[Is the engineer supposed to be that strong ?]

OP put a lot of effort into crying here.

[Is there a strong ranged focused Ranger build for group content?]

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.

 

[Recent Balance Reflections]

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.

 

[Mechanist is dividing the Community]

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

[Mechanist is dividing the Community]

1 hour ago, Asum.4960 said:

When one specialisation out of 36 (27 without core) makes up 33% of all played specialisations, then yes, that seems fairly clear cut indicative of an issue. 

A spec exploding that much in popularity (and for very good reasons) is indeed entirely unprecedented in the game's history.

 

And while the nerf already reduced it's playrate slightly, that seems mostly post-nerf psychological, as it's still busted due to it's sheer DPS uptime.

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.

[Where are the Elementalist balance changes?]

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

[I was able to solo three champions at the same time with my Rifle Mechanist]

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

[Harbinger overworld solo build?]

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.

 

[Harbinger overworld solo build?]

On 10/5/2022 at 1:16 AM, Asum.4960 said:

Bloodmagic just costs too much Damage for too little sustain (it doesn't have any damage modifiers, it doesn't generate Might, Vuln, nothing), and Blood Bank as a Trait has the problem that it's only worth taking when you have very good sustain already - in which case you don't need the Trait anymore. 

You are better off getting your sustain, and more damage, elsewhere.

 

With the Healing Power from Celestial, Alchemic Vigor with holding onto Blight and Regen from Tormenting Runes is pretty much all the sustain you'll need in most cases already, at a good 700 HP healing per second. With Signet of Vampirism and Vital Persistence, you are already at a good >1200 passive healing per second. 

Coupled with Celestials Toughness and crucially the ability to kite on a ranged setup (like with Deathly Haste), that's more than you need for solo'ing any casual content.

 

If you are going full Condi - basically adapting the meta condi DPS Harbinger Build, Parasitic Contagion is another option - although that setup is far weaker in a solo/casual content context overall. 

Going full Viper's with Approaching Doom and Parasitic Contagion nets you about the same damage as the third build I shared, except far squishier, locked into melee/far less DPS uptime, less sustain, less Utility, no intrinsic ally boon support, far less flexiable and you have to deal with Corruptions/Condition transference. 

If you go Trailblazer, it just ends up worse than Celestial in every single way. 

It's an option though if you only have one gearset to invest into and want Vipers for endgame - and for general OW and especially Story, that should still easily get you through ofc.

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.

[Borrowing from other classes]

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

[Did Jade Mech always have a 500 baseline ferocity?]

5 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

On asc. cele gear with self buffs only: 3,5k DPS (down from the 4,2K DPS it had before the most recent bug fix).

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

[Mechanist is dividing the Community]

9 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I don't want to add to the arguing but both sides need to come together with a solution. 

Mechanist can't continue to out DPSing other classes that have a much harder rotation but at the same time it should not be nerfed to point of being unusable by the Low Intensity population. 

I think a good middle ground is it should be able solo Open World content but not be viable in end-game Instanced content as a LI DPS.

This might come in the shape of nerfing the support/utility synergy rather than directly making the dps worse. Another good alternative is to Nerf is sustain DPS so in a drawn out fight it losses steam. 

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.

 

[There should be mech skins in the gem store]

On 10/4/2022 at 12:54 PM, kharmin.7683 said:

No, a mech is like a ranger pet or necro minion.  Those aren't skinnable either and would most likely require a lot of work to make so.

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.

[Why are Engineers so obsessed with Grenades?]

31 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Stop. Its already dead!

Posters like Lynx and a couple others just do not get engi kit playstyle at all. You are not supposed to stay in it and aa on grenade kit in pve. You are supposed to go in, use 1-3 skills, get out.

Also grenade aa does exists. Everyone should use instant range indicators anyways and holding down 1 turns it into an aa. Kits are the only decent utilities pve engi has. Turrets are just turrets. The only dmg dealing gadget is mine. Reducing engi to 1 kit can only work for elite specs and all of them would struggle without grenade kit.

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.

[Did Jade Mech always have a 500 baseline ferocity?]

2 minutes ago, Luvi.2581 said:

Don't they still get 50% from Mechanical Genius?

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.

[Why are Engineers so obsessed with Grenades?]

10 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

So you want the Holosmith to somehow have access to the entire toolbelt, and also the forge on an F6 or something?
You want Mechanist with F6-F9 mech commands?

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.

[Did Jade Mech always have a 500 baseline ferocity?]

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.

[New Elite spec]

11 minutes ago, Sansar.1302 said:

Willbender, Harbinger, Mechanics, Catalyst and Specter thats the classes to nerf ( yes in wvwv )

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"

 

[Harbinger overworld solo build?]

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

[If anet really wants this ground target support thing heres the solution]

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

[Remove Mech's Trade-off too]

3 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

I personally would like a trait like "apply an aura on you give alac to 5 nearby players"so no need to run water for alacrity/dps otpion , in the second trait choice for tempest (a smart guy gave that idea on the forums , not me) , i really dont like that important boon tied to overloads ( it will still be a bit , with overloads giving auras , but not 100% from it) , another changes i would make is fire overload boon application range doubled ... even tripled (not the damage aoe ofc), give solid fury access trough arcanes and ramp up duration of régénération on flash freeze (4secs of régénération on a 25 sec cd , ... c mon !!! and add vigor to it too).

So able to run with EB , solid alacrity access , all needed supp boons with appropriate range , we now have access to stab and aegis , need to keep up getting the ele out of his wheelchair !

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.

[Why are Engineers so obsessed with Grenades?]

38 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Tradeoffs yo.

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

[Can we get a QOL update for spirits? [Merged]]

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.

[Can we get a QOL update for spirits? [Merged]]

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.

[Remove Mech's Trade-off too]

20 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

You've said it better than I could. Agreed 100%

I don't think removing A-AR mech was a bad change. I'm glad they got rid of this interaction. I'd actually like them to go a step further and remove autocast from Mechanist. This will help raise their skill floor. Give it to the unleashed ranger pet instead. Untamed's APM requirement is borderline inhuman for real encounters. They needed this far more than Mechanist did. 

I was simply pointing out that people who mostly play OW will notice this change, mostly for the reasons you said. There will be fewer particles on screen. That, and the double orbital bursts won't happen anymore.

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.