Mechanist Feedback Thread

[Amadeus.5687]

2 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

 

• Barrier signet and superconducting signet should create their AoE on both, the mechanist and their mech, but enemies and allies just can get affected by one at the same time
•  

This is to ensure that bad mech AI doesn't mess with it and we get more control over placement. Scourge pillars already work in that way that multiple don't affect the same target multiple times, apply this to mechanist, too.

 

I had forgotten they had made this work with Scourge pillars, I agree 100% on that's the solution to those two. 

[azarhal.3086]

4 hours ago, Aravind.9610 said:

I keep hearing about the mech being tanky and dishing a lot of damage in open world like Drizzlewood Coast and such but I'm not seeing it. The way I play it the mech dies and dies fast if its under fire from a group of enemies. Are you guys using tanky stats or something? If so ,how long did it take you to kill an entire group?  Mechanist is still very good with viper's stats though. Higher dps than holosmith at the cost of less CC than holosmith.

Probably just running around in the default gear (Soldier). I ran around in Celestial and it wasn't melting against normal enemies, but not tanky enough to survive a Veteran Bristleback rapid fire attack without healing/barrier. It also killed that Bristleback slower than I can kill them with any other classes in the game. The Mech big burst attacks (Spark Revolver) make short work of low HP enemies, but Reaper's Soul Spiral does it better...

Mechanist is just Necro Minions Master with all the minions additively smashed together into a single one. Except everything was put into the Mech so you want that Mech to aggro things otherwise you are dead meat. But like MM, the time-to-kill isn't anything to be crazy about and that is supported by people doing benchmarks that unless you can perform the meta condi kits rotation* of Engineer the Mechanist DPS (player character + Mech) is bad at damage.

 

Reading some posts here about how soloing Champions is amazing gives me the impression that more players should main a Core/Reaper Minions Master or a Power Reaper. I actually find my main Reaper more easy mode than Mechanist.

 

*the most crazy keyboard piano in the entire game

 

[Amadeus.5687]

 

18 minutes ago, azarhal.3086 said:

Reading some posts here about how soloing Champions is amazing gives me the impression that more players should main a Core/Reaper Minions Master or a Power Reaper. I actually find my main Reaper more easy mode than Mechanist.

 

*the most crazy keyboard piano in the entire game

 

Reading those posts I'm actually afraid it's simply more a matter of most casual open world people, ain't used to be able to solo champions.
I assume there is a ton of reasons for that; poorly optimized gear, rotations, builds and even just general lack of player skill (For whatever reason).
Like any core profession and elite spec can take down champions, heck some of them can take down legendary targets solo. 
Mechanist just moves a lot of the effort from the player to the AI that do the job for you.

[Orack.9756]

29 minutes ago, azarhal.3086 said:

Probably just running around in the default gear (Soldier). I ran around in Celestial and it wasn't melting against normal enemies, but not tanky enough to survive a Veteran Bristleback rapid fire attack without healing/barrier. It also killed that Bristleback slower than I can kill them with any other classes in the game. The Mech big burst attacks (Spark Revolver) make short work of low HP enemies, but Reaper's Soul Spiral does it better...

Mechanist is just Necro Minions Master with all the minions additively smashed together into a single one. Except everything was put into the Mech so you want that Mech to aggro things otherwise you are dead meat. But like MM, the time-to-kill isn't anything to be crazy about and that is supported by people doing benchmarks that unless you can perform the meta condi kits rotation* of Engineer the Mechanist DPS (player character + Mech) is bad at damage.

 

Reading some posts here about how soloing Champions is amazing gives me the impression that more players should main a Core/Reaper Minions Master or a Power Reaper. I actually find my main Reaper more easy mode than Mechanist.

 

*the most crazy keyboard piano in the entire game

 

The only way I was able to defeat alone the Chack in Auric Bassin with the Mecha was to balance half Zealot and half Diviner to get enough sustain/buff so Mech' and me won't die till we kill it.
The kill speed was decent but I'm definitely faster soloing it with Scrapper. Still better than Holo who struggle to solo anything dangerous but at least his dps is way higher.
Tbh I see the mech shining in support gear or hybrid support/dps gear. The mace&shield fit this set-up very nicely.
It's definitely fun and like any pet build, you'r forced to heavily into keeping the pet alive cuz they die very fast since they don't dodge anything and we can't recall them near use to save them.

Also I've tryed to play with summon/unsummon the mech to get him out of trouble (a bit like SB).. Well... Never managed to unsummon it. Animation is way to long and the action get canceled by any hit so...

I really like it, but yeah, like any new spe it need improvement, but I'm patient, I mean, it took time, but look how fun Scrapper is nowaday ! 

[Amadeus.5687]

8 minutes ago, Orack.9756 said:

I really like it, but yeah, like any new spe it need improvement, but I'm patient, I mean, it took time, but look how fun Scrapper is nowaday ! 

I wish I could be that patient, but the 5 years it took to make Scrapper fun... I'm really not hoping that's what I will take for Mechanist to function 🙂

[SeTect.5918]

54 minutes ago, azarhal.3086 said:

Probably just running around in the default gear (Soldier).

 

Yea I also think so if i see players in open world or talking about it being tanky.
Like 80% of players with mechanist that I see in open world are using 5 signet setup.
Then i killed the heropoint under tarir in 1 minute and 30 seconds as power mechanist and someone said something like: "Mechanist seems to be the strongest out of all".
I was like "wtf" because my condi engi does it in 40 seconds. My chrono does it in 35 seconds. My firebrand in 30 seconds. My Condi weaver in 35 seconds....and so on. With condi mechanist I did it in 45 seconds because of the trash equip we get through loot bags on beta chars. I had 23% too low condi duration and over 300 too low condi dmg than it would be possible. And some less power and preci.
However people have different views of a class being op and so on.
For example a lot of players also said that mech is op already when they saw the damage on friday on the livestream bc they saw 10k dmg.
Now none is saying that power does high dmg on mechanist anymore in PvE.

However, as I said, I see lots of playing running around with the standard equip and build and making decisions from that. If they run with toughness it is surely veeery tanky with the toughness converted. Not saying its glassy without toughness but you ll see a difference for sure.

Edited October 30, 2021 by SeTect.5918

[Orack.9756]

47 minutes ago, Amadeus.5687 said:

I wish I could be that patient, but the 5 years it took to make Scrapper fun... I'm really not hoping that's what I will take for Mechanist to function 🙂

TBF I don't play since that long and very casually ^^

[Gatvin.6510]

This spec looks and feels very cool. Not sure its a good choice for numbers, but its a very stylish one. I generally avoid one-big-pet builds in games like this because the game engine just isn't well suited to fine control of multiple objects. The best implementation of this in my opinion is the Ventari Tablet. This spec kind of isn't for me, but for the people looking for something like this,  I imagine its everything they wanted. With all the usual visual QoL failures engineer has (Ah I see you want to primarily use the flame-thrower. Well I hope you didn't want to use your weapon skins!) .

 

That said, immediate functional warning flags are the removal of toolbelt skills and the lack of stunbreak in the signet kit. Toolbelt skills are a key part of the class, with some of them being the primary reason to use some of the utilities that exist. Without toolbelts, an engineer just can't equip the Medkit for example (they probably shouldn't to begin with, but that's another story) .  I'm not saying that toolbelt skills should be added in addition to the Mech, tradeoffs are important, but it seems like there might be a lot of things in base-engineer that might not work with this specialization and lead to some necessary re-working down the line in order to help smooth the edges between this specialization and the other trees.

 

One possible solution is to tie the Mech abilities to the signets as tool belt skills, which would allow more fluid selection between existing base-engineer skills and Machinist skills, but then it becomes a question of where the pet-ai selector and stow-button goes, and mixing the ranger-pet ui with the toolbelt ui is probably a mess to build.

 

Its a cool spec, I won't use it much as-is, but I WILL use it sometimes.

[Aravind.9610]

Overall a pretty fun spec, used it for doing daily t4 fractals everyday during beta with condi viper's gear. Its good without being overpowered since even though it does a bit more damage than holosmith it has far less CC than holosmith condi due to lack of toolbelt and photon forge.  Mechanist condi did feel easier than holosmith due to lack of toolbelt/heat/photon forge skills to keep track of so that's a plus. Also who doesn't want a giant golem following them around?

The only thing I would note is that the AI is a bit clunky. The mech doesn't use the F1-3 skills immediately after I press them even though its in range of the target and sometimes doesn't use them at all until I spam click them over and over till it does. It randomly summons/unsummons itself sometimes both in combat and out of combat. And finally lack of an underwater mech makes this elite spec useless underwater. I 'm guessing underwater mech hasn't been designed yet so they gave us a filler skill to use for this beta. I certainly hope that's the case.

I would ask that Crash Down be moved to F5 like all the other engineer elite spec profession mechanics so I don't have to rebind my keys for mechanist only. F4 can become a keybind for assigning a target for mech instead.

[Rosstanc.3756]

On 10/26/2021 at 11:39 AM, Okhu.7948 said:

Thought here, let us weapon swap in combat as a mechanist please. You already remove our tool belt, so giving us that at least would be nice.

Or swap our Mecha to the toolbelt while it is on cooldown/unsummoned.

[Stealfish.3912]

Mechanist feedback.

Hi there, after playing Mechinist for a good while now, mostly in WvW (Roaming/1v1) I have my two cents to give about it.

Overall:

Pros:  

• Cool mech design (please add dye options)
• Mace is a good addition to the (rather small) engineer weapon arsenal and feels fine
• Mech is superpowerful in small scale and 1v1 (too powerful imo)

Cons:

I do not like the spec in its current version because of following:

• Feels more like you are the pet for the mech because its way to strong, and you are way to weak
• Very boring playstyle due to lack of toolbelt and weaponswap especially when mech is dead
• General problem with powerful minion, you rely on ai to perform exactly as you want it to, which is not always the case

Rework Idea:

All of the following is just ideas I head during a quick brainstorming:

Instead of one big mech, make three medium sized mechs available.

• Guardianbot
• Damagebot
• Supportbot

You have to chose two of them (like selecting two legends as revenant), can swap them on a cd and they regen health when they are stowed away

• F1-3 stay the same
• F4 becomes the swap mech button on a X (10?) sec cd
• F5 becomes calldown

Detailed:

With the toolbelt and mech abilityslots conflicting each other, give engineer weaponswap for this build.

The three mechs. Every mech gets unique abilites and stat scaling:

- Guardianbot(Melee): Bonus scaling with your Toughness/Vit +50%

• Autoattack: Melee power attack, low dmg, inflicts weakness and gives the mech X barrier per attack
• F1: 'Capture Net': Throws a net at the target, immobilizes and reveals them for X seconds
• F2: 'Protection Zone': Mech pulses to nearby allies at X sec interval over X seconds aegis + protection + resolution
• F3: 'Ultimate Sacrifice': Destroys your mech and gives you X barrier (basevalue + bonus value) (the more %hp the mech had the more bonus value)

- Damagebot(Ranged): Bonus scaling with your Power/Precision/Ferocity/Condition/Expertise +75% (+ the 25% base = 100%)

• Autoattack: Ranged power attack, good  damage + one stack of bleeding
• F1: 'Spark Revolver': Power Volley attack (x12) + add a stack of bleeding on crit X% (50?)
• F2: 'Discharge Array': Sucks in nearby enemies and deals power damage + slow and confusion
• F3:    'Jade Mortar': same as now

- Supportbot(Ranged): Bonus scaling with your Healing Power/Concentration +75% (+ the 25% base = 100%)

• Autoattack: Ranged power attack, low dmg, every attack pulses ,X barrier (healingpower scaled) and one might stack,  to nearby allies
• F1: 'Cleansing Zone': Pulsing condition cleanse, one condition for every affected ally every second for X seconds and resistance, works with purity of purpose
• F2: 'Crisis Zone': same as now
• F3: 'Barrier Engine': same as now

Traits would now overall affect the mechanist and the mechs instead of changing single abilites. The small traits are fine as they are right now. (maybe affect the engineer by a small amount?)
Examples for new Traits:

• 'Quick Hands': Faster mech repair(after destruction) and lower swap cooldown for mechs and weapons
• 'Pyro Engine': Damagebot's abilites cause X stacks of burn on crit and your expertise is increased by X
• 'Perfect Synchronization': Increases your and your mechs endurance regen by X% (50?) and your mech now dodge rolls when you do

I like the Idea behind the Mech Core traits, but they need some tweaking to reflect the new spec design philosophy
Regarding the Signets, they all feel fine to me, just missing stability somewhere, and I would remove the cast time from 'Shift Signet'.

Conclusion:

This is just some abilities I came up with on the spot, just to make the intention of my idea clear.
All of these changes would give the Mechanist more build options and more diverse, fun and deep gameplay. Especially depth is currently lacking (in my opinion).

If you made it to the end, thanks for reading!

Edited October 31, 2021 by Stealfish.3912
Formatting and minor changes

[Jski.6180]

My thoughts: Support aimed

A bit of random ideals.

-The 1 skills need to fill a full roll mostly the support roll of the mech 1 skill should lose its auto attk and be a lock on to a team mate to support OR support in a given spot.

-The crash down and despawn skills should also fill a roll base off of the GM. The support GM should have an effect of support where it lands as well as it having a effect of support on "death" or despawn.

-The crash down should not root the eng and should be something you can use as a full effect during combat.

-The "green" of the pet blends in to much with the green of hp bars as well as the healing effects it is too easy to lose it in combat or to have it run off even though its support aimed.

 

[Sprites.9764]

the f1-f3 keys sometimes won't activate.

and the mech keeps resetting its name to default.

[Vagrant.7206]

On 10/29/2021 at 7:19 AM, Nephalem.8921 said:

Unbuffed golem but buffed player. golem gets stats from might conversion. Obviously using f skills aswell.

There is no vid with buffed golem but just test it. Bring a friend into golem area that buffs it while you have buffs aswell. 15k+ from what i have seen.

Ok, so I believe those numbers now. That seems accurate.

Problem is... it's literally the core condi 4-kit piano engineer has had since vanilla, but with a mech now! 

Call me crazy but... I don't want to go through that again. I've had enough finger cramps already.

[Yosenage.7298]

Can we transform the mech as a Rocket Suit Mount? you know like Rocket Man. Would be a cool Engineer only mount. 

[Jski.6180]

1 hour ago, Sprites.9764 said:

the f1-f3 keys sometimes won't activate.

and the mech keeps resetting its name to default.

If the pet is doing something already it will ingore your commands and keep doing that it started. The cast time on the pets auto attks are very long for pets where it seems ranger pets are much faster so most rangers never feel it. Its soo much worst in high ping environments too like wvw.

[Matoro.9708]

On 10/29/2021 at 4:30 AM, Random Wax Orc.7695 said:

It isn't a matter of if the Mech gets nerfed, it is just a matter of when the Mech gets nerfed.  Rebalancing is inevitable and any rebalancing will result in a nerf.  The implementation of the concept is so monolithic and too inflexible to be viable long term.  I look at the Mechanist and I see Anet retrying to improve the "New Player Experience" in an elite spec.

It's funny you say that, maybe they should then look at what new players play, like, for instance, core engi....

[Matoro.9708]

9 hours ago, Amadeus.5687 said:

I wish I could be that patient, but the 5 years it took to make Scrapper fun... I'm really not hoping that's what I will take for Mechanist to function 🙂

If GW2 even lasts that long lol

[TheMaskedGamer.5708]

I would like to suggest that beside the weapon-arms changing when you select the one line of traits only, the rest of the mech can be customize.  For the frame, you can have your Mech colors swap between different metal colors. And for the cores, multiple colors of Jade. (Yes, Jade can come in multiple colors besides green.)  I will provide my suggestion here:

Mecha Frame: Conductive Allow - Frame/Body is Gold

Mecha Frame: Channeling Conduits - Frame/Body is Bronze or Copper

Mecha Frame: Variable Mass Distributor - Frame/Body is Steel/Silver

 

Mech Cor: Jade Dynamo - Jade color is Red

Mech Core: Barrier Engine - Jade Color is Lavender

Mech Core: J-Drive - Jade Color is Green
 

[BXXL.8047]

I like most of this elite spec. One of my favorites from EoD so far. Though I find it kinda hard to control the mech due to the lack of an "attack" and "return" command as you have e.g. on core ranger (F1 and F3). This would help a lot in handling the mech and would also fit the theme of having your personal mech you control yourself. Further more it'd be helping to have a way of seeing the mechs conditions and boons without having to target it. So maybe a spot for condis and boons as you have for yourself. This way you'd have a better overview over how the mech's doing. Those however are the only major suggestion I have. Everything else I like a lot, good job! :D

Btw: Is there any way I can inspect what each part of the mech's auto attack does?

[blp.3489]

It would be nice if the Mechs breakbar appeared in the players UI along with its health bar, that way you could see what was happening to it and when it was stunned.  That way you would know that it is ignoring your commands because it is stunned, and just generally develop a feel for how the breakbar is affecting play.

[BXXL.8047]

I like most of this elite spec. One of my favorites from EoD so far. Though I find it kinda hard to control the mech due to the lack of an "attack" and "return" command as you have e.g. on core ranger (F1 and F3). This would help a lot in handling the mech and would also fit the theme of having your personal mech you control yourself. Further more it'd be helping to have a way of seeing the mechs conditions and boons without having to target it. So maybe a spot for condis and boons as you have for yourself. This way you'd have a better overview over how the mech's doing. Those however are the only major suggestion I have. Everything else I like a lot, good job! 😄

Btw: Is there any way I can inspect what each part of the mech's auto attack does?

 

Edit: I can't find any information about what the elite signet cannon attack of the mech does specificly. Is it hidden anywhere or is it nowhere? If so: Could you add it, pls? Would be helpful to know what an attack I'm casting is doing '^^ ❤️

[Aravind.9610]

18 minutes ago, BXXL.8047 said:

Edit: I can't find any information about what the elite signet cannon attack of the mech does specificly. Is it hidden anywhere or is it nowhere? If so: Could you add it, pls? Would be helpful to know what an attack I'm casting is doing '^^

For the details of the attack, open Hero panel->Training->Mechanist->Mouse over Elite skill. It isn't really much of an attack though.

[DragoTheWise.7256]

Hello!

Despite a busy week, I was able to play on the Mechanist some and even in a few raid encounters. I have some feedback I would like to share.

Positives-

Great theme- I just love the theme of the Mechanist and it just seems to fit so well with what we are going to get our hands on with Jade Tech.

• Follows holosmith trait customization- I really liked Holosmith trait customization as it was like building a lightsaber. After seeing the teaser, I was hoping for the same thing!
• Good flexibility- It can do a bit of everything depending on what you want your mech to do. Though the power line is a little lacking the other two lines, especially the support one seem pretty solid.
• Support route-  Speaking of which, it seems to be pretty solid and fun though may have trouble fitting in raids or other 10man content where 10man alarcity is available.
• Mace works fairly well- It gets the job done. The confusion may not push it up to high damage standards but the support aspects are what's important.
• Mech is pretty responsive- Haven't seen too many issue with AI yet. Though there are times where he'll be a little delayed in coming to me on command.

Mech is just plain fun- He is my best buddy ever.  

Suggestions for improvement

• Tool Belt F1 removal- Needs at least the F1 available at all times. Move the current f1-f4 over by one so mech abilities become f2-f5. Med kit gets really screwed up by not having the F1 available and makes it so that certain traits just can't be used like reconstruction enclosure.
• If possible keeping the tool belt when mech is away- It would be nice to keep the tool belt skills but make them only available when the mech is not around (except for F1 which should always be available). F5 would still not be present just like the other engi specs. It kinda makes a bigger push for the need for kits as the other engis skills relied on their tool belt skills to make them competitive against engi kits. I do realize this may make some signets less competitive as they would not likely get any tool belt skills. An alternative would be to make them more powerful when the mech is present in lieu of not having tool belt skills. If anything, medkit f1 could be tied into the mech f1 if the previous suggestion doesn't work. 
• Modifiers- It would be nice to allow modifiers to be applied to the mech. 10% boon duration, 10% condition duration ,etc. If this is not going to happen/can't happen, it would be good to communicate to the player that mods like these don't transfer to the mech.
• Breakbar UI-It would be helpful to have the breakbar on the pet UI. It is difficult to see if the Mech is stunned in larger fights with abilities and many characters.  
• Jade Dynamo- Consider upping the explosions chance for Jade Dynamo. Something like Shrapnel seems like it will have an extremely low chance to trigger for any sort of condi build synergy for the mech.
• Variable Mass Distributor-Would like the stats bumped up here to make power a bit more competitive. As a compromise, perhaps 75%? Of course would like 100% to make it a good competitive power build in PvE raids, but that may be a bit more of a stretch.
• Condi- The Mechanist can do well with conditions but still needs multiple kits to prop up the damage. The Condi signet can be useful on boss fights when more confusion is needed though. I think it will have a bit harder time competing with the more simple torment specs. In addition, since the tool belt is gone, a lot of CC potential is also missing.
• Range of Mech attacks when using bottom trait in column 1- I was doing Trio and was assigned the kegs. Ran a power build that time so the mech had its ranged arms. While the F1-3 abilities could shoot from where the kegs were normally located, it looks like its auto attacks couldn't reach for some odd reason. Perhaps allow the ranged auto attacks to have a bit more distance?

 

Other

• Medical Dispersion Field (MDF)- This will be affected by the tool belt missing for medkit. The support build generates a lot of barrier (though right now the mace 1 doesn't apply to allies atm so this is based on self barrier). Since MDF only activates from your own heals when you are <100% with the exception of using a healing skill, this trait won't see too much action and the inventions like has a tricky situation in regards to the grandmaster selection. MDF has always been a very odd trait with some skills/boons/traits not working with it, some skills/boons/traits only work <100% heath, and then the healing skill only being the one exception where it will activate when at 100% health. Would be good to take a look at this trait again and explain to the player the complexity of the skill or at least make some sort of baseline.
  Visual changes- I like that the first column of traits changes the arms. It would be nice if the other three changed something about the mech as well.
• Naming- Would be nice to be able to add numbers and dashes to the Mechs name just like the default name for the mech.
•  

Conclusion

There may be some more items I just didn't get to. But so far I'm looking forward with playing this spec.

There seems to be a lot of good feedback and hope to look forward to any changes in November!

 

 

Edited October 31, 2021 by DragoTheWise.7256
forgot a few items

[Nephalem.8921]

10 hours ago, Vagrant.7206 said:

Ok, so I believe those numbers now. That seems accurate.

Problem is... it's literally the core condi 4-kit piano engineer has had since vanilla, but with a mech now! 

Call me crazy but... I don't want to go through that again. I've had enough finger cramps already.

I predicted this after the reveal stream and got called an anet hater and troll. Guess theory crafting is black magic and evil sorcery for some. impossible to look at coefficients i guess.

Power mech is a bigger meme. 90% bomb aa. Would be nice if they would create specs with gameplay instead of rp themes. It is just core engi with passive pet dmg and 3 fixed fire and forget toolbelts. All of the eod specs are very lackluster from a gameplay standpoint.