My new suggestions:
Adept Minor: Stays the Same. I like function gyro. Could definitely use a recharge decrease though. Either make it 20 seconds or have Final Salvo decrease ALL gyro recharges by 20 – 33%.
Master Minor: New Trait -Increased(super?) coordination – Super speed also grants 10% attack speed. Decisive renown should be merged with one of the Adept traits.
Minor GrandMaster: Keep the same plus Dazing or Stunning a foe summons a random Gyro. 25 seconds recharge.
Just wanted to take it with a joke.
But back to topic: Scrapper was meant as lock down. To achieve that, we need to get the leap finisher daze aoe and we should raise the duration of daze/stun per gyro. Maybe there will be a way to get an extra class mechanic added with another gyro, that will get noticed in fight and will daze too, if destroyed.
Maybe something like what I suggested in another thread:
After using x toolbelt skills, you will summon 3 protective gyros. 1 of them is absorbing 1k damage, another one will absorb 1 condition and the last one will absorb 1 cc. They can’t be attacked themselves, they are attached to the scrapper. After absorbing, the gyros will explode, dealing x damage in an area around the scrapper.Another suggestion
Function gyro gets reduced cd and can be attached to living allies. If you do so, the gyro willgive this ally an buff, granting him aegis after getting hit for a set amount of hits.None of those suggest to me that they represent this concept that the scrapper is designed to be a “lock down” elite spec.
Perhaps it is best to keep it simple. Something like adding a lock down effect to gyros. Something as simple as having them knock back foes when destroyed, similar to turrets?
Not a fan of that. The fact that turrets do this when you take explosives has been a enough of a pain.
I am a fan of the idea that each minor provides a different type of utility gyro.
Good changes. Hoping for some more interesting ones next week.
INteresting? How is this NOT interesting?
As in: I find these to be interesting and would likes to see more of the same.
So… did they even show/talk about balance changes? Seems I missed it. They did random order of it or at least not the one they typed on their page.
@SpellofIniquity
Difference is Scrapper was promoted as a lockdown spec. Druid as a top-tier healer support. Druid is top tier healer support AND a lockdown char while scrapper isn’t.
That’s the prob.
Yeah, except Druids have to give up oddles of dps to do that.
Good changes. Hoping for some more interesting ones next week.
Thief only got a third dodge to be fair. Granted, a third dodge is universally good, but it isn’t very exciting.
It’s telling that this is the go-to example for “Scrapper isn’t the only one with a lackluster new mechanic”.
Daredevil didn’t just give a third dodge, though it looks like that at first glance. Being a Daredevil also forces you to choose one of three GM traits that fundamentally changes how your dodge works. Honestly I think it’s one of the cooler mechanic changes and has the potential to certainly be the most powerful outside Chrono because dodging is something you already do, it doesn’t make you give anything up. It’s purely better than the alternative of not having the extra dodge + damage/removal.
For some perspective, many on the thief forum want the new dodges to be F-SKills and the grandmasters to be completely different traits.
Doubting you guys have ever played against a good d/p or s/d thief with those answers, i’m not going to explain how one can easily out play any of the above ‘counters’.
Either way it was more of a joke thread to highlight the ridiculous amount of reveal, stability and stealth we will have with the specialization.
Well if the player is good, then it simply means you are being outplayed. Get better.
And we officially have too many reveals. I would be happy if one of them were to be re-purposed.
Weve had a counter for a long time against thieves.
Heavy Condi pressure.
Goggles for anti blind and reveal.
Minefield + the mine itself served as a alert system.
Tool Kit
Shield
Throw Elixir S
Big-ol-Bomb
etc.
I think they were strapped for time and did not get to it.
Honestly, I would not mind too much if took their time fixing it. Almost all elites are useless after you have unlocked your class’s first Elite.
I don’t.
All those times that they targeted us, the poor defenseless engi with no counter play :’( leaving us to blindly spam bomb kit in anticipation for their lock downs and rotations.
Well not anymore, those days are behind us. Grab your hammers, get your gyros; we’re going thief hunting.
Uhh, only bad Engineers ever had any real issues with thieves.
I’m glad to see that something is happening to the scrapper.
But I think the biggest problem isn’t adressed yet.
The scrapper concept and utility skills are anti-synergetic. Scrapper theme is about heavy amount of mobility and gyros just don’t have the ability to keep up (as seen in PoI). But their effects need them to stay close to the scrapper. So, if I use hammer in combination with gyros, I will never have the full benefit of the gyros. Their radius is just too low and they can’t handle the great movement of the scrapper. I hope there will be some work for this.
I think you—and I until recently—were looking at the Gyros wrong.
They are not pets. Their design is not to summon them and have them survive multiple engagements.
I see two scenarios for their use:
-Summon them right before engaging the enemy: i.e. summon bulwark or purge gyro as you approach a point being held by an enemy.
-Summon them whilst in the midst of bashing someone’s head in: i.e Blast Gyro.
In both of these cases, there is a consistent theme: make sure the initial summon is good enough, such that gyro death is not really an issue. It is the expected result.
The medic gyro update definitely shows an understanding of this. Somewhat.
My suggested further fixes:
-Significantly improve initial effect
-Improve each additional pulse
-make detonations more impressive (more damage and a blast finisher perhaps)
-Lower all gyro cooldowns between 5 and 10 seconds. I am okay with not having a CD trait, but the CDs need to be more reasonable
The goal here is to force the question of how long the cooldown is to be for a given Gyro onto the player.
(edited by lorddarkflare.9186)
You are a good man Karl, I am liking the work you are putting in thus far.
-The sneak Gyro effect should most likely be revealed, and the toolbelt skill changed.
-Purge Gyro should remove a max of 2 conditions from each ally in the area.
-The boons applied by Bulwark Gyro should not exceed 5 seconds in duration.
Pretty much all the other profession devs handle multiple classes.
Robert Gee is handling Chronomancer, Reaper, Berserker. I think Daredevil, Dragonhunter and Tempest have Karl.
This seems like poor resource management to me, like he should have been on 1 early profession and 1 late. At least say with Robert Gee his professions were all early and could go through a comprehensive testing process. I agree with the OP a dialogue has to start now.
I think you have that backward. The completion of the classes seems to drive the reveals, not the other way around.
Pretty much all the other profession devs handle multiple classes.
Robert Gee is handling Chronomancer, Reaper, Berserker. I think Daredevil, Dragonhunter and Tempest have Karl.
It has not been that long, and I imagine Irenio is busy with Druid stuff.
I would hold out ’til the end of the week before I worry too much.
Function Gyro is great. Just not for PvE.
Sneak Gyro is okay, but is too harsh a counter against thieves (I think a 1 – 2 second reveal would be more fair) and unwanted. Also, we are not thieves, we do not care about stealth nearly that much to waste our Elite on it.
This seems hypocritical to me, as the ability of thieves and mesmers to endlessly chain, or spam stealth at will, strikes me as unfair to the other 6 professions who have reasonably limited stealth, or no stealth at all.
Right, but stealth is pretty much all thieves have in terms of active defense.
If they were better balanced, 6 seconds would be fine.
I guess it really depends on which was made first. The article or the recording.
My bet is that the article was made first, so Gyro CD reduction looks to have been scrapped… hue hue hue.
That reasoning does not track as well as you suggest.
It is also likely that the build of the game in featured during the stream was much older.
All this thread has done is convinced me that Grenade 1 needs to be nerfed. Which is sad because I really don’t want them to. But you’re really trying to make our Hammer AA better than every other Hammer AA in the game, simply because it’s not better than our ranged kit AA. Clearly there is an elephant in this room.
Grenades have been cruising for a serious nerf for years now.
Another piece of advice, especially against eles:
Stack 3 conditions before you begin your rotation. This triggers auto-cleanse traits as well as perhaps baiting a condi clear.
My personal proposed changes:
- healing turret: decrease initial healing, increase overcharge healing (promoting turret upkeep). Increase cooldown to 24s while picking up makes it 18s (still 25% decrease).
- elixir H: thrown elixir H, add 1s of resistance (100%).
- AED: increase healing power scaling alot (1.5, for real tanking purposes). Static shock stun increased to 2s, its really hard to land anyway.
- Med Kit: healing skill on toolbelt seems fair as long med kit gets a rework, giving it AoE abilities for example.
- Medic gyro: dont know yet, but seems like it at least needs better options to keep it up.
As you can see these propesed changes are to make every heal skill fit a different kind of build (bunkering, dps etc).
Edit: almost forgot but gadgeteer needs rework too to make AED effective
Turret upkeep is NOT something we should be aiming for.
The problem here is to make the other heals more attractive and MAYBE give HT a very mild nerf. This takes a baseball bat to it.
And that essentially means that elite specializations on the engineer are meaningless by design, since the main weapon can’t be good (again, by design) and the utilities can’t compete with kits either way.
That’s a bit hyperbolic, don’t you think?
Both the rifle and pistol/pistol are incredibly good and slot well into both condition and power builds in PvE and PvP. Pretty much every build we have uses weapon skills off cooldown for maximum DPS or utility, so the idea that weapons are useless because they’re incapable of being ran standalone is ridiculous.
Hyperbolic? Indeed, but not far from the truth.
Sure, we’ve got some skills to use off cooldown…and essentially we use them just because they’re there either way and they aren’t worse than a kit autoattack, but then we’re still back using the same old kits we’ve used since the start of the game for most of the time.And it will be the same for 2, 3, 4 elite specializations. We will still have the same issue – chained in using the same old kits, despite having many new utilities. Simply because we can’t afford a place for them. Because anything is balanced over kits, and something that should be optional becomes forced instead.
People are going on a rampage now…
Relax and dont focus on the Hammer here.. the hammer is not the problem.the problem is the viabillity of kits vs other utilitys
and especially gyros now for the scrapper.no one will use a gyro ever if they are so much more worse then any kit, heck even med kit is better then medic gyro..
they just need to rework the mechanic of their gyros completly to make them anywhere close to a viable option..
right now if you theorycraft a build and a gyro comes up, its like.. HAHAHAHA..no.
Gyros have to be powerful and usefull and reliable to compete with kits..
The hammer is still part of the problem. If it can’t be good standalone, we will need to take kits to complement it. And thus having less slots left for anything else, like gyros.
Essentially, we won’t have a choice to start with.
Then the issue here is not the hammer, but the class itself.
P/P, P/S and R are not standalone weapons. Why should Hammer be one?
And that essentially means that elite specializations on the engineer are meaningless by design, since the main weapon can’t be good (again, by design) and the utilities can’t compete with kits either way.
That’s a bit hyperbolic, don’t you think?
Both the rifle and pistol/pistol are incredibly good and slot well into both condition and power builds in PvE and PvP. Pretty much every build we have uses weapon skills off cooldown for maximum DPS or utility, so the idea that weapons are useless because they’re incapable of being ran standalone is ridiculous.
P/P in a power build? P/S I can sort of get, but not P/P.
I just think mass momentum is just far too passive and limited the 10% power increase is nice and all but there should be more interaction with a better pay off. The might is fine I think.
Mass Momentum: Gain 2 stacks of might when your daze,knockback,stun,blowout,etc Gain a 10% damage increase after Incapacitating a foe for 3-5 sec or change it too a 10% damage increase while effected by stab.Then change perfectly weighted a bit
Perfectly Weighted: Hammer skills deal 10% more damage, Stab on evade, Evading an attack will reset the cd of rocket charge 10 icd for both the stab and reset. Increase the stab duration too 5sec.
I do not like those changes, but I agree 110% that the trait should be active.
I miss the time when engi’s were the queen/kings of vulnerability. I wouldn’t mind the hammer losing the might for larger vulnerability. Something like:
Hit one 1 stacks of vul ( 12sec )
Hit two 1 stacks of vul ( 12sec )
Final hit 5 stacks of vul ( 12sec ) and a blast finisher ( I love that idea and lots of people have requested itSarah
Only if the blast finisher is probability based like auto projection finishers.
Otherwise it is much too powerful.
(edited by lorddarkflare.9186)
The grandmaster trait for gyros was said to make them stun instead of daze. So there we have several more stuns.
The tooltips do not support this. Maybe that is something that they PoI build does not support yet?
At the end of the PoI where Jebro was showing his build with the scrapper he had this trait equipped, the tooltip didn’t change to a stun. sorry but I think that we can expect a fault made in the tooltip of the 3rd minor trait then in the tooltip of the grandmaster trait & the tooltip of the detonation itself..
It wasn’t said in the tooltip but in the blogpost. And they said the version we saw in the PoI isn’t the final, so I guess they just didn’t implement what they were saying in the blogpost.
Remember: We will be always marked as TBD, engineer ever was the profession which got polished at last. I don’t think they changed their mind in the small time window between blogpost and PoI. But maybe they did, scrapper actually looks like they improvised it the last days….
Fair enough it could be that the footage wasn’t up to date.
quote from the PoI: “Last week Jebro was here blablablabla”
So ye from that it’s atleast a while ago that he was there and alot could have changed since then.Anyway apart from that, If the trait makes gyro’s stun them instead of daze then I really dislike both traits (the 3rd minor & Final Salvo grandmaster trait). It kind of forces you to take that or you have a kind of worthless minor trait..
Agreed. It needs to affect daze.
ot gives you might, and it’s tanking weapon with AOE damage, so it’s fine.
You can always switch kits for aditional damage.Or you want another 1 1 1 1 1 1 class like Dagger necro?
Responding here from a PvE perspective:
The might and vuln doesn’t really matter for any serious PvE group since the entire group will likely be capped on this anyways. It’s really just a nice boost for pug and solo content.
Agreed that we don’t want an autoattack spam class. However, both meta builds for engi consist of the most complex skill rotation in the game, by far. It would be nice to see a more tame rotation that at least doesn’t lock down all our utility skills. This would allow us to be flexible with our utilities to match the content at hand without killing our DPS. Guardians and mesmers are a good example of a class that can be versatile with utilities without losing DPS.
I love the high skill cap of PvE engi, but the nature of all the kit swapping can be prohibiting in a lot of realistic encounters.
Unless kits are nerfed, our rotations will always be crazy.
The best you can hope for is maybe one less kit to switch to.
I agree there are many of our traits that are still left half or completely broken since the 23rd patch.
Just compare No Scope ( our master trait) to Master fencer (mesmer minor)…
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/No_Scope
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_Fencer
Usually not constructive to compare class traits in this manner.
The grandmaster trait for gyros was said to make them stun instead of daze. So there we have several more stuns.
The tooltips do not support this. Maybe that is something that they PoI build does not support yet?
I do not care to speculate on what MAY have been. We know what it is now. Lets concentrate on fixing THAT.
Grenade Kit has the same issue as well.
Both of them are so exceptional at their jobs that they crowd out pretty much any skill in their class.
The only other viable hear we have is Elixir H, and you HAVE to trait HGH. Even then, there is an argument to be made for taking it over HT.
It is the same issue I have with thieves and stealth. Until now, stealth has been such an able crutch that the core issues of the class have gone unfixed.
What happens to fuel when you don’t use a gyro?
The salient question to all the fuel-ralated suggestions.
A fuel system works for a different implementation of the class, not the one we currently have.
We only get one BWE (3 total was confirmed) to test the Scrapper. Aside from that confirmation, there are only 4 weekends left before HoT, and the next one is Twitch Con, so there’s not really any room for another BWE anyways.
We can only hope that the class gets some re-work before the BWE.
Looking at the actual timetable, this point you make actually becomes significant. I hope that there are at least some changes and communication with Irenio before the BWE, seeing as we will only have a couple weeks after.
I’d love to see him start getting active here this coming week and not wait until after the BWE.
Agreed. I would him to actually know of our concerns beforehand so that he either fixes them before the BWE or lets us know what his fixes will be so we can consider them as we play.
Hammer damage is on par with guardianns gs, theirlast hit hits harder but we get twice as much might and 2 vul.
Pluss the rest of our skill on the hammer are miles ahead from most if not all melee weapons out there.
As it should be our weapon skills should feel powerful considering we can’t swap weapons and the whole “but you have kits” thing doesn’t cut it. Kits are not our mechanic and it never should be they are extra skills we have an option too take they should never be mandatory.
I mean, you are free to feel this way, but the game is balanced around having access to multiple weapon sets. And that not being available, engineers are balanced around having access to kits instead.
In any game mode, if you are not using at least a single kit, you have kitten yourself. Just like if you choose to create a build without any stunbreakers (especially in PvP and WvW) you have kitten yourself.
The preponderance of kits is the ONLY reason why we were given a melee weapon without weapon swap.
Some have not realized it yet, but grenade kit or mortar kit is pretty much required on Hammer Scrappers in PvP/WvW.
Rabid amulet, runes of Balthazar, sigil of earth/torment.
Firearms 1-1-3, HGH 2-2-1, Tools 3-1-2.
Elixir H, FT, TK, S, X/mortar.
Playing P/P means you have to land that burn to deal meaningful damage. I find myself playing like a thief as I stealth to land blowtorch a lot. Other times, I land CC’s like magnet to get a blowtorch to the face. Also, know when to go all in with conditions when they burn dodges or cleanses and can’t deal with the burn.
Grenade kit is not necessary in this build, as it compromises between high condi pressure, CC, and survivability.
Yes to all of this.
The build itself is really only effective in Unranked, but it is incredibly fun and a good alternative if you are like me and dislike Grenades and Rifle.
We can only hope that the class gets some re-work before the BWE.
Where did you get the idea of reigning in complexity? Have you played Chronomancer? I don’t think complexity is any significant part of their plan for elite specializations. What they have said however, is that elite specs are supposed to focus on a certain part of a profession and expand that.
I don’t know where this complexity thing is coming from, if they have said this please point me to it.
Complexity in terms of balance. They have claimed that the continuous addition of skills as well as the multi-class system contributed to the imbalance in the original GW.
Mass Momentum would be a lot more interesting as stacking 6% toughness to power conversions based on dealing damage to enemies close to you.
No might generation.
Tailor their surviveability to their purpose:
Medic Gyro: 5 seconds of block on summon. Heals steeply scale with number of allies.
Purge Gyro: Modest Hp pool. Inflicts weakness when hit. Absorbs conditions instead.
Blast Gyro: 2 stacks of stability. High Health pool.
Sneak Gyro: 3 seconds of personal stealth on summon.
Bulwark Gyro: 3 seconds of invuln on summon.
Shredder Gyro: 3 seconds of evade on summon.
(edited by lorddarkflare.9186)
Tools is not that good. If they fix gyros I’d glady pick scrapper line (= we are going to kick thiefs out of the meta). And dreaming…please, nerf Icebow once for all.
Except the stealth bot pulls agro making it useless, if we want to charge up stealth we’ll just use Smoke Bomb.
Outside of Hammer and possibly shredder gyro for condi this specialization is useless for PVE as it stands (ok maybe niche use for the drone with a reflect).
At the very least stealth gyro needs to not pull NPC agro, hammer not tying you to the traitline would be HUGE. Overall I don’t really want to change the traitline, it’s amazing for what it is, it’s just not PVE, but because all of the little things are tied to traitline unfortunately we will be hurting ourselves by trying to get them. The way they’ve handled these specializations is simply dumb.
Only if you do not know the idea behind the way they are approaching them.
They want to reign in complexity. As they add new traitlines and weapons, they do not want too many permutations lest balance gets buggered much worse than it already has been.
I’ve been reading the wiki entries but something seems to brat missing. Didn’t they say in the poi that when a gyro is destroyed it dazes in an area? Or am I remembering incorrectly?
The self-destruct AoE dazes, not sure if untimely deaths also daze as well.
I suppose I should have been more specific.
The Scrapper skills and traits only provide a single stun whilst at the same time providing a crapload of dazes.
To me, this suggests a mistake may have been made with impact savant.
I belive when it come to stun duration, it also implied daze, since if I’m not mistaking the sigil of paralyzation actualy gives 30% to daze as well, while stating only stun duration.
This is what I thought at first, but in the stream, Thunderclap received the +20% gain but all the Gyro Dazes stayed baseline.
As the title says. Impact Savant affects only stuns, not dazes.
We only have a single stun, so I have to believe that the intention was to have this trait affect one of the millions of Dazes we have.
Also, Thunderclap should probably Daze not Stun.
First off, Scrapper should not solve our core problems. The core traits should work as a core proffesion on it’s own.
with that said, I see 2 main problems with our traits:
1. To many duplicate traits (like No-scope and Heavy caliber)
2. To many traits that only affect 1 kit (this can mostly be opened up to suppport more builds)Glass cannon and Shaped Charge should be merged into one 10% dmg buff with a bit more noticable restriction.
No scrope should be on non-crit without range restrictions to gain it’s own role of granting crit chance to low crit builds. (It is to similar to High Caliber at the moment).
Takedown Round is clearly an explosives trait and feels to similar to Aim-assisted Rocket , I’d rather see the old downed trait return.
Grenadier , Short Fuse and Siege Rounds should all be merged to a grandmaster Explosive trait that:
- Reduce cooldown on all skills that causes explotions
- Projectiles that causes explotions travels faster
- Delayed explotions triggers faster
Shrapnel should be moved down to master level.
Explosive Descent should be a part of another trait.
Siege Rounds old double tap on mortar toolbelt should be baseline or changed. The extra field durration should be made into it’s own trait called Fallout that adds 2 sec to all fields, not only mortar fields.Chemical Rounds & Skilled Marksman should be merged, as they can be taken on the same time, but never taken advantage off at the same time.
Health Insurance should swap place with Over Shield and become: Medpacks you make can be picked up by up to 5 different allies.
Inversion Enzyme should be a grandmaster that replaces Stimulant Supplier and works on all conditions removal and not just Elixir Gun.
Your approach is really good.
We have so much happening in terms of kits, that trying to directly accommodate them all hurts our traits. Making most of the generic opens us up to better traits.
I don’t dislike the gyros…..but they don’t really offer anything useful. In a sad way they are a bit worse than turrets. Turrets at least can be up to 5 min (if they survive), gyros only last 25sec. If they remove the CD and improve their defenses/HP I would consider using them, and make the medic gyro as powerful as healing turret. The only gyro I MIGHT consider using is the one that spins in place and applies conditions.
Gyros are not meant to be permanent. 15 seconds is too long in my opinion.
Most should not have more that 5 – 8 secs of life.
This would be a buff to them as utilities and a nerf to them as pets.
The auto is in a better place than the DPS weapons of some current professions. Not matching Grenades is not a good enough reason to bumb up the dps quite yet.
I think we can wait till BW3 before we decide whether or not the a small bump is needed.
They did not even show it in the reveal. It is unfinished and not game changing.
Definitely un-finished. Like all the specs as they were introduced. Except for Chronomancer.
I’m going to back OP up a little bit.
-He didn’t say he was beaten by anyone, they could just run away constantly.
-He said “seems to be able to constantly keep super speed up” which is not the same as constant uptime. It’s possible to make it seem like it is being used more than it is by smart movement (ex, not necessary when using gap closers, rooted skills, etc.).Im not definding his points though, only his actual words. I couldn’t care less if a Ranger is quick or confusing since they aren’t a real problem.
Rangers have literally zero access to superspeed unless using trapper runes. OP is either wrong or lying.
To be fair Quickning Zephyr gives super speed but it’s 6 seconds on a 60 second cooldown….. I’m not sure how that would qualify as a “silly amount” unless by silly amount the op means rangers should have more access to super speed.
That argument would make sense since rangers are a class that relies on evasion to survive and they don’t have access to teleports which is one of the reasons thieves and mesmers will always be used over them in competitive play. While super speed will never be as good as a teleport on the current PvP maps it might help lessen the gap between the roaming classes.
I think you mean quickness. Only engineers really have access to Super Speed.
I am assuming the ranger is melee evading at an increased rate due to the compression of quickness.
(edited by lorddarkflare.9186)
They made an elite mechanic. Minor trait one is Function Gyro which allows Scrapper to stomp and rez from 750 range once every 30 seconds. It is not game changing like other classes and it seems to me as if they failed to finish whatever they orignially planned. Note, and this is important, that the first elite specialization minor of every elite spec is supposed to say “makes you *name of elite specialization gives you access to this mechanic and this weapon."*
All this confusion comes in part from the fact that stomp rez gyro was never shown during the reveal, only a quick prompt which the designer never used. Scrapper stinks of being an afterthought. It’s as if forge was “scrapped,” because of deadlines.
That is not just us. Many of of the other specs have the same omission.