[The actual balance of Mechanist]

Y'all are missing my original point. This post was about performance in actual content.

This is hard to measure and I don't think we have exact numbers here, but one possible metric would be to look at the average amount of damage done by each spec across all major PvE game modes.

I reckon that currently, mechanist along with a few other builds has a decently higher average DPS than others.

Not because other specs cannot reach this DPS, but because builds like Mechanist or Scourge can perform incredibly well in in any fight and any encounter, pretty much no matter how much the biss moves, if there are multiple phases and pretty independently of different boss mechanics.

This builds are comparable to others on paper, but in reality they perform significantly better for most players and groups.

My point was that these specs should be balanced according to their actual performance in game, so that they are always good but never amazing. Meanwhile more complex builds that are more susceptible to things going wrong are not always good, they are often mediocre. But when pulled off well they should sting, not just as good as builds that can perform on the same level way more reliably.

The ease of use only plays a minor role here. If untamed could actually achieve 43k dps in every fight if just played competently, it would be pretty busted. In reality though, these numbers can only ever be achieved in short stretches and over longer, actual encounters the performance of untamed becomes maybe even less than average.

This is why I believe reliable builds should have their max dps lowered a bit. They will still perform great and will still be very viable, because for many players in many encounters, they will still be a top choice when it comes to performance.

[The actual balance of Mechanist]

19 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

I've also see harbingers pull it off. 30k is also roughly where quickness scrapper is. 

Mech with perfect rotation, 10 condis on golem should bench at Scourge level. Both are easy, ranged, unpunished by mechanics. Scourge also provides bonus utility while mech does not. 

Scourge can also continue to activate shroud skills while CC'd or doing mechanics. 

 

Mech under ideal conditions is also effectively no longer ranged. You need to be within 450 units of the boss or you lose out on High caliber, you deal less damage from blunderbuss, you cannot land jump shot, you can get trolled by nade RNG against smaller hitboxes, so you ideally want to be as close to the boss's hitbox as possbile to ensure all nades land. 

And if condis start to fall off because your group is failing mechanics your DPS will also tank. 

When forced to operate under ideal conditions, mech loses a lot of its advantage, so benching at scourge level, and above quickness support level is appropriate. 

Doing all of the above for 30k is simply smiter's booning Pmech out of the game, leaving the Mech traitline with 3 dead triats. While I'm sure many would get satisfaction out of that, that is not good balance. 

It's not super easy to balance. Especially when balance is different for different skill groups. And I agree, Scourge is definitely another spec that performs very consistently and should be balanced accordingly.

I think if Power Mech was brought down another 4k or so, it would still do really well in a lot of groups and situations. Only very experienced / fairly high skill groups would see a big benefit from running higher risk / skill builds with higher ceilings. I would consider that good balance. Its hardly objective though. 

[The actual balance of Mechanist]

13 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Supports currently sit at 26-32k 

Supports currently bench at those numbers. The only supports I personally see actually pull of those numbers are firebrands.

Condi Untamed benches at 42k but I've almost never seen anyone play the spec let alone reach numbers anywhere close to this in actual content.

That's the point here. Mechanist could easily lose a few thousand DPS and would still out perform supports in basically all encounters because of how simple and reliable it puts out its damage.

If supports regularly reach north of 30k in actual content, I would agree that dps Mechanist would be fine to go beyond that. 

[The actual balance of Mechanist]

49 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

There is no such thing as "independence from encounter variations". The issue is simply that most encounters aren't "varied" and as a result builds like rifle mech work almost everywhere without drawback. The only parts where this isn't the case are the competitive gamemodes as there they are faced with situations where simply "spamming 1" doesn't work anymore which can easily be adapted into encounter design for PvE as well. The game already has mobs and mechanics which can counteract / punish projectile spam (and there is more they can do), it just almost never makes use of them.

Well I doubt anet is going to redesign all major PvE encounters.

It would probably be easier to just balance PvE builds around the existing 10 years worth of content. 😛

[The actual balance of Mechanist]

5 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

High intensity should always outperforms low intensity builds. People should be rewarded for their skills, especially when improving your own skills is a fundamental part of gw2 current endgame/end goals. 

Pressing more buttons is not more skillful and playing complicated or difficult builds is not "a fundamental part of gw2 current endgame" for a lot of players. The tryhards in this game are actually the minority by a large margin.

Like I said in the post, the issue here isn't that  mechanist is too easy and therefor doesn't deserve good dps.
The issue is that mechanist will almost always perform close to its limit while many other builds simply cannot. So if Mechanist has the same upper limit as other strong dps specs, but only Mechanist is able to fully utilize this power everywhere, then ofcourse Mechanist will end up outperforming other builds in real encounters.

Therefor, builds upper limits should be balanced around how often and reliable these limits can be reached in the actual game.
Wether or not it is difficult or high intensity to do so should only be a minor consideration.

[The actual balance of Mechanist]

47 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

If a class AA hits 50% more dps then any other specialization with its autoattack there's simply something wrong.

There's nothing wrong with simpler, lower intensity classes. I think it's great there are viable options for anyone who doesn't want to or isn't able to play complex builds. I just think that currently, in real encounters, Mechanist simply over performs because it's output is very independent of the player and encounter.

10 minutes ago, Lysico.4906 said:

The amount of effort the op puts into cries for nerfing a class.   Imagine if it was his class that was done to?   Op, how about you all for buffs to your favorite class??     But easier to try to tear things down then make a better gaming worlds 

Lul

[The actual balance of Mechanist]

Even after recent adjustments, Mechanist is still viewed as the meme OP build and is still massively over represented in PVE content where it seems to outshine many other professions. Meanwhile there are plenty of builds that in theory bench way higher than Mechanist. So what gives?

Benchmarks vs Encounters

This whole issue ties into the recent revelation of: benchmarks are not real encounters. Benchmarks are performed by highly skilled players under ideal conditions on a stationary, passive enemy with a massive health pool. This setting allows players to perfectly execute and hit the ideal rotation over a long period of time. While this is a great way of standardized limit testing, it doesn't tell us much about how a build actually performs in real content like Open World, Meta Events or Instanced PVE.
Many builds rely on hitting key abilities and burst windows and on clean, uninterrupted rotations. Many bosses and encounters can mess with these through moving, attacking, changing phase or adding boss mechanics the player has to deal with. This means that even the best, well trained players simply cannot achieve benchmark numbers in many real encounters as their circumstances simply don't allow it. Here is where Mechanist comes into play.

Mechanist

While Mechanist is notoriously easy to play, the difficulty or complexity of the class is not the core issue here. Rather it is how reliable and consistent the specs output is.
Mechanist and its power build in particular draws its strength from a very simple, short rotation without any major burst windows, long cooldowns or critical, missable abilities as well as its powerful but fairly passive pet, which can still output damage even when the mechanist is disabled or dealing with mechanics. It has no major windup, combos or rotations that the encounter can mess up in any way.

This means that Mechanist functions fairly close to its limit in most situations and when played by most players, while many other builds struggle to meet their full potential even when played by experienced players.
This is the main reason so many people are picking up Mechanist: because they can be very successful, almost anywhere, almost immediately. This is also the reason why Mechanists tend to dominate dps meters in many groups and situations. Not because every other build is less capable than Mechanist, but because Mechanists will almost always operate close to their limit while others struggle to reach theirs.
This balancing issue is not so much about professions performance limits or ease of use and more about reliability.

Balancing Reliability

I believe the solution to this problem is actually fairly straight forward. Mechanist and all other builds that offer high reliability and independence from encounter variations need to have their performance limits lowered a decent bit below that of builds that are less reliable.
In practice, this will mean that builds like Mechanist will still perform really well pretty much everywhere but don't directly compete or outperform with less reliable builds in situations where these are actually being pulled off well. That would make reliable builds a great choice for anyone looking for lower intensity or more generalist builds while those who are really into using and abusing GW2s amazing combat system are properly rewarded with higher performance in situations where they can and do pull of their builds fully.

As for real numbers, personally I would suggest that reliable builds should bench just a bit higher than DPS Support builds. I believe that power Mechanist sitting at about 30-32k DPS on the golem would in practice result in viable and desirable but not overwhelming performance in real encounters.
I expect that Mechanist would still see above average use, as it's a very versatile profession and many players seem to prefer reliability and ease of use over complexity but it would make more room for other builds for those of us looking for performance over comfort.

[Overdue for an overhaul]

Nah.

[Nerfing core to tone down Elite specs (Undo Kit nerfs)]

Engineer gets all of its healing and cleansing output from core traits and abilities. So when you want to nerf Engineers healing and cleansing output you have to nerf core engineer. The performance of Mechanist was also adressed directly by reducing stability access and barrier output.

Engineers access to raw healing and cleansing was a bit ridiculous. The Elixir had 11 ticks of healing and condi cleanse and medkit stull pumps amazing heal numbers after this nerf. They just brought these skills more in line with other healing abilities in the game.

This patch doesn't change where support engineer sits in the game. It still puts out great healing and lots of condi cleanse. Heal Scrapper and heal Mechanist are still good for the same reasons as before. Their numbers are just more in line with what you would expect from other heal builds.

[Tank Class?]

There is no traditional tank role in this game.

As a healer though you don't deal much damage anyways so there is room to build minstrel gear, giving you optimal stats for supporting while also making you super tanky.

Current healers are tempest, scrapper, mechanist, druid, firebrand, revenant.

You might also enjoy heal scourge or specter.

[4th slot for elites only would be soo nice...]

The point of choice is having to make it.

[Bladesworn or harbinger]

You can try out a specs entire kit in the pvp lobby. Just get your character to level 2, enter the lobby and see what it feels like.

There's no wrong choices here though. Leveling doesn't take that long especially when you have reached level 80 once and you start collecting tomes of knowledge.

GW2 is also very alt friendly, so long term you can easily have access to and play all professions.

Just go with your gut and see if you like it. If you don't making the change will be easy enough.

[Regarding the August 23 balance preview....power creep is not good .]

Which of the planned changes are power creep?

As far as I can tell, they all target weapons and builds that currently under perform. This update doesn't change how much damage players can do or how quickly they can clear content. It just increases the number of builds and options that perform well.

[Mounts Required, why.]

Yeah imagine tying major features of expansions into their story. Ugh.

[On Boons, Balance and Diversity]

13 minutes ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

So, all that's really missing is now a full-on tank spec along with some aggro-controls for the game. Which brings the next question: "Ok, you now have all the conventional trinity functions: dps, heal, tank, so why not just scrap this specialization thing altogether as it stands and just bring back class roles?" Oh right!...that would prove to Anet that they failed to reinvent the wheel and that this is what should've been done in the first place!

I don't think they failed. The system GW uses offers a lot of freedom to us still. Every single profession can spec into various amounts of durability, damage, healing, support and control as they like. Some do certain things better than others, but overall there are still plenty options.

The meta is another issue. In multiplayer games with enough players, metas form naturally. People just figure out the fastest, easiest, most reliable way to solve problems and inform each other until everyone is aware of the optimal solution. The roles we currently have: damage, boons, healing are nice because they can be mixed and matched pretty well and they can be filled in different ways.

Most classes and builds are not strictly one thing but cover certain essentials while bringing some of their own goodies as well.

It is a bit of a shame that durability plays almost no role in PvE. There isn't much incentive to build tanky and little things for a tanky player to do. Personally i think i prefer the idea of a tanky support over an aggro tank. For example heal scourge who never dies and never lets his team die, carrying be being the immortal support rather than by distracting enemies. Sadly we don't have too much of that right now and there usually isn't a great reason to play like this, at least not once a certain skill level is reached, as dying can be avoided pretty reliably.

[High personal DPS Support source?]

19 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

Well that is good to know, so the one Mirage I thought could be this legendary Support DPS doesn't really exist. I mean when i play it i do full support by using Inspiration.

Staff Alacrity Mirage is still a really cool and strong support build. On the golem it is still the second highest benching Alacrity build behind Untamed.

This is misleading for two reasons though: actually pulling off the Alac Untamed rotation in a fight can be quite difficult and easy to trip up. Very few players will be actually able to achieve the untamed benchmark in a real encounter.
Performing the Alac Mirage rotation might be difficult but is much more doable and less prone to problems because it's a ranged build with tons of evades.
Also those 28k on the golem come with an average of about 35 stacks of confusion. With some rough calculations those come out at about 12k damage per attack that the boss does. Depending on the encounter this will seriously increase your dps.

Staxe Mirage is also a serious contender. While you lose 50% Alac uptime, you gain some serious personal dps. This would be difficult to pull of in pugs, but a with some friends or guild mates, your group could easily run two Staxe Mirages each pulling top tier dps even without confusion hits while together still providing 25 stacks of might and 100% alac uptime.

You can squeeze some crazy good performance out of Mirage both with dps and support builds. Mirage doesn't provide quite as meany boons as other boon supports do but in return comes in hot with very high damage potential and a crazy good might generation as each chaos vortex brings 8 stacks. 

[High personal DPS Support source?]

On 8/8/2022 at 9:50 PM, Mell.4873 said:

The highest personal DPS a support can get is 36k Condition Mirage Alacrity, but I don't see this played very often, why? 
This is a very hard to do with Condition Mirage without more concentration or the traited Signet of Inspiration.

The next inline is 33-34k Alacrity Untamed which abuses the lower cooldown trait Fervent Force, this is very hard combo and almost impossible to maintain alacrity.

I think you are referring to Staxe Mirage here? Which achieves the 36k benchmark by playing axe and therefor only providing about 50% alacrity uptime. Staff Mirage benches a few k lower while providing 100% alac uptime.

I think the main reason these builds aren't played much currently is because there are much simpler builds available. Mirage requires you to keep on top of your staff ambush uses to get high alac uptime while other builds can do it almost passively.

 

On 8/9/2022 at 1:41 AM, Ashgar.3024 said:

Don't know Mesmer very well but doesn't the damage from Confusion vary wildly from fight to fight? Which is why its favored on a few (SH and TL mainly) while mostly ignored on others?

See above why the 36k number is a bit misleading. But actually there is a misconception about Mirage dps in general for both the alacrity and condition variations:

Currently the benchmarks for Staff Mirage (100% Alac), Staxe Mirage (50% Alac) and Condi Mirage are:
Staff: 28k
Staxe: 36k
Condi: 38k

I feel like a lot of people assume that these are the numbers Mirage is able to pull on an enemy that confusion works well on. But those are actually golem numbers meaning the confusion never deals its active damage.
This means Mirage actually performs really well everywhere but can absolutely crush and exceed in certain encounters. I suspect the main reason this spec is currently underplayed is the intially steep learning curve combined with current trends. We currently have multiple builds that are widely known and easy to play, so naturally a lot of people pick them up, do really well on them and then stick to what they know. Mirage is still a great pick for anyone who wants to fill a very offensive boon or pure dps role.

[Worth it to wait or just bite the bullet now?]

7 hours ago, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

Just to clarify, all I do now is dailies and stuff, but I want to be able to safely do fractals, strikes and raids in a support role, which I feel is dominated by Guardians and Engineers.

Just because a lot of players play certain builds doesn't mean others are not good or viable. If you are scared of not being welcome in groups for not picking the flavor of the month, just make your own.

Very little content in this game is actually so hard that you have to genuinly optimize your group composition or specific picks. Almost all content can be done by anyone playing anything in roughly matching gear and traits.

[Pet choice for Untamed or does it matter?]

Jacaranda and Rock Gazelle seem to be decent choices on land. Iboga still seems to be top dps though.

Maybe there's some other niche pet currently being overlooked that happens to synergize really well with untamed.

[The August 2 Update and Chronomancer]

16 minutes ago, phokus.8934 said:

Because you seem new here but for those of us who have been around since day one and posted great feedback in class forums only for them to ignore it gives us the right to vent how we want.  The idea that constantly having a positive attitude in every forum is going to bring about the necessary changes is extremely narrow minded.

Being a kitten is not a right you earn by being upset. I understand that some players are frustrated, but letting that out on the devs is immature and will get no one nowhere.

Also I have not called for a positive attitude. Just a constructive one. Or at least one that isn't insulting, harassing or pure pessimism.

[On Boons, Balance and Diversity]

39 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

What this does is makes the game faster for everyone.  But that doesn't make the game more interesting whatsoever.  If in PvE I am simply going to anticipate always receiving Alacrity and Quickness, why not remove the buff and simply change all the skills to have a faster CD and a faster cast time?  Alacrity and Quickness do not stack in intensity, they are either on or off, and when they are always on, for all professions and all players, you have removed the uniqueness and interesting build design associated with it.

If I go into group content, I'm simply expecting to receive healing and have high up time on might and fury. So why not remove all boons and healing?
Because while providing these things has become the meta and build our groups around them, we still have to actively pursue them. Providing these things are builds and roles that actively optimize towards these goals. It's a layer of game mechanics that we the players can interact with. Of course the community finds ways to optimize these things and of course we expect ideal conditions from our party compositions. But that doesn't mean we should just get rid of all mechanics that the community has figured out how to use them because they have now become common.
 

39 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

Personally, when I do play OW, I do use the Jade Bot Offensive and Defensive boosts as they are really very overpowered and trivialize the game further than it already was.  I find this game unfortunately far too easy given the current access to boons like Alac and Quick but I will take advantage of this bad design anyway.  

GW2 has always been a very easy game once you've figured out the combat system and builds. Even if alacrity and quickness were removed entirely, OW would not pose a challenge to any experienced player. That's just not the type of game and content that OW GW2 has to offer.

 

39 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

The build diversity for using Improved Alacrity with Self Buffed Alac seems to have become fairly narrow.

Yeah. We've lost a small number of self buffing builds in favor of a large number of group supporting builds. Some chrono players may be sad to lose their alac privilege but im sure many others are happy that they can now opt into boon support builds on their favorite profession as well.

[Mech haters - Do you really want harder builds to be stronger?]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I realize LOTS of things but that doesn't change what I said. The issue with mechanist stacking is not related to power rifle mechanist build. 

There's a big issue with perception here. Both FB and Mech offer multiple different builds that overall cover a large range of roles in they game. So when you have 3-4 Mechs or FBs in your  group, they are probably not all playing the same build. But together they form a proper group without any additional professions. So from the outside it looks like those specs are just too good and OP when they could easily be replaced with other specs and the group would still function.

Part of the issue is definitely that we just see so many FBs and Mechs, even if they are not on paper super overpowered.

But I do still feel like both of the specs have access to too many tools strengths. I feel like they could both easily access to 1-2 things and still be strong meta specs.

[Low vision player, which class would be best?]

I assume melee builds without crazy mobility would be best for you?

Necromancer is naturally tanky and durable. You might enjoy reaper with a high vitality build. Its melee, plays very straight forward and is very self reliable, so even when you lose your group, you can still do and take a lot of damage.

Mechanist (Engineer) would be a good choice for a ranged build. It brings a lot to the table, offers multiple play styles and is almost always effective without a lot of input.

A lot of other classes also have builds that are decent, reliable and don't require great physical ability. If you could narrow down what you are looking for in class, we could probably suggest more.

[On Boons, Balance and Diversity]

2 hours ago, Karagee.6830 said:

The only way that comes to mind to ensure wide class representation is to restrict the number of boons each build has access to and restrict even further those they can select via traits and provide to the party.  This would help in other game modes as well.

How would this create more class representation. 

[Playing a single class vs best in slot]

There are reasons to compare and complain. Builds need to be at least viable. You might be fine with playing a build that's worse than others, but when it gets so bad it becomes unplayable, that'll be an issue for you 😛

The top performing builds may also set the scene for content. If some builds can reliably push x amount of damage, healing or boons, then content may be designed around reaching those benchmarks. And weaker builds may fall behind newer content.

Lastly it does kind of ruin to fun for a lot of people. I agree that we shouldn't be hell bent on matching everyones numbers or pick rates. But performing well in combat is a big fun factor for a certain group of players and it ruins their fun if their ability to do well is tied to picking specific builds over others.

Personally I'd just like to see every elite spec at least support 1-2 builds that are genuinely good and viable. Doesn't really matter if they are top performers. Just need to be good enough and not too far behind.