Raven.1793

It's good to see that so many people remember and enjoy the way the game was originally designed. GW2 is a beautiful game. I love the art style and gameplay design really incentivized players to watch and interact with the game environment instead of focusing on the skill bar. I would say that rotations and reactions are both built into the gameplay. There will always be an optimal way to play in pve and that optimal approach will involve a rotation. The issue is how much time and effort should the fixed part of this rotation take? A lot of design effort is going into making the rotations interesting and challenging. Herein lies the problem: rotations are predictable and they are tedious. Creating more ways to work does not make it fun. The original team understood this well and built a game that emphasized dodges, in-combat rezzing, and damage window mechanics over executing the same set of skills over and over again. This actually sounds like a lot of fun. Having random phases and boon strips along with other mechanics that force players out of their comfort zone would go a long way towards more interesting gameplay. I think one of the keys to fun and reactive gameplay in group pve content is to set up reversible situations that are unpredictable, involve interaction with other players, and require players to pay attention to the environment. One existing example I can think of is the role of heal scourge on boneskinner. With a perfect group, heal scourge is dead weight. However, we all know what happens in pickup strikes so people bring a heal scourge to deal with the possibility of pugs being pugs. This interaction has it all: reversible? check. unpredictable? check. player interaction? check. environmental awareness? check. Sure the actual attack has a pattern but you can't just brainlessly transfuse after every slam, otherwise you'll have to think of something else if people get downed on the next slam.

I'd just like to see the Kinetic Accelerator change completely reverted. Quick scrapper was fun to play before and did not need an overhaul. Maybe throw in a 5s reduction on Blast Gyro CD if you want to up the dps a bit or introduce superspeed / quickness to some gadgets or elixirs if you want to increase utility options. I main engi in pve and ele in wvw so I feel like I can probably comment on this. The balance philosophy of ele - especially catalyst - is to mash every skill on cooldown and when you're out of cooldowns, change attunement so that you have more skills to mash. Ele's power is limited by its poor flexibility. Once you are committed to an attunement, you're stuck and a smart opponent can read that attunement to force openings. Engi does not work the same way. We are about having the right tool for the right time - reserving some skills until the moment they can make a big difference. Unlike ele, most professions do consider keeping all of their skills on CD to be the epitome of gameplay and the overall problem with this balance patch is that somebody is attempting to make every profession play like that.

I was thinking of quick deadeye but it looks like they're going to nerf it on 7/18. Cata is my wvw main but I'll never play it (or tempest) as my pve main because the rotation is boring, tedious, and gives me carpal tunnel. If things stand as they are, I'll probably just take another hiatus, wait for the new expac to go on discount, and maybe come back if things have improved.

One big reason many of us do not like the 6/27 changes it made the game less fun. There has been an attempt to fix this by numeric tweaks but that will not work. The problem is that the balance philosophy itself is narrowly focused around an inherently unfun type of gameplay: skill rotations. Mukluk already has a great video describing the problem from a druid perspective. Since scrapper is my pve main, I'll describe the situation from that perspective. For comparison, I find catalyst - my wvw main - to be no fun at all in pve. I don't believe the accusations of favoritism towards elementalist but I will suggest that game balance has leaned too much towards balancing all professions to be like elementalist which is a bad direction for the game. Before the patch, quick dps scrapper was fun. We were the lowest entry on the benchmark but it did not feel that way since burst dps was good with clever gameplay on very short fights. Using gyros off CD was not a problem as long as you always use medic, blast, shredder in order with the possible addition of purge, bypass, and function. I personally ran enough diviner so that I could comfortably run everything off of the 25s CD for blast. That is it, my quickness rotation was 4-5 skills executed in under 2 seconds once every 25 seconds - this is about the same amount of time as rocket charge. The rest of the time, I could engage with the game, paying attention to mechanics and looking for opportunities to make the best use of utilities such as superspeed, stability, purge, etc. Quickness uptime and dps made the build viable but people do not play "barely viable" builds. People play strong builds or fun builds. Quick scrapper was not a strong build, but it was a fun build thanks to its minimal rotation and reactive game play. There is a good reason I keep my elementalist in wvw. The pve rotations for catalyst require constantly invoking skills off cooldown. Weaver has a few autoattacks that make it worse because we then need to perfect the art of skill chaining and cancelling. If I want to do anything outside of the rotation such as CC, I have to plan for it a few seconds ahead of time and figure out how to restart my rotation again afterwards. Note that this mechanic is not too bad in wvw because the gameplay is inherently unpredictable and it's generally possible to recover or counter-pressure if I choose the wrong skill chain. Not so in pve where missing the rotation can cause a major dps drop, loss of boons, or missed CC that could ultimately result in a group wipe. Staring at cooldowns or practicing my muscle memory is not fun. It's work. So what makes for fun gameplay? In the case of pve scrapper, the rotation was minimal and I could focus on reacting to the game environment. In the case of wvw catalyst, the dynamic nature of fighting other players created an environment where short skill chains were more relevant than rotation execution. For all of its flaws, the original design philosophy of GW2 was all about fun. Encounters were chaotic, professions were unique, and mechanics encouraged players to engage with the game. I understand that there are many who want to work hard and who want the game to reward hard work, but that game is not the Guild Wars 2 I played for 10 years. When anecdotes conflict with data, there is probably a problem with the way you are using that data. This means that something is wrong with your balance philosophy. For once, listen to your customers, completely roll back the druid and scrapper changes, and rethink balance from the perspective of what players enjoy.

Hammer 3 used to be an asset, it's now a liability. A well-timed Rocket Charge let us dps through damage, stack extra CC, or even helps out with some emergency healing. That's all gone now because we now have to use it off CD on rotation to maintain quickness. Letting whirl finishers trigger the proc or mace 2 leap doesn't help because the problem is not quickness uptime. The problem is that reactive gameplay is fun and rotation-based gameplay is tedious work.

Scrapper main here. I don't care if I can maintain overcap quickness in full zerker. I did better dps before in 50% diviner and I want my fun reactive gameplay and utility back. Rocket Charge used to be an asset, it's now a liability.

Quick scrapper sucks now. Yes, I can sustain 100% quickness uptime in full zerker gear but dps is garbage and it feels terrible to play. I did more dps before in 50% diviner than I do now in 100% zerker. Rocket Charge used to be one of scrapper's best skills because it could be used reactively to dps, CC, or heal while under attack. Using Rocket Charge and fields on cooldown instead turns it into a liability due to the animation locking at the wrong times. You can cancel the skill but in general, having to rely on skill cancelling to avoid bad design is a terrible idea.

Can you change this to also provide AoE alacrity just like Chaos Vortex? This would at least make alac mirage viable underwater. Also, I'd like to see the scrapper quickness changes completely reverted. The old scrapper's Rocket Charge and fields were a fun element of its reactive gameplay and forcing us to burn those skills on boon generation is a terrible waste.

Mandatory quickness and alacrity are problems. LFGs always block on boon support. Applying boons is work, not fun and in general, players will not play support dps if they could play pure dps. The best support characters are the ones that require the least effort to apply the boons. This leads to the current situation where 2-3 builds dominate each role. Artificially limiting boon availability will only make the problem worse as the meta will shift towards the build that can provide the best uptime for each boon. Remember when they nerfed chrono in HoT? People just ran 2 chronos instead. Either remove boons completely or make them so easy to apply that boon support essentially plays like a full healer or full dps minus some numeric effectiveness. Keep in mind that might, fury, and vulnerability used to be key boons (and one condition). They are no longer an issue now because any team comp will easily overcap.

Finishers are a terrible way for scrapper to apply boons. Gyros were great because they were not intrusive and because they did not require a rotation. Just cast all your gyros every 20 seconds to maintain quickness and you have the rest of the time for interesting gameplay like using Rocket Charge or Shock Shield to void attacks while dealing damage. Even the combo fields are more interesting when used reactively. For example using Spare Capacitor into Rocket Charge for CC or using Reconstruction Field into Rocket Charge for some emergency healing. Boons are an unfortunate necessity and I don't want their application method to be interesting or to spend effort applying them. I'd rather pay attention to the game environment than trying to play whack-a-mole on the skill bar.

Bring back the old scrapper. Quickness on gyros was great and nobody had a problem with taking 3+ gyros for quickness. I'd drop gyros before a fight and burst for 20 seconds before dropping another set. I could count on Rocket Charge for emergency defense and mobility. Even in 50% diviner and with subpar benchmarks, I was still able to contribute good damage because I could focus dps in burst phases and use Rocket Charge to avoid attacks while dealing damage. The new scrapper sucks to play. Sure I can upkeep 100% quick in 100% zerker on the golem but that doesn't matter because I now have to spend a greater amount of time and attention on quickness upkeep. Quickness now requires both a field and a finisher meaning that we are now locked into even more skills than before. Rocket Charge is useless now since it has to be cast on cooldown and can no longer be used reactively. Furthermore, the skills required to upkeep quickness take longer to use than before resulting in a noticeable loss of dps. Quick scrapper was already near the bottom of the benchmarks and I imagine that it won't be considered viable anymore after this. Note that mace won't change anything. The new quick scrapper has no problems with quickness uptime. It has a problem with dps. Mace dps is already bad and no amount of utilities will bring it to a viable level as long as we need to allocate this much time to the quickness rotation. Quickness on combo is just bad. Revert this change.

HAM does not have 20% representation. Mechanist does and most of that rep comes from rifle-mech. There is not enough room for more than 1 healer in a group and it's preposterous to think that HAM is always chosen as healer-support. There are at least as many healbrands. Druids are common in raids while heal tempest is new and only starting to get recognition. What I see is that rifle mechs are extremely popular, it's rare to see a group without one. The reason rifle mechs are popular has nothing to do with what HAM. Rifle mechs don't even have barrier.

If we're looking at the representation numbers, that explanation is simple. Mechanist has 5 good builds: HAM, condi-alac, power-alac, rifle-mech, and condi-dps. Add those up and it shouldn't be surprising to see 5 times as many mech players as elite specs that only have 1 good build. I should also add that most of the mech representation probably comes from rifle-mech which is a really easy pure-dps build that has nothing in common with HAM except showing up under the same elite spec.

I'm not really sure what you mean when you say that Mechanist does not have tradeoffs. Since you're comparing with Firebrand, I'm going to assume that you mean heal alacrity mech (HAM). First, it's important to note that HAM itself is very well-balanced against other heal support specs like healbrand and heal alac tempest. Barrier output on HAM is very good but that makes up for the poor raw healing output that mostly comes from regen and medical dispersion field. HAM relies on core engi utilities like medkit, elixir gun, and mortar kit for condi clear, burst healing, and some cc. HAM does unusually good dps for a pure support but 5k dps over the 0 dps from a heal alac tempest is not much to talk about. From this perspective, HAM is not out of line with other heal support builds. If we expand the scope to include build flexibility and dps support options, then I should point out that firebrand and tempest both have an equivalent dps support build. As far as I am opposed to having pure dps and support dps based off of gear, I don't think this is a problem for heal support vs dps support. This is because some groups decide to go no-healing and it's convenient for the healer to switch to an equivalent dps support build. Nobody is going to stack healers with partial boon support.

Not sure where this is coming from but double staff mirage can reliably cap alac and is really easy to play. This build does fairly well at the golem but it takes forever to ramp up and you rarely get anything approaching benchmark in raids and most endgame pve. It works exceptionally well in open-world content such as boss blitz since it heavily overcaps might and will spread it out among a large number of allies in your typical zerg. Maybe you're seeing people playing the staxe variant that decidedly cannot cap alac? You can tell what build a mechanist is running by the weapons on their mech. Alacrity mechs (both heal and dps) run the punch mech. Rifle mechs run the gun mech. Condi mechs run the sword mech. I still see a lot of Firebrands and they are still highly favored for a lot of content such as fractal CMs.