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Scrappers in WvW


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@schloumou.3982 said:

@spectrito.8513 said:So, if i understood OP is a bandwagoner who wants to play busted support classes to be carried by his teammates?Just play FB then.

That's what everybody will do. Because Anets' balance approaches are super incoherent. They aimed for sidegrade specs, but delivered strait upgrades. Then they admit it, but refuse to nerf PoF specs (because of sales or something, i don't know) and instead go ahead and just add trade-offs to HoT specs which...surprise, leads to even more imbalance. And we are back to only one viable support, that dominates competitive modes since its introduction. It's like nerfing the visuals of eles' fireball because of clutter just to introduce an expansion one week later that is a complete funfair of skills. Those decisions are made at the same time and wether it's on purpose or by lack of coordination, i don't know what is worse.

While i agree with you, this is a problem for people who only enter WvW to play on optimized zergs where playing meta builds matters more than having fun.

WvW is the only game mode which you have freedom to play whatever build you want without harming your team.Now if you chosed to play the game in a single way among many other styles... well, thats on you.

I don't really understand how you want to talk about any balance changes under that premise. That also collides somehow with your later statement that people tend to have no fun when they get steamrolled.

What im saying is, If you want to play the game in a single way you will play the same builds/classes.You cant balance the game with different classes in the same role without over buffing/nerfingFor example, how much damage Ele need to do to replace Rev as a dps ?You cant balance this without nerfing Revs or buffing Eles too much.

You will be stuck with those builds because you only play WvW for optimized zergs whereas havoc/roaming/clouding is much more open to other builds than zergs.I cant see how it collides with bandwagon since its a completely different subject.

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@schloumou.3982 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:what happened?

Yea, can someone not frothing at the mouth explain?

Haven't tested anything myself but scrapper line now has -300 vita as a minor trait, lost all passive healing, for barrier you now need to dish out damge, which you probably wont, and it lost the elite toolbelt. Chaith (usually level headed) posted in the engi section, that scrapper is not durable anymore, and therefor useless in WvW/PvP. Now people are building glass scrappers and try to oneshot each other for the luz.

On top of that, their goal was to turn it into a tank spec, per their patch description.

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@schloumou.3982 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:what happened?

Yea, can someone not frothing at the mouth explain?

Haven't tested anything myself but scrapper line now has -300 vita as a minor trait, lost all passive healing, for barrier you now need to dish out damge, which you probably wont, and it lost the elite toolbelt. Chaith (usually level headed) posted in the engi section, that scrapper is not durable anymore, and therefor useless in WvW/PvP. Now people are building glass scrappers and try to oneshot each other for the lulz.

Thanks so much for being able to communicate.

-300 Vit does seem really excessive. That reduces them to guardian levels of health. :open_mouth: I guess they're still needed in zergs, hp or less for cleanses and such though roaming scrapper.... GL :anguished:

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"ArchonWing.9480" said:-300 Vit does seem excessive. That reduces them to guardian levels of health. :open_mouth:It doesnt (14k vs 11k or whatever it is) but its really,
really
excessive considering you now got 0 built in hp regen and if you're not on berserker you got practically 0 barrier regen.

It was more of a quip on how low guardian base health is (15.9k on engi vs 11.6k on guardian) but everyone with low base health has many ways of mitigating damage and sustaining. Getting barrier when you do damage is pretty idiotic and not good for sustain, much less a "tank". (We have tanks in this game?)

I'm not surprised the balance team isn't balancing crap (lol those Chrono changes) but I just don't like it when I'm reading a bunch of rants where I have to decipher everything.

But seriously. 3k? Anyone versed in basic math could really see an issue.

Also upon further look, it seems like most of the traits increase damage, or are useless. I like the comment on Expert Examination; they really haven't gotten a clue.

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Scrapper post well buff could tank as well an any tempest, boonbeast, warrior du jour, but please post how it was OP? I never see scrappers with big damage spikes or even doing that much damage to begin with when running the tank specs. (Or even without) People were just that mad because tank scrappers were hard to kill? (And would end up being a standoff instead of easy bags) Medi scrapper has been relatively unchanged except it lost the stealth detection utility and a lot of sustain. Medi scrapper is still the best condi cleanser/converter in the game and will still have that slot in zergs but without the old barrier mechanic, does it have to be medi scrapper anymore vs medi engi? The -300 vit is absurd. The additional superspeed uptime is nice as well but not worth all the handoffs.

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I was running it a bit yesterday with the same minstrels gear, etc. Will it affect roaming? Sure. You won't be able to endure 1v3+s anymore for a while. The -300 vit does hurt, but it's not a totally killer since you get more barrier. You also get more barrier now with bulwark. Even in minstrels, you can do damage during rotations for support. A thunderclap when its off CD, and the hammer-time-spin which deals damage and provides a crucial and important whirl finisher too (The whirl actually goes on even if you swap to a different kit!).

The new function gyro is alright. I think the stab generation from the trait and the field benefits are kind of useless since the area of effect of the function gyro is so tiny! It makes it entirely impractical for giving out benefits to yourself or teammates.

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@Handin.4032 said:I was running it a bit yesterday with the same minstrels gear, etc. Will it affect roaming? Sure. You won't be able to endure 1v3+s anymore for a while. The -300 vit does hurt, but it's not a totally killer since you get more barrier. You also get more barrier now with bulwark. Even in minstrels, you can do damage during rotations for support. A thunderclap when its off CD, and the hammer-time-spin which deals damage and provides a crucial and important whirl finisher too (The whirl actually goes on even if you swap to a different kit!).

The new function gyro is alright. I think the stab generation from the trait and the field benefits are kind of useless since the area of effect of the function gyro is so tiny! It makes it entirely impractical for giving out benefits to yourself or teammates.

Medi still works fine. Just far less sustain so it is still an overall net loss and makes FB that much better in every area outside of condi cleanse and conversion.

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It doesn't help to post and go over what has changed to Scrapper, but adaptive armour, mecha legs, health regen and sustain was good enough to have long sustained fights, but you also needed the correct armour, sigils, and foods so you could regen when dodging, so it wasn't just the build, but the way you played it, that made this one of the most fun professions to play. (Scrapper build I played was Inventions Bottom, B, T, Alchemy Middle, M, M, and Scrapper was Top, T, T) cant tell you what they were, but maybe a build editor can show you). I have played Scrapper and spent countless hours fine tuning it to my personal play style. 20 minutes in WvW, and I cannot sustain, trying different things, but just die repeatedly. So I fully understand the frustrations, and having to re-adapt, but this time, they killed it, the reveal has been removed and replaced with a button that I find useless, and the reveal which has been removed, now gives another edge to 6 clone mesmers and thieves again. The damage in the Trait lines is my concern, lost the most important ones to sustain. I always have to consider the time taken to craft the armour, materials, sigils, runes, and then spend the time learning to play this profession properly, and this cannot be redone without cost and time to me again. maybe its a sign to me, but for now RIP Scrapper, we had fun together (and 4.3k WvW level, work that out in time).

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@MarkBecks.6453 said:It doesn't help to post and go over what has changed to Scrapper, but adaptive armour, mecha legs, health regen and sustain was good enough to have long sustained fights, but you also needed the correct armour, sigils, and foods so you could regen when dodging, so it wasn't just the build, but the way you played it, that made this one of the most fun professions to play. (Scrapper build I played was Inventions Bottom, B, T, Alchemy Middle, M, M, and Scrapper was Top, T, T) cant tell you what they were, but maybe a build editor can show you). I have played Scrapper and spent countless hours fine tuning it to my personal play style. 20 minutes in WvW, and I cannot sustain, trying different things, but just die repeatedly. So I fully understand the frustrations, and having to re-adapt, but this time, they killed it, the reveal has been removed and replaced with a button that I find useless, and the reveal which has been removed, now gives another edge to 6 clone mesmers and thieves again. The damage in the Trait lines is my concern, lost the most important ones to sustain. I always have to consider the time taken to craft the armour, materials, sigils, runes, and then spend the time learning to play this profession properly, and this cannot be redone without cost and time to me again. maybe its a sign to me, but for now RIP Scrapper, we had fun together (and 4.3k WvW level, work that out in time).

Your build and mine sound rather similar for what I used for utility and command. I had three builds: one gyro chrono trigger roam, one utility and one command and they were all fun in their respective roles. (I tag up on TC and am only one of three scrappers that ran tag on this elite spec) The gutting of the spec has made the two latter builds completely ineffective and the former roaming build is just meh. I have LA so I can survive the retraits but this kind of complete gutting of a spec really sucks for the people that have to regear. (forge or not) Condi is appealing but I have a dislike of condi builds so i'm not going there. I might see if I can make medi engi work so you don't have to deal with the absurd -300 vitality penalty. I still don't get how Anet thinks this is NOW a tank spec. It used to be....

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@"Sovereign.1093" said:what happened?

The "purpose" of the class shifted again.

Personal hp regeneration was removed (formerly from Rapid Regeneration, the spec on minstrels had about 600 hps with superspeed and swiftness, a portion of which was shared to allies with dispersion field).

Barrier gain from receiving hits and using a healing skill was removed, instead Impact Savant (grandmaster minor trait) was changed to give -300 vit (unavoidable since its minor trait) and give scrapper 15% of its physical damage back as barrier. Useless for a support build that has no damage stats and uses a kit with 0 damage coefficients.

Removal of F5 toolbelt skills, replaced with "Function Gyro" (previously used by pressing F button), Function Gyro no longer targets players, instead you can put a lightning field, with less range (range reduced), that can spawn "Function Gyros" to res up to 3 players and stomp up to 3 enemy players. I have yet to see it spawn more than one gyro though, and it instantly dies, doing nothing, because of how squishy it is and how logically there is pressure over downed players.

This are the things that affected the meta healer scrapper build (there are other changes that affected other builds). It is easy to see why people are upset, the changes are not just nerfs, there are dubious design choices on this changes, and even maybe unwarranted ones, even if you believed that scrapper was "OP", the important question is "what was OP about it", not just the spec by virtue of existing, specially considering that the things removed existed previous to the recent reworks and weren't even enough to give scrapper a place on the meta or anywhere really, other than being the pet build for dedicated engi players.

What makes healer scrapper useful comes from engineer, mostly, and from scrapper second (scrapper provided utility, while engi the core condi cleanse and healing). So the patch added more superspeed, but removed survivability on the scrapper, yet what was given to compensate for it (barrier gain) doesn't interact well with a healer spec, so that's really the crux of the problem here, if (big if) the spec is to just adapt to having -300 vit, the 15% barrier "life steal" should be looked at, it doesn't benefit at all the builds that were being played with this spec, on its current state it suggests going glassy, but that heavily overlaps with holosmith, and holo does it better. On top of that, most classes that have such low HP have means of either negating damage or preventing being hit in the first place, scrapper doesn't really, barrier will not save you from a burst spec trying to burst you down.

As I've said on the engi forums, beyond the balance issue, it is a very "feel bad" change, it has nothing to do with "true born scrappers" vs "bandwaggoners", that type of gatekeeping doesn't serve anyone. It's the fact that the spec is attractive to some players (has always been), but struggles to find its place on the game, when it works it works too well that other players hate it, the rest of the time it just doesn't work at all. Losing it from the organized meta would be a bad thing imo, it opened the window for medium classes to join and add diversity to the compositions. Unless, of course, we want the condi meta back.

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Its more they are also narrowing down the build, for power hammer scrapper it might be really good. For a support, healer or condi scrapper, not so much. And yeah that -300 that you can't choose on..yikes. Granted means more time on my core engi or the holo while reworking the scrapper.

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@"mindcircus.1506" said:The fact you find your toon "useless" after a small tuning down says more about you as a player and your skill level than it does about Anet's balance team.

The fact that you find the Scrapper murder is a small tunning down says more about you as a non-scrapper player and your understanding about what happened than it does about your comment.

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@Mil.3562 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:The fact you find your toon "useless" after a small tuning down says more about you as a player and your skill level than it does about Anet's balance team.

The fact that you find the Scrapper murder is a small tunning down says more about you as a non-scrapper player and your understanding about what happened than it does about your comment.

Probably does. But eh, it was a powerful looking sentence to latch on the OP.

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@Baltzenger.2467 said:Barrier gain from receiving hits and using a healing skill was removed, instead Impact Savant (grandmaster minor trait) was changed to give -300 vit (unavoidable since its minor trait) and give scrapper 15% of its physical damage back as barrier. Useless for a support build that has no damage stats and uses a kit with 0 damage coefficients.

But what if we DIDN'T train Impact Savant? Would the loss of a Grandmaster + Bulwark Gyro (and self stab) + Stealth Gyro be worth the gain for 3k more HP?

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@Mil.3562 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:The fact you find your toon "useless" after a small tuning down says more about you as a player and your skill level than it does about Anet's balance team.

The fact that you find the Scrapper murder is a small tunning down says more about you as a non-scrapper player and your understanding about what happened than it does about your comment.

I actually play a lot of scrapper. I'm enjoying the changes.

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@"mindcircus.1506" said:The fact you find your toon "useless" after a small tuning down says more about you as a player and your skill level than it does about Anet's balance team.

No, it doesn't because 1) it wasn't a small tuning down and 2) there's nothing to support that Anet's balance team actually knows how to balance or even plays their own game enough to know how. Even the people in this thread offering contradicting opinions probably know more and care more about its mechanics and their balance than ANet, and they aren't even being paid.

Scrapper's one of the easiest professions to kite. Support scrapper doesn't put out much damage to keep the ball rolling, and gearing for glass isn't going to do much for your longevity or for the support side of things. What this balance pass did was make scrapper into an almost PvE exclusive profession because it's largely in PvE where you're going to find opponents dumb enough to rush you and allow you to wail on them with Hammer in order to trickle feed barrier.

What they essentially did with impact savant was steal three thousand health on average and then turn scrapper into a watered down berserker who has to keep connecting with hammer in order to fake having that three thousand points of health back. Again- this works in PvE if you're able to surround yourself with a lot of non-vet/non-elite mobs that won't tear your head off straight away before the barrier has a chance to spool up. In PvP or small scale WvW it means you get ranged, auto attacked, and/or kited til the bulwark and the projectile bubble are gone then burst down. In large scale as support you just get focused because you won't be doing enough damage to offset what's incoming via barrier and if you were you probably weren't supporting your mates with you're other abilities as you should have.

Is the damage on hammer still semi respectable? Yes, but anybody who runs face first into it in a competitive mode and loses isn't much of a gauge scrapper's effectiveness because they're probably an even worse player than the scrapper for doing it.

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@mindcircus.1506 said:I actually play a lot of scrapper. I'm enjoying the changes.

There's no way that...

-The removal of the F5 skill-The function gyro being meme-tier-A substantial loss of damage-The eradication of healing builds (justified)-And condidition damage builds (probably not justified)-The loss of 3000 health points-And a near nonexistent barrier generation through the combination of low damage even in berserker gear and retaliation

...has you enjoy scrapper unless you're a masochist, a liar, or just baiting, which I clearly did bite.

I don't have much love for the Scrapper spec but there's barely anything worth salvaging here that makes it fun or performing. That's the first time for me in almost 7 years of Engineer and I'm actually surprised. If you don't belong in any of the categories mentioned above, I'm curious to know what makes the spec enjoyable.

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We heard the same argument from thieves everywhere after Stealth traps were reworked and now look at them, despite being a "worthless" class and traps still being a thing, they're everywhere now.

Try a new spec for a few months, wait for things to calm down in the engi dept and anger towards another OP class to take center stage, then ask what about me.

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