Enraged by the mechanist

[Arkham Creed.7358]

So by default the mechanist's golem has an improved version of the pet UI, the specs "pet-command" utility skills are just straight up better than ranger's due to being signets with additional functions, and the pet related trait line is more than lame stat buffs and actually has a major impact on the way the pet plays and what it can do. As a ranger main I am very, very unhappy. 

[Yazkin.6179]

I'm just a bit upset by the damage numbers shown and utility. I love ranger for being the pet class, and seeing it done dirty by mechanist through trait control, overall stats, and utility makes me want to just go mechanist for EoD. 

 

Of course it's beta, but not much was said in the live stream. I tried getting their attention in chat to show off how the unleashed pet skills work with ranged pets but to no avail, either. I'm afraid more of the pet roster might become unusable if you go Untamed.

[Xanadrine.4352]

I saw that it said you can choose to play melee at range or support with this, wow much diversity 

[covahlam.6391]

Watching the stream, I felt a bit jealous of the mech's ranged abilities and utility, but I really appreciate the variety offered by ranger pets. A select few pets are much better than others, but even within that subset, there are different stats/abilities available. For instance it's nice to take one squishier, hyper-offensive pet and one that's a bit tankier like the jacaranda. The mechanist has much less flexibility.

Edited October 22, 2021 by covahlam.6391

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Mechanist is core ranger but with no swap option, shared stats, and less flexibility.  It may look cool, but I'd wager engis are not going to be super happy with it on the overall once the wonderful AI kicks in.  

 

I do think they will keep the breakbar and also reduce that CD on death to 60s, because there is no way that thing isn't going to get eaten alive by random AoEs.  

 

Might be very decent for PvP though because of the mechs potential to stall a point capture with that breakbar.  But, since this is ranger forum we all know engis might be getting the nerf stick if PvP sub gets hurt too much by the mech.  

[Cekay.2614]

Also dont forget that Engi's dont have access to their toolbelt skills at all, when using this specialization.

 

Thats like potentially 27 skills or something that we simply cant use whatsoever on that spec.

 

no throw elixirs

no medkit main heal!!! (i think they overlooked this, cause being unable to heal yourself with an heal skill is a bit silly)

a lot less stunbreaks

no grenade barrage

no big ol' bomb

etc.

 

instead we get 3 attack skills for an AI pet that may or may not respond.

if it is dead we are stuck in 1 weapon set until the cd comes back.

Remeber, Engi's dont even have Weapon swap

[Levetty.1279]

3 hours ago, Cekay.2614 said:

Also dont forget that Engi's dont have access to their toolbelt skills at all, when using this specialization.

 

Thats like potentially 27 skills or something that we simply cant use whatsoever on that spec.

 

no throw elixirs

no medkit main heal!!! (i think they overlooked this, cause being unable to heal yourself with an heal skill is a bit silly)

a lot less stunbreaks

no grenade barrage

no big ol' bomb

etc.

 

instead we get 3 attack skills for an AI pet that may or may not respond.

if it is dead we are stuck in 1 weapon set until the cd comes back.

Remeber, Engi's dont even have Weapon swap

Also dont forget that Rangers's dont have access to toolbelt skills at all, when using any specialization.

 

Thats like potentially 27 skills or something that we simply cant use whatsoever on any spec.

 

instead we get 3 attack skills for an AI pet that may or may not respond.

[Zyreva.1078]

Ranger pets are still a lot more cute!

[Gorem.8104]

Nerfs, buggy ai, pets being useless in pvp/wvw format. 

Be interesting to see if Mechanist is viable in pvp, cause then it would be the better pet class by far. 

Unless what we saw was pve stats for the mech (just like with Ranger pets,  asif they let us have pve stats in wvw, they like some of our pets having <10k health in pvp format). 

I mean I Miss early gw2 pets, I remember back then my stealth Panther could actually kill people. All it needed to do was stealth and pounce and rip people to shreds, way back when Core Ranger was actually good. 

I see so many issues with this spec in pvp, purely because pets die instantly. Whereas if this mech doesn't, that means for non-pve content, it will be the better pet class 

Edited October 23, 2021 by Gorem.8104

[Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582]

6 hours ago, Cekay.2614 said:

(i think they overlooked this, cause being unable to heal yourself with an heal skill is a bit silly)

Actually, that is exactly how the Untamed heal skill works too. If your pets are dead, you have no heal skill.

[Arkham Creed.7358]

9 hours ago, Levetty.1279 said:

instead we get 3 attack skills for an AI pet that may or may not respond.

And only one of them we actually have any control whatsoever over. This is one of the main reasons I'm so upset; the mechanist didn't only get our whole pet UI; they got a BETTER version of it. I get that we also get that version with Untamed, but I feel like that was more of an afterthought than something made for us. And either way I feel like having full control over all three pet skills should be baseline, not limited to an elite spec. 

Frankly, from my perspective, everything about the mechanist is straight up better than a ranger. Better pet, better skills, better UI, better control...heck being able to force the pet to shadowstep to your desired target alone is freaking huge. But image if our command skills also had passive or secondary functions so they were worthwhile if our pet was downed. Imagine being able to fully control all three pet skills. Imagine being able to alter the pet's core stats to make it useful regardless of build instead of being forced to take specific animals you might not even want just because it's what works best. Imagine NOT having completely useless pets. 

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by Arkham Creed.7358

[Bezerker.2379]

Right but rangers have had an orbital space cannon (longbow 1) since release. Lol

[Yazkin.6179]

4 hours ago, Arkham Creed.7358 said:

Frankly, from my perspective, everything about the mechanist is straight up better than a ranger. Better pet, better skills, better UI, better control...Imagine being able to alter the pet's core stats to make it useful regardless of build instead of being forced to take specific animals you might not even want just because it's what works best. Imagine NOT having completely useless pets. 

 

This is what mostly upsets me. Ranger pets should have had some kind of scaling to our stats. The beastmaster trait line should give us more flexible picks as to how our pets function. The untamed being able to control all three abilities should have been a ranger baseline update. 

 

They should honestly rework the whole core ranger with new mechanics and a better tethering code. It would feel so much better seeing QoL changes with untamed being more of a tank spec than a beastmaster.

[draxynnic.3719]

My perspective on the golem traitline is that you're spending an elite specialisation, including a stiff tradeoff, to approximate what Untamed gets through choosing from their stable of pets. Keep in mind that there are just nine possible combinations of major traits, so there are really only nine types of golem available compared to more pets than I'm going to try to count off the top of my head. Admittedly, pets do run into the problem where there's often just one thing you'd want to change (juvenile smogscales when?), but I think Untamed is still winning in that respect.

 

Would be nice to see the UI improvements made to base ranger, though. 

[anduriell.6280]

3 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

My perspective on the golem traitline is that you're spending an elite specialisation, including a stiff tradeoff, to approximate what Untamed gets through choosing from their stable of pets. 

Although that is true it is good to keep in mind you can mix and match the golem skills, so you can have one of each or 2 support and one ranged, etc…

ranger is limited by the combination the pets offer which is usually very unidimensional: you can not get a pet which offer aoe support and at the same time ranged dps for example. 
 

Untamed brings some variety in there with the extra cleave, boon rip and projectile hate but still the effects are mostly locked into the pets themselves. 

[Dakiaris.2798]

The thing every single person seems to be missing is in the first row of the machinists trait line.... You can literally change it to have ranged attacks.... You don't have to worry about buggy melee making it unusable in pvp just give it a gun and call it a day.

[draxynnic.3719]

6 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

Although that is true it is good to keep in mind you can mix and match the golem skills, so you can have one of each or 2 support and one ranged, etc…

ranger is limited by the combination the pets offer which is usually very unidimensional: you can not get a pet which offer aoe support and at the same time ranged dps for example. 
 

Untamed brings some variety in there with the extra cleave, boon rip and projectile hate but still the effects are mostly locked into the pets themselves. 

I addressed that, even if you edited out the part of my post where I did.

 

There's a total of nine different combinations there. Rangers will have 56 terrestrial pets with EoD. Now, rangers don't have the ability to trade out one skill for another while keeping everything else mostly the same like mechanist can (apart from changing F2 by choosing a different animal from the same family), but rangers currently have more families of pets, on land at least (and underwater combat has been pretty much forgotten apart from that revenant rework for quite some time) then the total number of combinations that mechanist has. Granted, that's more of a sense of picking from a menu rather than customising, but it still represents more choice overall.

Meanwhile, 7/9 mechanist traits basically cease to exist whenever the golem is off the field, which could be for over a minute at a time.

Edited October 24, 2021 by draxynnic.3719

[anduriell.6280]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

There's a total of nine different combinations there. Rangers will have 56 terrestrial pets with EoD. Now, rangers don't have the ability to trade out one skill for another while keeping everything else 

You missed my point there, it does not matter how many choices you have to pick from if all are the same witha different color. That why rangers end up playing with the same 3 pets in every game mode. 

Mechanist Golem offers the same variety of actually usable  "pets" as ranger the difference is that at least as engie you get to build up your golem to your specifications so no skill is a waste. 

 

Quote

Meanwhile, 7/9 mechanist traits basically cease to exist whenever the golem is off the field, which could be for over a minute at a time.

I am not saying the golem is magically better than the pets or the traits are amazing. Just that the Golem has the possibility to be more adaptable to the game style of the player. Which is something ranger cannot do. 

 

Let me put you an example: You want a condi ranged pet. So you got a very glassy iboga which has ranged skills and a melee autoattack. Or a very glassy carrion with no AoE. Or a very glassy spiders with no damage. You pick. 

Same goes for the melee ones. 

 

And soulbeast with the archetypes is even worse. 

Edited October 24, 2021 by anduriell.6280

[Bish.8627]

Also interested to see how bad that break bar is going to be. Worst case it takes all CC from aoe sources and goes into 5 second stun, which is too long, then after 5 seconds the bar resets and repeat. A fight like Tequatl, if the waves and stomps effect the break bar, its going to be chain stunned unless the break bar has a long reset.

[anduriell.6280]

8 minutes ago, Bish.8627 said:

Also interested to see how bad that break bar is going to be. Worst case it takes all CC from aoe sources and goes into 5 second stun, which is too long, then after 5 seconds the bar resets and repeat. A fight like Tequatl, if the waves and stomps effect the break bar, its going to be chain stunned unless the break bar has a long reset.

Is not like you need to have the golem out in the middle of the bomb , the CD for sending the golem back is 10s I think. 

That is something very good the Tamed doesn't have but the soulbeast does.. Believe me is very good for being in the middle of zerg combat.  

 

[draxynnic.3719]

First, apologies, it's actually 27. Forgot to carry the "order of numbers matters".

 

But I think my point still stands once you consider that many of the combinations just aren't going to be practical. You cited combining range with support - well, baby siege turtle might bring that, and untamed could use F3 for projectile hate, but otherwise, sure, you've picked one thing that ranger pets can't (currently) do. Conversely, however, fully melee golem only exists if you consider taking the support grandmaster to be fully melee, while ranger has plenty of full melee, melee with some ranged, and full ranged pets. Furthermore, the actual number of viable options for the golem is going to be constrained (who's going to take the power ranged adept trait with the melee condi master trait? who's got the stats to take one trait from each column and actually make that work?), while every ranger pet is at least supposed to be a viable self-contained option. There's also a much greater chance of ranger getting more pets than mechanist getting more configurations.

 

Utility skills are also a factor. Commands are effectively additional skills for the pets, mostly supportive in nature. Most signets and heal skills also influence the pet. Mechanist just has the signets, and in fact, engineer utilities are degraded by the loss of the toolbelt. How much that matters depends on the skills in question, but mechanist is probably going to struggle to find core engineer utilities that it can actually make good use of.

 

Furthermore, mechanist loses a lot more if the golem gets pressured hard. Core ranger can swap at 16-20s recharge if it triggers before the pet is defeated, 48-60s otherwise. If mechanist's golem dies, it's one hundred seconds. The recharge is also proportional to the damage taken, so while if a ranger swaps pets just before a pet dies, they have 16-20s recharge and still have a pet out. A mechanist under the same circumstance would have a close to 100s recharge, no golem, and the only mechanist traits they have that do anything at all while the golem is off the field are master 2 and grandmaster 3. You only get the 10s recharge if the golem is undamaged when dismissed (which I guess could be worthwhile if the golem is about to be smacked hard, but again, a ranger can swap (or merge) and not end up as a two-line spec with no class mechanic until the recharge finishes).

[Teratus.2859]

Way I see it is there's gonna be two Ranger classes in the game now lol

This new Engi spec actually has me excited to go back and start playing my Engi again.
Hell I may even make another one and build it around this spec and keep my old one the way it was.

There's still a lot of differences and cons with this compared to Ranger so it's hardly a "superior" form of Rangers own mechanic if you ask me.
They're just different and that's perfectly fine.

What I really want to know is if the new pet UI will only be available on the new Ranger Spec or if it will become the standard for the class.. and I seriously, seriously!!! hope it will be an upgrade for the entire class.
Ranger has been desperately in need of a serious overhaul of the pet system for a very very!! long time.
Giving us active command over our pet skills is something Rangers have wanted since Gw2 first came out, it's absolutely needed on the Core class and the last 2 elite specs as well.

Edited October 24, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[anduriell.6280]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

... well, baby siege turtle might bring that...There's also a much greater chance of ranger getting more pets than mechanist getting more configurations...

We know nothing about upcoming pets, it could be a very crappy pets, look at sand lion or cheeta. Let's stay on what we know better. 

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Utility skills are also a factor.

That is a very good point to bring forward. Yes the Golem should need to benefit from core traits at least. I think CmC said something along those lines like the Golem would benefit from traits. 

About the utilities you are totally right in my opinion, to make the golem more rewarding some Engie utilities would need to interact with the robot pet. But that is not an issue of the golem itself but how it interacts with the rest of the profession. 

 

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

...You only get the 10s recharge if the golem is undamaged when dismissed ....

I think you are gravely mistaken there. The 10s CD is if the golem is dimissed while still alive. 100s is if you let your golem to be destroyed. Which i think is a very good compromise. 

So most of the times engie will work as a Soulbeast with a 10s health reset for the golem. 

 

[draxynnic.3719]

7 minutes ago, anduriell.6280 said:

 

I think you are gravely mistaken there. The 10s CD is if the golem is dimissed while still alive. 100s is if you let your golem to be destroyed. Which i think is a very good compromise. 

So most of the times engie will work as a Soulbeast with a 10s health reset for the golem. 

 

The current wording is "Summon your jade mech at the target area. Foes in the area are damaged. The recharge time of this skill is based on how damaged your mech is."

 

Emphasis mine. I'm pretty sure it would be worded differently if it was "10s if you pull it out in time, 100s otherwise". While we don't have the precise scaling factor, the wording certainly strongly implies that it's not going to be a 10s recharge if you dismiss it at 1% health.

 

And heck, even if you were right, it's still a steeper price than any version of ranger pays for losing their pet, especially considering that nearly all mechanist traits just disappear if the pet isn't there, while even Beastmastery allows for at least one major trait from each column that continues functioning even if the pet is dead.

 

14 minutes ago, anduriell.6280 said:

We know nothing about upcoming pets, it could be a very crappy pets, look at sand lion or cheeta. Let's stay on what we know better. 

 

Or they could be the next smokescale, gazelle, or jacaranda that changes the meta. The overall trend is that when ranger gets a new family, it's usually better than the pets that filled a similar role before. Sand lion and cheetah are bad primarily because they're just new variants of feline and feline has always been glass cannon DPS without any utility or CC besides the F2... and they're competing with the likes of smokescale, gazelle, jacaranda, and the odd wyvern. 

 

Point being that if the complaint is "golem offers more options" - ranger has and will continue to get more options as long as more expansions are released (and maybe the odd addition between expansions, although I'm not holding my breath since we never got smogscale). Some will be better than others, but that's to be expected. And since the new pets are part of ranger content for EoD, if you're going to say it's premature to consider them, I'll retort by saying that by that logic it's premature to compare ranger to what other professions are getting at all until we know what the EoD pets at least bring to the table.

[Bealis.6023]

No need to get unhappy I would think.😉 Mechanist is focused solely just on that one "pet". Well see during and after the beta, but right now it seems Mechanist will get boring soon - imagine traveling with that hunk for hours. On the other hand Untamed has much more room for the devs to improve it. If we look at the traits, it will get much easier to change them. If they wanted to make Mechanist more fun, they would literally need to redo whole spec, which most likely wont happen.

Edited October 24, 2021 by Bealis.6023