[November 28 Skills and Balance Update Preview]

As far as Engineer goes :

 

-The Elixir buff are....ok I suppose.

-Off hand pistol change are actually pretty good

-I havent played enough Scrapper support to know how these change will eventually perform.

-Rifle ""buff"" are totally irrelevant. The weapon for PvE is still mediocre at best and for PvP/WvW it remains complete trash

-The Mechanist interaction with relic is good. The nerf for PvP...Not so good. The mechanical genius change doesnt mean anything until a proper value is given.

 

Overall... Let's just say if the off hand pistol change is what really seems interesting here. I'll let people playing support scrapper have their own opinion on these changes but for me this patch is just forgettable.

[Adps Mechanist viability]

12 hours ago, xellink.7568 said:

Power alac DPS mech with hammer or rifle isn't about being top in the charts. Its about consistency. You can open the door for the pizza delivery man and still do really well. 

The simplicity also comes with quality of life utilities that are useful for most raid encounters.

 

The build I linked is also very consistent in both dealing damage and providing alac. If you do not want to do any input then you might as well not play the game at all. Power Alac allows you to do that but at the cost of doing no damage. And if you're doing no damage you might as well just play HAM and be usefull for your party. As far as ADPS goes PMech has a lot of competition

 

9 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

That build uses three kits.  How is that simplified (video title)

Pistol 2 ---> during the cast you switch to another kit and press 2 and 3 or 4 depending on the kit and you rotate like that.

 

It is literally use skill 2 of pistol and  every kit in chain. We've seen worse rotation.

[Adps Mechanist viability]

Alac power DPS mechanist is trash. Even with Hammer it's barely passable.

 

If you want to play alac mechanist as a sub dps, then use condi : 

 

Or play HAM

["Best" (subjective) Power Dps with strong burst. pve...]

If you're asking for power stuff that lets you solo stuff in OW....I think at one point Firebrand could do that. I think Bladesworn can play power without dying too fast as well. Scrapper is ok with power as long as you can hit multiple opponent but its survivability unironically drops hard the moment you start doing 1 v 1 against tough opponent.

 

But outside of these 3 (I am excluding Reaper since that's what you used to play) I dont think there's many spec that can run power and still be able to solo things. 

 

But if you're playing with a friend/group then you have much more option. I could recommend you PBM Holosmith, it's honestly pretty fun

[Just a few suggestions]

No thanks, I would rather keep the current version of what we have rather than....this

[New ways to play]

Hammer Holosmith is pretty solid and currently the best performing build as far as power DPS goes. Hammer Engineer work as well if needed.

Mace for support Scrapper is ok because it's the weapon that has a skill good for support.

 

But outside of these SotO did not bring much for the Engineer. Hammer is the only good power damage option (Holosmith with sword is still ok though) and pistol remains the only condi weapon Engineer has. Past the first 5 min of trying out what X weapon can do on Y spec, you simply return to use the same build you ran before with the same weapon.

[New player need help. What is the best Mechanist build for Open World?]

 

The damage are slightly lower due to the recent balance patch but it's no way dead.

[Throw Mine is Actually Strong]

14 hours ago, Stalima.5490 said:

It throws out 2 mines at 1.5 seconds (3 sec total stun) tho with gadgeteer and is one of the strongest defensive options you can have on engineer with this trait,  you forget that it is also unblockable.

 

So basically:

24 second cooldown (not 30, remember recharges where baked in base)

up to 3 seconds of stun in spvp

up to 6 boons removed

It is Unblockable

Up to 2 blast finishers

900 range throw

explosive allows excellent trait sync

can be manually detonated at up to double the circles aoe to throw enemies offguard

very low cd toolbelt which deals alot of damage

 

You would usually use it as a form of defense but it is easily usable offensively to prevent blockers.  Just some advice to the OP tho, they massively buffed the elixir X moa so if you are doing core you can drop a 51s cooldown moa grenade now with tools down from 90s, use this knowlege wisely, responsibly and always for the greater good... who am I kidding just moa everything.

Then this is for PvP because WvW is still 30 sec for 1 sec stun duration.

 

I would rather run something like rocket shoes which IMO becomes more and more mandatory for WvW considering the movement powercreep.

[Scrapper is Still Incredibly Strong In Open World]

On 10/7/2023 at 5:28 PM, mandala.8507 said:

Not to single you out with this, because it's more a response to the thread as a whole, but I simply don't agree that the sustain is bad or that this build is somehow terrible for harder solo content.

I'm actually not all that interested in a build's ability to solo Path of Fire legendary bounties, T3 rifts, and the like when I'm considering the strengths of an open world build. I understand that there are many condi builds out there that put the dps potential of Scrapper to shame on these extended fights in the hands of skilled players, but most of those builds are hilariously unfun in day-to-day casual open world play, which is more my focus.

I also don't put much weight behind the strength of builds that require rigorous mechanical turnover or that are reliant on spammy, unintuitive, or complex/convoluted skill prios to maintain perfectly optimized boon uptime and passive sustain. Most people who play this game will either fail miserably to achieve the requisite apm for the build to function or will refuse to learn the skill priority well enough and just end up pressing random buttons in an order that nullifies any of the build's strengths or skill synergies.

Builds without ample breathing room on boon uptime or tolerance for improper skill ordering ultimately fail to satisfy players below a certain skill threshold, and these are the players who I think open world buildcraft should be catered toward, as they are the vast majority.

Anyway.

If the "worst spec for soloing tougher content" is in the room with us somewhere, it hasn't been anywhere near me:

 

I mean....Yeah ok Scrapper can do that. But Holosmith and Mechanist can also do the same thing but better. The only thing Scrapper really has over both of them is survivability but even that is dependent of the amount of mobs around. In fights where you can consistently hit 5 mobs then yes Scrapper has more survivability than Holo and Mech. But as you reduces the amount of mobs (so hits) Scrapper can do, Holosmith and Mechanist survivability increases and in a 1 v 1 situation both Holo and Mech definitely has better survivability.

 

Another thing is that Scrapper damage output isnt great. Holosmith and Mechanist can do that job much better. Holosmith can just stack burn very fast and Mechanist can greed firearms and explosive trait without trading too much survivability if you run celestial. Both will just outdamage Scrapper.

[Throw Mine is Actually Strong]

A 1 sec stun that remove 3 boon on a 30 sec CD, I wouldnt call that strong, just good. 

[Scrapper - Sword and Mace]

4 hours ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

Even then Snowcrows doesn't use Sword on any of their Holosmith builds. Sword just doesn't do enough even on Holosmith to justify faffing about with the heat levels and cooldown reduction auto attacks.

When you can just do everything with the one stop shop Hammer.

The player doing the benchmark for ESCU Sword is waiting for firework relic to be fixed before testing. Otherwise Sword on Holo is actually decent once you factor in heat.

[Rifle feels undertuned]

15 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Rifle suffers because of Mech. Heres guys calculating AA, but what they need to take on is added Mech AA values to the whole damage.

You're aware with that logic, pretty much all Engineer weapon deserve a nerf

[Rifle feels undertuned]

3 minutes ago, Arantheal.7396 said:

Sorry I have to say it a-net, but someone is sitting in your balance team that doesn't understand multiplicative math.
If you look across ranged power weapon AA's in the game (rifle on other classes / longbow), they are currently balanced around 420ish base damage and 1.0 power scaling, with slight variations around class mechanics and related traits. On engineer they decided to take our multiple strikes per cast into account, and therefore correctly split our damage into a weaker first projectile, and a stronger second followup.
The logical error here is that both skills should still scale with power the same.

lets do the math. I choose the warrior rifle as benchmark, to show what a properly tuned AA on rifle should look like, so that's the first we'll be doing.

Formular: [[strike dmg] * [[power scaling] * [power]] / [target dmg resistance]] / [sequence] == [n]dps (before precission, ferocity, and vulnerability, as those scale consistently across the board)

benchmark: warrior "fierce shot" with current values pulled straight from the wiki
input:
strike damage: 422
Power scaling: 1.0
power: 2000
target dmg resistance (armor + toughness): 1000
sequence: 0.96 seconds
output total: 879.16 dps

benchmark: engineer rifle "rifle burst" with current values pulled straight from the wiki
input:
projectile 1 strike damage: 190
projectile 2 strike damage: 253
projectile 1 power sclaing: 0.45
projectile 2 power sclaing: 0.6
power: 2000
target dmg resistance (armor + toughness): 1000
sequence: 1.13 seconds
output projectile 1: 153,33 dps
output projectile 2: 268,67 dps
output total: 422 dps

Do you see the issue A-net? If we'd combine the strike damage of both engineer rifle projectiles, we'd end with 443 total strike damage, roughly around, but slightly above the warrior ballpark. And if we do the same with our power scaling, we'd end with 1.05, again slightly above warrior, which would then be correctly offest by the fact that our sequence is also longer than warriors, so we get slightly more bang for our buck. Totally fair and balanced, right?
Well, that would be true, IF MULTIPLIKATIVE MATH WOULD WORK THAT WAY. But you didn't just split one multiplicator (strike damage OR power sclaing), you split both, which is why engineers rifle benchmark under the same conditions will always end with below half the damage of warrior's rifle AA, or thief rifle AA or any longbow AA (ironically, with the exception of warrior longbow, since you did the same projectile split errors there, too).

This is not just an engi problem, this is a problem you will encounter multiple times across all classes, where the decission was made to balance around multiple projectiles.
you want proof, a-net?

Here's a benchmark of engi rifgle AA, if the power scaling would have been left alone. Still two projectiles, still offloaded the mayority of the dmg on the second projectile, simply set the power sclaing to the combined total of 1.05 on both projectiles:

input:
projectile 1 strike damage: 190
projectile 2 strike damage: 253
projectile 1 power sclaing: 1.05
projectile 2 power sclaing: 1.05
power: 2000
target dmg resistance (armor + toughness): 1000
sequence: 1.13 seconds
output projectile 1: 353,09 dps
output projectile 2: 470,18 dps
output total: 823,27 dps

Would you look at that...
Still slightly behind warrior in raw performance, therefore justifying all the trait interactions we get, still 2 projectiles, still the second one being the heavy hitter...
I know I might sound condescending here, but I refuse to believe that the results we see in the game from multiple projectile weapons and attacks in general, aren't the result of math errors deep seeded in the balancing of the game for a couple of years now.

 

Is this for PvE ? I havent done the math but it seems extremely low.  If you're telling me these value comes from PvE, then you are not ready to see the value for PvP and WvW

[Rifle feels undertuned]

It doesnt feel undertuned, it IS undertuned.

 

As far as performances goes, Hammer is straight up better. As far as fun factor goes, well that is subjective but it seems a lot of people arent exactly having fun as well. And dont get me started on "bUt rIfLe hAs RaNgE" because if you need range you'll be running grenade kit or mortar.

[Which build should I use?]

11 hours ago, Fade to Shadow.4579 said:

Mmh so Condi is the way while playing Engiee?

 

Yes and no

 

Yes it is the way to go if you want to do solo stuff like champion or legendary. Celestial condi allows you to have sustain and decent damage. You run condi because despite not being a power build you still get some benefit from power stats in the form of....well basically all skill that inflict direct damage. However the opposite isnt always true.

 

No, if you want to play in group content, you'll need dedicated condi or power build but power Holosmith with Hammer is pretty good. Sure you can definitely run condi Mechanist for instance but overall group content allows you more flexibility on what you want to use.

 

Now as far what spec and build to pick from, I would say both are performing decently so it's a matter of preferences.

[Current PvE builds]

For open world, you can run this Holosmith build, it's pretty easy and fun :

 

 

For raid and fractal, you can run the build posted above my comment.

 

[Scrapper is Still Incredibly Strong In Open World]

It works but it's far from being " incredibly strong" when put next to Holosmith or Mechanist.

[What's everyone's favorite Alac DPS provider?]

I dont know if it is still viable for group content at least but Mirage S/S used to provide alac while basically being almost invincible and outputing ok damage due to spamming ambush skill.

 

Condi Alac Mech looks interesting as well.

[Anet never cease to surprise me]

19 hours ago, squeegee.4320 said:

Are you seriously trying to say that mechanist is difficult to play?

 

The condi mechanist build that bench high runs 3 or 4 kits (I dont remember if it uses overclock signet or mortar kit).

So yes, it is just a little, tad, harder to play than the trash power DPS rifle mech.  But there is a one kit condi alac build with simplified rotation funny enough called SCAM. And yes this one is easier than Holo condi.

 

17 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

That's ironic. Condi mechanist had/has an easy build with pretty high dps.

Which is ?

17 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

All you're doing in your post is blindly assume "they just targetted that one holo build", but if they wanted to only touch holo they'd probably do it through holo skills and traits like they did in some of the other cases. They're moving the dps back a bit and that's a good thing because it was getting insane.

I'm not assuming anything at this point Anet has shown more than enough proof for me that they dont know what they do as far as Engineer goes. Mechanical genius, wanting to turn Scrapper well into 900 ranged static well, overbuffing Holosmith condi ability when the complain was not about the damage but the lack of option outside of ESCU.

 

If all Engineer condi build are ""overperforming"" that Anet is nerfing pistol, then why condi druid is still untouched ? Last time I checked it had about the same DPS as condi holo. Why is Virtuoso untouched (or rather barely touched ) ?  All these build has roughly the same DPS as Holosmith (which is overperforming) but strangely enough they are barely nerfed. 

 

I have nothing against fixing powercreeps and growing DPS but how do you justify nerfing one class because it's overperforming and then leaving another class as is despite being as strong as the one you nerf ?  And this time the "eAsY tO pLaY" argument is out of the window so they better find some actual convincing argument. 

[Remove Weaponmaster Training]

12 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

1 Single build was overperforming with confusion so you nerfed whole confusion and now mace is trash

 

Actually if I remember correctly it's even worse than that.

 

1 build was performing really well against few bosses that attack fast so they nerfed confusion because of that niche use. God forbid against those select few boss that attack fast we dare use confusion to exploit the effectiveness of the condition to the maximum.

[Why Balance Patches are Professional Raiders skills dedicated ?]

8 hours ago, Matoro.9708 said:

I think I've said this before, but maybe we should all just start pugging with terrible builds and failing at raids to make their metrics go crazy.

I call turret engi!

 

The vast majority of player who run those dedicated raid build arent player doing raid with randoms. They already have static group. The majority of player doing raids with pugs are either people who are actually trying to encourage players into doing raids, people recruiting for static group or people selling raids.

 

You bringing garbage build would just hinder the remaining players willing to help other getting into raids. And I'm not even sure you will last long enough for your shenanigans to kick in.

[Sad about Mabon’s]

I wanted to make a joke but I would be accidentally spoiling the plot of SOTO

[Not allowed to play Holosmith]

12 hours ago, Atmaweapon.7345 said:

LI Condi Mech benchmark was like 41.6k

I will need a proof on that because all the build for Mechanist that bench above 40k are far from being LI.

[Anet never cease to surprise me]

I've said it multiple time I personnally expect Anet to nerf very popular weapon in the last balance patch.

 

And well they kinda did that for other spec (namely Scourge) but as far as Engineer goes Anet managed to surprise me in a good and bad way.

 

Pistol is the weapon Anet decided to nerf for this patch.....Yes pistol. Not rifle, not Hammer, not mace, the pistol. So yeah I am glad they didnt nerf Hammer but why pistol ? I completely understand why they did nerf pistol to be fair, it is to nerf Holosmith but in a true Anet fashion this wasnt what supposed to happens. When Anet added burning to some Holosmith skill I was very sceptical about Holosmith being able to compete both as a condi spec and as a power spec.  Condi Mechanist was (and still is) a pretty complex build to run but with power Mechanist being supernerfed for a DPS and Holosmith being buffed, it left Condi Mech in a rather undesirable state. Condi Holosmith had a harder rotation to master compared to Mechanist but its "saving grace" was that it dealt higher damage and you didnt had to micro manage a pet with poor AI, poor pathing with also a very dumb and punishing mechanic if it ever wanders away from you. 

 

I am afraid we are going back to the old loop of Anet slowly nerfing weapon until it reaches a point where it is simply not worth using (Hello rifle) but this time this issue was caused by Anet themselve. I can understand Rifle being killed because at one point for one patch it used to bench high, but in the case of Holosmith, the additional burn added to Holoforge was never needed and Anet kept buffing Holo condi ability in PvE. And now that Holosmith is overperforming, Anet is nerfing both Holosmith and pistol ? Even though the root of the issue is Holosmith itself and not pistol ?

 

Once again, GG Anet, you keep proving me you literally have no idea on what you're doing, at least as far as Engineer goes

[It's flamethrower again.]

1 hour ago, Arantheal.7396 said:

Yea, with elixier gun, nades and mortar, we really don't need another condi heavy kit, besides, you can't "nerf a coefficient" for flamethrower only, because burn stays the same for all builds across all classes, unless individual traits / runes / sigils modify it for your entire character.
A burn on each pulse got proposed before, but even in theory rejected by the community, since even a 1 second burn can become a 2 second burn between corresponding trait / sigil / rune combinations, giving you a AA that has the potential to tick with 10 stacks of burn active.
Simply NOPE, you don't want to play against that.

Your ideas for #4 and #5 are more reasonable, tho.

Elixir gun is trash at doing condi and it's not it's main purpose to begin with. Grenade is a hybrid that forces you into picking grenadier to be used and explosive trait line is mostly a power branch than condi and mortar is also trash at doing condi damage, it is mostly for power damage and only has 1 poison field.

 

FT is the only kit right now that fill the condi requirement because it can apply burn which is arguably the strongest raw condi. But to apply burn right now you have to cast FT 2 and hope you hit your target and then maintain it somehow by spamming auto attack + 3. Another weakness of the FT is that it only apply 1 stuff : burn. Which means it's very easy to dispell. Dont get me wrong I dont think this should be changed especially considering it's burn we're talking about but it is still a weakness worth mentionning. Guardian also have to deal with that but they have so many skills that generate burn that condi guardian could be playing power guardian, at the speed of which it applies burn you wouldnt notice the difference. 

 

I still think the auto attack should apply burning on each pulse but just enough so that it tick once and disappear, with only the last pulse having longer duration. It would fit the theme of the kit without being OP...well if you consider this OP then I would suggest you look at Elementalist scepter because its auto attack apply a decent amount of burning while being a 900 skill with hitscan.