miriforst.1290

Isn't it increased cooldown for each gyro "Beyond the first"?

Of course its a set-up weapon, that much was clear from it's very introduction and mechanic. It was just marketed as a support set-up weapon. Magnet + anything is a deadly combo really. Look at this post for an example of a nasty combo available on core engineer (honestly the moa is possibly a bit overkill, but against slippery classes like thief its wonderful). Variations of these combos have the advantage of not requiring 5ish seconds of setup while you camp on top of quite visible "traps". That still doesn't exactly make core engineer a top roaming pick. And if against all odds the costco dragonhunter build proves successful in the very niche it wasn't intended for (remember its support at the cost of offensive output supposedly) I have no doubt they give it the catalyst treatment and make them pulse like 10 damage or something.

We have dragonhunter at home. Dragonhunter at home:

I am no fan of mechanist in the first place (the pet idea would never work out in this game). But it is a million times better than turrets but legs. I have little confidence such a spec wouldn't just be a moving junkpile spec with ineffektive trash serving only as a distraction in pve and a targeting annoyance in pvp while abandoning the little customization and control we got. It works for necromancer because they get lifeforce when they die (i also think the little ugly gremlin aspect works better for them). Let them keep them. We are rather unique in having had 3 iterations of AI minions. First turrets which are rusting at the bottom of the sea (fix or replace them before even thinking about more "minions"). Then gyros which filled the minion niche the turrets didn't (mobile and expendable minions) with admittedly limited offensive use (blast, shredder). They were your typical X but using a robot archetype. Healing but robot, condicleanse but robot, stealth but robot, damage but robot, etc. It didn't work, they were made into wells and scrapper then gained considerable popularity over previously. Honestly I was still playing scrapper with the old minions and found the bulwark, blast and sneak gyro to be okay if clunky. But i understand why they were removed. Then we have mechanist which offers a single strong pet customized into 9 variants. Which I personally find more interesting than summoning 3 clockwork dolls that die after 3 attacks or something. Sure it's a pve only spec but at least it does something. It has big artillery vibes, it's tanky enough to take a hit and we have some degree of control. Truth be told while i expected mechanist to fall flat on its face in all gamemodes, I was surprised when we saw how strong it was in pve. Perhaps excessively so. Reworking mechanist into a minion spec to me feels like just patching back the old scrapper. Its a roleplay idea, but technically we still got gyros for that purpose (they are just a visual effect and not yet another healthbar). If there is anything I would like to rework on mech it would be to replace signets with something more interesting. Some of them such as overclock or shift signet have new mechanics or some form of spectacle. But the idea of introducing the passive skill type to a spec built around powerful pets makes my skin crawl. I had a bad feeling they would combine those because of all the demands for signets (for some reason?) and minions. Luckily the pet ended up singular rather than diluted into minipets with healthbars.

Yeah sorry, I appreciate the thoughtful ideas and criticism. I am just used to conversations being either Doom or Denial, and I went in expecting the latter. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it wasn't the case.

Judging by the list of proposed changes I think I might have another perspective regarding what accounts for "nearly there".

The engineer archetype in many games often tend to gravitate towards using short range shotgun weapons to compensate for increased firepower through devices such as turrets or utility such as the ability to repair vehicles. On release the engineer was as such given the classic shotgun style weapon with a few twists, while warrior would cover the more military style marksman/rifleman archetype which makes sense thematically. However the pistol would also fit into the short/medium range category with its main damage coming from point blank blowtorches, and with mortar being a stationary siege weapon (a flavour I miss, even if the implementation left much to be desired) that left engineers without much long range weaponry, and with odd options for melee combat. If i remember correctly that is why grenades ended up with such a long range (1200 and traited to 1500) as i think they used to have a medium range at some points during early testing. The mortar was redone but was still better when deployed as a tactical grenade and for utility than as a reliable long range weapon (the damage coefficient nerfs in pvp benefited us here however). As for turrets... The problem with the weapon bound method of expanding our options is that while it might work well for the brute force classes such as warrior (lots of physical weapons of a low tech nature) and for the magical classes where you can slap a thematic visual effect on every skill and say *snort* magic *snort*, the engineer ideally (at least for me) needs to have a good explanation for why and how they use a weapon. Using a staff to shoot fireballs is no good, instead we have to tie it to lightning rods, cattle prods and tesla style devices while still keeping it firmly connected to the weapon (we could use a greatsword to summon an orbital strike, but what is the point of the sword?). And i still think it is an emergency measure to account for other classes more easily adapting to hightech weapons than we are at adapting low tech without feeling like we are stuffing it full of unrelated gadget utility skills. It should be said though that even classes such as warriors are about to run into a problem of adapting thematic weapons. My hopes for whatever content they sell next is that they focus on expanding the utility side in a similar fashion. Something like introducing a new skill in every skillcategory or what have you. Or that we instead got options to switch skills on our weapons untamed style which would fit amazingly with the tinkering side of engineer. Imagine choosing to mount an incendiary grenade instead of a netshot cannister, or switching the auto attack into either a short cone fit for a sawed of shotgun feel or a long range marksmans shot to not make you feel as goofy when using the predator. The only problem would be that people would not get new skins to their main. But i am not exactly thrilled about having more dreamers around.

Let's just say it took nonehotbuildtest hours to come up with ways to complain about this weapon. A clunky and costly way to do something which we already do. What could be more classic engineer than that? It actively avoid synergies without bringing anything particularity new. I chuckled a bit when i saw the prenerfed cooldowns in wvw. As if it was going to change the meta at an alarming rate in this state. In terms of constructive feedback: You could increase the radius to 240 or even 360. You could make the firefield apply a few stacks of burn instead of token vulnerability. You could increase the coefficients on a weapon so die hard dedicated to doing "support" over damage. You could make the pulse effects on some of the skills more attractive than slow or (hah) cripple. You could even go crazy and allow it to provide any one of the real attractive boons such as protection, stability, resistance or even the fabled quickness or alacrity. Some of these changes might even make it effective. The elephant in the room is that even if that was the case (instead of it being forgotten as an embarrassing mistake like turrets), I don't believe you would be able to make it fun to use.

You are missing the real fun over in the engineer forum!

I am amazed at this point that he even cares to correct things like typos when the actual content of the post is so transparently vacuous.

This is NHBT, he does this all the time. Take a peak at the spvp forum if you dare. He doesn't even look at the videos by his own admission.

Man i miss the hobosacks. I know i am the only one, but still...

Back in my day we blasted our smoke fields and we liked it!

The earliest version of the 100nades build (including stealth) was back in 2013 afaik. Old enough for people to reference 100 blades.

I suppose they make a good point. We shall have to withdraw stealth from engineer to avoid a thematic cease and desist. But you will be handing in ALL of your firearms wont you? Its an entire traitline for engineer after all, as is explosives, As is any form of technology. And alchemy. So things are looking especially bad for deadeye (has to use fingerguns from now on), bladesworn (do you have a license for that gun...blade?), harbringer (we got you on two charges, guns and elixirs). Also we will be taking that jade sphere thank you. And was that shortbow using explosives? Once this is done the court will be open for rangers to get back their traps and longbow from dragonhunters. On a serious note, i am not opposed to showing the function gyro while in effect as that was the gimmick it was created under.. However it also means it should have some power back, especially in wvw where it's a meme even compared to other stealth options on engineer. Mortar gets dull after a while.