All health (and barrier) / Sec utilities compared to Bulwark Gyro

[PaladinVII.1647]

Abstract (TL;DR) : This is a study on (nearly) all utility skills that provide health / second. Barrier is counted as health / second for this study. No other skill features are counted, only the cooldown or count recharge is used to determine health / second. The health / second of Bulwark Gyro is 438.4 while the average of the other skills (Excluding Bulwark Gyro) is 107.1088. Bulwark Gyro should be reworked so it does the following: Grant barrier to yourself and allies each pulse (400-520 base, 5 pulses).

Main body of Study: I did some math to compare health per second with utility skills (Excluding the oddity of the Revenant Centaur Tablet). Health per second in this study counts barrier as healing. This study does not consider casting time or aftercast delay (which should really be included in the skill tool tips if it's going to be a thing), only count recharge or skill recharge are used to determine health / second. I do realize these skills do other things, but those other features are not within the scope of this study.

Sanctuary (Guardian)----------------------------------------------------41.76Merciful Intervention (Guard)------------------------------------------58.6Bow of Truth (Guard, count recharge)-------------------------------139.2Signet of Renewal (Ranger)-----------------------------------------------62Glyph of Alignment (Druid)--------------------------------------------129.25Shadow Refuge (Thief)---------------------------------------------------147.916Signet of Water (Elementalist)--------------------------------------------97Stone Resonance (Weaver, Count Recharge, Barrier “heal”)------106.9Signet of the Locust (Necro, counting 5 targets)--------------------250Sand Swell (Scourge, Barrier “heal”)-------------------------------------46Serpent Siphon (Scourge, barrier “heal”)-------------------------------59.48Super Elixir (Engineer, Elixir Gun Kit)----------------------------------147.2AVERAGE HEALTH PER SECOND UTILITY SKILLS ------------>>> 107.108833333333

Bulwark Gyro (Scrapper, Barrier “heal”)----------------------------438.4

As you can see, The scrapper's Bulwark Gyro is COMPLETELY BROKEN. It even exceeds the healing skills available to the engineer in health per second (AED on Lethal Damage (399) and Healing Turret pickup after casting (367)). The skill also goes against its design intent. The idea behind the skill is to use it next to allies who are under fire to mitigate their incoming damage. The reality of this skill is that if a scrapper tries that, they die more often than not. Therefore, a scrapper has a conflict of interest and is best suited using this skill away from allies so that the damage sharing component does not activate.

If I were to balance this skill, I would rework the skill so that it applies 5 pulses of barrier (no initial barrier) to the scrapper and allies in the radius. Remove the damage transferred to the Scrapper feature. The barrier would start at 520 / pulse. This would put the health per second at 130, making it high, but comparable to Glyph of Alignment.

Another good point for comparison is the weaver's Stone Resonance, which gives 106.9 health/second in barrier. Examining that skill, I would not drop the base barrier / pulse below 400, as this puts the skill at 100 health/second in barrier, which would be equivalent to the Weaver's Stone Barrier.

Also, looking at this list, it is clear some other skills need some buffs as their health / second are WAY below the average. Looking at the data, the top two skills (Shadow Refuge and Super Elixir) heal about 147 health / second, but require standing in an AoE. This has me scratching my head when I look at the lowest health / sec skill Sanctuary which is only 41 and requires standing in an area; even with the CC component that skill still seems really REALLY low.

Note, I am a main engineer with over 9,000 hours logged in game; half is on my engie. I really hate recommending nerfing my class as there's a developer at A.net that seems to have it out to make my flamethrower a soggy pasta launcher (Flamethrower 2); however, this really is broken.

[Dawdler.8521]

And then most of it is completely irrelevant since certain other classes has the damage to overcome a full bulwark heal in 2 auto attacks (or 1 skill attack dealing 2x the damage) while also passivly regening about 5% hp a second (real hp, not barrier) which at their minimum vitality is twice as much as the bulwark.

[archmagus.7249]

That may seem true, but if you deploy bulwark gyro in the middle of a fight, you don't get any healing, and can even get killed if your allies are taking too much damage. Like when I was defending smc and the game thought it would be funny to put watchful eye on the lord. Sure it's helpful when you're alone, but can hurt when you're in a group.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I would say that the other barrier skills in the game are just underpowered. I took one look at Stone Resonance and saw that it was nigh useless:

Doesn't bulk up fast enough to eat an attack.PVP players will chew through 5k barrier quickly.Anything that is a vet or higher in PVE will take it down in one second.No utility outside of granting barrier.

I've been seeing these traits and skills that grant a paltry few hundred barrier, and they don't make any meaningful impact.

EDIT: you'll have to forgive me for being slow, but I've noticed that you're using the PVE numbers here. From the PVE perspective, you need to consider that a block or a dodge has the ability to mitigate a near limitless amount of damage. You're looking at barrier as if it were a secondary form of heal, but that's not how barrier actually functions. A barrier is ablative damage reduction. It is a fractional dodge. Much like the invulnerability period of dodge and blocks, the barrier goes away after awhile.

To have barrier function similarly to heals, you need to fulfill two conditions. First, you need to be steadily receiving damage. Second, you need to be continually stacking up barrier over long periods of time. Only then, does barrier work like heals. Otherwise, it is just a block skill that has a damage threshold.

[Dediggefedde.4961]

I think you might be using bulwark gyro wrong then.

Granted, I mostly way WvW zerging. There, in ideal case, bulwark is used during enemy bombs against 20-40 players. That is why you use hammer-4 or shield-5 for some period and have self heal ready. The very few times I died due to bulwark, I didn't use a block.

For Roaming and PvP you could use it only for the barrier and avoid the effect. Or you use it for the effect and run a zerg strategy.In PvE I heard most heavy damage is dodgable... And even then, I never had problems in T4-fractals as heal-engy.

The Barrier-generation is indeed a bit too high in my opinion, but it is not a heal. It vanishes itself after a bit of time, so skilled enemies in duels can wait it out. Adaptive armor barrier is probably more unnerving for them.Also... scourges sand flare gives 5k barrier on 5 player with 25s CD, so 25k/25s=1000 hps ? Then 500 hps from bulwark don't seem so weak...

[Chaith.8256]

Using Bulwark to shield allies gives you an insane negative Healing per/s. It depends on the situation but probably a degeneration of -500 a second per ally.

It's more like a blood-magic skill for crying out loud. You're doing -2500 hp degeneration per second while doing a team revive with bulwark, on top of what you take in damage.

So you've hit the analysis on the nose: I suggest

-Bulwark gyro barrier ticks scale with the number of allies affected.-Alternatively, Bulwark no longer transfers damage, barrier nerfed by 66% to fall in line with other skills.

[Chaith.8256]

@PaladinVII.1647. This has me scratching my head when I look at the lowest health / sec skill Sanctuary which is only 41 and requires standing in an area; even with the CC component that skill still seems really REALLY low.

Standing in super elixir means you're utterly soaking damage but sanctuary is a very powerful damage mitigation skill. It's not all about the healing per second

[Ghos.1326]

What the original poster also has to figure in, is why the barrier is so big. And it's mainly because Protection, unless you run Purity of Purpose (which might need a small adjustment), is pretty scarce unless you run something like a pistol/shield setup. And even then the Protection is minimal, forcing you to run both Alchemy AND Inventions, as well as run a rune that either extends protection, or grants it, on top of bulwark gyro. Otherwise, things that hit hard like revs or warriors will just tear through your barrier applications easily, usually in a couple hits or a single burst even. It makes it hard for the Engineer to deviate from NEEDING to use Alchemy and Inventions together, destroying build diversity and possibilities because if you let go of one or the other, you lose Protection uptimes, especially if you opt out of Purity of Purpose. Now, if the Inventions trait line had more Protection procs and maybe also some Regeneration to go with it, then I could see Bulwark Gyro needing a nerf, as the damage mitigation through other sources like boons would be there, and at least decent enough to not depend on a specific 2 trait lines combined with Scrapper, which would literally be 2 defensive trait lines and 1 condition manipulation trait line. Even Warrior currently doesn't need to use 2 defensive trait lines to fulfill a dueling role with great success (referencing the Strength vs defense, combined with Discipline (utility), and Spellbreaker (defensive)). I don't think Engineer should need to be locked into 2 defensive trait lines (Scrapper and Inventions) in order to be somewhat viable. If Over Shield in Inventions was changed so that you gained Protection when critically struck for 3s, with an ICD of 12s (1/4 uptime) and Regeneration Procs for 5-8s was returned to Reconstruction Enclosure as well as the Protection Proc for 2-3s on heal, then I would say definitely nerf Bulwark Gyro, as the damage mitigation from boons like Protection would cause the barrier to be much stronger. But as is now, Engineers kinda need that much barrier otherwise they couldn't survive in any kind of duel or team scenario.

[Vagrant.7206]

I think it's somewhat disingenuous to compare a barrier skill to a healing skill -- barrier is a temporary health buff, not permanent. If you compare with other barrier skills, then the comparison is valid. So if we look at Desert Shroud (the most comparable barrier-providing skill), then yes, bulwark gyro is still over the top, because you can get 8000 barrier over 5 seconds, as opposed to Desert Shroud's 5k instantly.

I'm not a fan of the way bulwark gyro works -- I wish it distributed barrier evenly amongst allies, rather than placing it all on the scrapper and redirecting damage to the scrapper. This would make it provide the group damage mitigation it's supposed to without being OP for individual use.

[PaladinVII.1647]

@Vagrant.7206 said:I'm not a fan of the way bulwark gyro works -- I wish it distributed barrier evenly amongst allies, rather than placing it all on the scrapper and redirecting damage to the scrapper. This would make it provide the group damage mitigation it's supposed to without being OP for individual use.

That's a solid idea for discussion. You gain a set amount of barrier if solo. It applies barrier to allies. It applies more barrier to yourself and allies the higher the number of allies in the well, limit 5.

[PaladinVII.1647]

Another thought: You gain 5 pulses of barrier and take a portion of damage from nearby allies. Gain additional barrier each time damage is shared in this manner.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

with signet mastery necro locust and vampirism sig heal for a lot lot more.

[Prinzsecond.4863]

I am twisted regarding bulwark gyro....

• on one Hand it is strong yes, very strong and simple (not really engineer Feeling), it could be toned down a bit (e.g. 20% less barrier) and still be fine.
• on the other Hand, if you compare it with a block or invul skill the damage mitigation is in a very similar range. In WvW you can easily be hit for 6-10k with one hit or 1-2 seconds, much more if there are 2 enemies against you. So blocking for 2 seconds has the potential to easily mitigate more damage than bulwark gyro.

[Manuhell.2759]

It's a skill whose only purpose is giving a self-barrier, with a partial damage sharing downside, on a spec that empowers barriers (impact savant increases them by 15%), in a class that relies on utilities (as it lacks a second weapon slot). Of course it gives a beefy amount - that's all that skill is good for. Put a lesser barrier, and the scrapper will just be taking other people's damage in group situations (and it already happens in modes like WvW).Even then, to avoid issues with PvP, they could just change it and made it give a lesser amount, but affecting allies as well, and removing the partial damage sharing. So that it would be less powerful when alone.