Tinkerer.2167

There's a reason why herald was played there though, it wasn't because it inherently great on its own, but if you look at the team comps you'll understand why.. It's similar to people saying Untamed is absolutely broken but the only reason Boyce ran it was to counter the 3 specters and no enemy tempest on team in the previous mAT before. It has a niche purpose for very niche things in organized play, that != high tier play spec. A high tier spec would be something that you absolutely need to run, maybe 90% of the time to be competitive, a good example is Specter. You don't really need herald in either of these teams, they're just added as a slot for DPS roaming to pair with BS (and no Tempest hints at that, one of the many hints why it's run here). It's a really bad argument to make for Herald being relevant in organized formats. It's just not, 95% of the time. It's a pug stomper in ranked, and it's fun to play. That's why it's used in ranked at top level and barely used in organized play.

Distortion causes point neutralization, which invalidates the very existence of trying to stay alive for as long as possible on a side node, regardless of 2v1 potential. Also, in ranked it's a known obvious fact that roaming and bursting is king, so it also further invalidates the premise of this class even being any better than it is now. This is why Virt will still be bad post patch. It'll have more survivability for sure though, but I just think it won't amount to much value in the long term for the spec as a whole. Finally, virt is for the most part projectile based... Which I think we both know is already useless because Tempest exists. It gets its entire offense shut down by a single spec.

If we're talking about PvP, it won't matter, untamed is still a better pick. Even with pet swap ability, it just slightly restores a spec that was overnerfed. There's so much more to soulbeast that made it better in its initial state, and pet swapping was only a minor portion of it. Untamed is just a better roaming burster than soulbeast, and for that reason it'll just be flat out better still. Especially since Cata wasn't nerfed, nor was Tempest, which Tempest shuts down Ranger entirely anyway, for that reason you barely see it in competitive. It's definitely going to help the spec in PvP, but untamed will still outperform it based on role priority in ranked. This is at the upper level anyway. I mean, you can pretty much run anything in Gold-Plat1 and be absolutely fine.

No

Well, holo forge isn't that great as a mechanic on it's own though... It's traits that requires you to maintain a maximum heat value to produce damage remotely equivalent across the board with % and might gen (even out of forge because sword skills reflected upon heat value etc) to have an impact and have enough defensives (condi clear), if you don't run it you're basically making 0 impact. Most of the functional aspect of forge is to maintain dmg % for your class across the board, not so much of the value from the kit skills itself. Reaper does have issues though, I just don't get the comparison.

"because they come with exclusive cosmetics " A monthly gizmo is an exclusive cosmetic and a title that is by far more rare than any Fractal, Raid clear you could ever pay for, and that value will vary heavily based on which gizmo it is, for example a golden crown is extremely valuable. It's something you'll never get access to in PvE, and is only achievable by winning a monthly tournament. I understand the topic is more about wintrading, so obviously the title in question is going to be rank1 God of PvP or even the 2nd tier title from then. That alone is even more rare and valuable technically than fractal, raid clears where raid/fractals are more common, and easy to carry through. There is only 1 way to get r1 title, and that method is extremely hard, even if you pay for it. The amount of coordination needed to do it properly is ridiculous and may even be down to luck in a lot of cases. It is in the <0.1% of the population that have one. I'm not sure what your distinction here is, but people will pay a lot of money for them for that reason alone. On Epic accounts with them sell for a minimum $2,000+, and those are just flat alts with Gizmos and nothing else. There's a lot of money not only in mAT's, because top players will flood alts with Gizmos and then sell them, but also because they charge for coaching, Top leaderboard carries and of course, monthly tourney wins. I think though, it's difficult to actually coordinate carrying someone's legit account in an mAT win, because it's heavily monitored, so what they tend to do is just get gizmos for their own alts then sell them and make money that way. It's easier, and it's safer for them.

Maybe but nobody was running around with zerk core ranger before when it was relevant in side node, because when you breath on ranger with zerk it dies... It's just an auto focus, similar to power harb Maul hitting for 9k isn't the issue, because ranger on zerk is a liability and doesn't hit for 9k Maul hitting for 9k on valk is the issue, because it's much more tanky, and even then you were getting 5-6k crits w/ MoC setup But that's irrelevant now... Maul isn't even what makes Untamed busted in ranked, it's a package of everything that makes is a good roaming spec, and there is a lot of classes that are also good in ranked, Herald is very good in ranked, but dogshit in comp. Similar to Herald, Untamed is irrelevant in comp, and only reason it was used by boyce in last eu AT was because enemy team ran 3 specters, which Untamed counters. The moment you put a tempest on the team with a decent comp though, Untamed becomes irrelevant. It's the sad reality. Since support is utter useless in ranked, and roaming is king, it's no question untamed will be much more relevant there. I'm just confused by the logic being thrown out around here.

coping, there's a reason they didnt run DH in mAT when it was really good and it had more consistent dmg uptime than untamed ever will... It's just a good pug stomper build. DPS + Roaming will always be king in ranked, and there's other classes that can do that too, like herald. the ONLY reason boyce ran untamed in mAT was because akimbo mode had 3 specters.. he needed to otherwise it prob would have been bladesworn because his bladesworn brings more value, but since flor can BS it was fine to run. even then they also barely won, even with untamed supposedly countering specter. thinking that untamed would have any value after shade nerfs to specter in mAT now is massive copium. it's only value in competitive is dependent on how good a few other specs are, specter mainly in this case. I will add that it's funny that you mention untamed, which was only brought to provide damage control from the specters and the harb was basically a decoy because you cant let harb free cast + low value kill = their team can do things and have more freedom elsewhere, but the big thing is you don't point out there's 5 thieves in mAT finals xD Like the bias that you show is unreal lol , like people ignore the obvious competitive broken kitten because it's most likely their profession, but point out other stuff because they dont like it.

So your problem isn't untamed, it's with Maul Maul hitting 9k requires some serious setup and zerker ammy.. Obviously it can be done but you need might stacks and MoC setup to do it. You cant just tp in and 9k maul crit. Doesn't work like that.

This probably won't be popular especially in PvE where spirits I imagine are a decent addition, but let's suppose spirits worked off of a toggle instead of spawning clunky AI pets that stand still. Similar to facets in herald Toggling "Spirit essence" as a utility skill gives you access to the spirit skills, this could be activated by a GM in NM. Heal could work like big heal over time in default state, activated could apply regeneration and triggering could give a health explosion to yourself and allies, elite could be something really good but have some impact. Controlled by spirit energy, which is drained over time depending on the amount of spirit "essences" that are activated. Essence explosion could evaporate essences to get boon buffs. It quite literally would work very similar to Revenant's energy consumption Like make them something actually interactive, fun and provide benefit outside of dmg boost bots in PvE, they see absolutely no play outside of that. They haven't been viable outside of PvE since maybe 2013-2014 when the spirit build was busted in a time where the PvP state of the game was very new. A lot of work in reality for one aspect of the class, but that rework could also be tied to an elite spec or just reworked inherently... I think having the GM activate those features in NM would make that line somewhat viable. I guess you still run into the issues of trait diversity like ranger always does. Being forced in NM would take chunks of dmg out of your build, so not sure. Instead of reworking it across the board, since those features would only be controlled by the GM, if you don't have that GM activated, spirits would work like they normally do, so players in PvE could still use the spirit features like they currently work. Just a thought anyway, it's just spirits have been bad for a long time outside of Pve.

What amulet do you run? What traits in mech do you run? What is your rating? Running side node? "It's braindead easy. First game I swapped to it, I didn't have keybinds set up. I literally just pointed the mech at my opponents and went about my usual engineer gameplay without the mech skills. " Don't know if this a meme or should be taken seriously, unless you're running a full burst amulet with the pre/feroc trait the mech does almost nearly no damage, if you control it with soft cc. "The mech never dies. I think the mech died at most 5 times across the ~50 games I played as mechanist. I wasn't even running the barrier signet or sustain traits. I basically didn't ever worry about its health" ? Weaver counters mech, condi alliance/demon counters mech, LR ele counters mech (not even condi btw), signet cata counters mech, Bladesworn literally hardcounters mech... As mech your only good position is to side node, and port in and run f2 to provide stab and alac for teammates... That's it. This is why it's not a good teamfighter, because the mech would die quickly if you're not running the defensive mech traits and a defensive amulet. Also, you need to run mortar elite so nobody would run elite to revive mech, it's a wasted elite. That's why it's good in organized settings. If you're running burst mech, then there's no way you're doing well, because your traits won't allow it, against anybody with a brain that is.

I don't think you understand... the 10k isn't from the mech golem... It's a trait from explosives that produces an orbital strike which is based from stats from the engineer itself after a number of explosions... That's always existed in the engineer core kit, not a mech specific thing.

If you're referring to orbital, it's always done that kind of dmg in pvp, and you need zerk amulet to do it or keep consistent 25 might on you on less burstier amulet and hope your explosion lineup matches to produce an orbital while having those 25 might stacks.. On paper, it sounds good.. In actual fights, it's much less so. If you're talking about jade energy shot, numbers of jade energy shot in your screenshot, you need to have the pre/ferocity trait line selected while you yourself also needs to have a ferocity power amulet on (it only scales on your feroc/pre). You can't equip wizard and do those numbers with a golem (like OP is demonstrating) because it doesn't take 100% of power only 50%, and only precision and ferocity is 100% only from the trait. It's taking only 50% of the stats through the 1st minor. This doesn't go in line with the OP, because the OP has the condition trait selected, which you won't get those numbers and you're keeping perma 25 might on your golem, which I think we both know even with HGH in alch it's practically impossible (no elixir options from the toolbet since you run mech). You couldn't even do that with Grieving amulet which would be the ideal mixture if you wanted to have both condi dmg and spike dmg from your golem (go grieving, run pre/feroc trait). The reason the information is important is because the meta mech build currently isn't even using either the condi or pre/feroc trait, it's using the vit/conc trait because a side noder needs to have that for the survivability options in the Mech f2. If you don't run that you'll just die or more importantly even more so now since mech doesn't have a defiance bar (so weakness, blind, cripple, chill, immob now work on them, not to mention cc's), even with elixir gun you need it and it would die. It's not an optional thing to be efficient with mech now, you just need it which highlights the core problem. The reality is mech even with wizard, rabid or carrion is a soft condi applier. There's other classes that can apply condis better while having better survivability without relying on AI, even untamed can apply condis better (not to mention more weakness consistently and doesn't need to camp elixir gun autos). I'm sorry but if anybody is complaining about mech now, as it stands, really just needs to get better and micro manage golem movement better, it's nowhere close to ranger where they can swap pets out.. You can very easily micromanage the melee mechs... I think the ranged mech is a bit different, but there's so much projectile denial in the game now (even untamed has a low cd f3 pet untamed cloud) that it's kind of irrelevant. This forum post is really just not providing any actual valuable issues or insight and most of it is very mixed from the OP itself to the people replying.

"Its mobility is bad in this new EOD meta. Everything was given a ridiculous amount of teleport & general mobility creep. Bladesworn is very easy to get away from. " Well, I mean there's maybe only 2 classes from EOD that will see play at any kind of actual scale when comparing to HoT/PoF specs and with mech nerfed and vindi losing a lot of it's sustain that is even more apparent. Right? So in reality there's no mobility to compare to for Bladesworn in terms of an "EoD meta", nobody is playing willbender competitively and you can have the same mobility as vindi on rev and it's a more reliable roamer burster despite it's obvious weaknesses, in all reality it's looking like vindi will be more of a noder as Alliance/Demon. There's not enough sustain on harb to even be worth it and specter is more or less the same class but with a bit more team fight potential - still the same mobility. You have a tp on mech, but it's useless now as a side noder, just bring LR ele or any condi spam spec and it's easy so not many will bring it now. EoD brought a bunch more mobility, sure, but if nobody plays them because they're useless then it's kind of a pointless argument. I can bring a lot more mobility and provide insufficient value in another part of the map until Bladesworn gets there, or I can play a more viable spec and sacrifice the mobility in exchange for actual value. So the EoD meta you're referring to just doesn't exist to even try to compare it. If anything the meta in terms of mobility stayed the same with only slight adjustments with EoD coming in. So yea, Bladesworn still is mobile enough when comparing to most of the good specs that are being played in ranked and at the top level.

He has mobility.. dt is on a 4 sec cooldown... lol .. Has good condi removal (aoe too), good sustain, got pressure, bs skills do ridiculous damage at a good range threshold... It's busted. Nevermind that though, after watching markhutirios, grim, anya, naru and jeff duel helio after scrim practices on bladesworn it's safe to say that Bladesworn will easily be the next broken spec once people have gotten it down - its quite literally unbeatable and this is matchups between good players who are probably at the top level of what you could play at in this game on NA at least. It was good before, but immediately got super buffed with vindi and mech nerfs. It was already stalling or beating vindi pre-nerf, it's just demolishing vindi now. Anybody defending and trying to wrap conceptual outplays around this class in terms of avoidance is missing the fact you'd be formulating an entire team platform around the concept of "How do we outplay this class by playing the map?" - then you know it's stupid busted and it's not realistically going to work in ranked. The fact that you have to actually do that, is the same mindset that was with bunker chrono back in the day - they built team comps around not only using it but trying to beat it to a point where they knew it wouldn't work and everyone just ran it, because it was so busted. It seems like that is what you're suggesting here. You're asking an entire group of strangers in ranked with a max threshold of a duo q to decide how they're going to outplay a bladesworn on map rotation because it's simply uncontested in 1v1s and you just have to play the map due to it's hypothetical slowness (which again, theyre not slow) in a PvP mode where not even the top 4-5% players can 1v1 the class.

Also tools becomes useless, most of the kit is tied to toolbelt skills. This concept of the mech needs to be looked at to offer more viability... I knew tying an AI to a class that has been known to have some of the highest skill options available to them next to weaver wouldn't cut it. I thought the defiance bar was broken/op, and that it wasn't needed in PvP because it had no place it would introduce a concept that should only be in PvE but with how mech is, it almost quite literally needs it to be viable. As crazy as that sounds, I guess I just didn't realize how the defiance bar was carrying it and overshadowing how counter-able and bad it is without it.

I disagree, one of the main things about the mech was that it couldn't have weakness applied to it. Now for just one of many examples, LR weaver has a huge advantage, and most likely just an easy win condition against you since they can regularly cc the pet the entire fight consistently, not only damaging it but inflicting weakness... It really could just be considered almost an auto win for an LR weaver, you would have to slot the highest amount of area condi cleanse (automatically forced to use elixir gun) to have a chance to regularly cleanse the weakness off - not only is that unrealistic but in most cases your mech will die from the procs itself not including the damage by the ele itself. Alot of that dmg before was non-existent because the mech couldn't be disabled until the defiance was at 0, now it can be regularly cc'd for high proc potential. Not to mention since it can be soft cc'd now, it's automatically going to lose against alliance/demon condi build that people are starting to run. Anya for example made it specifically for the mech meta build pre-nerf, now it has a much higher advantage due to the chill and torment uptime.

Fair enough, I should have specified that too but yea, I was thinking along with that making swapping the mech out more fluid or almost as fluid as a ranger pet, but I think that would still introduce the same problem you're referring too and thematically wouldn't fit, since your mech would almost need to just disappear instead of it's fly up animation. Maybe rename it "Teleport away" xd and it just vanishes. Mech just seems like a weird spec... Engineer from core to holo has always been about massive skill options and diversity which included a higher skill ceiling along with it, and with mech it basically takes a majority of that away and puts a reliance on an AI pet and you're even more pigeonholed by trait diversity between being more tanky or bursty along with mech trait choices directly affecting dmg. It's not a bad or horrible spec, it just takes it out of the engi mindset/playstyle that it's always shared between the 2 other spec variants and core.

Harbinger is a do as much as dmg as you can before getting nuked down spec. It has virtually no sustain. The moment you are focused or try to 1v1 good players you will see the glaring flaws in the defensive qualities of harbinger, because those players will mitigate the burst dmg output for harbinger well, which leaves you pretty much a free kill afterwards. I mean there's even better pug stompers, because anything that sneezes on you as a harbinger and you'll just die... Atleast with holo, dh, untamed you have much more survivability and mobility while providing more than enough impact damage to pressure teams. I feel like they should give more survivability to harbinger in exchange for some of that burst damage.

Like if you were able to swap out the mech and put it away for access to your toolbelt skills, it would allow for a better "swap and play" mechanic. You could queue up putting your mech away and use some other skills to micro-manage. Only then would I not mind nerfing the dmg on mech, because then you could do stuff yourself while also actively handling your mech management. The problem is moreso that most survivability on engi was in the toolbelt skills, so you have this kind of necessary use of the defensive trait lines in Mechanist line to make up for that, but that leaves you in a corner for anything else possible on a mech build. For this reason I think the mech hitting harder than a normal ranger pet for example should, is warranted. If you nerf dmg on the mech itself, you might as say goodbye to this spec unless you give it other stuff to compensate for it, because it wouldn't even be able to sit on a point (its only good role) and if it hit less, a bursty variant which already isn't do-able definitely wouldn't work.

Right, but now it can be controlled And yes, you are supposed to kite it because the only one that will hit you consistently while you kite is the ranged mech, which isn't that good because projectile denial is way too rampant in 1v1 matches. If you're arguing for not wanting to get hit AT ALL in a given fight, well, then what's the point of the AI pet to begin with. You'll just get destroyed by a good fresh air ele, and if you don't think that's the case - duel grimjack on it. Considering mech is basically a side node role at this point, the dueling reference makes way too much sense, which weaver or cata should hold up quite well to it now that the mech can be controlled much easier without defiance. He demonstrates how easy it is to not only control the mech, but utilize that denial to render it useless. With melee it's even worse, it has a windup time on it's 1st attack of the animation, which means 80% of the fight you will probably never get hit by a full attack chain. Melee attacks have a 1/3 windup time on the first attack, yet you say it's fast, that's slow. I don't think you understand, from the moment you stop, the mech stops -> starts wind up animation -> hits you -> then proceeds to try the 2nd attack in the chain with an ICD -> refreshes animation after you move... That's slow. Where you're getting the idea that they're fast outside of having quickness is beyond me, because they aren't as fast as you're making them out to be. What made it busted before was the fact that weakness, chill, hard cc, etc didn't affect it until the breakbar was gone. It was literally an un-soft-cc'able machine that hit hard. Now you can do aoe weakness and mitigate a massive amount of it's damage, and it dies a lot easier now too while also potentially not doing as much damage. With the loss of toolbelt skills, and entire trait line unusable and a mech that goes on a 45 second cooldown with traits that don't benefit the engineer nearly as much, it's way too many "tradeoffs". It's really really easy now to condi spam down the mech on point, and I know because Anya who runs condition vindi/demon eats it alive and has tons of mobility to kite out the only advantage a mech has against you -> sit on point and eat damage. The mech doesn't have efficient enough movement to reward chases and you run mace in most cases on a side node build, so you yourself don't even have chase potential. The examples above with rev and ele are not meant to say that it's bad now (because it's not), it's meant to show it can be countered or at the very least have outplay potential now while also being durable enough to provide a role as a side noder, this in my mind is a good stance to take on their balance without removing a spec entirely. -- With that said though, the only time a mech will hit you hard is when you run pre/ferocity trait and you build around your amulet being glass, but the clincher there is you can't run alchemy/inventions to have the damage numbers you need to be offensive enough to have a good defense as a bursty spec. You'll have 11-12k orbitals, and your mech will hit for 1.9-2k per auto , but you will have almost no cleanse. Holo is able to do it because the toolbelt skills and holo leap made it worth doing and the barrage allowed enough offense to make it viable dmg along with sword skills when heat is managed nicely. You can't do that with mech, you lose all of those abilities with mech - so a burst variant is a meme. The only real good build atm with mech is the side node alch/explosive/boon mech build or a variant of condi with the same stuff but with pistol instead of mace. Also, you're even more limited in your mech traits because they directly tie to how your mech does damage. This wasn't a big deal before because the mech had a defiance bar. Now it is a big deal. There's a reason why mechs dont hit as hard with the side node build, because you have to run the conc/vit trait to get access to the boons needed to tank damage along with the condi removal needed to fight against condi 1v1 specs while also having enough defense to take +1's (ranger does it better now that the mech is cc'able). So not only is there a few tradeoffs in the spec itself, theres dmg type tradeoffs in the trait selections of the spec lines also. Which is fine. I think mech is in a good spot atm, you can now run weaver or ranger and with the nerfs to mech and vindi the untamed and bladesworn are already much much better. Even catalyst is looking better now. I think they did a good job this time around nerfing the mech just enough without completely removing it and I think mech is fine now.

they actually made trapper better, now superspeed stacks

Trapper ranger has no stun breaks though, meta DH trapper has 2 and one of those completely clears condis - with trapper ranger you can't just slot all wilderness utilities and clean condis, you have to rely on your healing spring, which means you need to stand in it, and any competent player knows once you use that heal, you can be loaded with condis. Trapper ranger doesn't have an un-evadeable pull (that also pulls through revenant sword 3 and dodges) with 8k ToF traps, if they did ranger would have been nerfed literally within minutes of people using it. This is the actual difference between the 2. The only comparable thing between the 2 is trap downstate cleave is good, because its brainless, you lay traps and they do damage. This is the only comparable thing between the 2. Rangers need to run 3 traps to even have effectiveness because poison and fire trap is needed and you need spike for lockdown potential, otherwise people would almost always never run into your traps. If you miss any of those you lose pretty much a majority of your damage since you're running condi. So I mean, yea, they constantly invis and can run around, but that's it. They will lose nodes and they can't roam because they have no 1up potential. The biggest weakness of ranger is no stun breaks when running traps, so warriors will just destroy you, and with no sic-em slotted, you would be a flat easy kill for a DH. So the goal on trapper ranger is literally constantly re-invising around nodes, applying conditions and annoying people and trying to get people to 2v1 you for long enough time that your team does anything useful, and you will never hold caps because invis neuts points soooo you are almost forced to run roam and 1up or team which there are like, I don't know so many better options for that, like just run DH xDDD Valk core and sicem soulbeast are 100x more effective and easier to be effective. Trap ranger is actual garbage, but that doesn't mean the rune itself doesn't give too much, it's an annoying cheesy rune and should just be removed from pvp or at the very least durations lowered OR an ICD put on the stealth and superspeed application so neither class can cheese with it. I would say 5-10 sec ICD, that way you don't spam traps just to get superspeed like both classes abuse so much.

All Hail Koroshi

Firebrand is actual garbage, and necro does have decent builds in all expansions lol Core condi, power reaper and bunker scourge are very effective in ranked. The only thing id say is less impactful is scourge, even though it's ironically a much better effective build it really only works in organized competitive, supports just don't really do well in ranked -- better off running reaper or condi core.