Vagrant.7206

BD? Do you mean blast gyro?

In theory you could do that, although your healing ability will go down (low synergy between hammer and heals), and you will functionally be "shifting modes" between offense and support, which is an awkward transition.

Several reasons: My healing is already rather high. I rarely struggle providing enough health unless someone is really bad at avoiding damage.Toughness on minstrel's makes me the tank, so mobs are pulled towards me. In turn, other players stay near the mobs to deal damage, which allows me to heal better. I spend less time running around trying to gather allies near.The conversion aspect (with Purity of Purpose) means I can grant some really nifty boons. In any fractal/instab that chills, I grant a ton of alacrity. I'm always granting a ton of regen, fury with blinds, might with weakness, protection with vuln, etc. And in the few instances where immob is a thing, I grant resistance. I can pump out some really hefty boons, so concentration is a great stat for that.

Fair number of changes to emphasize healing instead of survival in a competitive game mode, particularly when it comes to gear/trait selection. Pistol/Shield is a better choice for healing than hammer, but offers less tankiness, for example.

Hey everyone, I feel really confident in saying I have one of the best healing builds in T4 fractals. My PUG teams just do not die... even on twilight oasis with birds and last laugh. The only struggle I have is when teammates don't know how to stay near me. The newest patch further cemented the power of this healing build. The only time I see people die is when they simply don't avoid agony or OHKOs, or actively run away from me while I'm trying to heal them. It cleanses like nobody's business too -- your whole team can sit in the middle of a rift and barely notice. Works best with the Afflicted Instability, but We Bleed Fire also makes it shine. Condi-heavy instabilities bring out some incredible buffs, and I've capped duration on regeneration in these instabilities. Super effective in Volcanic, Cliffside, Mai Trin, Uncategorized, Underground, Siren's Reef, Molten Boss. Not weak in any other fractals, but it can really shine in these ones. Note:This is a build that will require familiarity with your 3 primary kits and your offhand shield. Med kit, e-gun, and mortar kit make this build very potent as a healer. Mortar kit can be exchanged for sneak gyro in certain situations, but its light field (that blinds!) and water field are useful enough to merit priority in most situations. Here's the build:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqensTBFpitbBepC0ehFDjSc/6v/jOxf8KPMAuv8D-jhxGQBDZ/BydCAmoSQ6p+DAeAAEU5HpA8bmF-ehttps://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Healing_Scrapper How to use it:Trash MobsBlind with mortar 4Spam med kit 1 for minor injuries on alliesUse med kit 4 or Toolbelt 1F for major injuriesCleansing like a crazy person:Elixir Gun 3: Fumigates entire teamMed kit 3: Pulses cleanse on the regular (combo with double shield 4 for heal blast)Elixir Gun 5: Cleanse + healElixir Gun 5/Purge Gyro/Mortar Kit 4 provide light fields that can be blasted for additional cleansesPurge gyro: Pulses cleanse regularlyHealing like a crazy person:Med kit 1 is healing filler, use it between major heals.Toolbelt F1 does >5k healingE-gun 5 does >4k healing on initial burstAlways blast your med kit 3 with double shield 4.Activate bulwark gyro prior to big enemy hits. You can also block while it's active to stop incoming damage. You can also use your shield 5 for group protection.Toolbelt F5 + Mortar Kit 5 for another water blastMortar Kit 5 or Med Kit 3 + E-gun 4 for another water blast.Point blank med kit 2 for a massive injection of health on individuals. Typically >7k at point blank.If you're doing decent cleansing, your Med kit 1 should be healing over 500 health per pulse, or about 1k per second.Other functionsShield 5 can do some impressive CC when timed with certain boss attacksToolbelt F2 does impressive projectile destruction plus stabilityToolbelt F3 is a stunbreaker if you need itOn cliffside, you can hit all the chains between sections by cleansing immob once to grant yourself resistance. Similarly, in Volcanic, the immob spam turns into resistance spam thanks to Purity of Purpose.If you have fractal savant/adept/champ/god, your passive healing from that seems to also be shared with group members. Not sure if this is a bug with MDF, but I've healed people passively without doing a thing.If you know an ally will go down (failure to dodge, too low health and too far), pretarget them so that when they do go down, you can immediately activate function gyro and start rezzing.Changing skills based on scenarioIf you're in a less condi-intesive fractal/instability combo, you can swap out purge gyro for another blast finisher like throw mine to boost your CC/water blast potentialSwap mortar kit out for sneak gyro for when you want to skip trash mobs (Molten Boss, Twilight Oasis). Works great on underground fractal when needing to activate the switch.

If you can find something that packs a stunbreak (toolbelt) and condi cleanse (E-gun 5 + 4) in the same package on a relatively low cooldown, you can use that, but good luck finding both. You'll generally get one or the other.

After the recent changes, I thought about trying a few new builds. Toyed around with some ideas. The ol' drunk scrapper is functional again, still troll-ey, with new and improved sneak gyro: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUncTBlXhVXB2XBEqilJjS8ZKgAgeuz7A/74WumD-jJROABAs/AMlBQ/CAI/DAAA I think I got a crit on jump shot of 12k with that build. Granted, I wasn't playing seriously with it, but it was super troll. Stealth gyro makes it very easy to hide and reposition. I had good success with this tank build, but I wouldn't rate it higher than prot holo: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASncoCFpitbBuoCkfhlKjievr78WcZCgyDM6quOC-jJxWAB4WGwxHAQzXAAA2fAA The downside was that it was weaker at cleansing and dueling than prot holo, but could stay with targets better and could CC more frequently, making it easier to finish foes. What do you guys have?

On the other, you have the frequent complaints that mirage is an untouchable, unkillable, ez-mode, brain dead, god-spec, rife with too much evade, invuln, stealth, detarget, mobility, etc. (See any mesmer complaint thread as well as many posts here.) I think targeted changes should be applied to both offense and defense: Offense:Minimize direct damage on axe, torch, scepter, and staff so condi builds really only output condi.Shave condi application so condi damage is ramped rather than burst. Possibly add an ICD on Ambush attacks, but in exchange leave Mirage Cloak alone, except as stated below. Ideally, cut back the excessive cleanse and resistance in the game to compensate, which might even enable additional viable condi specs.Maybe this is out there and has issues, but: Rework clones so they don't pile conditions via auto-attacks, but instead apply a couple stacks to opponents who kill them (to punish them for falling for the fake and encourage developing the most important skill for fighting mesmers: identifying the real mesmer--which isn't as difficult as people think.) Outside of shatters and ambushes, clones do almost no damage and truly exist to facilitate the mesmer's deceptive play style. So no more complaining about clone spam. Defense: With the reductions to offense, defensive abilities are more justified to enable that ramped condi application and allow "mirages to excel in longer combat engagements" per Anet's goal. Still, many complain about, and many mirage mains agree, that dodging while CC'd should go. It's not unreasonable for mirages to be forced to spend a stun break here like others. Generally, I think condi mirage should retain most of its defensive trickery in keeping with its theme. It should duel by craftily outplaying opponents, wearing them down with DOT (particularly the self-inflicted kind from torment and confusion for thematic reasons), and fill less of a burst DPS role. Kind of like a tankier but less damaging thief that hides among what opponents see rather than what they don't. Would that satisfy (most) everyone? I could go for this. Allows for reasonable counterplay while not absolutely destroying the e-spec.

https://imgur.com/5zqEf1g Whooo Nelly. Yeah, that's not humanly possible.

Screenshot is giving an error. Load to imgur?

You want the hobo kits back? Dang.

My thoughts on Spirit Watch:Too vertical. Classes with teleports have a severe advantage.Orb mechanic is extremely un-fun. Picking it up means you move 50% slower and can't use any of your normal skills for a long period of time. It's boring but necessary when playing this map. This map will never be a successful in ranked with the Orb in place.Points are too far apart. They are located on the outer edges of the map which means the majority of your time spent in the match is running along the outskirts. As such, the mid node isn't as important as there are other ways to access the side nodes. The mid node feels small and unimportant. It might be interesting to have a walled elevator that activates only for the team that holds the mid point, although that might lead to a snowball effect.

Just my engineer. Rest are storage characters or brought out only for raids. I can play other classes (guard, ranger, war, thief, necro), but I don't play them with any regularity. Why? My engi can do most everything, I'm most familiar and comfortable with it, and it doesn't bore me like most other classes do.

Ugh, that's the stuff of nightmares. How about a holosmith permanent corona blast animation? Just spinning and spinning....

Certain classes benefit way more from Spirit Watch than other classes -- Thieves and mesmers in particular. Classes without any teleports (warriors, engineers) are at a much more severe disadvantage.

This bug's been around since PoF launched. Unfortunately, I don't see it getting fixed because there are similar visual glitches with many other classes that have been around since launch.

Likely an oversight. They've had the same issues balancing Elixir X underwater too -- we still have the plague form underwater, even though Plague form no longer exists for necro or Elixir X above water.

Honestly, my biggest complaint about deadeye is how apparent the stealth culling problem is. Even if they're standing right in front of me, I only see them by the time I have half health. Then they're back to stealth again. I have to guess most of the time where they are, because for the 60 frames they're on my screen, I don't have enough time to even reach them. The stealth culling is really, really, REALLY bad, especially if you are having ping issues.

Ditch the group stunbreak for a projectile reflection/destruction spell like it used to.

Yeah, throw elixir S and throw elixir r would be the two that might suffer from PBAoE. However, I think its appropriate given that there's no other way around the clunkiness of ground targeting and all the problems affiliated with slow-moving projectiles.

Again, more confirmation that the "throw" elixir skills should be a PBAoE instead.

The old version was more useful, period, and this is functionally a nerf, making Elixir U more niche. While the extra quickness is nice, the projectile reflect/destruction was way more valuable amd the potential combo fields were nice additions for clever engineers (blasting light for cleanse, blasting/leaping shadow for stealth). The AoE stunbreak is exceedingly niche, so the throw skill will almost exclusively be used for quickness uptime.

Naming it "mechanic" would cause so much confusion in balance discussions, lol.

I really don't want to use grenade kit even more than I already do... the carpal tunnel... lol I hear ya. would this mean even more AA spamming in pve? For condi builds, it absolutely would. Shrapnel is already quite powerful for condi builds, so it's the recommended autoattack for condi engi. The change you recommended would reinforce that.

I really don't want to use grenade kit even more than I already do... the carpal tunnel...