Stay away from penalty traits..

[Sobx.1758]

@Chaba.5410 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Chaba.5410 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:Seriously the fact that you try to base your argument on someone running away when you got barrier is laughable

No, my argument is based on this fact:

There are zero builds where Impact Savant is significant/relevant to the build.

It is always significant as long as you're dealing and receiving damage.

With the WvW scrapper support build, no one would say getting barrier is significant even though you are dealing some damage. LOL. In the drunk scrapper build, the elixirs are the significant part of the build. Impact Savant is incidental to current scrapper builds. Or as one of my fellow scrapper players put it, "Barrier just a benefit of hitting things."

Wow, so you say that if someone tries to support other players instead of actually dealing dmg, he won't actually get as much of a shield that is a % of dmg dealt? :o Your "fellow scrapper player" sounds like he has some troubles with constructing a coherent sentence tbh. :D

Anyways, good job with pentalty traits, Anet, I think it's a good direction to counter-balance some of the aspects of e-specs and turn them in the right direction.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Sobx.1758 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:Again, quite the contrary. Everyone fighting anyone that's not AFK is using it as a relevant part of their scrapper build. It mitigates dmg whether you want to admit it or not.

Not if you're running a medkit-based support scrapper, you don't. People were actually starting to experiment with that sort of thing before the patch, making possibly the first time medkit has been used seriously for a

long

time. Not now, funnily enough.

Yes, you're correct. But we're talking about dealing dmg here and I'm pretty sure I said that in my previous posts. :D Literally not dealing dmg obviously negates that.

Support, though, is an example of a case where someone can be contributing to a fight (certainly not AFKing), while getting little or no benefit from Impact Savant... while still paying the penalty.

Engineer has always been in an awkward space where it feels like ArenaNet is trying to give it support options while always backing off from making that actually a viable thing to do. With the exception of a couple of kits, engineer (and holosmith) utilities are pretty selfish: throw in a couple of gyros, though, and you can actually get a decent support build. Now, to do that, you're looking at having thief levels of durability without thief evades.

Impact Savant as it currently stands is looking to push scrapper into one role: power DPS bruiser, because that's the only way you have a chance of generating enough barrier to make up for the health reduction. Problem is, that's a role that holosmith already holds, and does quite well at, putting them in a direct competition with each other. Holosmith even has its own I-get-barrier-through-hitting-enemies mechanic in Crystal Configuration: Eclipse, except that since that scales according to Healing Power and number of hits rather than damage, it doesn't lock you into power stats.

And what does this penalty trait accomplish? Core engineer builds were already viable in at least some environments, and losing the F5 toolbelt skill already provides plenty of incentive not to slot scrapper just because you can, and that's without considering the additional opportunity cost of a third core traitline (something which seems to be often forgotten, including, I fear, by the ArenaNet balance team). Scrapper bunkers were a bit obnoxious for a while, but that was already starting to wind down as people figured out ways to beat them - nowadays they're all but gone from competitive modes.

It'd be like if when ArenaNet reworked daredevil, in addition to replacing Steal with Swipe they'd introduced a trait that reduced daredevil toughness on the basis that they're supposed to dodge everything and therefore they don't need passive damage reduction.

[Chaba.5410]

@Sobx.1758 said:Wow, so you say that if someone tries to support other players instead of actually dealing dmg, he won't actually get as much of a shield that is a % of dmg dealt?

What?

[Chaba.5410]

@draxynnic.3719 said:Support, though, is an example of a case where someone can be contributing to a fight (certainly not AFKing), while getting little or no benefit from Impact Savant... while still paying the penalty.

I haven't found the loss of vitality bad to the scrapper WvW support build when you're in a comped group where heals are easy to come by. It seems that the current scrapper builds people are using just outright ignore Impact Savant. It forces a vitality penalty for nothing, no real trade-off, and at worst discourages certain types of builds. It is telling that there's been no increase in scrapper builds since the patch. The loss of Rapid Regeneration in comparison is noticeable though.

[Sobx.1758]

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:Again, quite the contrary. Everyone fighting anyone that's not AFK is using it as a relevant part of their scrapper build. It mitigates dmg whether you want to admit it or not.

Not if you're running a medkit-based support scrapper, you don't. People were actually starting to experiment with that sort of thing before the patch, making possibly the first time medkit has been used seriously for a

long

time. Not now, funnily enough.

Yes, you're correct. But we're talking about dealing dmg here and I'm pretty sure I said that in my previous posts. :D Literally not dealing dmg obviously negates that.

Support, though, is an example of a case where someone can be contributing to a fight (certainly not AFKing), while getting little or no benefit from Impact Savant... while still paying the penalty.

That's because you don't need to utilize it then and the -300 vit doesn't really matter either. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. As a reminder, that's a thread about penalty traits and not a single trait. But even if you want to talk about that one trait, your example doesn't really show anything you want it to show. As in, the support scrapper in groups is still doing just fine. On the other hand, for the more isolated fights, it encourages more pro-active playstyle instead of "I can't kill you, you can't kill me, have fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun". So it literally does what it was supposed to do. And the same goes for DD swipe nerf. Sub-optimal, sure, but it did help separate e-spec from core playstyles. And that was the point of introducing those btw.

[Matoro.9708]

All those memories lost, like tears in the rain.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Sobx.1758 said:And the same goes for DD swipe nerf. Sub-optimal, sure, but it did help separate e-spec from core playstyles. And that was the point of introducing those btw. And that was the point of introducing those btw.

The problem is that scrapper got a double penalty - loss of the elite toolbelt skill, and loss of 3000 health. Daredevil, by contrast, got a sidegrade (one that admittedly is regarded as a downgrade by a lot of players, but there are some situations where Swipe is better than Steal).

Thief is, honestly, an example of a profession where the tradeoffs seem about right. Scrapper and Chronomancer tradeoffs were overkill.

[Vagrant.7206]

@Chaba.5410 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:Support, though, is an example of a case where someone can be contributing to a fight (certainly not AFKing), while getting little or no benefit from Impact Savant... while still paying the penalty.

I haven't found the loss of vitality bad to the scrapper WvW support build when you're in a comped group where heals are easy to come by. It seems that the current scrapper builds people are using just outright ignore Impact Savant. It forces a vitality penalty for nothing, no real trade-off, and at worst discourages certain types of builds. It is telling that there's been no increase in scrapper builds since the patch. The loss of Rapid Regeneration in comparison is noticeable though.

The problem stems from multiple facts:

• Scrapper, by design, is not a good damage dealer.
• Core engineer does not do power damage nearly as well as other core classes like warrior. Its original design emphasized control and attrition over straight up damage.
• Scrapper has a hard goddamned time staying on targets in the first place. The only gap closer built into it was Rocket Leap. They added all this superspeed to help with gap closing, but it's still unreliable.
• It completely ignores that some of core engineer's best DPS output is in condi.