Rifle Autoattack Rework

What would you prefer?

I think it's a pretty damn good auto-attack when attacking squishies with full might and some quickness it is doing like 3k DPS.

@Chaith.8256 said:I think it's a pretty kitten good auto-attack when attacking squishies with full might and some quickness it is doing like 3k DPS.

Notice that "No changes" is not an option haha. JK I just forgot to add it.Jokes aside, you mentioned full might and quickness. That's the problem for me, it just needs those to be good. Since rifle is (let's face it) a melee weapon, I think our AA should change depending on the range we use it. Sort of becoming like a shotgun.

I'd love Anet to assume Rifle as a melee weapon for engineers, making it a shotgun. After all, a lot of professions already use weapons in strange ways like the Revenant with a Hammer. A weaker yet different version of Blunderbuss would be perfect for me. But it just wouldn't make it if they don't give another ranged power weapon to engineer.

I think it deserves the shotgun treatment and something else (Mortar Kit? E-spec/Core weapon?) can take the auto attack's place.

fck shotgunalso remove bleed part from blunderbuss, and compensate in direct damage

@Hock.6740 said:kitten shotgunalso remove bleed part from blunderbuss, and compensate in direct damage

Would love that too.But shotgun FTW.

Actually a melee-ranged (maybe 300ish?) conal attack would be sick. Change mortar auto to lock onto targets and not require ground targeting. The 2345 skills still would, as you'll want control over where you place the fields, but the auto being ground targeted is just silly. Make it move like ele fireball. (Honestly mortar 2345 needs some reworking if you ask me, but the auto definitely needs to stop being ground targeted if they want it used in any game modes.)

Give it 1500 range and make the auto attack a reverse of Ranger's Long Range shot, so it deal more damage the closer you are to your target (While Rangers do more the farther they are). It make it a optimal short range weapon while giving us another option to deal damage from afar other than Elixir Gun.

All Engineer weapons are already super short range and I cannot even get close to a stupid scourge without melting to conditions a few moments after. I NEED that long range option.

I would choose for it to be changed to a non-projectile Shotgun blast auto attack.

Though my thoughts on the Rifle is that it need a complete revamp as the desgin for it is everywhere on what it is designed to be compared to Warrior's Rifle being a Scout Rifle and Deadeye's Rifle being a Sniper Rifle.

The design for Engineer's Rifle seems to be trying to go for a Shotgun that use different types of ammos similar to real world shotguns that do have different types of ammo variety.

I really think rifle is one of the most fun weapons in all the game. It only needs a few changes to make it valuable on itself, and those changes are mostly on its viability against projectile hate, and on the logic of use for the skills. Engies rifle IS a shotgun, a weapon for mid short range, and that is ok. But it also has the only non kit, non "parabolic" AA we could use from 1000 units.So I think I would combine some ideas in this thread.1- Make the AA a faster, non-projectile attack that increase damage the closer we are.2- Give back the burst potential to the first attack in Jump Shot: make the damage 50/50 on the jumping and landing, or even put more damage on the initial jump.3- Also on Jump Shot: make it move slightly farther than swiftness running, so it keeps a value as a movement aid too.4- Keep Overcharged Shot as a self knockback, but also add an evade in the animation, so at least engie is not vulnerable all the way.

like idea of non-projectile shotgun

Reading the other comments, I think I'd actually like it to be reworked into a shotgun style weapon. That would be kinda interesting!

Problem I have with making it a long-range, non-projectile shotty is that why is it good for us to have that and not Guardians? It's going to be hard to sell that after all the hate they were given over complaining about their staff nerfs.

It's a slug thrower, sort of a repeating musket if that's even a thing. Probably higher gauge than either Warrior or Thief rifles and smoothbore - which would explain the varying combat loads. It also has an organic pierce component. We won't convince anyone to make it not be a projectile weapon. It just is. What rifle truly lacks is good return on investment in strength. The bit about making it hit harder the nearer a target is to it is solid though- and would certainly dovetail well with High Caliber and Skilled Marksman.

Our damage is mitigated by toughness(as it should be). We just need that higher base threshold.If they won't give it to us organically I'd say go with a running theme in firearms with range based talents, and remove modified ammunition in favour of a new talent called Double Powder Load, which would give that damage increase to rounds in stepped descending range thresholds as suggested.

We then could have Overcharged Shot replaced with a new attack called Rifle/Musket Grenade(yes, they're a thing- look it up) and have that be a long range, high damage shot similar to the dynamite blast we have on Speargun. Have it be affected by explosives talents so that the portential for crippling/bleeding isn't lost from Overcharged if players take explosives. We don't need to keep attacks that knock us off our feet. There's more than enough of that in PvE and WvW land to do it for us without giving the enemy free punches at the expense of a shot that might or might not be a winner for us.

Back to Modified Ammo- we could afford to lose it. We should. Alone we don't apply enough conditions long enough to justify it as a grandmaster talent. What's more we currently have to choose it in lieu of Incendiary Powder, a talent that should have had Modified Ammunition's effect rolled into it before PoF launched. Why do we have a talent that grants bonus damage to targets with conditions and then exclude the talent beside it that gives us the ability to do just that. It's crazy. If they rolled the two together at least then we'd have three solid choices in grandmaster firearms, Juggernaut, Double Powder Load, and Incendiary Ammunition.

It would be a good start and a good incentive to not necessarily be endlessly tied to kits and alchemy for our sustain. At least then we have the option of going Explosives, Firearms, Scrapper and have some teeth for a change with base rifle.

@Iozeph.5617 said:Problem I have with making it a long-range, non-projectile shotty is that why is it good for us to have that and not Guardians? It's going to be hard to sell that after all the hate they were given over complaining about their staff nerfs.

You misunderstand what people want it to be. What people want is for Rifle on Engineer to be a Melee Range Non-Projectile Shotgun weapon.The current design for Rifle on Engineer is to be a Melee Range Projectile Multi-ammo Rifle which does not work very well because it is a very mixed design. However, the focus of Rifle for Engineer has always been for it to be a Melee Range Weapon since Core GW2 era which is why people want it to be more designed to its original intent instead of how counter productive it is now as the game gets older.

Shotgun weapon is also a very common default weapon used for Engineer classes in games as well which adds to people wanting the theme for Engineer's Rifle to be a Shotgun instead of this mess we have now.

Well I think rifle could generally need some love / qol updates. Like Remove the self knockback from over charged shot, add an evade to jump shot, give the net 2 charges.

Also a alternative to bombs auto attack would be nice, so I think it could be increased a bit in dmg aspects. I would be fine with keeping the DMG like it is on Max range, but increasing it against targets that are closer to you.

Anyway 'nades and mortar need love as ranged options. Specially mortar needs a rework and should be power focused. The currently projectiles are slow and don't deal good damage.

@EdwinLi.1284 said:

@Iozeph.5617 said:Problem I have with making it a long-range, non-projectile shotty is that why is it good for us to have that and not Guardians? It's going to be hard to sell that after all the hate they were given over complaining about their staff nerfs.

No, I completely understood what they say they want and it won't happen. You want a melee range weapon that does that then use one of any number of kits we currently have which hit multiple melee range targets in an arc. Toolkit is strong, and then there's flamethrower just off the top of my head- neither of which are reflected or absorbed by barriers or anti projectile shields. What you're saying you want is essentially to turn our rifle, a terrible but somewhat functional long range weapon, into a more burst-centric flamethrower. Why? You still won't get it to be non-projectile as there has to be a counter to it. The counter for flamethrower is its anemic damage. The counter for tool kit is that apart from throwing a wrench, and the magnet -which is just a pull- it has no range. You're better off leaving rifle alone and asking for a lightning//tesla, frost, or acid thrower kit which, if we're lucky, will still benefit from Juggernaut.

Back to the rifle/shotgun non-debate, if you read above you'll see that what I described (what we currently have) is a shotgun - a smoothbore/non-rifled modern day musket which uses cartidge ammunition. Shotguns, even the semi and fully-automatic models, use slug rounds in addition to regular buck/and bird loads. They also use flechette ammunition, breaching rounds, as well as rubber and bean bag rounds for less than lethal take downs. All that's missing is the net round and the jump. So I get it. Even so, why in hell would we want to give up our one -rubbish as it is- twelve hundred range weapon option to have another melee weapon. Isn't sword bad enough right now? Are we that hot to be forced into using the joke that is mortar kit for any range at all? Try and consider what you're asking for.

@EdwinLi.1284 said:The current design for Rifle on Engineer is to be a Melee Range Projectile Multi-ammo Rifle which does not work very well because it is a very mixed design. However, the focus of Rifle for Engineer has always been for it to be a Melee Range Weapon since Core GW2 era.

Back in core GW2 era they put out descriptions of their vision for classes, engy was supposed to move in and out of medium to short/melee range, rifles "mixed design" fits that, it is not supposed to be simply melee.

Beyond that engy does not need yet another melee option is has sword, hammer, toolkit, bombs, flamethrower (melee / short range).

I like the idea of a shotgun style rifle skill set, but not as a replacement for the existing engineer rifle skill set. Would make for a cool Guardian elite spec though.

To not spend much time of dev, one of these 3 options:1) Increase damage.2) Decrease cast time.3) Rework, changing to a chain skill:

One two tree shoots:Chain 1: One shoot: Shoots one time (same damage and cast time as actual hip shoot).Chain 2: Two shoots: Shoots two times (each shoot has 75% of the One Shoot damage and cast time of 0.5s)Chain 3: Tree shoots: Shoots 3 times (same damage and cast time as Two Shoots, but with an aditional shoot)Obs: may change some values.

Not a bad idea, give the auto a chain, seems to be one of the most realistic suggestions in this thread. Make the last hit of the chain a toned down Blunderbuss, the first two leave similar to hip shot.

At thing point, I'd appreciate any buff to the rifle AA.

We already have lots of melee/mid range weapons. What engi dont have and definetly need is a 1200 reliable AA.

Rifle AA is good if you have 25 might and quickness like Chaith said... but I think that we should have a range AA (1200) who works at least decent without all that boons (because any crappy skill is good with 25 might and quickness).

Rifle AA is the power range AA who escale worse with power (0.75?) .... I'm not asking for somithing like Revenelant hammer (1?), but at least 0.85 will be great.

@ApaWanka.2698 said:We already have lots of melee/mid range weapons. What engi dont have and definetly need is a 1200 reliable AA.

Rifle AA is good if you have 25 might and quickness like Chaith said... but I think that we should have a range AA (1200) who works at least decent without all that boons (because any crappy skill is good with 25 might and quickness).

Rifle AA is the power range AA who escale worse with power (0.75?) .... I'm not asking for somithing like Revenelant hammer (1?), but at least 0.85 will be great.

Mmhm, i agree, if the Aa had a better power scaling, i could totally come up with builds that rely more lesss in the use of elixirs.

Rifle auto attack is okay, but rifle #2 (net shot) is weak considering it is single target + super easy to miss. Rifle #3 (blunderbuss) should also be a blast finisher and rifle #5 (jump shot) needs slightly faster animation + evade frame and then it would be useful to travel quickly in combat, instead of just being a huge viability. Notice rifle #4 (overcharged shot) would still be a huge risk with all the risks and single target, so maybe it also needs an evade frame as reflected overcharged shot is same as suicide.