An Honest Look - Exceed Skills

I don't think Exceed utility skills are ever getting used in any game mode, outside of PvE laser disks and PvP/WvW Prime Light Beams. Specifically talking about all of the defensive ones - Coolant Blast, Spectrum Shield, Photon Wall, Hard Light Arena.

Let's put the numbers/tuning aside, the reason why defensive skills that require high heat for max defensive value aren't great - high heat is a product of aggression and low heat comes as a product of playing defensively. In a nutshell, it makes sense to ramp up your attacks with high heat, but it's counter intuitive to ramp up your defensive skills with high heat. It would make more sense for defense Exceeds to have their defense baseline, and the high heat bonuses be more offense and utility oriented, so they're there when you're ready to play aggressively.

Obviously, I'm going to be suggesting buffs to Exceed skills that are never taken. First and foremost, rather than just making them too insane, making them more consistent would be key.

Suggestions:Defensive Exceed skills still scaled with heat but the low-heat variants were not drastically weaker - rather just smaller or less quality of life - you need to use your defensive skills WHEN you need to.

- Coolant Blast - Always grants additional small heal over time. New above high heat threshold effect: Expel 25 heat. No longer chills or applies frost aura.- Cauterize - Reduce base cooldown from 30 seconds to 20. Always removes 3 conditions. New high heat bonus: Instead of burning the Engineer, Cauterize applies 2 seconds of Fire Aura for each condition removed.- Hard Light Arena - Always lasts full 12 seconds, with high heat - provides the big radius and causes foes inside the arena to take 7% increased damage from all sources (Holosmith raiding utility.)- Prismatic Singularity - Fine as is - AoE pull becomes larger radius with high heat.

- Spectrum Shield - always has 15 second cooldown, activating Spectrum Shield above the heat threshold causes your next two attacks to become unblockable when you have high heat.- Flash Spark - now pulses blind every second for 4 seconds. Current high heat bonus of granting light aura is fine, increased duration of light aura from 3s to 5s, and grants it after last pulse.

- Photon Wall - Decrease cooldown to 25 seconds down from 35 baseline. Increase Photon Wall duration to 4 seconds. First heat buff fine as is - goes from projectile block to projectile reflect. Second heat buff - "Launch Wall" - now always launches 3 walls - with high heat, the wall projectiles gain 120 increased radius if they explode after launch.- Particle Accelerator - Fine as is - Velocity of projectile increased with high heat.

It'd be really nice to see some changes to defensive Exceed skills in the coming balance patch, in addition to the many sword tweaks hinted by Robert Gee. The Exceed skills are really not getting any playtime in many game modes, hopefully they aren't forgotten.

I can see that you really thought about these. They all sound good to me, maybe a little heat threshold buff for particle accelerator and not just velocity but meh, still good.

I think Exceed skills are a missed opportunity to expand on the Heat mechanic. Rather than "your skills function normally above 50 heat," exceed skills should play around with your Heat value itself. Make all of the current Heat effects baseline and instead, add recast mechanics to exceed skills for additional effects that generate heat. Exceed skills then become a versatile part of the holosmith that exchange the use of photon forge for utility.

What I'd like to see for Exceed skills (tell me what you think) : take all their defensive aspects and make it baseline, then give them offensive bonuses when above heat threshold.

Coolant Blast -> Same thing you proposed but instead of reducing a chunk of heat, gives a 3 seconds buffs that prevents ANY heat generation, giving you a short time window to pull out a full combo without the risk of overheating.

Cauterize -> Always burn 3 conditions. Above heat threshold : gives Fire Aura for 3 seconds.

Hard Light Arena -> Duration and expended area become baseline. Now only gives Fury if above heat threshold. An enhanced HLA would be red instead of white so everyone would know.

Spectrum Shield -> Base CD is 15 seconds. Above heat threshold : also increases outgoing damages by 25% for the duration.

The rest is ok for me, I really like Flash Spark the way it is because it perfectly fits the way I'd love each Exceed to be built : defensive no matter what, offensive bonuses when above heat threshold. I would just like an upgrade for Photon Wall casting times because it's really slow right now.

You might think my version of Spectrum Shield is OP, but remember that if you use it to boost your damages, you're basically sacrificing a lifesaver and a breakstun to do so.

I think Photon Wall is also used, but primarily as Static Discharge fodder. Photon Wall has the problem of having less than 10% uptime and requiring you to face the threat, where Toss Elixir U has 30% uptime and you have the flexibility to face somewhere else (to run away, engage another target, or whatever).

Broadly speaking, I agree with you. I used Coolant Blast through PoF, and I really shouldn't have: in the harder encounters, it meant I died a lot (hey, it means I know just how determined a certain person was to drag out a certain fight until a certain event happened - if you get downed, said certain person will keep reviving you until it's time to stop doing so) when I probably wouldn't have if I'd used a different heal. The problem is that a) as you point out, the time you generally really need a heal you're also forced onto the defensive, which makes it harder to build up heat and b) if you've just rallied, you have zero heat and you want to heal as fast as you can (and possibly throw up other defences to give yourself the chance to do so), but Coolant Blast is only an efficient heal if you're above the threshold.

It really is a bad combination. It'll do well to keep you topped up if you're staying on top of things, but you get a sharp drop of efficiency during the very times you need it most.

I think it is part of the general idea of holosmith to encourage being aggressive - but one thing that helps being aggressive is knowing that you have a fallback if things go pear-shaped.

Its nice to see such a distinguished member of the engineer community partake in the discussion, and the ideas are indeed consistent and reasonable.

However i also feel like the result is a change of design in the opposite direction to where holosmith was headed.

The overall theme of holosmith seems to be risk vs reward. Not only can we in theory risk blowing ourselves up if we screw up (although from a balance perspective this is almost entirely in the hands of the holosmith and not the opponent, reducing counterplay options) but the exceeds scale this way for what looks like a simple reason. Entering a fight at 50% heat or 0% heat makes a world of difference in the opening moments of a fight, meaning there is also a risk versus reward for deciding if you are to enter the fight hot or cold, meaning you will have to decide if you are to play defensively or offensively in the first few moments. I think a large part of this would be lost with these changes. Now what could be done to keep a bit of their flavor would be to give them two different goals depending on your heatlevel, one defensive and one offensive. For example one version of arena could be pure defensive boons and one could be offensive boons (bonus if the deployed arena reacted to a change in level while deployed). This way there would be uses for the exceeds both above and below threshold while still providing a decision in heat management. Apples and oranges instead of apples and rotten apples. The main difference right now is that the low heat effect of the exceeds is the increased burst you get out of a zero heat holomode (meaning zero heat holomode is our orange).

The alternative would be to actually make the reward for resource management more sweet and less homogenized by increasing the heat versions capabiliteies even more as to at least rival our baseline skills on average.

I hope this made sense.

@miriforst.1290 said:Now what could be done to keep a bit of their flavor would be to give them two different goals depending on your heatlevel, one defensive and one offensive. For example one version of arena could be pure defensive boons and one could be offensive boons (bonus if the deployed arena reacted to a change in level while deployed). This way there would be uses for the exceeds both above and below threshold while still providing a decision in heat management. Apples and oranges instead of apples and rotten apples.

Yeah it makes sense, producing equal but customized results based on your heat level.Similar to redSPINE.7845 suggestions except he specified that only adding offensive utility past the heat threshold only, defensive utility is baseline.

Either philosophy would be a highly positive direction.

@RedSPINE.7845 said:What I'd like to see for Exceed skills (tell me what you think) : take all their defensive aspects and make it baseline, then give them offensive bonuses when above heat threshold.

Coolant Blast -> Same thing you proposed but instead of reducing a chunk of heat, gives a 3 seconds buffs that prevents ANY heat generation, giving you a short time window to pull out a full combo without the risk of overheating.

Cauterize -> Always burn 3 conditions. Above heat threshold : gives Fire Aura for 3 seconds.

Hard Light Arena -> Duration and expended area become baseline. Now only gives Fury if above heat threshold. An enhanced HLA would be red instead of white so everyone would know.

Spectrum Shield -> Base CD is 15 seconds. Above heat threshold : also increases outgoing damages by 25% for the duration.

The rest is ok for me, I really like Flash Spark the way it is because it perfectly fits the way I'd love each Exceed to be built : defensive no matter what, offensive bonuses when above heat threshold. I would just like an upgrade for Photon Wall casting times because it's really slow right now.

You might think my version of Spectrum Shield is OP, but remember that if you use it to boost your damages, you're basically sacrificing a lifesaver and a breakstun to do so.

I'm a big supporter of making high heat bonuses offensive only. It fits with my philosophy that the defense utility must be baseline. I tried to minimize the high heat effects to fixing quality of life issues and helpful but small utility. You have suggested giving powerful offensive utility at high heat to things like Spectrum Shield and Coolant Blast which fits Holosmith but might be too much at first.

Agreed, defensive aspects should be baseline. If you want more firepower you should generate more heat.

Glad I'm not the only one unhappy about defensive/reactive Exceed skills' heat interaction. I have posted about similar grievances earlier in another thread.

Re: OP's proposalRolling most of the heat bonus into baseline would certainly make them better to use, (and also easier to implement and balance, which makes me believe it's what anet will end up doing :p ) but it also means that heat bonus as a game mechanic loses a lot of relevance to the point of it being fluff. I think ideally an entirely different approach should be taken to rethink heat bonus at least for the defensive and reactive ones.

Pipe Dream (in which I imagine a world where actual reworks of existing mechanics happen) :I wonder how a granular bonus approach, instead of all-or-nothing bonus based on a huge one-time check, would work.One of my ideas was Exceed skills getting fueled by excess heat, meaning heat will shorten the cooldown of exceed skills a la alacrity. If we wanted to push the idea even further, we could even get rid of heat level thresholds entirely and make Heat Therapy grant 0.1 sec of CD reduction per heat loss on Exceed skills. (of course, there arguably are some gameplay wrinkles that would be lost without heat thresholds, so I'm still debating it internally)Another idea would be to make them provide passive benefits like signets, scaling with heat level.

Random Ideas:If Coolant Blast were to reduce heat, it could have not only interacted with heat, but also Heat Therapy. It feels like a missed opportunity. Built-in heat synergy, encourages aggression for better sustain, and as a bonus, shorter tooltip too! You can make it a heat-loss-over-time to add some flexibility in usage(you can pop it first if you need it urgently, then quickly generate some heat for a little more heal).

Also, if we are gonna keep the current 50-heat-or-nothing design, there could have been a utility/toolbelt/trait that locks your heat level to 50 for a few seconds. Kinda like how Unravel or Mercy interacts directly with their respective elite spec mechanics.

I'd love it if Cauterize removed 5 conditions and gave Fire aura for each condition cleansed. Engineers are already fairly squishy, what's the point in damaging yourself in order to cleanse damage?

Since HoT launched, all of Engineers heals feel quite lackluster in the face of all the strong attacks that are thrown around so a small buff to the healing on all those skill would be nice.

The Exceed skills just feel like Scrapper Gyros without the Gyros. I haven't thought much about them since I don't use them but some more synergy with condition damage for some skills would be nice.

hmm I play photon wall as an offensive utility, not a defensive one... it brings very little defensively, but brings instacast dps and is offensively buffed at high heat to be pretty strong

Am I missing something about "velocity increase"??? Both Chaith in his overview said it was fine and now insanemaniac says it's offensively buffed.

Does it actually do anything meaningfully different over the heat threshold? If I covered up your heat bar would you even know which version you used?

@Adamantium.3682 said:Am I missing something about "velocity increase"??? Both Chaith in his overview said it was fine and now insanemaniac says it's offensively buffed.

Does it actually do anything meaningfully different over the heat threshold? If I covered up your heat bar would you even know which version you used?

That's why I said I'd like a buff for it but I'm still liking the skill. Honestly velocity increases doesn't add a thing, it should be baseline IMO.

@insanemaniac.2456 said:hmm I play photon wall as an offensive utility, not a defensive one... it brings very little defensively, but brings instacast dps and is offensively buffed at high heat to be pretty strong

Don't underestimate the defense of Photon Wall, it blocks all attacks, not just projectiles. It's essentially the Dragonhunter F3. It's just not really worth a utility slot with its current cooldown.

@Adamantium.3682 said:Am I missing something about "velocity increase"??? Both Chaith in his overview said it was fine and now insanemaniac says it's offensively buffed.

Does it actually do anything meaningfully different over the heat threshold? If I covered up your heat bar would you even know which version you used?

I said it was 'fine' because in my point of view, small quality of life increases with high heat bonus is not a bad thing. It travels significantly faster at high heat but it doesn't make a huge, meaningfully different ability. Making the utility drastically better at high heat, especially defensive utilities, this is the exact problem I have - the low heat versions you are often forced to use are just BAD because they're balanced around having high heat.

change to cauterize suggestion to better reflect good baseline defenses:

*- Cauterize - Reduce base cooldown from 30 seconds to 20. Always removes 3 conditions. New high heat bonus: Instead of burning the Engineer, Cauterize applies 1.5 seconds of Fire Aura for each condition removed.

I don't know that I necessarily agree with your assessment that you primarily want to be be playing offensively while at high heat, and primarily defensively at low heat. I don't think that there's really a correlation. If anything, the moments that I play most aggressively are when I'm at low heat at the start of a fight, and the moments that I play most defensively are when I've been slugging it out and I'm at high heat. It just seems like a contrived argument for the sake of being able to plop down full-power Hard Hight Arenas at the start of every fight with zero built-up heat.

The way Exceed skills are designed to function is to be stronger overall -- both offensively and defensively -- while you're playing with built-up heat. It's a risk-reward system, in that it rewards you for playing dangerously (i.e. at high heat), since high heat puts you at greater risk of over-heating and taking damage. They even allow you to build up and maintain heat out of combat in order to better utilize this risk-reward system.

I think that a few of the Exceed skills could be improved, but I don't think a fundamental design flaw is the reason the defensive utilities aren't used. In an alternate timeline without Spellbreakers being the absolute go-to 1vX specialist, a point-holder utility like Hard Light Arena would probably be really good as-is in PvP. You have a better perspective on this than me, though.

@Solaerin.8635 said:I don't know that I necessarily agree with your assessment that you primarily want to be be playing offensively while at high heat, and primarily defensively at low heat. I don't think that there's really a correlation. If anything, the moments that I play most aggressively are when I'm at low heat at the start of a fight, and the moments that I play most defensively are when I've been slugging it out and I'm at high heat. It just seems like a contrived argument for the sake of being able to plop down full-power Hard Hight Arenas at the start of every fight with zero built-up heat.

The way Exceed skills are designed to function is to be stronger overall -- both offensively and defensively -- while you're playing with built-up heat. It's a risk-reward system, in that it rewards you for playing dangerously (i.e. at high heat), since high heat puts you at greater risk of over-heating and taking damage. They even allow you to build up and maintain heat out of combat in order to better utilize this risk-reward system.

I think that a few of the Exceed skills could be improved, but I don't think a fundamental design flaw is the reason the defensive utilities aren't used. In an alternate timeline without Spellbreakers being the absolute go-to 1vX specialist, a point-holder utility like Hard Light Arena would probably be really good as-is in PvP. You have a better perspective on this than me, though.

Our heat will cycle from high to low regardless.If you bring completely reactive abilies like Coolant Blast, Photon Wall, Spectrum Shield, you must react and heal yourself/stunbreak/block instead of spamming them in your high heat cycle. That's the main point.

Exceed skills require you to always be above 50 heat so when you need to react, you're not reacting pathetically. It's too big a design limit for a couple reasons:

*- Holosmiths are only able to maximize their persistence, burst, the time spent venting 10 heat per second if they allow the forge to fully cool off. Very often you can't get the job done by venting only a little heat, staying above 50, and going back into PF.

*- Vent Exhaust GM, (the perspective I'm coming from using), this is the real thing that makes defensive exceed skills truly difficult to properly use. When you're forced on the defensive, your heat plummets via dodges and defensive Exceed skills will repeatedly be low-heat variants.

Edit:

@Solaerin.8635 said:

The way Exceed skills are designed to function is to be stronger overall -- both offensively and defensively -- while you're playing with built-up heat. It's a risk-reward system, in that it rewards you for playing dangerously (i.e. at high heat),

I think the execution of Exceed skills was different than the design they were going for. By gating your utilities behind Photon Forge use, Photon Wall, Spectrum Shield, Hard Light Arena, these are are going to have to be at least equal or slightly better than Elixir S, E-Gun, Rocket Boots when used at high heat.

Where i can read sword tweaks hinted by Robert Gee?

@DirtyMonk.9240 said:Where i can read sword tweaks hinted by Robert Gee?

He just said "changes were coming." That's all we got.

@Chaith.8256 said:Our heat will cycle from high to low regardless.If you bring completely reactive abilies like Coolant Blast, Photon Wall, Spectrum Shield, you must react and heal yourself/stunbreak/block instead of spamming them in your high heat cycle. That's the main point.

Exceed skills require you to always be above 50 heat so when you need to react, you're not reacting pathetically. It's too big a design limit for a couple reasons:

*- Holosmiths are only able to maximize their persistence, burst, the time spent venting 10 heat per second if they allow the forge to fully cool off. Very often you can't get the job done by venting only a little heat, staying above 50, and going back into PF.

*- Vent Exhaust GM, (the perspective I'm coming from using), this is the real thing that makes defensive exceed skills truly difficult to properly use. When you're forced on the defensive, your heat plummets via dodges and defensive Exceed skills will repeatedly be low-heat variants.

I feel like this is a different tune to your original post. The point, originally, was that buffing defensive utility skills while at high heat was counter-intuitive, because you want to be playing defensively at low heat. My response was that this isn't the case, that there isn't really a correlation between what heat you're at and when you need to play defensively, and that Holosmith is designed to reward you both offensively and defensively when you maintain heat.

Re: You need to cool down completely in order to maximize your burst potential. Isn't this a good trade-off? You're putting yourself at risk of having worse defensive capabilities in order to allow yourself more time in the forge to burst down a tanky spec.

Re: It's difficult to make full use of the defensive Exceed skills with the Vent Exhaust GM because you might accidentally lose too much heat while dodging. Isn't this a good thing though, honestly? If there's actual difficulty involved in getting the most out of your skills, I feel like that's a sign of skills actually being designed well.

FWIW, I'm not trying to comment on the tuning of these skills. It might be the case that it's not worth attempting to maintain high heat to buff your Exceed skills because they're just flat out not good enough; the return on defensive utility isn't high enough to warrant the loss in burst potential/healing from heat therapy. If that's the case, then they obviously need to be buffed. I just don't see a fundamental design flaw, currently.

@Solaerin.8635 said:I feel like this is a different tune to your original post. The point, originally, was that buffing defensive utility skills while at high heat was counter-intuitive, because you want to be playing defensively at low heat. My response was that this isn't the case, that there isn't really a correlation between what heat you're at and when you need to play defensively, and that Holosmith is designed to reward you both offensively and defensively when you maintain heat.

Kind of.. I said that low heat COMES with with playing defensively. High heat COMES with aggression, you're changing the phrase to 'you want to be playing defensively at low heat.' You're just changing the meaning completely...

Re: You need to cool down completely in order to maximize your burst potential. Isn't this a good trade-off? You're putting yourself at risk of having worse defensive capabilities in order to allow yourself more time in the forge to burst down a tanky spec.

One thing you're not acknowledging is that you can freely choose to NOT make an such trade off. Here's a better trade off - DON'T TAKE EXCEED SKILLS, and go ahead and feel free to burst down that tanky spec and still have superior defensive skills if you do get counter-pressured badly.

Re: It's difficult to make full use of the defensive Exceed skills with the Vent Exhaust GM because you might accidentally lose too much heat while dodging. Isn't this a good thing though, honestly? If there's actual difficulty involved in getting the most out of your skills, I feel like that's a sign of skills actually being designed well.FWIW, I'm not trying to comment on the tuning of these skills. It might be the case that it's not worth attempting to maintain high heat to buff your Exceed skills because they're just flat out not good enough; the return on defensive utility isn't high enough to warrant the loss in burst potential/healing from heat therapy. If that's the case, then they obviously need to be buffed. I just don't see a fundamental design flaw, currently.

One Holosmith GM trait has negative synergy with Exceed skills and it's a good thing? Again, you're not considering the fact that Vent Exhaust and defensive Exceed skills have bad synergy and you are just forced to take the other combinations that are not awkward and have better overall defense ratings. Seeing as if you just buffed Exceed skill numbers, certain combinations (vent exhaust and Exceed skills) still have higher restrictions & difficulty, that combination isn't going to be used. Hope you understand that everytime you nerdgasm over a tradoff in a certain utility or trait combo, Engineer players just shrug and play the build that simply circumvents that tradeoff completely.

@Adamantium.3682 said:Am I missing something about "velocity increase"??? Both Chaith in his overview said it was fine and now insanemaniac says it's offensively buffed.

Does it actually do anything meaningfully different over the heat threshold? If I covered up your heat bar would you even know which version you used?

oh, no, the utility itself gets a pretty good buff over 50 heat. not the toolbelt. when you send it flying before it fizzles, it shoots a damaging projectile. if you do it over 50 heat, it shoots 3 of the same projectile. being in melee means all 3 hit. feels like speargun 2 in how hard it hits.

the heat bonus for the toolbelt is entirely pointless.

it kinda leaves me scratching my head at using it defensively... I wouldn't bother really. incoming things can go over it, things shot from melee don't get reflected... and it's reflect, not block. it's a hyper offensive utility imo. lucking into a reflect is bonus damage on an already bursty skill.

@Chaith.8256 said:Kind of.. I said that low heat COMES with with playing defensively. High heat COMES with aggression, you're changing the phrase to 'you want to be playing defensively at low heat.' You're just changing the meaning completely...

The point is that there's no actual correlation. You're going to be playing defensively when you need to be. If you choose not to focus on maintaining heat and get jumped by a thief while you're ice cold, having your skills be stronger above a certain threshold might be inconvenient, but there's nothing counter-intuitive about it.

One thing you're not acknowledging is that you can freely choose to NOT make an such trade off. Here's a better trade off - DON'T TAKE EXCEED SKILLS, and go ahead and feel free to burst down that tanky spec and still have superior defensive skills if you do get counter-pressured badly.

I did acknowledge this. I said that if the full-power Exceed skills aren't good enough to warrant the trade off then they need to be buffed. And let's be clear, the only thing you're losing by entering a fight at ~50% heat is the initial burst potential, in a sustained fight it isn't detrimental to stay at or above 50% heat.

One Holosmith GM trait has negative synergy with Exceed skills and it's a good thing? Again, you're not considering the fact that Vent Exhaust and defensive Exceed skills have bad synergy and you are just forced to take the other combinations that are not awkward and have better overall defense ratings. Seeing as if you just buffed Exceed skill numbers, certain combinations (vent exhaust and Exceed skills) still have higher restrictions & difficulty, that combination isn't going to be used. Hope you understand that everytime you nerdgasm over a tradoff in a certain utility or trait combo, Engineer players just shrug and play the build that simply circumvents that tradeoff completely.

I think you're way-overstating the 'negative synergy', as if every time you dodge roll you fall below 50% heat. Exceed skills are designed so that if you have heat above 50%, you're rewarded for it by the skills being super strong. With Thermal Release Valve, it's possible to maintain a heat level above 50% for the majority of a fight; likewise with Enhanced Capacity Storage. This inherent design is not flawed. If you fuck up and plop down a Hard Light Arena right after a dodge roll without getting your heat back up, that's not a failure of skill design, it's a fuck-up. Is the tuning right for this play style to shine over just using vanilla engineer skills? Perhaps not, in the current meta. But like you said, this thread isn't supposed to be about tuning, it's supposed to be about the general design of the skills being stronger at high heat.

I'm not arguing that the skills are perfect or that none of them need to be changed/buffed. I'm saying that I don't think the principle of them being stronger above a heat threshold is bad design. The idea that you could master heat management and reach a really high skill ceiling with Holosmith is cool and good, and I don't think you should get rid of that because they're not as good as vanilla skills in the current meta. Just lmao if you think me having that opinion is 'nerdgasming'

I like these changes, they are reasonable and would make exceeds better.Hardlight Aren is actually my fav to use from them. The boons are good and the lightfield i really nice. Best part of it is the pull on toolbelt though.The stunbreak looks good in concept but the toolbelt looks pretty bad. With this 4x1s blind it is justified and it is kinda an oh kitten button.
The suggestion for the reflecting wall is fine too. I would use it but i have not enough space on my utility bar, with these changes it is atleast a worth while swap in..The heal is horrible IMO and your changes would make it usable.