ThrakathNar.4537

If the enemy Scrapper (or Mech) is playing Rifle, Corrosive Poison Cloud is a must play skill for any necro build. Put that thing down, and they can't touch you at all for several seconds (it also works fine if they're playing grenades or mortar kit). Also, engineer builds at the minute are all incredibly weak to condis. Either core condi necro or harbinger will melt through them, because they can't outcleanse what you can do.

Honestly I think just removing the stealth and massively reducing the stability would be enough to allow other specs like druid and tempest to be comparatively viable, but ANet didn't make those changes with the patch, they made a sweeping change that impacts all gamemodes that probably won't reduce the effectiveness of the build in the gamemode it was intended to be nerfed in.

While Scrapper undoubtedly deserves a nerf, this is not the way to do it. The Current Problem in Game: Scrapper dominates as a secondary support in WvW, providing strong access to stealth, superspeed, stability, cleanse, and on-demand healing. The Proposed Solution of this Patch: Make Scrapper Gyros ground targeted and not follow the player. The Most Likely Outcome: Scrapper is still meta and best in slot in WvW, because it still brings all of the aforementioned things. The only change is that Scrapper becomes less fun in Open World, Fractals, and Dungeons, where the appeal of the spec is zooming around and smashing stuff in melee. Now, if you actually want to use the wells for their intended effect, you waste the superspeed you get from the initial pulse (since none of the gyros finish in under three seconds).

There's a lot to say about this patch, but starting with: The Good Mechanised Deployment buff is actually pretty huge for S/D builds in PvP, Holo struggles a lot with cleanse generally, and this might actually make Tools Holo good again. Shield nerfs getting reverted is good, that was a dumb change. PLB getting damage back is good, although I don't think the reasoning was quite there (IMO the philosophy should be "When the skill has a huge telegraph, it's allowed to do CC and damage") Utility googles buff is good, but they're still probably worse than elixir U (unless Gadgeteer isn't broken, maybe) Coolant blast buff is good, but it's still not as good as elixir H (just remove the self burning from Cauterise completely, please). Impact Savant buff is good, actually makes it a net zero trait for supports instead of net negative. The Bad Gyros....... Yeah. Personally, I think Defence field being ground targeted can work, but it really kills the feel of Scrapper's motion to have the gyros be static. People on the forums have been comparing them to Chrono and Necro wells, but neither is really a fair comparison. Chrono wells are all limited to 3 seconds, Scrapper wells are all 5 or 6 seconds so it's much harder to actually land the entire thing. Necro wells are a similar duration, but are generally stronger than Scrapper wells - look at Well of Power compared to Purge Gyro. Purge Gyro literally just cleanses condis and gives a light field, Well of Power converts condis, stunbreaks, gives might, and is a combo field. Granted it's harder to get the full value, but it is so many worlds stronger. Comparing Well of Suffering to Shredder Gyro (using PvP or PvE coefficients), the former does more damage, is unblockable, gives vuln and is a combo field, the latter just has a finisher. Scrapper wells would need a massive buff if they are to remain competitive. Takedown Round, these sort of "more damage when you're missing endurance traits" are generally pretty bad design, since it encourages blowing dodge rolls that you should be saving. Was Throw Mine still overpowered after removing the knockback? I know that boon rip got nerfed across the board in this patch (which isn't a good thing), but I think this skill got hit far harder than most, since the boonrip aspect of the toolbelt got deleted entirely. Does anyone actually still play Medical Dispersion Field? Everyone I know took Anti-Corrosion Plating. This trait has been nerfed so much now it's ridiculous that it actually still exists in WvW. The Ugly Kinetic Battery buff is ok... the trait is still garbage. You need to blow 5 of your skills for a couple of seconds of superspeed and quickness? Hard pass, would rather take gadgeteer or improved endurance on pretty much any build. Why buff grenades? It's already the best performing power damage in PvP. Why not buff/rework Toolkit, or Bomb kit (rework not buff, because the numbers here are already pretty crazy), or Turrets? This decision just reeks of a lack of imagination, or knowledge of Engi's available skills. Kinetic Accelerators change is weird for PvP: when it came out Scrapper was pretty weak, but this change made Scrapper sort of playable. Now, removing quickness from it makes a below average build be more below average. Just sort of sad, really. And that's the patch. Some good stuff and potential for new builds, but far too much misguided and unimaginative balancing made. Hopefully this stuff can get changed before it makes it to live.

At present, the meta build for Power Mechanist takes: - a 1200 range instant cast teleport with a low cooldown that also gives you bonus movement speed when off cooldown - a decent bit of self-quickness uptime from your GM trait (useful for when boon supports are slacking/dead) - 230 healing for every second of the fight that your heal skill is off cooldown (this is significantly stronger than Heat Therapy on Holo) - a bit of group might Conversely, the meta build for holosmith (sword) gets: - Boon rip (only on some fights, and only actually useful on even fewer) - Less self-quickness than Mechanist (from sword 3) - Less healing from Heat Therapy and effective healing from the barrier of Corona burst than Mech has - Less group might than mechanist (blunderbuss is more spammable than corona burst, since there's no lockout mechanic) The non-DPS tools that DPS Mechanist brings are, quite simply, stronger or usable in more situations than on Holosmith. When you combine this with the fact that holo loses DPS uptime at range while mech doesn't (a fact which matters on all bosses, but especially on the EoD strike CMs), Mech is pretty much flatly better.

The thing is though - most supports have significantly more nerfed coefficients in WvW than they do in PvE. Ele staff water autoattack has a 0.25 coefficient in PvE, but a 0.15 coefficient in WvW. Rev staff auto has a 0.3 healing coefficient in PvE, and a 0.15 coefficient in WvW (2 examples, but I could list so many more if you want). Bringing any PvE spec down to the same numbers as its WvW spec will make it significantly weaker than the competitors. Even if Scrapper is still the strongest in WvW, nerfing the PvE numbers to that level puts it at the bottom of the pile. There is only one trait in the entire Scrapper traitline that brings any sort of group support, and that is the one that gives quickness. Everything else is personal survivability or DPS, purely selfish stuff. Out of the toolbelt skills, both Chemical Field and Spare Capacitor exist only for DPS builds, and Bypass Coating is something you need to press off c/d just to maintain quickness (you can't save it for the actual group stunbreak). Defence Field is the only gyro toolbelt I'd argue is actually good support-wise (since you don't take heal gyro on full support builds). If Scrapper is on-par with Firebrand healing in PvE, then that means it has below average healing. Firebrand's power comes from the utility value it brings, with more access to Stability and Aegis than any other class just baked in. Compare this with the healing output of Druid and Tempest. Pre June 2022, Druid healing was so good that you could still fill a dedicated healing role, even when you didn't take the trait that gave you a 50% modifier to all healing when in CA. Lingering Lights was such an incredibly strong trait, but you didn't even need to take it, your base healing was that good. Similarly, new Tempest takes Lucent Singularity for the alacrity instead of Elemental Bastion, despite the latter giving a massive heal every time you apply an aura (of which you have a tonne). Healing from water attunement is just that strong that you can give a massive source of healing and still be a valid healer. I don't even want to touch on the healing you can get from Salvation+Ventari Rev. Was Support Scrapper bad before this patch? No. Was it outperformed massively by its counterparts? Absolutely Yes. Hence why this PvE nerf was unjustified.

Except heal Scrapper didn't get nerfed in WvW - it got nerfed in PvE: a place where the build was by no means overperforming, just seeing a bit of use. Personally, I don't think Scrapper should be a support (the traitline really isn't built for it, especially Impact Savant), but ANet disagrees with that, in their own words: "Scrappers are support-oriented engineers with access to gyros and a plethora of other cleansing abilities. You can aid multiple allies in large-scale battles with massive area-of-effect skills, healing and providing superspeed and other necessary boons. They are also adept at crowd control. " (Taken from the in-game text that appears when you mouse over the Scrapper specialisation) This means that ANet wants Scrapper to be a support, and this patch is a nerf to that intentional role in PvE. Personally - I think they forgot about Scrapper completely when making this change, but the game devs not knowing about the stuff that's in the game isn't an excuse for bad balance decisions, it's a reason.

Don't get me wrong - the Support Mechanist nerfs were entirely well needed, but nerfing core is not the way to fix that. As it stands, a nerf to the core coefficients is a nerf to Support Scrapper (which also uses medkit and elixir gun), and that was actually already underperforming in PvE. This change just makes Support Scrapper even worse, which is a bad change for a patch that was supposed to make more underpowered builds viable. In terms of what to do to fix it - either make it so that these changes only take effect in PvE with the Mechanist traitline equipped, or nerf another aspect of the mechanist support (Reducing the improved regeneration healing from Exigency Protocols for example). Overall, while this patch is a step in the right direction, I can't help but feel as if some of the changes are... restrained. This patch is undeniably a buff to the DPS of builds like power Berserker, power Holo, power Reaper, etc: but it's not much of a buff. For most of these builds, the damage buff looks to be just enough to cancel out the damage nerf that every class got when banners and unique modifiers were removed. There also seem to be very few trait changes addressing systemic issues with how supports work (i.e. Tempest having to choose between massive healing and alac whereas other classes not making the choice), but that might be beyond the scope of this patch.

The question is though - does that mean that pistol autoattack isn't bugged? The skill description says that the skill should have a cast time of 0.5s, but it actually has a cast time closer to 0.8s (which should display as 3/4s in the game). Given that pistol has had an incorrect skill fact for years whereas rifle's skill fact was only incorrect for a matter of weeks, I guess it's fair to assume that they either don't read the engineer bug threads, or they know and just don't care.

I mean, the exact quote from you I was arguing against was the phrase "updated a whole traitline of core". To me (and in the dictionary) the word update means "to make something more modern or suitable for use now by changing its design", it does not mean to change something tangentially related that has synergies with that thing. If it means something different to you then that's fine, but it's not what I was disagreeing with. My point being - if this is what a full traitline rework looks like, and if the firearms traitline is now "fixed" in the eyes of ANet, it's not. Firearms is not in nearly as bad a place as Tools, but it still has major issues. Pinpoint Distribution, before and after this patch, is one of the most boring, lazy, and passive traits in the game. The gameplay that Juggernaut encourages is unhealthy, but outside the specific scenario of flamethrower camping builds, it's pretty useless. As a whole, the traitline mostly comes down to passive damage modifiers, which are fine, but also makes for a very boring and glass cannon playstyle. Contrast this with explosives, where not only do you have some options for survivability in a DPS traitline, but most of the traits have a visual impact on the world instead of just making your numbers 10% bigger. You can feel the increased projectile speed of Grenadier, feel and see the impact of EE, see the aim-assisted rocket, it just feels a lot more interesting to play.

I mean, I wouldn't call 4 changes on firearms "almost a whole traitline of core", especially when 2 of those changes come down to changing range thresholds, 1 of them is a crit increase that (almost) every profession got, and 1 is a rework into a dumb "passively pulse 5 might" thing. The inventions change is weird and clunky (and may end up being a nerf in all gamemodes), and they really should just remove the minimum range on the explosives trait instead of just lowering it. Also, as well as tools and gadgets, could they not consider reworking turrets?

It's a shame, because if the DPS of the ability is less than bomb kit auto (which may or may not be true depending on cast time) then it won't get to be used in PvE. It's good that nothing significant on core got nerfed (although depending on if the reworked Medical Dispersion Field works at full health or not, that might be a significant nerf in all gamemodes), but that does feel like a bit of a low bar. For an update "focused on adding or improving skills, traits, or weapons in each profession, in a way that introduces new builds to try," it's a shame that they only did stuff regarding one of those aspects. Turrets (net turret specifically) are some of the worst utilities in the game, and Tools is also in a dire need of a rework. I keep hoping that this is just a fraction of the actual changes, even if that's never going to be the case. But yeah, definitely shouldn't complain too much - engineer avoided the short end of the stick this time. Although it is painful to see Mechanist getting buffs where Holo and Scrapper don't, despite it being the best performing spec (for PvE at least, and PvP to a lesser extent).

That's not true, though. Looking at Teapot's vod of the last MAT (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f-Gy_UaFWY), there is a pinned comment listing the frequency of classes and expansions. "Class frequencies in the 23 matchups Teapot spectated: Necromancer: 71 Guardian: 66 Thief: 39 Elementalist: 22 Revenant: 17 Ranger: 5 Engineer: 4 Mesmer: 4 Warrior: 2! (Both won their games btw) And by expac: EoD: 172 Core: 28 HoT: 27 PoF: 3" While Teapot doesn't have VODs going back to 2018 1 year after PoF launch), Jebro does (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzjcbkCLehI), and while I can't be bothered to do as thorough an analysis as the commenter on the TPot vod, you can clearly see that mesmer and warrior have higher representation (there are 3 mesmers and 1 warrior in the finals). So no, those are not the only 4 classes that all or even most comps have revolved around for the last 4 years.

2022-05-10: Shield cooldowns nerfed on core because of Mechanist. 2022-02-28: Flamethrower damage (power coefficient on skill 1 and burning on skill 4) nerfed on core because of Scrapper. 2022-03-29 and 2021-06-08: Purity of Purpose nerfed on core because of Scrapper. 2022-03-29: Medical Dispersion Field healing nerfed on core because of Scrapper. 2020-12-01: Grenade coefficients nerfed on core because of Holosmith. 2021-08-17: Over Shield duration nerfed on core because of Holosmith. These are just the ones that come off the top of my head for one specific class - there are a lot more instances of this happening, most of which aren't for engineer exclusively. This is a really common scenario, although an extremely misguided one.

It's amazing that they recognised That J-Drive (the trait that let you keep signet passives while on cooldown) and Overshield were both issues in the text surrounding the post, and yet completely proceeded to ignore them when actually making balance changes. This is the same, misguided, balance logic that resulted in Thief getting a 40 second cooldown on their heal skill instead of actually nerfing the thing that needed nerfing - the Shadow Arts cooldown reduction trait. Out of all the changes: - The nerf to the passive healing was a good change, and hopefully curbs the bunker build. - The nerf to the alacrity trait just makes it harder for this trait to fulfill its intended purpose. Remove the ICD, but just make it not work with sanctuary rune. It's that easy. - The nerf to Shield cooldowns is nonsensical and hurts every single engineer spec (except for Scrapper, because you'd probably run hammer instead). Overshield is a strong trait and could've done with a nerf, but this is not the way to fix it. Teamfight Holo builds were already outperformed by Willbender, Harbinger, and Untamed - this just makes the gap even larger.

I think this is the most important aspect to making core engi good. As long as core only has 2.5 good traitlines with mediocre synergies between them it means that elite specs are always going to be better, simply because there's no value in taking the other core traitlines that isn't significantly improved on. Even if they do add a toolbelt tradeoff that wouldn't actually make core desireable - mechanist has a full toolbelt tradeoff, and because of other balance details it's the strongest engineer spec at the minute. Personally I think Alchemy and Explosives are both in a fine position at the minute. Inventions is strong, but only certain traits - ANet could easily buff/rework Automated Medical Response, Bunker Down, Experimental Turrets all without inadvertently buffing Mechanist. Tools and Firearms both need significant reworks, Firearms to give the traitline some survivability options instead of pure damage, and Tools to make the traits just not bad. Kinetic Battery on Tools is pretty much just a worse version of Kinetic Accelerators on Scrapper - the quickness you get is 1 target instead of 5, and requires spending more cooldowns to get a lower duration.

I don't agree with everything else being said about how strong willbender is in this thread - but that's not the most recent MAT. That's the one from one month ago. The one that happened two days ago definitely had a willbender in the finals. Here's the TPot vod for the most recent one, timestamped at the finals match. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1464829075?t=3h33m5s . R55 play core support guard, mech, harbinger, willbender, and untamed. Perhaps some people are exaggurating the strength of willbender, but that's no reason to underplay it. It used to be bad, but the extensive buffs it received really made it quite good.

The person I was responding to was saying that mechanist was never going to be viable in PvP and WvW - that comment about bad design was made based on the assumption (of the person I was responding to) that mechanist would not be allowed to be good. It has nothing to do whatsoever with flavour-of-the-month balance. And as I keep pointing out, the cooldown for a player to use their WASD keys is 0 seconds - anything more than that gives the player inherently less control than other boon support classes. Is there actually any drawback from making the currently unused f5 skill a ground-targeted "Move to position" button with no cooldown? I don't play LoL so I can't comment on the accuracy or validity of your statement, although I imagine there is significantly less frustration because in LoL your opponent cannot kite off nav-mesh, since there is no real 3rd axis. Also I find it slightly funny that the OP's suggestion for mechanist is to make the mech more turret-like, and the primary example of AI you use is turrets.

That's literally my point though - Core doesn't deserve to get nerfed, because it is dramatically outperformed by the elite specs. Buildcraft is at its best when as many options are available as possible, and nerfing specs that are not overperforming to bring in line specs that are just makes the issue worse. In my opinion, the direction for balancing the game's diversity should be to have it such that every single profession's core class has a viable build for every role. It's an ambitious desire, but it would go a long way towards making the game more interesting. A greater range of builds means that gameplay gets less repetitive. This change however goes the other way.

Have you played Sabir, then? because the group needs to be constantly moving around the boss in a circle due to the giant tornado. In what way do you find Ventari tablet "lousy"? In my mind it's very similar to an AI companion. Do you think the skills are underwhelming? If so, remember that mech wouldn't be copying those skills. Are you concerned that Ventari is used less than other legends? If so, remember that it's only really good for healing, so only sees use on heal ren builds (although sometimes used on dps alac ren for the projectile block utility). Do you find the lack of customisation boring? If so, remember mech can change skills through traits. Personally I really like the feel of Ventari, despite the shortcomings which I addressed (which mech would fix). Also - your second statement is ignoring reality. Mechanist has been viable for weeks in PvP - to say it never will be is absurd. AI specs at various times have been extremely powerful in PvP, looking at Minionmancer and Core Ranger (which isn't nerfed, just overshadowed by Mechanist) in particular. And they are a horrible experience to play against. The funny thing is though that this wasn't the golemancer spec that all the people asking for golemancer wanted - several people wanted a mech suit that you could "ride in", which mechanist didn't deliver on.

I don't care if Support Scrapper is at the top of the food chain in terms of supports (I'd be completely fine if Tempest or Druid or HealRev or something supplanted it at the top) - I just care that core medic engi is lower down on the support tier list than it was before. When it comes down to it - core engi doesn't offer substantially more healing or cleansing than tempest does. Scrapper is picked much more frequently because of the utility package it offers (Stealth and Superspeed). If Scrapper were deleted and it were a choice exclusively between core engi and tempest (pretending other healers aren't options) then tempest would be the most likely pick, due to the more reliable boon output and utility of auras (reflect, stun, etc). The heals/cleanse of engi aren't necessarily OP - on core they're balanced out by the fact that you basically can't do anything else, whereas Scrapper gets additional utility for free. There is a solution to this issue though, and it's a solution ANet used in this very patch with Firebrand (and in the past with Scourge). That is to make it so that traits only lose effectiveness when a specific elite spec is equipped with them. Using this, you could bring Scrapper in line with the other top supports without making the core package (which underperforms on its own) worse. Of course, this change would establish that healing is Core's identity and superspeed/quickness as Scrapper's and thus is unlikely to be something ANet would do as it evidently doesn't fit their vision.

Honestly, if that's actually what ANet's vision for the spec is, then it's fine if they change it to that. There's just a small issue of how much changing they need to do. Currently, Scrapper traitline brings 0 healing traits and effectively 0 healing skills, since the shared healing from medic gyro is so small. It also brings 0 cleanse traits, and 1 cleanse skill. At the same time, Scrapper brings 2 superspeed traits and 1 superspeed skill (plus the other 4 from traiting). It also brings 1 quickness trait, and the corresponding 5 quickness skills with traits. By numerical comparison - Scrapper's current identity (Scrapper's identity, not engineer's) is far more focused on superspeed and quickness than healing and cleansing, and yet the first two are dismissed as being less important than the latter two. If ANet want to change those traits so that they instead do heal/cleanse effects then that's something that they're perfectly entitled to do, but until that happens there is a clear difference between what they say about the game, and what is observed.

And yet they didn't nerf med blaster - they nerfed MDF. A trait that doesn't work at all with med blaster, since that skill only applies healing to allies, it doesn't heal yourself. Also an AI companion may hold mechanist back, but it doesn't hold core back from being as good as scrapper. In theory, core could provide an alternative to scrapper, providing boonrip with tools+throw mine instead of superspeed, but the numbers aren't there. The issue is that that theoretical build which is too weak for the current meta has just been nerfed as collateral damage. That's the issue with nerfing core to compensate for overpowered elite specs.

The irony is that Mechanist is actually really strong in PvP for all the reasons people hate AI companions in games. It's irritating to use properly, but I'm sitting at p2 playing mostly mechanist this season. Let's go with that 25 second number though - that's still way too high. Bear in mind, the cooldown on WASD is literally 0 seconds - a player can move freely when they want. The Sunqua peak fractal final boss moves around much more frequently than once every 25 seconds - I've tried to get the mech to cover boons on everyone, but there are a lot of boons going to waste because of people moving to try and follow the boss. I've also found it to be an issue on Cardinal Sabir due to the group constantly moving around the boss when the big tornado appears, as well as all of the new strikes (except Harvest Temple) because those bosses also move around very frequently. None of those are in PvP, all of them use PvE numbers, and yet with all of them I struggle to get the boons where I want them to go because players are moving more frequently than shift signet comes off cooldown. and since Return to Me doesn't always work, my boon output is not determined by how skilled I am, but how lucky I get with the random mech position. This is not good design. Also - dismissing competitive like you did is not a good mindset to have about this game. ANet recently called WvW a "cornerstone gamemode": dismissing everything but PvE isn't something the studio is doing, so it's not something we should do as players. However, mech simply doesn't work in WvW because of systematic design reasons behind the spec. If any spec can't function in a cornerstone gamemode because of its design, then that spec is badly designed. It's as simple as that. Reworking mech to be more like ventari tablet would massively improve these issues as it gives more direct control back in the hands of the player, which makes it less irritating for the player, and less mind-numbingly painful to play against as the opponent.

I don't want to put words into the OP's mouth, but what I imagine they're advocating for (and what I personally advocate for) is a Ventari Tablet-like thing, where the mech doesn't move independently, but has a very low cooldown reposition ability so you can move it around rapidly. At present, the control skills over the mech are very lacking. "Return to Me" is ok, but it's not very helpful if you want the mech to move out of an AoE, or if you want it to go stand next to an ally to give them boons. And saying you can reposition the mech with shift signet misses the point. It has a cooldown of 50 seconds and is a very valuable stunbreak/condi-cleanse for you. You can't use it to make the small, controlled movements on your mech that a player can achieve by literally pressing the WASD keys. It shouldn't take such an important resource to get the mech to stand in a position, that should be a given.