Farwind.8016

Okay, did a Fractal CM clear as shortbow heal scrapper, got a little bit more feedback: T4's and CM's were very comfy minus 100cm 100cm had some struggles -- killing the side node in full harrier's was possible, but it required me to save my CC skills ungodly early. Like for the 66% and 33% splits I needed to basically not use my shortbow CC on any breakbars in the previous 20% of the bosses HP, or else I'd wipe the group by not being able to CC the side and kill it with mortar kit. I basically had to hold skill 5 only for the side. Next time I'm going to try and bring more CC via other means, but yeah, it did emphasize the skill 1 and skill 5 things I mentioned above.

I've used it once or twice to give superspeed to people off stack, or when I'm not running Gyroscopic Acceleration in favor of stability. Even in that case though, you have a lot of superspeed tied to other skills in your kit.

Hi, I've been playing heal scrapper with shortbow in Raids and Strike missions since the beta has come out, and had a pretty drastic change of heart towards this weapon. I was really negative towards the beta, and after reading the skill changes I was very skeptical coming into the actual release. That changed during a XJJ CM pull where, as I sniped someone with a condi cleanse right before they went down, the weapon kit clicked. I've been having a blast with it since. All that being said, I've got a bunch of feedback. Parts of the kit feel really good, and some parts don't. For context, I have played shortbow exclusively in PvE instance content. I have done the following: 1 . Raid Wings 1-7 with Challenge Motes (CM). 2. Aetherblade Hideout (AH) CM, Xunlai Jade Junkyard (XJJ) CM, Cosmic Observatory (CO) CM 3. All normal mode strikes What's Excellent 1. Animations and sound knock it out of the park. Skills 2-5 all look good and sound fantastic, and skill 4 deserves special praise on the animation front. 2. Skills 2-5 Feel good to use. They feel weighty and crisp. I don't feel like I'm fighting the kit, like I did in the beta. - animations, sound design, cast time, and flight time are all well aligned. 3. Tiggering Chain Reactions is easy and doesn't feel uncontrollable, like it did in the beta. 4. Skill 2 (Essence of Animated Sand) and 3 (Essence of Living Shadows) have great utility. There's been several times where sniping people with these skills have put a smile on my face. 5. having a dark field rounds out engi combo field access. What's Okay but not Great (aka things I kinda shrug at) 1. skill 2's Chain Reaction is kinda lackluster. engi brings a lot of might across it's kits now, so there's no real purpose to this particular chain reaction. 2. skill 4's recharge time feels a little long. What Could be Improved 1. Skill 4's aegis timing is weird due to it's fuse timing. it's applying after I think it should due to the skill's animation/sound queues. combining this with the recharge time makes using this skill to aegis certain mechanics a bit awkward. 2. There's no consistent sound cues for triggering *chain reactions*, if there is any. I'm guessing whether I triggered the *chain reaction* or if I was too late. This would drastically improve how *chain reactions* feel to use. 3. The 4 seconds to chain a skill is uncomfortably short, especially if you have any recharge time between your skill casts. Theoretically you could do 2 5 2 4 2 3 2 in a continous chain, I've never been able to pull it off. Increasing the time the marks hang around to the 5-8 second range would go a long way. 5. Skill 5's recharge time is way, way too long. Using the skill and triggering the chain reaction for CC feels great, but the recharge time takes it out of the game for too long for a skill whose primary purpose is CC, especially since you need to be saving 2 skills to get the full CC on a dime. The recharge time makes it bad against long-lived large defiance bars, and the 2-action trigger makes it bad against bars which require instant breaking. When you're playing heal scrapper this is your only at-will CC, and restricts usability of the spec on a lot of encounters, especially when there's some supports that have an order of magnitude more CC available, with lots of that CC being instant cast. I'd either reduce the recharge, make each circle daze seperately when the chain reaction is triggered (aka double the total max CC from this skill), or both. Points 2 and 3 combined made me think the shortbow wasn't great when I did my initial testing on release, because of a combinations of missing the chain reactions and not realizing I'd triggered them. What's Terrible 1. Skill 1 sucks. It does worse damage than elixir gun, brings a lackluster condition, and doesn't even have a 20% projectile finisher. It's worse than the pistol days on heal scrapper. There's got to be a way to make this skill have a purpose. Random Grumps 1. having an ethereal field during beta was super cool. I was pretty down on the actual version during the weapon preview stream because of that going missing. 2. debilitating conditions are awkward to fit in with this kit. Specifically the trade-off to bring immobilize over other heal scrapper utilities is too high. 3. heal mechanist can't upkeep regen if you take shortbow over mace/shield. Because this weapon is very specifically not meant for use on dps support builds, that leaves only heal quick scrapper as a viable build in instanced PvE content. TL;DR 1. skills look and feel fantastic to use. 2. skill 1 neither looks nor feels good, and is missing literally any reason to exist. Add a 20% projectile finisher at least. 3. skill 2 chain reaction isn't particularly useful with the heal scrapper kit. 4. skill 4 aegis application has a weird fuse time attached to it. 5. skill 4's recharge time is slightly awkward. 4. skill 5's recharge time feels really bad, and should have a much shorter recharge, higher total cc, or both. 6. marks for chain reactions should last a little bit longer, somewhere between 5-8 seconds. 7. chain reactions need a sound cue (and possibly a visual one). 8. shortbow doesn't work with heal mechanists' kit. 9. I'm really enjoying the weapon so far, which is suprising considering I was very negative coming into the release. Thank you guys for all the work you did on it!

Questions for Devs/Feedback: 1. Do you guys envision shortbow engi as a possible pqdps build? Or is this really specifically aimed at heal builds only? 2. Are you guys happy with how the confusion change worked out, where it's less swingy per boss? 3. You're changing thief to suffer less from stray endurance gain. Any chance a similar change could be made to takedown round on engi? 4. fire wizard is losing some burning stacks from your arcane changes. Is there a plan to compensate that? 5. I find quickness coming from the engi rather than the blast kinda awkward. Is that going to change with shortbow?

So, I've got some feedback on the mechanist changes, and why I think this particular way of nerfing mechanist is a bad Idea. Right now microing the mech is a frustrating experience. The only build on mechanist where you're actively microing the mech currently is the heal alacrity build, where your main role is centered around giving the boons from the mech to the group. Your crisis zone or barrier burst comes off cooldown, you mirco your mech to the correct location, and then you're rewarded by giving you're burst of boons to the squad. The current change as proposed makes it a punishment to not be constantly microing the mech. To play, you'll now have to be constantly pressing f6/f7, getting punished for every second the mech isn't attacking, every second the mech isn't withing 360 of the player, and every time the mech decides to run to the other side of the boss to attack when you press f6 for some unknown reason. it makes microing the mech almost a passive part of playing the class. If the implementation were instead something like f2 on power mech gives you a damage bonus for 6 seconds based on how close you are to the mech, that would be a better solution because it's a reward for using the f2and proximity correctly. Suddenly you'd want to time your rifle/nade/f1 burst for when f2 came off cooldown -- ensuring you position, execute f2, and drop your damage at the same time. Then you get ready for when it'll be time again to drop your burst again, similar to how you're rewarded for dropping your burst of boons on heal alacrity mechanist.

The nerf to Condition Mechanist F1 hits two builds (mace/pistol and pistol/pistol), the second of which is not overperforming in the current meta, and is likely to removed from the current meta with this nerf. By buffing mainhand pistol to offset some of the nerf, some of the damage could be given back to pistol/pistol Mechanist, as well as supporting the other engineer condition builds which have fallen behind over the last few years. Details: We have 5 condition builds currently for Engineers: Condition Mechanist (mace/pistol j-drive) Condition Mechanist (pistol/pistol j-drive) Condition Holosmith (pistol/pistol 4-kit) Condition Core Engineer (pistol/pistol 4-kit) Condition Quickness Scrapper (pistol/pistol 3-kit) Of these builds, (1) and (2) are currently considered meta, while (3-5) have slowly lost dps to various nerfs to the point where they aren't considered viable choices in most end-game content. (aka benching 33k or less). Condition Mechanist (mace/pistol j-drive) is currently overperforming due to it's high confusion damage from mace. However, it's counterpart, the pistol/pistol variant, does not generate nearly the amount of confusion that the mace variant does. The current changes to the f1 skill will hit this build hard, dropping it's dps into that 33k or less range with the other condition engineer builds. If the damage which has been removed from the Mechanist f1 skill is moved to the mainhand pistol, it would prevent pistol/pistol Mechanist from being overly nerfed due to mace/pistol overperforming, and give a welcome damage buff to the other Engineer condition builds, which could really use it. Thanks. TL;DR -- I suggest moving the bleed damage being removed from Mechanist f1 to Core Engineer mainhand pistol

With the upcoming patch, Throw Mines will be having a coefficient boost to 3. However, currently if you use the trait Gadgeteer, Throw Mines uses the wrong coefficient, instead using the coefficient from Deploy Mines, the underwater version of Throw Mines. Throw Mines has a corresponding underwater skill called Deploy Mines, and the two skills have a different damage coefficient. Throw Mines has a coefficient of 2, and Deploy Mines has a coefficient of 1.65 If you take the Tools traitline, there is a trait called Gadgeteer, which modified Throw Mines to drop a second mine at your feet. Both of these mines, when traited, use the Deploy Mine coefficient of 1.65 rather than the Throw Mines coefficient of 2. When you update Throw Mines, could you guys also fix the Gadgeteer trait so the mines have the correct coefficient? Thank you.

Will this change to Throw Mines fix the current bug when the trait Gadgeteer is selected? Throw Mines has a corresponding underwater skill called Deploy Mines, and the two skills have a different damage coefficient. Throw Mines has a coefficient of 2, and Deploy Mines has a coefficient of 1.65 If you take the Tools traitline, there is a trait called Gadgeteer, which modified Throw Mines to drop a second mine at your feet. Both of these mines, when traited, use the Deploy Mine coefficient of 1.65 rather than the Throw Mines coefficient of 2. When you fix Throw Mines, could you guys also fix the Gadgeteer trait so the mines have the correct coefficient of 3? As an aside, would you guys also buff Deploy Mines to match the Throw Mines coefficient? Thank you.

Steps to recreate 1. Press F4 (Recall Mech) to send the mech away 2. Before Mech takes off, Press Mace 3 (Rocket Fist Prototype). - Recall Mech will be interrupted. The Mech will instead due it's counterpart to Rocket Fist Prototype 3. Press f4 (Recall Mech) to send the mech away The mech will be on cooldown for 50 seconds. This is consistently repeatable.