miriforst.1290

So napalm nerf to nerf core condi, and power scrapper nerf (with similar changes across classes)? All just casually dropped in without official motivation afaik? This smells the same as that mystic coin change (i say as someone not playing much cm). It's bad faith changes to push people into buying an expansion which feels like they lack confidence in. It is funny to have gone: -"Of course i will prepurchase a gw2 expansion set in cantha." -"Okay this reveal seems pretty lacklustre, let's hold the purchase until they have had a chance to reveal everything." -"Best wait until launch." -"Let it be out for a month or two to get things in order." And now: -"Maybe sometime." Of course we shouldn't be prepurchasing stuff in the first place, but it used to be that the gw franchise was my weak spot. Glad i didn't purchase this. The more revealed the worse it got.

Mentioning here as well that appart from the ult (which is listed as 5x2 sec of immob) it appears both jacaranda and ancient seed applies twice as much immob as listed in the tooltip (5x2 vs 5x1 seconds). This has been the case since hot release.

Well, there is the problem that jacaranda root and druid root both apply twice as much immobilize as stated in the tooltip. The entangling root elite states correctly that it is 5 pulses of 2 seconds of immobilize. The other two however lists 5x1. This is not the case. This means that even with a 33% reduction trait and food that reduces condition duration by 20% it takes an extremely minor investment in expertise to still have it pulse 1.25s of immobilize, enough to cover any lag between pulses. Arenanet thought 3 seconds immobilize was too much on net shot (which is the case). It really isn't that strange that people get frustrated.

Thematically and mechanically that would be a big resounding no from me. There are better classes for waving magic wands around and pulling jade rabbits out of hats.

I'ts the most commonly suggested e-spec in the same way that fishing was the most commonly suggested feature. I just don't have much faith in either. To me it just sounds like a tick box for asura roleplayers (who already have golem racial skills, except they suck. Which brings us back to turrets). I do hope its more of a mech/battlesuit (although i would have preffered a more supportive elite) as you say than a full on minion master (remember they like to reuse skill types). Full minions would be a disaster, and i have seen plenty suggestions on reddit for that as well. Often by people doing a full elite spec suggestion and who haven't played enough engineer or spent enough time in the engineer community to understand why we are highly skeptical of new AI skill types or mechanics.

That is very unfortunate. If the mace from the previous leak is a melee weapon as well (or condi mid range, wouldn't that be hilarious!) i can't see this spec doing well. If a developer reads this. Engineer has had 2 elite specs so far, both power melee focused. Scrapper in wvw happened because there wasn't any 3rd supportive traitline. Out of these one tried to do summons in what was actually a reasonable fashion that could have worked, if they had stuck to pulsing effects around them and a tighter leash. However it was decided to streamline this into just an aoe that followed the engineer. Fair enough. Then we have the core engineer with a skill type that was heavily featured in promotional material and which is a traditional staple of engineer archetypes in many a game which was deemed troublesome and delegated to afk farming queensdale or whatever (is that why you moved self destruct to the main skill? So that it can't be autocast? Because i don't believe any changes made to turrets are there to actually improve the skill type). The problem here is that even if these bots or golems or whatever they will be are the best skill in slots for every gamemode (doubt that will last longer than 5 mins before an emergency update, ha!) i still think this was a bad idea. Because we already have an ai type designed to fight for us with rockets, nets, flames and quakes in the ground and if this new skill type does anything else than passively buff you like gyros (which we already replaced with wells) then we already have skills for that and you have just sold us a balance update, and we are down one elite spec compared to everyone else in my book. Fix turrets before you give us golems. And if you cant think of a way to make stationary weapon emplacements work in this game (player controlled or ai) then replace them with something else. You did it with thief traps so i know you can. Please.

What have you done? You know it will only end like this:The changes will cause an uproar which leads to a massive smiters boon with massive collateral damage, which leads to the buffed abilities ending up worse than how they started. Remember how they buffed elixir S trait before removing it? On the other hand i'm pretty sure they would nerf elixir r on "principle" even if they didn't buff it once they have to tone down the feedback revives or whatever.

Nvm i skimmed through too fast : P

I made a considerably longer post but i figured its just a waste of the proverbial ink. So the highly situational primary mechanic (as in the holomode, the beastmode, the astral form) that cost us a elite toolbelt and several good adept traits (and is mostly just a downgrade anyhow to the original anyhow) needed counterplay that badly that you felt like designing an entirely new layer of counterplay. I mean outside of the fact that it still got low armor, can be killed, cced and has a limited duration. Wow. In what world was the old function gyro over performing that badly? Here i thought the old scrapper was broken due to its 1v1 sidenode stalling potential (in which case the function gyro doesn't even figure in the equation!). Anything without stability is a pinball, and every downed state that can't already waltz away from the function gyro got CC. It is a primary mechanic that it is designed to fail at the one small niche it was meant for. And you see nothing wrong with this? Let it be balanced around the fact that it can be destroyed, has a limited duration, and can be knocked all over the place already (which already improves the odds that it will naturally expire). At the moment its the biggest failure since turrets. Let that sink in. Ps Did you apply the same care when you considered adding a trait to warrior increasing damage against scrappers by 50%? Since scrappers can't stop generating barrier thanks to the same obligatory minor trait reducing our health that people didn't like either? Or is that reserved for Frankensteins monster over here? This.Function Gyro might as well not exist at this point. And I haven't even noticed the warrior buff at first, if this applies to the healthpool this is INSANE. So basically the supposed tank specialization is now designed to be one-shotted by warriors. A+++Funny thing is not even stability (defense field, since mass momentum does not apply to the gyro) protects from destruction. So they are concerned of counterplay, but the counterplay to that counterplay which requires a heavier investment from the scrapper than the standard CC everyone who cant already ignore it has is entirely rendered moot. Scrapper indeed is undeserving of that "S". Honestly all that's missing now is that the function gyro rallies the enemy when its destroyed. Would that be enough?

I ran a quick test this morning against the engineer and saw it rack up chill without taking too much damage, need to test with the warrior to compare.Might be that it counts as hit by cc even if it has stability. Which would be bleak. The alternative is even bleaker. And its hard to read "This has been the functionality since the rework but we are clarifying it in the upcoming update because players are under the mistaken assumption that Function Gyro has low health and armor. The Function Gyro has 18k health and 1.3k armor. " as anything but that the intended hp in live is 18k. Funny thing though about the armor though, because at release i was looking into why the bulwark gyro was exploding so fast and realized after measuring the difference between damage taken by me and the gyro (thanks to a friend proccing pulmonary impact which deals a set amount of damage) that it was close to base toughness (a naked player at level 80), if not even less if i remember correctly. This supports that theory. So much for that tanky gyro lol. The point of mentioning it dies to 1 rock was to confirm it's not CC at all that's in question Tested, 1 rock brought it down to 98% bodyblocked. Unsure if the pve indirect damage reduction still apply to bots in lobby. And i mean you know how much i love to whine about scrapper, so its not like im biased in anets favor here. : P Looks like a recent stealth fix, wow, I tested it after the last major balance patch. Well that's a nice surprise and makes me want to PvP on Scrapper more.Btw worth noting is that the stability trait (mass momentum) does in fact not grant stability to your function gyro, only to you and allies. I assume stability is applied before the gyro is spawned. From preliminary tests, stability also does not protect the gyro from destruction, so it wouldn't have helped anyhow. Uppdate: Yep, stability does not help (defense field). Which means this thing is really bad at its jobb.

I ran a quick test this morning against the engineer and saw it rack up chill without taking too much damage, need to test with the warrior to compare.Might be that it counts as hit by cc even if it has stability. Which would be bleak. The alternative is even bleaker. And its hard to read "This has been the functionality since the rework but we are clarifying it in the upcoming update because players are under the mistaken assumption that Function Gyro has low health and armor. The Function Gyro has 18k health and 1.3k armor. " as anything but that the intended hp in live is 18k. Funny thing though about the armor though, because at release i was looking into why the bulwark gyro was exploding so fast and realized after measuring the difference between damage taken by me and the gyro (thanks to a friend proccing pulmonary impact which deals a set amount of damage) that it was close to base toughness (a naked player at level 80), if not even less if i remember correctly. This supports that theory. So much for that tanky gyro lol. The point of mentioning it dies to 1 rock was to confirm it's not CC at all that's in questionTested, 1 rock brought it down to 98% bodyblocked. Unsure if the pve indirect damage reduction still apply to bots in lobby. And i mean you know how much i love to whine about scrapper, so its not like im biased in anets favor here. : P Also tested in with a friend in a match. It doesn't have 2k hp.

I ran a quick test this morning against the engineer and saw it rack up chill without taking too much damage, need to test with the warrior to compare.Might be that it counts as hit by cc even if it has stability. Which would be bleak. The alternative is even bleaker. And its hard to read "This has been the functionality since the rework but we are clarifying it in the upcoming update because players are under the mistaken assumption that Function Gyro has low health and armor. The Function Gyro has 18k health and 1.3k armor. " as anything but that the intended hp in live is 18k. Funny thing though about the armor though, because at release i was looking into why the bulwark gyro was exploding so fast and realized after measuring the difference between damage taken by me and the gyro (thanks to a friend proccing pulmonary impact which deals a set amount of damage) that it was close to base toughness (a naked player at level 80), if not even less if i remember correctly. This supports that theory. So much for that tanky gyro lol.

I've observed Function gyro die almost instantly in Fractals from AoE damage. Sure didn't seem like it had that much health. Is that 18k getting divided by 5 or something? They're talking about the Function Gyro on the dev client for these balance changes. Right now it definitely has 1k health. I wouldn't count on them referring to the test client. Sometimes they will insist.Eh I would say he is definetly talking about the live game and how its 18k hp now. It's just not explained that it instantly die on CC. Someone really should test that. It kind of could make sense since CC is thrown everywhere in WvW. It explains why most classes are unstompable with the gyro (guard and rangers with their AoE knockback/stun in particular) and of course that would make it totally worthless in most large fights.I think in pvp atleast it might actually have a decent hp pool. Why on earth they thought that something that should help stomp/revive you needed to be extra super vulnerable to cc i don't know, when the only times i've cared anything about function gyro was when it had stability so i could actually count on it doing its jobb against downed players without any friends to help them (where i would argue it NEEDS to be a guaranteed stomp if its to be of any value in that role). Arenanet apparently disagrees and think the fight between a gyro and a downed player should be in the downed players favor. Sure i can double stomp to secure a stomp, but in that case just blinds or stability is better. Flamethrower skill 5 is better.

I've observed Function gyro die almost instantly in Fractals from AoE damage. Sure didn't seem like it had that much health. Is that 18k getting divided by 5 or something? They're talking about the Function Gyro on the dev client for these balance changes. Right now it definitely has 1k health.I wouldn't count on them referring to the test client. Sometimes they will insist.

I made a considerably longer post but i figured its just a waste of the proverbial ink. So the highly situational primary mechanic (as in the holomode, the beastmode, the astral form) that cost us a elite toolbelt and several good adept traits (and is mostly just a downgrade anyhow to the original anyhow) needed counterplay that badly that you felt like designing an entirely new layer of counterplay. I mean outside of the fact that it still got low armor, can be killed, cced and has a limited duration. Wow. In what world was the old function gyro over performing that badly? Here i thought the old scrapper was broken due to its 1v1 sidenode stalling potential (in which case the function gyro doesn't even figure in the equation!). Anything without stability is a pinball, and every downed state that can't already waltz away from the function gyro got CC. It is a primary mechanic that it is designed to fail at the one small niche it was meant for. And you see nothing wrong with this? Let it be balanced around the fact that it can be destroyed, has a limited duration, and can be knocked all over the place already (which already improves the odds that it will naturally expire). At the moment its the biggest failure since turrets. Let that sink in. Ps Did you apply the same care when you considered adding a trait to warrior increasing damage against scrappers by 50%? Since scrappers can't stop generating barrier thanks to the same obligatory minor trait reducing our health that people didn't like either? Or is that reserved for Frankensteins monster over here?

Scrapper: Generates minor barrier whenever they deal damage from a obligatory minor trait that reduces vitality. Warrior: "I'm about end this mans whole career" I highly doubt there will be much growth in scrapper play if this trait becomes big (considering it also gives 25% damage against high health enemies it already looks like a decent burst trait).

Just so you know. Warriors cunning is essentially "50% more damage against scrappers". Thank you for impact savant. Such a lovely mandatory trait. Well worth giving up health for i would say. And you know actual good traits like rapid regen and adaptive armor.

A scourge can (more or less) stop spamming barriers as far as i know (outside of a zerg, in a small scale scenario). The scrapper can't stop if he fights back at all thanks to the same mandatory trait that still reduces our vitality. While it might be invented to counter scourge i don't think they even realized what this means for a scrapper. It aims for the scourge but hits him in the leg, after passing through the brains of a hobo scrapper. Honestly i don't know why they don't keep it at 25% damage to enemies above 90% health or with barrier. That would still mean big hurting for the scrapper but not as insane as this. The problem is also that 25% more damage against enemies above 90% health is a decent trait enough for a core trait in its tier. So its not like you would use it like old lock on which you might only switch to when you got fed up with that ghost thief trolling and stalling your teammates when they should be heading back to the squad. You might actually have this on your bar for general use.

Is that warrior kitten for real? LOLScrapper vs warrior was already a fight you didn't want to take unless you were specifically built for dealing with them (still hard).Now warrior is basically a hard counter to scrapper LOL Edit: Those warrior changes are kitten nuts holy kitten kitten I propose a trait for engineer that gives us 50% more damage against enemies under the effect of stability. So what, stability is handed out less freely than barrier so whats the problem? And we need a counter to boon spam don't we? Or we could get +100% damage against enemies with resistance since that is so rare of a boon! Those resistance spamming classes had it coming! I'm starting to think barrier and super speed was just a white elephant.

Meanhwile in warriorland: "Warrior's Cunning: This new trait increases damage by 25% against foes with health above 90%. Additionally, it increases damage by 50% against foes that have barrier. These bonuses do not stack." This essentially translates to: "deal 50% more damage to scrappers" since unless the scrapper afk, or just spam medkit, he is going to get constant but useless barrier spam translating 10k hits into 15k hits from this trait alone. And thats a core master trait. But go ahead and buff hammer which is the one thing already working decently. Back to buffing blowtorch i guess. Instead of fixing the mess you created with the scrapper tree... Oh and a damage buff on the function gyro OF ALL THINGS. Do i really need to start linking this again, pane 4 in particular ? That thing is years old by now, from 2016 in fact. Also if you are a dev, read that comic carefully. Multiple times. Meditate about it on a mountain. Do you see it? Do you see the irony of purity of purpose while buffing the damage of an escape/mobility skill and a heavy condition damage skill? Utter the words "Increased the damage of box of nails by 1000000000000%" and reflect on the meaning of this. Good. You can breathe out now. This concludes todays sermon.

I can't help feeling like we are being haggled with. Propose an insane change.Propose a lighter change that seems reasonable by comparison, use this momentum to suggest further changes.People forget the class took a massive nerf that broke core aspects of the scrapper and that this patch is at best implementing some light nerfs and reimplementing a tool they took away (and probably in a weaker form) at the cost of another (poison field for downed cleave and weakness). Notice how there are no proposed changes to the function gyro itself. Honestly the reduction in vitality penalty is still undercooked given id argue the trait isn't worth any vitality reduction at all given the removal of vital traits like rapid regen and adaptive armor (to name a few of the big hits, just ignoring the removal of stab on dodge and damage mods). Honestly i'm not surprised if people are gonna go stockholm syndrome over this. Good thing i got the original game (not gw2, the real guild wars) to wait for people to figure things out.

Well to quote myself: I genuinely believe the Frankensteins monster parallel, hell we were even brought to life in a thunderclap! It's just a few changes but it tells me all i need to know about their thoughts on the last big patch. That being "Jobb well done, let's do it again!".

I was going to do a long detailed and analytical post, but i think i will just be talking to a wall. But i will say this (if you even read this): Nerfing the scrapper instead of the toxin runes, after the last patches attempt at murdering the scrapper in spvp with the justification of "increasing build diversity" when scrapper is one of the rare changes in meta compositions and by all means a success story in "increased build diversity" at the meta level is so typical of what i have come to expect its both tragedy and comedy. You know what happens if you nerf scrapper untill the people playing it right now switch to something else? Those handfull of scrappers are replaced with..... (drum roll) yet more guardians or if we are lucky tempests like its HOT. Furthermore lets not go burn the candle at both ends with sneak gyro. You are reimplementing and boosting a lot of reveals so there actually is a counter to a very powerful mechanic, lets see what happens first before we increase the cooldown by close to 70%(!) on an elite skill that already lost a lot of its attraction with the removal of its toolbelt. I was happy with the scrapper at POF release. We were left alone with a suboptimal but "consistent" (or as close as we were gonna be) design It had its gimmicks and fun little quirks. Scrapper right now is just ugly, it works but just because of a lot of duct-tape. It's going against your will of it being an offensive brawler by being a healer partly because it can not compete with holo in that regard and partly because even without holo it lacks the tools to do so. It's weapon says you are a tank, its utilities says you are a support and its traits say you are a glassy berserker. And its primary mechanic says-... Oh well lets not open that can of 2k hp worms. Of course most engineers have given up discussion and will simply sit and be resentful and smug in the engineer subforum, not here where guardians and necromancers will tell everyone how utterly dominant and oppressing a handfull of scrappers are in wvw, as opposed to a perfect division of blue and green fighting each other. Some classes feels like there is genuine passion behind, and even if the don't turn out as well as expected there is still signs that it was someones Labour of love. In comparison the scrapper truly feels like frankensteins monster. It's a shambling abomination desperately wanting to be loved, with a maker revolting at and regretting its own creation. And so it wanders aimlessly through the world, with everyone telling it where it doesn't belong but never where it does belong. Just scraps stitched together to resemble a real elite spec. We laughed at "purity of purpose" because you never really bothered with purpose, and so it became more of a "lack of purpose". What did you take away from it? You made it into a joke trait which ironically is the best in slot meta alternative. I will be honest i'm not really looking to contribute to a back and forth discussion so i'm not sure if i'm going to bother following this thread, im just venting steam at this point. But i have watched since the return of the nerfbat last patch, curious to see what lesson you took away from it. And it seems to be that there is one area of the game scrappers are good enough to still be a part of (emphasis on "part of") The Meta and that is a big problem. Bah humbug!

While the gyro changes are a sensible compromise, i'm a bit put off by the top master and grandmaster majors. I get it, you want to play condi scrapper and feel validated by the class design when doing so (it would make sense if the next spec is condition focused). But there is to few a traits per spec to have traits which do not have any synergy with what the spec as its own package introduces. If it was poison instead of burn for example triggering the trait, then at least the purge gyro helps validate why its on scrapper and not in firearms for example. There are still ways to make the scrapper useful to condition builds without destroying the cohesion of the espec design. We usually do this with universally useful traits that provides utility or surviveability for both power and condition builds. In the old scrapper Adaptive armor was still a useful tool for condi build for example. In short if you want to go scrapper as a condition build you do it in the same way as one might pick alchemy in a condition build. It's like having a couple of traits in holo provide outgoing healing bonuses, it makes little sense when considering the holo introduces no healing abilities or synergies at all.Honestly the burn trait looks more fit for holo than it does scrapper. At least it has burning application at all. In short you are making the same mistake arenanet made with impact savant, where they tried to make a spec not designed around dishing out damage depend on its ability to dish out damage, but instead you make some traits depend on conditions not included in the spec itself (although they made it worse by tying it to a minor). Save those for core, a new elite spec built for conditions or change imob to interrupt, and burn to stun/daze (and we have experts examination again, only as a grandmaster....) and it makes sense with the themes and abilities the scrappers weapons and skills introduces. Pardon if i come off as harsh, but this balance patch shown how vital a coherent design is, and there's no reason for us support scrappers and condiscrappers to plunder the remains of this wreck instead of fixing it.

In the WvW forum, someone posted a picture of a reset zerg having 70% scourges. I sure as heck aint playing zerg scrapper healer after this patch even if it's core traits are unaffected. Because nothing makes sense anymore with the new scrapper and people are already shifting. No Anet, I do not want to go full berserker hammer spec just to get my own barriers from the new trait when scourges get AoE barriers by accidentally sneezing. Indeed, that minor trait alone pushes out actual bruisers (using toughness etc instead of full glass) as well as healer specs (that deal no damage and spend a lot of time healing instead of damaging) and the snowflake condiscrappers still holding out hope. And in the end, we already had a full damage spec in holo, we don't need two berserker melee cleave specs (and holo still does that so much better). If the -300 vit is for the sake of the 15% barrier generation why not have that as an optional grandmaster trait then (instead of the mess that is the new adaptive armor....) similar to invigorating precision (which is actual healing and doesn't carry a penalty, on a class well built to use it). This minor trait has to compensate the loss of all our previous barrier traits, as well as rapid regeneration and 300 vit on top of that. And in pvp i'm not sure it does, My theory is that they are destroying scrapper like this for the sake of (imaginary) pve scrappers and to do the classic nerf that looks like a fair rework to the outsider. In pve cleaving 5 targets with impunity is the norm and since glass is the only way there, they tried to reshape the scrapper into a fractal hero or something while ignoring how people have actually been using scrappers for the past years. Funny thing is that the blokes at the pvp forum are already screaming "NERF!" at the top of their lungs, because they think of all of this added onto the existing scrapper, and don't realize that this is a big gut punch of a nerf across the entire spec, and they don't see how much of it is meaningless fluff with massive penalties. I cringe every time i hear wooden potato go "exciting!!!!" over every single thing. Just listen to him talk about the damage delay trait like its the best thing that has ever happened. Speaking of which isn't it just hilarious how they removed the most popular master trait and left the trait that was never used as is? It's like trying to balance shredder gyro by removing all other gyros.