Kodama.6453

I would just be happy with them becoming spirit weapons in gameplay. Make them perform an AoE attack for a prolonged time and they are untargetable, then they automatically detonate after a while. Anything is better than what we currently have.

Considering that you detonate the canisters, there is a slight chance that all the arrows produce a blast finisher. But if that is not the case, then yeah, won't get played on scrapper support.

Not even angry, just disappointed. I was hoping for a reason to return to the game, so I was highly anticipating this weapon reveal. But I guess I just won't.

Did I read that right... basically the skills 2-5 are all these canisters with just different effects in their AoE? That.... sounds extremely underwhelming. kitten, am I glad that I stopped playing this game.

I think scrapper was also initially supposed to have some kind of resource management. In the blog post in which they advertised scrapper for the first time, they specifically mention that gyros will have fuel and if said fuel is running out, they will explode. Then we got shown the minion gyros and the fuel was literally just an icon on the gyro which showed the duration the gyro does it's thing until exploding. I also believe scrapper might have been an early concept of the heat system of the holosmith. Fuel and the fiery animation of rocket charge makes me think that the class wasn't supposed to have the electrical theme it has now, but was supposed to work with flames and explosions initially. Rocket charge just sticks out like a sore thumb in the hammer kit. All other skills have the electrical theme, except rocket charge. I think they just kept this skill with an explosive theme because they already presented it to the players and therefore HAD to keep it.

Now I imagined Donkey Kong as a dual sword wielding necromancer. I need someone to draw this.

But they failed to address the problem which they said they want to address, which has been that we had specific skills forced into our builds which was restricting build options. All they did was changing the type of skills you get forced into your build. Instead of gyros forced onto us, we have fields and blast/leap finishers forced into our builds. Other classes have the boon generation tied to their class mechanic which they get for free, therefore there are no skills "forced into their skill bar". Because these skills were never a choice in the first place, they are just there. Like the druid celestial avatar skills, or bladesworn dragon trigger, or deadeye and their mark mechanic, or untamed and their ambush skills, etc. If they want to free up our build choices, they would also have to tie the quickness output to a mechanic we get for free for picking scrapper.

I personally think holosmith is the engineer/warrior fusion. The heat mechanic is mimicing the adrenaline mechanic of the warrior, both in gameplay and thematically. And the photon forge itself is giving us the weapon master fantasy of the warrior. The photon forge actually does use a big variety of weapons visually. The auto attacks and 2 are using a sword, skill 3 uses a staff, skill 4 uses dual pistols (or a speargun underwater) and skill 5 uses a hammer.

Stopped playing this game some months ago. Best decision ever.

Anet deliberately never gave ranger rifle, because it is an unfitting weapon for the fantasy they have for this class. Ranger is the "nature class". Themes are nature, plants, animals, etc. They aim to be one with nature. And they don't want to give ranger technology themed weapons like pistol or rifle because this would contradict this idea they had. Rifles are a symbol of technology, industrial revolution and exploitation of nature. Just watch the movie Princess Mononoke, it represents this concept perfectly. So I think rifle will be the dead last they ever add to ranger, if ever.

Here you go, buddy.

Lol, good luck with that. We were asking for the removal of RNG from engineer since release of the game and they still didn't manage to do this job properly. Let's have this discussion again in 10 years.

This just makes one of the core issues of scrapper more apparent: It has no real class mechanic. Scrapper quickness generation will always force some skills or others into your skill bar, simply because there is no other way to implement it into scrapper. Let's look how other elite specs are distributing these key boons: Druid: While this spec has its own set of problems, the utility skill bar is free for them to chose how they see fit. Because the alacrity comes from the celestial avatar mode, which is their class mechanic they get for picking druid in the first place. So no investment in utility skills is needed. Untamed: Creates quickness with their ambushes, which again is a class mechanic they get for picking untamed in the first place. Tempest: Gives alacrity through overloading. You guessed it, class mechanic. Bladesworn: Gives alacrity through dragon trigger, class mechanic. Willbender: Gives alacrity through using flowing resolve, class mechanic. And so on and so forth. The only sad excuse of a class mechanic which scrapper has is the function gyro. To make scrapper work in a similar way and allow us to pick our weapons and utility skills freely, they would have to load so much quickness into the function gyro that we can keep up permanent quickness just with the use of this single skill alone. Which is most likely not gonna happen. This will keep being the problem with scrapper (utility skills/weapons forced into our builds which we have to spam off cooldown for the boon) until Anet decides that scrapper deserves to have an actual class mechanic instead of just one single skill change.

Yeah, it is apparent, but how Anet has implemented these aspects into the game just hurt the engineer in the long run. The self CC is one example I mentioned, which they have completely removed. Another aspect which was supposed to represent this mad scientist idea has been that elixirs used to be a bunch of randomized effects, also mostly removed (with elixir x being the only real remnant of this old system). You can give off the feeling of mad scientists without making the class clunky to play or have coin tosses which are frustrating for both sides in a fight. But Anet is just weird like that and they will continue to build in mechanics into engineer which will hurt it in the long run.

Yep, or how overcharged shot and rocket boots used to be the only skills (to my knowledge) which hard CCed the user. Also both engineer. In general, it just seems a theme anet pushes for engineer. Engineers are masochists. I am just glad that I am taking a long break from this game. Maybe I will come back when they introduce an underwater mech (so probably never).

Yeah, I am also not a fan of how scifi the class has become with holosmith and mechanist. The original more steam/chempunkish feel of the engineer is more appealing for me.

As a huge fan of Kurumi Tokisaki, the idea of a time manipulating rifle user can be extremely cool. Let's see what they have in store for that weapon.

First and foremost, what I want a weapon to provide is BOON HATE Already stated this multiple times here in the forum, but if Anet really plans to no longer release any elite specs in the future then they need to inject boon hate into some classes which are currently struggling to remove boons and engineer is one such class. Besides this, I would like a mobile condition damage option focused on poison primarily.

First of all, I am speaking about scrapper as a whole design, not just the hammer. Hammer is not really lacking CC, tbh. As mentioned, hammer 5 into hammer 3 results in 3 instances of hard CC being applied (1 sec stun, 2 instances of 1 sec daze). This is the already nerfed state, remember that the hammer initially released with a triple leap instead of the double leap finisher on 3. Literally the only skill not themed around electricity on hammer is rocket charge, which is a relic from when the spec was most likely themed around something else (oil, heat, explosions?). But they had to keep that skill, because it got already shown to the playerbase in that early preview of elite specs for HoT. Every other skill on hammer has electricity as it's theme. The lightning fields are there for comboes and because they are associated with the general theme of scrapper. The hammer is almost entirely electricity themed. Traits in the trait line are seperated into 2 major thematics: kinetic energy (mechanical theme) and electricity. It was even more obvious when the original final salvo trait existed, which made every gyro explode with a lightning field that dazes enemies. That trait got removed, but alot of the original electrical theme is still there. How is it replacing? Scrapper loses almost nothing from core, except for the F5 skill. All the other electrical stuff from core is still present and even synergizes with the scrapper trait system, because there are traits which procc off dazes and stuns, which electrical themed skills are a very big distribution factor for. I repeat, I said it is electricity themed, not lightning themed. And except skill 3, the entire hammer is electricity themed. Not just one skill. Drones and electricity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they were directly connected for the scrapper. Already mentioned final salvo, a trait which gave a lightning field for every drone that died. Even the function gyro is still creating a lightning field. They could have chosen to make that field adjusted by the same traits which switch out how your function gyro works (system shocker, gyroscopic accelerators, mass momentum), but they didn't. Because electricity is still present as the major thematical theme of the spec. Yeah, the alchemy theme is done as well. I am honestly giving up on hope that they will reintroduce the offensive usage of alchemy they have removed over the years from engineer. Alchemy got almost completely rebranded for engineer to purely supportive features. Poison dart volley and acid bomb are basically the only offensive uses of alchemy left in this game for engineer, everything else is support oriented. So I am basically in the same boat here. I have a vision of how I would like to see alchemy represented in the game, with acids and other dangerous concoctions used to kill foes and remove boons and such. But that is not the vision Anet has for alchemy on engineer. It is more present on harbinger than it is on engineer, engineer has the supportive alchemy. Same for this electricity theme in my eyes. People want an electricity theme for engineer that is ranged damage focused, but that doesn't seem to be Anet's vision of engineer electricity. These themes (electricity and alchemy) are done. Just not in the way we personally would wish them to be.

But if we are looking at how engineer mostly uses electricity, it is mostly associated with CC. static shield (stun and daze) static shock (stun) electrified net (stun) static shot (blind) Sure, there is static discharge, but this is really more the exception here. Then scrapper even put further emphasis on electricity being connected to CC for engineer: thunderclap (stun) system shocker (daze) spare capacitor (daze) Additionally, scrapper came with alot of new lightning fields and was always encouraged to use combo finishers with them, especially the (at first) triple leap finisher from rocket charge. And a lightning combo field with a leap finisher results in a daze. People are asking for a ranged high damage lightning theme for engineer, but to me it seems that electricity as an engineer thematic is mostly connected to CC instead of damage.

Anet, if you really want to go through with the idea of never adding new elite specs in the future and putting all role identities in the existing 3 elite specs, then there is one thing you are still missing from some classes: BOON HATE As it currently stands, classes can get seperated into 3 different tiers when it comes to dealing with boons. Classes which have sufficient boon hate in their core features (Thief, Necromancer, Mesmer) Classes which have dedicated boon hate elite specs (Warrior and Ranger with Spellbreaker and Untamed respectively) Classes which have insufficient ways to deal with boons (Engineer, Elementalist, Revenant, Guardian) Some encounters require you to remove boons regularly. While it is not such a core identity as the boon supports for alacrity and quickness, it still is an identity that should be considered. So I request that we get more boon removal options added to these 4 classes which are currently lacking it, either through new core features or as something added to the elite specs.

So you really just ignore the 3 seconds of damage immunity this skill grants? Wtf? Also you are using competitive numbers for your comparison here (33% of max hp healed, but in PvE it's 50%), but Fervent Force is primarily just used in PvE. Most competitive Untamed builds don't use the trait, so how do you come up with the argument that it needs compensation in that environment? Again, ignoring a key component of the skill. The cooldown is 40 seconds baseline, but gets reduced by 50% if you hit an enemy with it. So in most cases, this skill has 20 seconds cooldown.

Yeah, that sentence is pretty much just a justification so they can treat classes unfairly. So some classes, like engineer and necromancer, will always keep all their trade offs, while others get it lifted completely. I would have argued that soulbeast losing pet swap for the fuse mechanic was also a "natural trade off", but they are just completely arbitrary with this term.

Ok... but what is the point of that observation? There are also no untameds in EoD except the lore NPC. Can't recall that I saw any NPC enemy specters, either. Technically also no real mechanists, in the sense that there are no NPCs with the permanent jade bot buddy.

Engineer also doesn't have shouts. I am not sure if the change from shouts to commands was not related to gameplay, btw. They changed commands to shouts for a while, then went back on it. Maybe there were outlier cases in combination with the runes which enhance shouts? Similar to how they reworked thief traps into preparations, because they wanted to prevent usage with the trapper rune.