UNOwen.7132

Eh, Im fine with DT as it is. My only real complaint (besides what they just did to Darin Dragon, I liked the existing DD in PvP and the new one is gonna suck) is that the gunsaber skills largely suck, especially 2, but also 3 and 5.

Doesnt really address the problems with Bladesworn tbh. Gunsaber is still gonna suck.

Was scrapper even overperforming? Last I checked it was basically non-existent in February MAT, and I haven't seen a lot of players on it in general.

Nerfing Grenades nerfs every Engineer build, and theyre by and large already not good. If you wanted to nerf Scrapper (not sure why), nerfing Scrapper specifically is correct.

Doesnt even really need to be upped by much, what I think it needs most is some changes to make it less clunky.

Yeaah if youre hitting 6k in WvW, let alone 8k, youre facing enemies in yellow gear. Its scaling isnt high enough to get even 6k on anyone. Youre also not getting 4k in sPvP on Shadowshot. Youre getting that much on Backstab. Shadowshot is gonna hit 2.5k or so, max.

Ehh, I kinda disagree actually. Its not the meta choice mostly because the stun is valuable, but I do think it has potential to be the meta choice, being able to fire back to back to back dragon triggers is actually quite potent.

If it came down to just trading autoattacks, Bladesworn would win. The problem isnt that, the problem is that the non-autoattack parts of the weaponset suck at range. Youre confusing damage per shot with damage per second. Longbow fires once a second. Both halves of the first 2 chain attacks fire faster than that. Plus, Bladesworn itself has plenty of modifies too, not to mention stuff like "For Great Justice" which gives you a sizeable boost. In practice the damage on the autoattacks is high. Its the rest where it suffers. Ranger longbow has rapidfire, rifle has volley, gunsaber has ... nothing.

And gunsaber 3 explodes. Piercing is pretty rarely useful too tbh. Im talking the whole chain, its 0.66 per second. You have to keep in mind that attack 1 and 2 are also faster than longbow.

The 2020 balance patch. That was pretty much the turning point, it was at least stable before that.

The autoattacks are significantly stronger (almost 50% damage up), range is worse, and the damage skill is worse. Its ... probably better compared to rifle without its burst, but worse compared to it with its burst? Though thats assuming the burst hits.

Theyre not actually that slow, and you get more than 300-400 on just a regular attack let alone a crit. I tested out my spellbreaker which is just a bladesworn that I respecced in PvP. Oh that part is confusing. You see how it notes that it does extra damage based on ammo? That works with 1 ammo too. Its basically showing 2/3 of pre-patch damage because its showing 2/3 of the actual damage. I dont know why they worded it that way, its confusing. Overall you basically do 3/4 of two shots now with a 2 ammo 1 shot, but you dont get to hold 3 shots. I doubt he would read everything he gets pinged for, or be particularly interested in listening to it.

Keep in mind, ranged autoattacks hit less than melee ones in general. I tried looking, and I dont think anyone but Ranger has stronger ranged autoattacks. And even with Ranger its only at a certain range. But yeah, Blooming Fire sucks. Damage per shot is normally the same, the scaling was untouched on one ammo, but 2 ammo is worse by a lot, its definitely a nerf. It really wasnt that close, Gunsaber did need changes, but some of these did miss the mark. I dont think autoattacks need to be buffed. Theyre already very good. Its the rest that needs buffs. Im not sure pinging a designer makes much sense.

Alright, with the new patch we got a few promised Bladesworn changes, which since Warrior is the class Id be most likely to play in PvP right now and Bladesworn is a concept I like, I have decided to do a bit of a deep dive on. First, the new ranged components. As far as I can tell the scalings are 0.35, 0.45 and 0.6, each reduced by 2/3 if the melee part hits. This is a net buff of 0.116666 and 0.15 on the first two attacks, third attack remains unchanged. As for the ranged component, this comes out to a total of 1.4 per 2.13 seconds or a DPS of about 0.66. Thats ... actually pretty strong for a ranged weapon. Its now the highest ranged damage option discounting conditions. This change is good. There isnt much to say, its a good buff, it does fix a design concern Bladesworn had and its a clever solution on how to have a strong melee and ranged attack on the same weapon. Kudos. Now, for the rest. Blooming Fire had its explosion changed from being at the apex of your slash to being a projectile that explodes on impact. Nothing else was changed. This skill remains terrible. Funny enough, this change also doesnt make sense because from what I can tell this is actually a straight DPS-loss at range, thanks to the new autoattack. The skill needed to either do more damage (especially at range), have its melee slash range increased OR do something in addition (like a short evade or something along those lines). As is, this change was pointless and needed to do more than it did. Artillery Slash is frankly a downgrade. You lose a lot of damage, on a weapon kit that already struggled with sustained damage, in favour of a daze you dont need. Except its worse than I thought initially, because it also got a pretty big increase in cast time, so not only do you put all your eggs in one basket with the new mechanic, its much easier to dodge too. This went from the best skill on Gunsaber by a lot and the only reason to be in Gunsaber in PvP and WvW to a terrible skill. This change needs to be reverted, quite bluntly. Cyclone Trigger. Straight buff, and a good one. Makes the skill fun to use, and less clunky, without really breaking it. No complaints. The rest was untouched. Some things should've been changed honestly, like breakstep, but oh well. Overall, two good changes, 1 pointless one, and one really bad one. I dont expect Bladesworn to be good in PvP, especially with the loss of Artillery Slash. Theres some good ideas here, but I do think that artillery slash needs to be reverted, and blooming fire and breakstep reevaluated, before gunsaber is a worthy weapon. Having a good autoattack chain isnt enough after all.

How are you getting hit for 4k from Shadow Shots? 4k is what backstab can usually do (up to 4.5k), and that does about 50% more damage. Are they pre-stacking might up to 20 or something?

Typically rips the Aegis before hitting. If youre wondering for steal specifically, yeah it rips aegis.

Because the unblockable part comes up very little, and the range comes up a lot. When this change was first made, it was the reason why everyone switched to core thief and dropped Daredevil completely.

No, thief would be the worst class in 1v1. No decapping, no +1ing, its purely a 1v1, which is the thing thief is explicitely terrible at. Id expect Warrior or Ele to be at the top. Or anything thats got good active defenses, decent damage and good sustain.

That implies they care about it being used. They clearly dont.

Nah. When youre in stealth you can be hit, but you cant hit your enemy. Its straight up bad to stay in stealth, especially because stalling for time favours you more than the thief. You have more cooldowns coming up at once, and yours are more valuable. Why do you think the SA changes that incentivised leaving stealth ASAP instead of incentivising staying in stealth were such a huge buff? If the thief is staying in stealth, congrats, youre getting free damage. The only time you wouldnt is if your class is exclusively targetted non-channeled ranged damage. Which doesnt exist. Shadow Meld wasnt removing potential danger, because revealed wasnt dangerous against. It was improving your offense by allowing you to skip a lockout, because thats what stealth is for. The stealth access is still not even remotely as valuable as you think it is. As for mobility ... yeah that could be an issue, but even then, it wouldnt have to be good, just not the by far worst in the game, but also ... Im not sure thats true anymore. We see from the current meta that thief is just not even worth playing. Then again, Cata is busted. Also its funny to hear that others dont want to work for their kills and want "ez bags as it's used to be." coming from a Cata Main. Who kept downplaying Cata until 5 Catas won the MAT. "Above average strength", remember? No, its very much so true. Superspeed is definitely good, but it only lasts 1.5 seconds, if youre staying in stealth, you wont have it. Blinds, what blinds? Thief isnt gonna be hitting you with blind from stealth. You might at best have 1 blind as they enter, but its not like autoattack chains take 3 seconds to cast. Evades, congrats, you forced them to burn defensive cooldowns because stealth is kitten at defense, and you think thats a bad thing? If they were blocking they wouldnt have to evade, now would they? No, they cant. Well in theory if youre a 0 mobility class they can try to keep you in combat by staying just barely within your range and using teleports to move around if need be, but that sounds extremely inefficient and pointless to begin with. Even in WvW. If you think stealth is better than block, then you are simply very bad at the game. Any thief would happily trade stealth for block (assuming stealth attacks get some other way of being unlocked, of course). I mean thatd be one hell of an upgrade.

It really isnt. Stealth attacks are good, but stealth you mostly just want to go into to trigger the SA traits, and then get out of it ASAP. How is that relevant to Shadow Meld? Youre not gonna be stacking stealth after removing revealed with Shadow Meld. Youre gonna exit stealth. Its an in-combat skill. And yet thief is the one class that has no 1v1 build ever since the Spectre nerfs, and relies entirely on +1s. Mobility is its saving grace. Or was, perhaps, in the current cata meta a thief is ironically a liability. Stealth has something even better than counters. It has counterplay. You cant see the thief, but you can very much so hit him, and if youre melee, you can track him through stealth. All while the thief cant fight back while in stealth. Its why the optimal strategy is to spend as little time in stealth as possible. If the thief is camping in stealth, theyre doing it out of combat, where revealed doesnt matter (outside of WvW, but then the reveal gets reapplied). Block is generally MUCH more powerful than stealth, and its not even remotely close.

I quite like the change to Gunsabers attacks, allowing it to be both a viable midrange and close range weapon, without breaking either side. It alleviates some of the issues Bladesworns had. However, there is a slight issue with the ranged attack chain, as while attacks 1 and 2 do good ranged damage, attack 3, despite having a slightly longer cast time, does significantly less damage, at only a 0.2 scaling compared to 1s and 2s 0.6 scaling. Countintuitively, this makes not completing the chain strictly correct, and incentivises resetting the attack chain after attack 2 as much as possible. Which leads to pretty poor gameplay in my opinion. My suggestion would be to use the same mechanic as for attack 1 and 2, where attack 3s ranged component does more standalone damage, but gets reduced significantly if the slash also hits. For example, a 0.8 scaling with a 75% reduction would keep the damage identical for melee, but make the ranged attack chain actually worth completing, and would no longer incentivise constantly resetting it.

I am well aware, thats why I calculated with that. Blooming Fire does as much damage as pre-patch, which is too little, and in melee the autos are buffed.

Ok so I did some basic math to figure out the Bladesworn changes, heres what I found. Autoattack damage on the first and second part of the chain is increased. Pretty sizeable buff, actually, skill 1 goes from 0.49 to about 0.68, skill 2 from 0.66 to about 0.85. Third is the same as it was, just ranged. The ranged attacks are also not terrible, 0.6 on both 1 and 2, which is slightly higher than current melee 1 and 2, but attack 3 is utterly terrible at ranged. I would say optimal play is about resetting the chain without actually going through attack 3, if fighting from afar. If you can keep attacking with only 1 and 2, youll be doing solid ranged damage. Blooming Fire damage is entirely unchanged. The ranged part is only 0.6 scaling. Lower DPS than your attack chains 1 and 2, but still better than 3 when at ranged, so if youre fighting from afar, use this to reset the attack chain. Still a bad skill tbh, too hard to hit, and not enough damage. Now we get to the big one, Artillery Slash. Yeah this is a huge nerf to your burst, and not a warranted one. At one charge it does the same damage. At 2 charges it does 25% less damage. And since you can only hold 2 charges, your burst also went down, so instead of doing 3.45 damage over about 1.5 seconds, youre doing 1.725 damage over half a second. Higher DPS, but falls short in sustained damage and is much worse if your enemy dodges the one attack. This especially messes with the ranged auto chain, since instead of 3 resets, you only get 1. Not sure I like this change. Rest is unchanged in terms of damage and functionality regarding this particular part. I like the Aegis on Cyclone Trigger. Break Step still needed some kind of buff. Overall these changes are ... mixed. The autoattacks are better overall, and by a good amount, blooming fire is still a bad filler skill, Artillery Slash is worse, Cyclone Trigger is good. I think not doing the Artillery Slash change and buffing up Blooming Fire would be a good idea here.

What makes unblockable attacks (normally) strong is being able to be used on reaction to someone blocking to get them out of a block. Prime Light Beam has an insanely long 1.25 second cast time. Youre not gonna get that out of it. Its still way too easy to dodge too. Chilled to the bone has the advantage of being circular AoE, and ccing for longer, and even then I believe it is not used for similar reasons. Hahahahaha, nooooo. Not even close. I can definitely think of worse elites in other classes. But even across classes, its bottom 50% at minimum, and I'd say bottom 25% more accurately. Most elite skills on most professions are miles better than PLB.