Overcharged Shot unblockable, it’d just be more of the same power creep. As much as I want it to be, it shouldn’t be unblockable and neither should basi venom and spear. There needs to be counterplay.
It’s not just the damage. As we’ve been saying for a while now, it’s the reflects and lack of evade frames. Observe:
It’s the fact that rifle needs to get in close to deal damage, but has no real defense. You can hardly ever rely on Overcharged Shot or Net shot. You put yourself at a massive risk using Jump Shot compared to a Hammer engi using Rocket Charge for similar damage.
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So what is wrong with that though? Why would anyone think it’s not reasonable to supplement rifle with an additional weapon to achieve a very efficient build? .
Because you don’t need to do that for Hammer.
So if you take any Rifle build and swap in Hammer, you get a better build.
That’s what’s wrong.
It’s like this:
Rifle / Pistol / Shield were designed (for launch 2012) to be 75% good weapons to be used with kits.
Hammer was designed (for HoT 2015) to be a 100% good weapon. (so that it could be used with gyros? dunno)
We’d just like Rifle (and other non-HoT stuff) to be brought from 75% to 100%.
Alternatively, if they’d like to nerf the HoT power creep across the board, so that everything goes back to 75%, that’s fine too.
Probably because the game isn’t balanced around 1v1 at all. Some classes & builds are just untouchable, or make for really lame duels.
Eg trying to kill a healbot ele with a class that can’t do enough damage. The duel just goes on forever and no one wins.
Here’s a quick clip of my Rifle/Nades build in action:
Build is:
Explosions (for Nades)
Tools (for Toolkit, Swiftness, Dodges)
Scrapper (for Sneak Gyro + Function Gyro)
Then half-zerk, half-soldier stats. I go full zerk for fun sometimes, but it’s too much of a risk in big fights because you’ll get 1-shot.
It’s not good though. It folds to most condi classes except necro (clears 2 condi per 20s). Its only defense is dodging and Gear Shield (recently nerfed, plus ineffective against the myriad of unblockable kitten out there – Spear of Justice, Basi Venom, etc.)
See other threads for why Rifle sucks now, but TL;DR: projectile hate, ineffective cc, poor damage, no defense, high risk & low reward.
Still, I like blowing someone up with a well placed Grenade Barrage and some pew pew.. when it’s not reflected.. so I stick with it.
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Sure, a good Rifle player may beat a bad Hammer player from time to time, but the fact remains that Hammer is just an all-round better choice.
- Using Hammer over Rifle doesn’t mean the Engineer can’t use the same kits for damage
- Hammer deals more damage than rifle
- Hammer is not prone to reflect and projectile problems
- Hammer defends while attacking (Evades, Block, Reflect). Rifle has no defense even though it must also be in close range to do damage.
Rifle’s self-cc is really frustrating too. Eg. I shoot Druid with no stability with Overcharged Shot. Shared Anguish triggers. Druid is not cc’d. I’m knocked back. Druid shoots me with longbow or staff auto, procs Ancient Seeds because I’m cc’d from my own attack. I’m now immob’d for 5s+ and I can’t even clear it with Overcharged Shot because it’s on cooldown.
“at the expense of the PVE experience”
Wait.. how does fixing rifle for PvP hurt PvE? It doesn’t.
The fact that other classes also have weapons that aren’t viable in PvP/WvW is also a problem. I just care about Engineer & Rifle because I play it, but other classes also have balance problems. Those should be fixed too.
Look at the last balance patch, for example. They added another boon convert to Necro axe. They’ve been trying (and failing) to make Necro axe competitive for a while. It’s not some conscious decision to ignore certain weapons in PvP. They’re trying to fix weapon balance. They’re just slow and bad at it (sorry Devs, I know you’re trying). It takes literal years for some changes.
“buy to play” is a slightly different concept from “pay to win”.
it sucks for f2p players who think they stand a chance against paying players, but in general “pay to win” as a concept is something a bit more slimy than “buy the game once”.
Fair point. P2W was probably a poor way of phrasing it; was just responding to Lilyanna.
@Obtena, my argument is that balance doesn’t matter in PvE because it’s not a competition.
In PvE, no one is going to say “hey. Please use Hammer instead of Rifle because you’re not doing enough damage to this mordrem”. No one cares what anyone else is using. It’s cooperative and easy. You’re only hurting yourself by playing an inferior weapon in PvE.
In PvP or WvW though, it is a competition. It ought to be a level playing field and aim for as close to balanced classes/builds/weapons as possible. That’s not to say that one build can’t counter another, but they should try to ensure that all weapons are playable.
They could add some simple things that would go a long way to fixing Rifle such as:
- improved power scaling
- backward evade instead of self-knockdown on Overcharged Shot
- evade during Jump Shot travel
!
They’re doing an AMA on Reddit.
This question seems to cover a lot of our concerns: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5e6uxb/a_crack_in_the_ice_devs_here_ask_us_anything/daa4bej/
They haven’t responded yet, but I think they just might be reading it.
Edit: Welp. There you go. They don’t read the forums, but do read Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5e6uxb/a_crack_in_the_ice_devs_here_ask_us_anything/daa7s1r/
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My condi/minion reaper build runs shouts like Rise! and Suffer! which work especially well against clones, as well as Necromantic Corruption for even more condi transfer. Add Staff 4 on top of that, and I’m not that worried about condi mes as a necro.
I’m not saying Necro is in a particularly good spot for pvp, just that it’s good vs condi mes.
Edit: Also, it’s not easy to kill them if they want to escape, but it is easy to contest the point and force them off long enough to cap it before pursuing them.
I made it to Legendary easily (2:1 win ratio) solo-queueing with a minion/condi reaper but the complaints in this thread are pretty accurate.
In every fight, I am the first to be focused and will die without support – especially in the first teamfight because I have minimal life force. It’s just frustrating because it’s almost entirely out of my control. If I get focused, I’ve got 2 dodges and a health pool. Granted, it is a pretty big health pool, but it doesn’t stand up to DH traps + pulls or Rev hits.
I don’t know if I’d call it OP, but personally as a Rifle Engi in pvp/wvw, I can’t fight a good condi mesmer. I just have to run away.
- Engi lacks condi cleanse. I cleanse 2 per 15-20s with Healing Turret
- Engi is particularly affected by confusion (uses many many skills between toolbelt and kit swapping – even Healing Turret is 2 skill activations to cleanse)
- Engi is particularly affected by torment – much of our defense is mobility.
However, if I catch a condi mesmer off-guard and get a cc + burst, then they stealth to escape instead of invuln, I can use detection pulse and occasionally get a kill while they weren’t expecting to be revealed.
If the fight goes long though, I have to run because the constant confusion + torment will overwhelm my pitiful condi cleanse.
On Necro, I don’t have a problem at all – just aoe down the clones, contest the point, transfer back the conditions.
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I just don’t think they read this forum. It may be time for drastic measures.
We should post threads on Reddit with titles like:
- I just bought this game and I am in love!
- Had this awesome experience in the open world..
- The Guild Wars 2 community is just the bestest!!!
Then post any suggestions re: Engi in there. At least we know the devs read it.
It should be balanced for PvP and WvW though, not PvE.
Look. GW2 PvE (aside from raids) is not a challenge. It’s easy. You can use any weapon. They could nerf a weapon by 50% and it’d still be fine in PvE. The real balance issues come up when you face other real players and their weapons are just better than yours.
Rifle has bad damage, bad scaling, ineffective cc, and no defence. It was designed as a mixed-range weapon, but its tools don’t support that any more. You can’t rely on Overcharged Shot or Net Shot to land and successfully cc the enemy (stability, auto-proc cc traits, reflect). You can’t rely on Jump Shot to close distance or escape (hits traps, takes damage during travel, gets cc’d during travel).
It needs a serious buff, if only because non-HoT players need a power weapon too. It must be really demoralizing for a F2P player to make a fun power rifle build only to come up against HoT builds in PvP or WvW and get completely destroyed by bad players that are carried by their weapon.
For a lot of classes, it is P2W. Go try playing any base class and fighting an elite spec. Unless you are very very good and the other player is very bad, it’ll be an uphill battle.
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It’s such a stupid, situational minor trait. The ICD on it is just a slap in the face. Look, if I somehow manage to res/stomp 5 people in 5 seconds, I deserve my 25 stacks of might. Yeah?
Please do list reasons why it’s not underpowered right now. Would you like me to go through every class and build and evaluate Rifle’s performance against them? I certainly could, but it would take pages and pages of text. I picked Zerker because I think that’s the most obvious example and Hammer because it’s a comparison against the Engi HoT weapon. Let me know if you’d like me to do another class. I’ll even post a vid.
But anyway.. it deserves a massive buff because it’s not as good as the other options. If weapon balance isn’t a consideration .. what is? Expansion profit?
Problem with Engi is that it needs its skill slots more than other classes need theirs. Ele, for example, can get away with slotting a condi clear skill because its damage and utility weapon skills (x4) don’t take up any skill slots. Engi’s kits do the same, but they do take up skill slots.
As for burning at the end, I’m guessing they did that so you can’t apply burn and then cancel/swap to pistol 4 for more stacks + FT toolbelt skill + IP. They’re probably trying to limit the stacks of burn you can apply in a short time period.
Expect nothing and receive less.
That’s true. They’ll probably nerf Jump Shot range or something next time just ’cause they can.
I’m not sure if you play Engineer, but those encounters are not “carefully choreographed”. Those are very common fight sequences vs those classes. Meet me in-game for a duel if you don’t believe me. I play Rifle Engineer a lot. It is my main, so I think I know what I’m talking about here. I’ll post video if need be.
My complaint here is that Rifle isn’t competitive in any game mode and hasn’t been since HoT. It’s not even close.
I’ve listed my reasons why I think Rifle is sub-par right now. If you disagree, maybe you could explain why.
Is there some special way hammer replaced it? I don’t think so.
So … unless you have a specific example, just throwing out key words like power creep and Pay to Win doesn’t really cut it. Your explanation makes no sense.
There are many, many things (Chrono Shield 5, Scrapper Bulwark Defense Field, Hammer 2, etc.), but I’ll limit it to a few examples here:
You and a Zerker Warrior meet each other in WvW. The warrior comes at you with bull’s charge. You attempt to knock back with Rifle 4, but Last Stand procs and the Warrior gets 10s of Stability. Warrior is not cc’d and you are because Rifle 4 is a self knockdown, so they probably hit you and stun, then combo you down to <25% health if not kill you on the spot.
… But maybe you dodge their charge and they follow up with Headbutt. Maybe you dodge that too. They still have 9s of stability. They Greatsword 3 to close the distance (you’re out of dodges). You use an escape skill (Rocket Boots, for example) and get 900 units away. They follow with Greatsword 5. You swap to Toolkit and block for 2 seconds. Their stability is almost up, so they swap weapons to get enough adren to use zerker mode. They get perma-stability while in zerk mode from Eternal Champion. They still have Balanced Stance available for more stability and auto-proc Endure Pain, maybe Endure pain on their skill bar as well.
What are you going to do against that with Rifle? You can never CC them because they have perma-stab and auto-proc stability from Last Stand if you do manage to land a cc. If you catch them with Rifle 2, (only a 2 second snare) they can just break out of it with any movement skill, but most likely they won’t even be affected because they have stability all the time. You just have to run away.
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You encounter a Hammer Scrapper. You go to CC them with Rifle 4, but they pop defense field. The reflect knocks you down twice. You wait and play defensive for a full 5 seconds because almost all of your attacks are projectiles. Meanwhile, they use Hammer 5. You dodge. They use Hammer 3. You dodge 1-2 of the hits, but get hit by the last one because it lasts that long. Their Defense Field is done now, so you try and attack, but they reflect with Hammer 2, then Block with Hammer 4, and dodge. Also, they’re getting Stability when they evade attacks, so you’re trying to find a good opening to use Rifle 4 again. Eventually you do, you follow up with a combo, but they’ve popped Bulwark Gyro and have Protection Injection, so your attacks do little damage. Now they’ve got their dodges and Hammer 2 off cooldown, not to mention whatever kit they’re running (probably E-gun), and Defense field is almost off cooldown again to buy them another 5 full seconds of reflect.
I realize that is a massive wall of text, but you wanted examples. There they are. Rifle is sub-par and needs to be brought up to HoT standards
That’s fine. I don’t think RB should be ground targeted. I would just like them to make it a worthwhile skill to put on our bar. I use it because I like the feel of it, but I know for a fact my build would be vastly better if I slotted Elixir Gun instead.
I die a little inside when I use RB and get Spear-of-Justice’d mid-flight, or use RB to escape, but don’t actually escape because it doesn’t go far enough.