Lynx.9058

OP put a lot of effort into crying here.

The problem here is that this game is built around buff spam, which is all done at close range. Every ranged build has to basically play like a melee character because if you don't, you're not getting those buffs that are critical for dealing damage or surviving. In any group content - whether it's fractals, wvw, or open world trains - will require you to play at point blank range to the enemy if you want to be effective. All the posts complaining about ranged builds being able to avoid mechanics easier seem to forget that fact.

There's No reason for ranged to do less than melee since, as you said, they do not get group buffs or heals without stacking up with the melee players, at which point their range advantage is gone. If ranged builds are forced to play at melee range because of how reliant everyone is on buff spam, they really aren't ranged builds anymore; they're melee builds with ranged weapons. As far as a range threshhold, I think you're looking at this the wrong way. Yea, mechanist/engineer has traits which force being at close range, and when you're using a ranged weapon on a ranged build that is a bad idea IMO. Ranged builds, if they truly are meant to be played at range, should be encouraged to actually do so - not to sit in melee with everyone else.

You tend to believe what supports your particular agenda, that's the gist of it.

Last night running champion/bounty/event trains, I was seeing 2-3 mechanists out of 20-30 players in each group. I think your numbers are BS at this point, honestly. Anyways, following the patch the damage output has definitely dropped, but it seems right in line with my harbinger/firebrand now.

elementalists are the red headed stepchild of this game. They aren't allowed to get buffs. I'm not actually sure the devs know how to create a proper working caster. EDIT: This was sarcasm people, you can stop being confused now =P

God the mech hate is real. That salt is flowing.

I did make a few adjustments based on my preferences. I use a dagger offhand for the extra condi damage/bleeding and because it looks way better on my character than focus/warhorn, I'm using the syringe skin for it 😃 but I do need to get a good warhorn for the weapon swap still. Using all celestial gear since it was a boosted character anyways, so most of my gear issues were taken care of already.

Thanks for the info, I made some changes and I'm doing crazy good on harbinger now. I wasn't using the right runes/sigils before (missed those from the build link). Damage out of shroud still seems pretty average, even sub-par, but as soon as I go into harbinger shroud it melts everything. Survivability is way up with the tormenting runes and I've been able to solo some of the bounties and overworld bosses even.

Soulbeast's beastmode mechanic on mechanist would be great. Have it merge the player into the mech like the asura golem suits =P

A 17% drop, sounds like plenty nerf to me.

Pmech is hardly the only 'viable' LI dps build for instanced content. Just take a look at harbinger and firebrand, a few more key presses per minute but still well within the "low intensity" domain, and they both do just as much dps. Here's the changes I think would work: 1. Remove autocast from the mech's abilities. If any class gets autocast on its pet, it should have been ranger. The fact that you don't even have to press a button to use the mech's big attacks is one of the main things contributing to the LI/"Afk" dps situations. 2. Rework Rifle to have a little less damage on AA, but more damage on 2 and 4. Yes, this will effect all engineer specs, but I don't think we'd see too many complaints from scrapper or holosmith regarding rifle having the damage moved around a little. The goal is to make you push more buttons, instead of just sitting there spamming autoattack. 3. Fix whatever went wrong with the update that is causing mechs to do more damage now than they used to, even though it was supposed to drop overall dps. I think what happened is they weighted more ferocity for the mech through mechanical genius while removing it from Variable Mass Distributor, and the net change ended up being a buff rather than a nerf. 4. AAR was already removed from the mech, we're fine there. I think that and fixing the ferocity change is enough of a DPS loss from the top end. After the ferocity fix, if damage ends up being too low, some can be added back in with rocket punch.

let's be honest, both necro minions and ranger pets also need to have some customization options. I hate how necro minions look. They're terrible, low quality models that look like fleshrats. I'd love it if they gave us some skeletons and zombies as skins for those minions.

Oh I "get it", I just disagree that the current design is fun in any way. There seems to be a subset of players who, for whatever insane reason, actually like piano gameplay though. Probably why they're here and not playing any of the other MMO's on the market, it's one of the things guild wars 2 seems to be known for that is frustrating to anyone who's played another MMO.

That I'm not sure of. All I know is they were removing the ferocity gain from Mech Frame: Variable Mass Distributor. That trait will now only give the mech additional precision afaik.

For holosmith, I don't see the issue having the toolbelt as well as holoforge. For mechanist, there is no toolbelt at all, so nothing would change for them. This is why I suggested allowing kits to be equipped as a secondary weapon and swapped to (minus healing kit, which needs to remain a heal slot ability). Every engineer would get exactly one kit (two with healing kit, if taken) and can use it in addition to their normal weapon. No more using 2+ kits at a time, which means they can be properly balanced to be substitutes for an actual weapon, which engineer has been deprived of since the beginning specifically because of the existence of kits. Set up that way, every engineer spec would have their primary weapon (mainhand/offhand), and select grenade kit, bomb kit, elixir gun, toolkit, or flamethrower as their 'secondary weapon' to swap to in combat. Mortar would remain an elite (though it needs some buffs IMO), healing kit would remain in the healing slot.

Not sure, tbh. They may have given it a baseline amount with the patch to make up for it no longer getting ferocity from the mechanist's gear.

Think your tone would be different if you played any of them. This is a classic case of "my class/spec isn't the best anymore, so nerf the new fotm"

Is Blood magic / blood bank not used on any of these? I thought that was a go-to for survivability with all necro builds.

Ground targeting pretty much needs to disappear entirely from this game. It's a frustrating mechanic that nobody really enjoys using.

honestly elementalist as a whole needs to be completely scrapped and reworked. It is supposed to be THE 'caster' class in this game, and so far it's basically been a melee fighter with some elemental themes. Personally I wish they would've at least used rifle for catalyst, and made it a sort of tech/alchemy based magic spec with ranged DPS. Staff needs to be reworked into a proper and viable option for tempest and weaver as well.

Exactly what the devs just said they're trying to get rid of

Instead of having a pet active for the druid specialization, what if it changed the functionality of the Spirit abilities, making them into the equivalent of necromancer minions? Spirits, once summoned, would have unlimited duration and follow the druid around until killed, and their activated effects would become available just like the active abilities of necro minions. This seems like it would fit Druid more thematically, as well as provide a better support option and make spirits (which are necessary for support builds) much easier to use.

IMO druids should have gotten permanent spirits that follow the player, instead of access to the pet again. Would've been more thematically fitting and support themed, basically turning druid spirits into something akin to necromancer minions.

I think these changes would be fine. Just no further, I'd rather not have mechanist become unplayable because they overreacted due to commentary on these forums. It's already being dropped down to about 10k lower on benchmark than other DPS builds with the upcoming changes to AAR and mech ferocity. I'm fine with manually casting the mech's abilities and agree that it will bring up the skill floor slightly (TBH I don't use autocast on them anyways because I save core reactor shot and jade mortar for break bars, as any good mechanist should). I definitely agree with giving autocast pet abilities to rangers (all specs of ranger) and think it would greatly help that spec be more playable, and provide a more LI option for them.