Rising Blade.9206

somehow this looks like someone just cobbled in boons to the shouts and wrote it off as a job well done, doesn't seem to have any reasoning aside it from "just give tempest advance and stand your ground that stunbreaks". just get rid of aegis and stability from this skill already, it's disgustingly overloaded since it already acts as a stunbreak especially when mech has barrier generation.

most of the problems and balance shenanigans at the moment concerns high end content meaning 5-man/10-man instanced content, if you're just going to catch up to the story you can play whatever you want. though if you are, warrior is decent...ish provided you know how to play it.

you call this lazily written pencil written note up, bold? still so insistent on keeping the inferior version of the HoT banner bundle pickup skill?

still putrid, remained that way since its first beta. only place i roll cata is in WvW looking at crits with double meteor shower, everywhere else I'd just stay the hell away especially hammer. the concept had potential, execution is poor, far below even Anet's low standards

standardization for the sake of standardization? ok. i still stand by what i said with the reason you switched those two is because you just want mech rocket punch and net shot to go in tandem since you can't find a way to code it without breaking the skill system of the game, no need for the holier than thou reasoning. you mean on the checklist since beta and is currently overshadowed by the fact that mechanist has been been very strong in PvE in release? would have been better to just remove the mech rocket punch since engineer already has a lot of tools for CC and defiance damage, now it just looks weird with the mech just instantly firing the skill without even a flinch also a great double down to see how out of touch was the guy in charge in balancing with no idea how or why the meta exist with putting boon generation traits in the wrong places with contesting traits already exist in other traitlines, also forgetting that support roles exist for a reason, it's like they want to go back to pre-HoT meta with warrior/guardian/mesmer/ele speedclearing dungeons but this time with just firebrand, mechanist, and mixed in with virtuosos

i miss it too. they could also make overcharge happen in an interval instead of only on turret drop

Rocket boots - mobility and long jump shenanigans along with rifle 5 Battering ram- when you don't want your enemy to be in your face and your other knockback skills are on cooldown. decent breakbar damage, traited version with gadgeteer seems to be a bit broken since it becomes an instant cast, surprised it hasn't been fixed yet throw mine- similar to battering ram and works best with the gadgeteer trait, removes boons so it helps if you're against a mob that has protection or any other boon slick shoes- decent if you're being chased and want to get out of combat fast AED- decent CC though the heal isn't that reliable since mobs attack either too fast or too slow and mobs tend to have knockbacks that interrupt your casting. useful if you're skipping the radiation room in thaumanova and works best with gadgeteer and automated medical response, but you need to precast it before hitting the health threshold to get the instant cooldown, you're going to need to learn a bit to use this gadget. kits grenade kit- if you want to tag mobs and deal damage mortar kit- if you want to tag mobs at a long distance and get some lingering AoE fields flamethrower - ol reliable. the whole HoT storyline would've been shorter if the devs made engi PCs whip out their flamethrower toolkit- pry bar just feels satisfying to hit but most of the time it's a good kit to get for the shield and magnet medkit - if you're running with a friend and you want to help out with healing, otherwise the swiftness on medkit 5 is nice elixir gun- AA damage may be bad but skill 4 is decent for getting some distance and skill 5 is great for cleansing condis

not so quite sure about this one. if this is the line of thinking on how you're going to approach elementalist, this sounds like it's going against your current philosophy for balance if the previous patch is anything to go by, also elementalist is supposed to be a reactive class, moreso than engie, weaver should be the elementalist spec meant for focusing on frequent attunement swapping and it feels like you're creeping that line of thinking to tempest with the new trait, which is a spec that reinforces that reactive gameplay the mech nerf i can go by as long as i see less and less mechanists out in the field, but can you please take a look again on the new rifle animations? rifle 1 and 5s animation is way too fast for rifle that feels like it should be thematically slow paced. Rifle 1 would feel better if it's something like an autoattack chain instead of 3 shots in a single second and jump shot just gives the engie a lot more mobility when it already has a lot of mobility options (rocket boots, multiple sources of superspeed, and shift signet) I'm still not convinced on the direction of where you're going. if you're prancing about class diversity, what you're doing is just pushing already irrelevant classes and playstyles deeper down the well while your favorites still reigns as the golden child of the game. 10-man targeting would enable better compositions instead of reinforcing the cookie cutter quick/alac/heal trinity which just isn't interesting

No, they did it because they don't want to remove rocket punch and just have it be restricted to mace 3, so they just swapped net swap with blunderbuss and have the soft CC skill work in combo. I know, it just feels out of touch with the theme of the rifle, not a fan of it being that fast

the new rifle jump animation needs some tuning on jump speed, it's too fast and doesn't feel like it has any weight at all. somehow i expected the new autoattack to act like a chain, it's currently a tad too fast and much like the new jump shot lacking any weight

basically lip service, as expected. would've been better to just postpone the balance changes and re-evaluate said changes and move them to another date. never change, please keep doing what you're doing

Like that one guy said, i wouldn't say that engie should be balanced or favoured towards a kit-centric playstyle but it's hard to ignore that it's important to its identity especially considering that it doesn't have options when it comes to weapon swap. Engineer has always been that "have a solution for every problem" class, it lets you free form your playstyle and kits contribute to that, gutting kits would hurt that identity and all we're left is just a pure ranged class that requires you to cough up extra money to get an upgrade and melee weapons

the engineer rifle change seems interesting, though the other promised classes just doesn't seem to fare so much. the new tempest trait just seems underwhelming with locking alacrity behind overload. banner change though, that just hits the final nail in the coffin, quickness on banner cast just seems sad espeically with the new pickup mechanic, what's the point of bringing banners now if all it does is grant boons and a one-time quickness every 60 seconds? it's just not worth it on bringing all of them just to keep up with the quickness demand a group needs

Core warrior is decent. does some reasonable amount of damage, with axe/axe, greatsword, and you have the bonus of bringing banners which is a very welcoming thing to have in fractals

too many unique buffs. I'd rather they just rework hammer and giving it more leap finishers than to what we have at the moment then maybe the current aura focused traitline would work

so wait for the broken spec to get a revamp(hopefully) in the profession update and in the meantime enjoy a poorly designed PvE spec and its weapon with bloated damage values that's still clunky to use and doesn't welcome other ele playstyles? ok. please nerf it a week after if it overperforms again.

best you can do with mechanist in wvw zerg fights is trait J-drive and always have the mech inactive. at least you can annoy the enemy with those airstrikes and do some small damage if it matters while you're shooting with your mortar kit. just play scrapper

addition of f6-f7 is nice, going to be a pain finding a suitable keybind for it though. was still decent and the same like the last beta, looking forward to release. still has the issue of alchemy traitline being dead for the spec. pet attack bound to weapon skills seems like a neat idea, though don't like the fact that rocket punch is bound to mace 3 only. would be nice if you could modify the bound skills or just make it that all weapon skill 3 procs golem rocket punch.

nice change for the orb mechanic, but still not good enough. make it an upkeep skill instead kind of similar to ventari tablet or a well with an upkeep. get rid of the augment special mechanic of needing to be in a specific attunement for a special proc, weaver and tempest didn't ask for specific attunements to make their utilities more effective, why break the convention now, what's the point on making the class hard to play than it is? either get rid of the hammer or go for a full revamp, the hammer's skillsets is just not that fun to play, autoattacks just don't feel right with their animations, hammer 3 has no point in it skillsets, redo the concept of the ele hammer and just give us an earthshaker type of weapon by going for full melee instead of the mess of a weapon. rework traits, if i want to play auramancer i'd play tempest, hammer doesn't give the spec a lot of aura and neither does the augments, do people over there even forget that tempest exist? Funnily enough, the spec plays better with every other weapon BUT the hammer. the spec overall is just a mess in concept.

Changes made the willbender smooooth, can't be stressed enough. made the Willbender play a lot better compared to the previous beta, in light of this it really shows how the spec's strength of being very mobile in exchange for some of guard's survivability(due to changes in virtues), turning it into a blue assassin of the sorts. Though it still has some problems: Rushing justice - has a tendency that does a back and forth thing on the last phase of it's animation, at least it keeps happening to me. rolling light - quick retribution's range is still questionable, stubby to use because it's range is a lot less compared to the range of the evade Heaven's palm- has an issue with it's telegraph with everyone can just dodge out of it easily, would be better if the teleport just happen a bit later compared to the current one. heel crack - can this be put to 1/4 second cast time instead? 1/2 breaks the flow of the spec because it feels like it takes ages to finish flowing resolve- not much of an issue but feels like it could have a trait that changes the skill into making it give superspeed, evade window/aegis, and remove movement impairing conditions instead of a dash

edit: i seem to have gotten lost and didn't realized this wasn't the catalyst feedback thread. still yeah, hammer is still crap, just not fun to play with. if you're looking for fluidity, look at D/D, better fluidity and utility. overall has a better feel.

It's core engineer with a pet, but this time you're the pet, and it feels like you're playing 2 characters at once, It's great! not sure if the long tether range is intended but it's nice in PvE for double teaming shenanigans, not sure in PvP so it could use a fix only to that game mode. Mace is nice, a bit average but plays quite well with the mech, though the animation of the 3rd auto attack animation just feels awkward because of how fast it is. Skills are alright, Elite could use some work since using it when your mech is off cooldown uses up the elite and problem of accidentally using it when the mech has 3 seconds left is quite punishing. Jade cannon is disappointing damage-wise, the animation is decent but doesn't hold a candle to the powerful feel of the Holo's Elite. Traits are decent, jade cannons deal a heck of a lot of damage, but seems reasonable with the removal of toolbelt removing a half of where Engie's damage is from. J-Drive mech air support passive is funny to use, quite a flavourful passive. Not much else to say to mechanist traits, they all work nicely and quite refined at their current state. With the base engie specs, it synergizes well with explosive and tools due to the toolbelt and explosions that the mech gives out and spamming mech commands that inherits toolbelt enhancements. Inventions lands on the average synergy though useful when you want build with support in mind, along with Rifle which isn't as effective as explosives/tools combo when making for damage. Alchemy however is just useless, no point at all to take it due to removal of toolbelt which gets rid of additional party boon share with throw elixirs(Though channeling Conduits and Barrier Engine already suffices for Might, Fury, Vigor, and Alacrity upkeep). Purity of Purpose would just be dependent on you using Medkit and Elixir Gun since mechanist in general doesn't have that much group condi Cleanses. The Spec is quite fun to play in PvE, Mech as a companion just feels right and comfy. in WvW, it feels strong on roaming and duels though it's useless on big fights since the Mech is easily burned down. Overall the spec in general is alright, traits are refined, really fits the engi being very utilitarian in it's nature, though unfortunately with the removal of toolbelt it removed Elixirs and Alchemy traits making them useless for that spec entirely, Hope to see further refinement on release on that regard along with the mace autoattack animation.

hammer feels like just a bastardized version of D/D while D/D feels like it fits the spec a lot more than the weapon it's introduced with, one of the reason is due to it being able to charge up the energy mechanic a lot more, and hammer feels like it's trying trying to cover a broader area instead of pinning it with a single role/identity: it can go ranged(fire/air), close (water/earth) and by a bit of extension, mid; it doesn't have enough gap closers to be become a bruiser since it's only and single gap closer that it has is water 4 and it isn't quite reliable, and ele and catalyst doesn't have the tools to cover it. and it's damage is just bad the sphere mechanic just really doesn't fit well with the hammer, staff maybe but it sure plays well with D/D despite the fact that it only has 4 blast finishers. the mechanic shows promise but the energy mechanic of it just really holds it back Not sure how sure if the scrapper treatment for it would work well, on one hand the scrapper's niche might just be overtaken by the catalyst, while on the other you'd got a support oriented catalyst which is just a mix of scrapper/tempest with moving combo fields that's forced to be on close combat. the traits are just utterly forgettable and it doesn't really go well with everything the class/spec has.

put gunsaber on "in combat" weapon switch hotkey please, it being on F1 makes it clunky. let us be able to enter dragon trigger regardless if we're using gunsaber or not, needing to be using gunsaber just to enter the stance really doesn't flow well. let the gunsaber be sheathed when out of combat, for aesthetic purposes, also let the sheathed gunsaber be displayed when using the primary weapon. gunsaber damage feels too low in WvW or in general there's quite a delay when entering dragon trigger before being able to use DT skills due to the initial chargeup for the first ammo to pop, hard to use it when you're looking to use Dragon slash 2 for a quick gap closer/escape or just want to use DT with just one charge, i suggest letting it consume a small amount of flow upon first use change Dragon trigger skill 5 to something like a skillshot/directional cursor, was hard using it with as a small AoE circle when you have the lock in range option disabled, also it would feel a lot better to use. utility skills really fits the bill on being just plain utilities, not saying that it's bad, but the spec goes nicely with physical skills, at least in WvW. also playing against other bladesworns in WvW is awesome, almost feels anime, i love it.