Bulwark Gyro + Party Members = Suicide

Can Bulwark Gyro's damage share get a cap placed on it so that the Scrapper doesn't instantly die if a nearby party member happens to be standing in an AoE?

I actually really like the new Bulwark Gyro but I find myself actively AVOIDING allies, because more often than not trying to soak damage for them ends up getting me killed.

I also wouldn't mind it if the damage share functionality were changed, or moved to something else, like an optional trait. Even if the damage taken was capped based on the Scrapper's HP, sometimes I just want barrier for me, not some punk who runs up next to me and decides to stand in a danger field in WvW or a blue donut during the Tangled Depths meta.

It's just really weird gameplay to have to avoid allies.

There is a reason Scrapper gets 10K barrier from it.

I never had problems with it while pushing into enemy zergs.

A healscrapper has enough healing power to get 10.5k barrier. However, the initial barrier is 8.5k, so it should be enough. But I guess it depends on the playstyle.

As a healscrapper you have some vitality and heal yourself during the barrier-pulsing.Other builds should probably not use it much.

Before it just soaked up damage, though. At worst it was useless. Now it can even be harmful.Besides, 10k will go away quite fast in a typical WvW zerg engagement, seeing as you are getting damaged by your allies' damage too. Allies you've got no control about.And talking about a 10k barrier is quite deceptive, anyway. Enemies aren't gonna wait for the last second - when the barrier is fully charged up. If some ally get burst down in the first seconds, you're still sharing that burst. And somebody else's damage after he's dead.

The toolbelt is still useful, so i shall still use it. What happens now is that i can't even use the main skill cause somebody else's error can make me die. It has gone from a bad skill to a potential suicide button. Great job.

Edit: In PvP it may be strong because there are few allies and enemies fought at the same time; i don't care, other modes aren't PvP and skills cannot be balanced in the same way. Else you end up with skills like this.

Has anyone a clue how much dmg it soakes?I have currently no issues because i have fantastic health regen and barrier generation thus i never died using it.

I don't know why people are even acting like this is controversial. If you aren't a fully built pure Healing/Defense Scrapper you can't use this skill in a group. It will get you killed. That is problematic.

@Dristig.9678 said:I don't know why people are even acting like this is controversial. If you aren't a fully built pure Healing/Defense Scrapper you can't use this skill in a group. It will get you killed. That is problematic.

Then why not use it to mitigate chip damage rather than full spikes?

@Jethro.9376 said:

@Dristig.9678 said:I don't know why people are even acting like this is controversial. If you aren't a fully built pure Healing/Defense Scrapper you can't use this skill in a group. It will get you killed. That is problematic.

Because you can't keep other people from not jumping into spike damage. It should have some sort of limit if they expect it to be useful to a wider variety of Scrappers. Just making it so that it can only take you to ~20% health would be fine.

@Dediggefedde.4961 said:I never had problems with it while pushing into enemy zergs.

A healscrapper has enough healing power to get 10.5k barrier. However, the initial barrier is 8.5k, so it should be enough. But I guess it depends on the playstyle.

As a healscrapper you have some vitality and heal yourself during the barrier-pulsing.Other builds should probably not use it much.

Does anyone know if the damage transferred via Bulwark is reduced because of armor/toughness or protection?

WvW is not PvP. The amount of players fighting at the same time is drastically different. And so is the damage that ends up shared with the scrapper. And if someone dies, somebody else in the area gets the Watchful Eye buff (despite what the tooltip says, it is not 4s; it's given in 1s pulses). And you get damage from that player too now. Rinse and repeat.It's like they haven't thought about WvW at all when they designed that change.

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Dediggefedde.4961 said:I never had problems with it while pushing into enemy zergs.

A healscrapper has enough healing power to get 10.5k barrier. However, the initial barrier is 8.5k, so it should be enough. But I guess it depends on the playstyle.

As a healscrapper you have some vitality and heal yourself during the barrier-pulsing.Other builds should probably not use it much.

Shouldn't be reduced by toughness, should be reduced by -damage modifiers. Haven't tested it, but that's what it feels like when using it

@Manuhell.2759 said:It's like they haven't thought about WvW at all when they designed that change.

shocker!yeah seems bad tho.

Also don't have it on near walls that are being bombarded. Repairs will kill you, It seems the walls/gates think you are in a party with them. I've only used bulwark in havoc size and you can tank it with gyros and boons. Thought maybe I had blocked some of the damage, but haven't checked properly.

Yesterday 2h Edge of the Mists guild raid. we 20, quite a few 40-60 encounters.We play very melee oriented, so after our 2 revs cast their hammers (and some necro signs), we usually engage into close combat.I usually pop bulwark gyro now when we enter close combat and I never died from this.Granted, we had a lot of healers (4 guards, 3 scrappers) but the scrappers were all using this and none of them died.It might be, that it's just EotM publics not being quite as good... But until queues are low again it is the best I can test.

If it's difficult to survive, maybe overshield, adaptive armor or elixir S should be considered.I also have the feeling as if shield-4 is blocking the bulwark damage. Can someone falsify this?

Here a little footage where I used shield-4 together with bulwark gyro in an enemy zerg.Please note how the barrier stacks up to max during blocking and after shield-4 ends drastically drops.

As far as i've seen in these days, EotM is quite a steamroll for organized groups. I've done a couple hours there with the guild and had no issues with Bulwark either.In the normal WvW, versus other guilds...i don't even bother using it anymore.

Regarding the shield, i would guess that damage does get blocked. I've had a similar experience as well.
It's not really helpful, though. Those seconds of blocking to negate the shared damage are all seconds i could have spent healing with med kit...so there isn't much of a point to use it to start with.I wonder what happens if multiple scrappers use it, though (usually i'm the only scrapper in our squad). Is part of the shared damage passed down as well?

@Dristig.9678 said:I don't know why people are even acting like this is controversial. If you aren't a fully built pure Healing/Defense Scrapper you can't use this skill in a group. It will get you killed. That is problematic.

I'm using a Full zerker scrapper ... I use it in the zerg all the time. I really don't know what the OP is going on about.

To be frank, seems to me that at least conceptually, this isn't intended to be a tool for heavy offensive builds anyways.

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:Does anyone know if the damage transferred via Bulwark is reduced because of armor/toughness or protection?I am almost positively certain that the absorbed damage is before toughness and the like are taken into account. That is, an attack that would do 10k damage against 1000 armor, will be split up as an attack that does 7k on your ally, and 3k on the scrapper, values which are then modified by the respective boons / modifiers.

I state this because I play a condition bunker scrapper (condition damage, healing, toughness), and the other day at the siren's reef fractal, a few people went down on the boss area and were quite swarmed by pirates. I could pop bulwark and ress them alright, without noticing my health dropping any faster than it would do normally, and they were all certainly glass cannons.

Though this can totally be tested in the PvP lobby area, and I wouldn't be surprised if the wiki already had the answers.

@Dristig.9678 said:I don't know why people are even acting like this is controversial. If you aren't a fully built pure Healing/Defense Scrapper you can't use this skill in a group. It will get you killed. That is problematic.

If it's problematic and ANet doesn't want careless scrappers in suicide mode, they could disable the gyro when the scrapper is on 25% or less life.

I read somewhere its 33% but not sure. Had a moment in WvW on full minstrel scrapper where I poped it and got oneshot. In the log there were 4 CoRs and stuff hitting me at the same time.

Probably very stupid idea: How about combining the Bulwark Gyro with the MDF and the AED?

So we could reduce the damage to our allies and grant a powerful area-heal. The effect should be noticeable, even on a non-healer build. I am not a huge fan of the AED either, but I think it has some hidden potential.

[EDIT] Spent a few hours in WvWvW now for the Warclaw, probably made every mistake there is to make. But I was able to test it. It works OK for a non healer build. When AMR is traited as well, you can even launch off two of those massive heals in short time. But if you manage to get that much damage so quickly, you are much likely to die a few seonds later anyway.