Kstyle.5829

Well yeah but if you don't have any expansion you're at a big disadvantage in pvp tbh. There are 3 elite specs and I think like 6 traitline in total or something. And you take 3 lines so if you're taking the 3 best statistically it's always gonna be an expansion one. It's not like that on purpose it's just a low chance that the three best specs would be ONLY free lines lol The only free meta build right now is core necromancer which is like affliction warlock . Burn guardian, core ranger and hammer gs warrior are alright too but most fre builds are downgrades of pay to use specs. The only really strong free one now is core Necro imo which is probably only free build better than it's expansion counterparts. Good news is it's not like wow where you need every expansion to progress. Even endgame pve all expansions ascended gear is the same level its more of different options than upgrades but all of them better than nothing

It's very useful though. You can teleport with short bow and use dodge to get swiftness. It a lot of mobility. It just is a big brain IQ playmaker not a cc god burst assassin like wow lol. If you like windwalker or assassination rogue you'll like will bender. It uses dual swords, all 3 virtues teleport, sword 2 and 5 both teleport to target. So you can just sit on targets and do your dps rotation more similar to wow pvp

For scrapper you can go kind of tanky or full damage and still survive bc so much barrier. I usually go explosives 233 firearms 332 scrapper 132 with full berserker gear and I rarely die. I use shredder blast and medic gyro with mortar kit and elixir for stability quickness. Now if you're dying a bit go explosives 233 alchemy 221 scrapper 112 and get mostly berserker gear with durability runes maybe a couple accessories with armor and vitality and power and switch blast gyro to bulwark and medic gyro to elixir heal

Stupid phone made me double post

Well it's not a class for dueling like I said. the class roles in the game are dps, roamer, duelist, bunker. Duelists have a lot more healing. You aren't going to duel ppl on thief and win it's just not designed to kill players like that. You mostly decap bases and finish off low hp targets and stomp them. It doesnt have enough damage or sustain to win fights on its own. Everyone in that duel arena is playing duelists classes. It's not like wow in this game you can pvp at lvl 2 so may as well try a bunch of classes and see what you. It's not like a rogue who is king of 1v1. Thief is probably the worst 1v1 class in the game. Definitely one of them. There other thief like classes more similar to rogue pvp would be revenant or willbender. They are ninja classes that dual wield swords and teleport around. Rev is pretty hard like thief but willbender is easy. Those classes are designed to deal high damage. Like at end of game on theif you should have top points for offense but only 150k damage maybe and couple kills. On willbender like 400k dmg and 15 - 20 kills. Thief is for stealing bases and ganging up on ppl. If someone try to duel you a good thief runs away. If your goal is hypermobile ninja burst melee glass cannon assassin and you want to just run around killing players you want to play a dps class like willbend or rev or holosmith. On theif your goal is to avoid combat unless it's a 2 or 3 on one in your favor. If anyone tried to fight you fair you run away. Take the bases where no players are that's how you carry games

No it's for 5v5 pvp for sure. They said so on stream it's a sustain buff for dps scrapper in that scenario. That's why it doesn't really benefit from healing power

If you're used to playing wow you will have a lot to get used to. Wow has mitigation in PvP by default, this game does not. All characters have similar hp in that game. Some classes in this game have almost a third of the health of others with certain builds. On a thief you die extremely quickly. Playing like wow doesn't work in this game past understanding the controls (you have to keybind everything clicking is not acceptable whatsoever). There's NO global cool down or macros just the cast time for skills. You can use instant casts during casted spells as many as you want. Sometimes pressing 5 buttons in a split second. It's more like a fighting game . You have to physically swing your melee weapon and connect with your oponnent. Theres no rng dodges and blocks. There's no macro game awareness like wow where you chain cc and use defensives for their cooldowns. It's mechanical skill and pressing buttons quickly, predicting and reacting to individual attacks. There are strategies beyond that but its mostly just map awareness and when to run away from fights or engage. As a theif in this game you literally can die in one hit. You're playing an extremely unforgiving class and easily one of the hardest and most technical in the game. And you aren't sneaky because stealth only lasts a couple seconds in this game. The only way to survive is know all moved in game and predict and dodge them. You have like 13 to 15k hp where other classes have around 30k and Necro is like 50k plus with shroud. Most classes can one shot you so you can't trade at all. Pvp does have problems but the things you mentioned are more of L2P issue. On theif you never should be dueling people you mostly run around decapping bases and 2v1 fights. You have great mobility by dodging for swiftness, shortbow teleport, and dagger/pistol attack number 3. Unfortunately like any old and dying game the PvP community left here are mostly old players who have ten years of experience behind their back. It's not easy to get into as a new player. I played wow for ten years and was a top arena player and still sucked at this game bc of the faster pace. It is an amazing game just extremely hard to play. It's sad that a lot of games die for that reason.. I recommend you try some tankier duelist classes that are more forgiving. Necro guardian and warrior are considered easiest and have good sustain. The things that can trade best will be high hp condition damage duelists or bruisers with armor. There is really no sneaking in this game. But if you want a class that actually does big damage and can teleport around and run fast maybe try willbender. Its easier than thief but it's actually a dps class that can kill people and top charts. Thief in this game doesn't assassinate people, it's an annoying playmaker that steals bases, runs away, helps stomp people after they are downed and revive teamates with stealth. It's a great class but the damage is low overall. You also cant train people and do rotations on them like a rogue. It's mostly hit one time maybe a couple auto attacks, then dodge away when you see them swing at you. Then try to stealth and backstab them again. If you don't have expansion still go shadow art trickery acrobatics d/p because sword dagger is not good in this meta, especially on a free to play build (most free builds are not as viable) Overall thief is really good and was my main for years it's just a niche role and requires a higher skill floor. Feel free to send me mail to this name and add me on friendlist and I'll help you in game learn the ropes next time I get on.

It's like 200 hp a second with superspeed. Added to your normal scrapper regen of like 100-200 its huge. Using alchemy and explosions. Big boomer, and the trait that gives regen when removing conditions in alch. Mortar and elixir gun. Barrier gyro and blast so that I have 2 stun breaks. The healing gyro because it give more superspeed than any other healing talent. Run this with either berzerker amulet and dolyek rune or demolisher amulet and chronomancer rune. I think its explosives 3-3-3 Alchemy 2-1-2 Scrapper 1-1-2. You can take the 10% more healing effectiveness in alchemy if you want but you don't use medkit so maybe that's a waste.. idk. The reason you don't use avatar amulet is bc scrapper heals don't scale well with it and you need damage or people just ignore you. With this build I do decent dmg too. You can give up bulwark gyro for shredder and you can blow ppl up on point more. In fact shredder is probably better than bulwark in most cases of solo play. The high armor is good bc it makes regen healing more useful. Now if you want more damage you can go explosives with tools + this talent but in my experience if you go that route you better off just taking object in motion for 15% more dmg.

Actually I kind of take back this whole post... the new talent is really strong if built correctly. I'm doing 200-300k self healing a game. Honestly they are probably going to nerf it with the luck scrappers have.

no they didn't thats only in PVE

Scrapper Dps is so pathetic in PvP you pretty much have to take object in motion and all the strike damage modifiers in explosives and tools to have enough damage to move someone off point. It doesn't matter how tanky you are, if you can't deal damage people just ignore you. This new trait doesn't scale with healing power very well, and it's objectively worse if you are making a bunker build based on that. However since the base healing is pretty good it seems like armor stacking is the way to go. Maybe running demolisher or dolyek with full damage talents otherwise. This seems to be fairly effective in my experience

They mostly balance traits for PVP because that's where balance is important, and they don't even do a good job at that. It's not that important for things to be fully balanced in PVE because you're not supposed to be competing against your teammates for dps. You're trying to beat some ez raid or strike boss which you can already do taking the worst builds in the game. If the argument is that you're hardcore into fractals then something will always be objectively better and people will ALWAYS take the best dps talent. Anyways nobody cares honestly... Fractals are a boring repetitive waste of time that don't present rewards worth the time spent. They don't even give better armor for higher lvl like wow mythic+ scaling does. So if you're complaining about all your talents not doing competitive dps then nobody is listening. The dodge roll and the might one are both really good in PvP depending on the build you run. That's a better position than most classes are in where you just choose what sucks less. But complaining about talents not being equal in PVE just based on one metric of measurement is a really pointless complaint.

Yeah it's not going to help DPS scrapper in any way to lose 15% damage modifier. Most good scrappers know not to use the build on guildjen with tools/alchemy because you have to take object + explosives damage modifiers to do anything near decent damage but ends up quite squishy. That being said, the new trait is actually very strong. around 100 health per second with swiftness up and 200 per second with superspeed. Now this doesn't scale very well with healing power, I tried avatar amulet and dolyek runes, going inventions and alchemy for regen and maxing out regen. The staying power you have is not really noticeably different than before, it only goes up like 15 to 30 health per second. HOWEVER- I think you can maybe make a build that uses this talent. My experience is that it is much better just stacking armor and other healing abilities that also don't scale much with healing power. So I tried inventions for the health every time you use a toolbelt skill and explosives with big boomers. I ran that with demolisher amulet and dolyek rune and was pretty unkillable with almost 300k healing by the end of the game, but have no ability to push people off point. So I think your best bet is to take explosives, tools, and that new scrapper talent. Tools with a kit like mortar or grenades so you can at least maintain swiftness and then a bunch of gyros to maintain some superspeed. I used the demolisher amulet with chrono rune. Seemed like that build is pretty decent to me.

They can't even balance the game with the current roster. I hope they never add elite specs again

I only play PVP hammer dps scrapper and occassionally wvw healer scrapper. And those are the builds that 99% of scrappers play in pvp. So I'm glad you're happy but most people aren't.

Subjective... maybe you're right. Maybe scourge, mirage and scrapper are objectively the 3 best classes in the game. And everybody's subjective experiences are collectively wrong including the top players in the game. But I really doubt it. I admit there's alot I don't know, but It's not like I play just one class. I have like 500 + games on every class minimum. I've played 7 classes up to around high gold elo which is everything except ele and revenant. And most people at that elo have experience playing all classes and you can tell when you switch to another class and within a few games you go up hundreds of elo. And when I get up that high it's around the top 100 ranking so exactly who are they balancing the game for.. just the top 10 people? According to those top players they would say otherwise. The average players are the customers you should be aiming to appease anyways... and their "Subjective" experience. If they are going to balance objectively to have equal representation only among classes at top 10 rankings then at the least they should show us the data that leads them to make such decisions I can guarantee that I cold personally do a better job balancing the game than they are doing now. If these so called objective statistics actually exist and were presented to me. And it's not because I claim to be some expert. All you have to do is take the time to listen to your playerbase and understand how to inerpret data. It just seems that they lack motivation because there is no passion for the game amongst the employees. It's just a paycheck for a dying game My guess is that there is actually only around 200 to 300 players left who still actively PVP and that's why the data is hard to interpret. When companies like blizz and riot and ANET say they have 50 million people playing a game It's a straight up lie.

wtf... the difference between silver players and platinum players is not reaction time. you're really clueless if you think that's what seperates good players in this game. It's overall game knowledge and awareness and ability to predict what your oponnents do. Nobody is "reacting" to .25 second casts and even if they are, that's not going to make you suddenly a top 100 player. And just cuz 1 guy ragequit because his FOTM class got 1 nerf doesn't mean its "unplayable". Who cares what that guy thinks. I promise you there will still be plenty of untamed in the ladder. It's not like everyone is going to suddenly be playing soulbeast or switching to engineer lol

Lmao just because you can't shadowstep during maul doesn't mean it will destroy untamed. You can still shadowstep then pretty much immediately use your greatsword 5 stun, which is the better use of it anyway IMO. Untamed has alot more going for it than that one thing

Yeah that's the life of a scrapper in this game. Just be comfortable as your position as worst class in the game, because we can always nerf you more and make you worse. Just turn gyros into kittening turrets why not.

The only rework it got last year was the one that removed quickness from grandmaster trait in PVP only and replaced it with fury. Hilarious when every class in the game is broken they just nerf some damage scaling, but when scrapper has 1 stupid flamethrower build people are abusing, they just completely gut scrapper as a whole by removing quickness. The entire class is balanced around having 100% quickness uptime in PVE but they think just removing it from PVP entirely is a good change

it's cuz engineer is the least played. That's how they actually seem to balance the game... they balance the PVP classes people ply the most. They even refer to it like "we are going to buff grenade holosmith" like bro... some players made these builds up but this is YOUR game ANET you can make your own builds or buff your own talents. Don't have to just buff whatever people play in the meta

NOBODY plays bunker. Nobody has played bunker scrapper in years. Every single patch you guys are talking about making it a bunker. Just STOP it shows how pathetically clueless you are about your own game. The top players who play scrapper play full PVE DPS modifiers just so they can keep up with all your broken EOD classes. If you want to make a scrapper bunker you can do that now, the problem is it has no damage output to get people off the point. They just tunnel damage into your face and ignore your pitiful damage until you get pressured off point. Making scrappers give up even more damage modifiers for survival is not the answer to even your own goal. The way to make scrapper bunkers would be increasing their base damage and lowering scaling allowing them to force people off point when using avatar or demolisher amulet. It should be really obvious and it's sad that it takes 4 months to add 1 little buff when every other class gets like 30 changes.

Oh I didn't see that. Their own words was they want to buff reapers. It looks to me like their spells werent changed to melee range but just do even more damage now in melee range. So it's actually a buff I believe. But I wouldn't be surprised either way. I was shocked to hear them still talking about making scrappers a bunker. It's like they haven't watched one single game of top players. Nobody plays bunker because they pose no threat. Their problem is not survival its damage. You could learn really obvious things and avoid making these mistakes that leave people with their jaw hanging open thinking "wtf" And yeah I'm sure they just leave scourge to the dogs like scrapper and mirage. Can't balance everything right? Just gotta let some specs die, keep the EOD specs good though gotta sell those expansions!

no ofc not. I was mainly mad about scrapper but if I post on engineer forums only like 2 ppl will see it. But yeah mirage has been terrible for a long time too. It's like their goal is just to have maybe 5 specs we can play. Just enough to run an actual game. Who wants to be the untamed, ok you can be the spellbreaker, I'll be the core shout guardian. That's how they balance the game, based on balancing builds that players made and use and are already established, rather than looking at data and trying to balance everything as a whole (traits, skills, etc) They are too dumb to interpret the data they have before them. They just say "oh there's only like 1% of people playing scrapper and mirage so we don't need to worry about those as much. We need to balance the popular classes." Not thinking "wait a minute... maybe people dont play those classes because they suck"

Waiting 4 months to finally make sweeping changes is a horrible way to balance the game. It's just a rotation of nerffing whatever is most OP and then buffing random classes that are already B tier and pretty good. It's really obvious you guys see this game as dead and just have it on life support. I mean you say as little as possible so maybe people will assume you guys know what you're talking about, but some things just make no sense at all. For two or three patches in a row you guys saying "we want to make scrapper a cool guy bruiser class!" and then you buff defensive talents that you must give up offensive ones for. Right now scrapper is a joke because the damage is REALLY LOW. The people in the top 100 who play scrapper all run a full PVE DPS build going explosives tools scrapper and taking every single percent strike damage modifier to still become a D tier DPS class. The problem is DAMAGE. If you are a bunker with ZERO DAMAGE then people just ignore you. It's just comical that you guys don't understand that simple concept. But I get it, nobody cares about scrapper, that's just me and the 5 people who still play it. Untamed left untouched of course. S tier but it's not THE class so that's fine right? We can wait another 4 months to fix untamed. Just let all the scepter catalyst play untamed for now. Nerffed vindicator. Good job. Still shouldn't have taken 3 months. Then it looks like you do what you always do, buff a bunch of classes that are already A tier while leaving the bad classes untouched. Great job. Buffing willbenders and shout reapers which are already some of the strongest dps classes. Not going to fix hammer spellbreaker until next patch I guess? I guess for next 3 or 4 months just avoid dueling those hammer spellbreakers if you don't want to sit in 11.5 second stun. That's fair and balanced gameplay right there. With all the sweeping changes you made something else will inevitably become overpowered and be the new scepter catalyst. What will it be.. hammer willbender? Who knows, I guess only us within the next few weeks and then ANET will fix it in a few months and leave over 50% of the classes unplayable once again. I mean is it so hard to just PLAY YOUR OWN GAME. Maybe talk to some of the top players and get feedback, watch some streams. What the hell do you pay your staff to do on this game? It seems like the game is so dead now because if you get into mid gold you're in top 100 so I guess we have maybe 200 or 300 people who still play PVP. I'm personally done. I'm giving away the last of my stuff and deleting my characters because it's obvious you guys put 1% effort into balancing PVP and I can't let it be something that bothers me anymore. Caring about this game is like being in denial about someone who's dead. Best to just get over it and move on.