PvP Balance guy

[semak.7481]

1 minute ago, Kuma.1503 said:

I think you underestimate just how loaded they made holo. They had to stack it to high heavens in order to carry core engineer. 

Here's a list of everything the meta Holosmith setup gives you with just one traitline, no utilities, and no weapons:

Mobility - Holo Leap

Condi Cleanse - Prismatic Converter, Crystal Configuration: Zephyr

CC - Holographic Shockwave, Holo Leap (cripple)

Sustain - Heat Therapy

Self-Might Uptime - Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit, Corona Burst

Vuln Uptime - Corona Burst

Ranged poke damage - Photon Blitz

A good damage modifier - Lazer's Edge

One traitline gives you a well rounded kit. If core engi had anything even remotely decent and you stacked it on top of that, it had to get nerfed because it would cause holo to overperform. Conversely, it should be a testament to just how bad core engineer is if something this overloaded has fallen to the wayside as of late. 

As for why core engimore attention than core mesmer, it's because it's already dead, and they still keep nerfing it. And there are still people , including streamers who defend the nerfs, (Even you say shield had it coming... Because it overperformed on Mech and Holo. Proof that people still defend core engi nerfs to this day) 

At least core mesmer has the luxury of being mostly dead and forgotten. They might be bad but they don't keep getting worse patch after patch.

Core engi, more than likely will continue to see nerfs even after this. Scrapper is still king in WvW, so there may be Elixir gun, Med kit, Alchemy, or Inventions nerfs on the horizon. If Willbender and Harbinger get nerfed, Holo can make a resurgence in the meta... which puts them in the direct line of fire for more core engi nerfs to tone it down. Perhaps  Explosive Entrance can take a hit next. We got rid of their bunkering.  Lets remove all of core engi's damage next!

You wasted 20 minutes of your life writing it, I'm well aware about it. Speaking about "trade-offs", this one got nothing as "trade off" for being so insanely broken.

Shield by default had it coming as its offhand with 4 different skills and any of them is good for any situation. Shield block was clear outliner among all blocking abilities, so no big surprise.

I mean, we can dig up further whos got it worse but it wont make neither class viable when there are vindi/specter/wb/harb are dominating everything, lets argue some more, shall we?

[Choyacute.8591]

Prediction time:

 

- Nerf Core Revenant

 

- Buff Willbender and Harbinger

[Kuma.1503]

50 minutes ago, semak.7481 said:

You wasted 20 minutes of your life writing it, I'm well aware about it. Speaking about "trade-offs", this one got nothing as "trade off" for being so insanely broken.

Shield by default had it coming as its offhand with 4 different skills and any of them is good for any situation. Shield block was clear outliner among all blocking abilities, so no big surprise.

I mean, we can dig up further whos got it worse but it wont make neither class viable when there are vindi/specter/wb/harb are dominating everything, lets argue some more, shall we?

On the contrary, spewing walls of texts on the forums are the perfect way to relax when you have a work at home job. Takes your mind of the daily grind. 

That... and I type fast. 

It seems a bit hypocritical to me, for someone who is so against nerfing core mesmer because of Mirage and Chrono, to turn around and defend core engi nerfs because of Mechanist and Holo. 

When you encourage that president to other classes, you cannot complain when that same president is used later to nerf your favorite class. 

That aside... since people love to bring up "Outliers" in core engis kit. I should mention that outliers in statistics dont only deal with data points that rise above the curve, it also included data points that fall far below the curve.

So i'd like to bring up the other obvious outlier. Not OH Pistol, the worst weapon in the game, but the only weapon core engi can pair with Shield. 

Lets look at MH Pistol

Fragmentation shot - The worst auto attack in the game. Low damage, countred by projectile hate, long aftercast, one measly stack of bleed that doeesn't even apply on the AoE Explosion.  but you don't auto with pistol you use kits so I'll let this one slide. 

Poison Dart volley does okay-ish condi damage. But it's spread out over a long duration. You have plenty of time to cleanse after you see this loooong animation before this comes close to killing you. 

Asuming it lands in the first place. The projectile velocity is slow so you will miss moving targets.  Also Counted by Projectile hate. 

Static Shot - The blind is more useful than the confusion. It does decent damage if it can bounce between targets... which it won't more often than not because Core condi engi is a bunker spec, so you'll be in 1v1s more often than not. Also countered by projectile hate. 

This is an obvious outlier among condi weapons. An outlier because it's significantly worse than the competition. 

At least mesmer's scepter can still deal damage into reflects with the 2 and 3 skill. Does good power damage on the 3 skill. Has a usable, albeit situational 1 skill thanks to the clone gen. And has a block. 

This even see's play on Power Virtuoso because a 1.785 coefficient on Scepter 3 is just... good. 

Necro Scepter is completely immune to reflects, has built in boon corrupt (converts stab into fear!), no travel time on skills so they will always hit moving targets, and great condi damage. 

Specter Scepter is just... good. The auto attack, the 2 skill with it's weakness spam, both 3 skills are loaded to high heavens. 

Rev Mace is just... good all around. Good AoE, good burst damage on the 2 and 3 skill. Good power and condi damage on the auto attack. Completely immune to reflects. I'd kill for this on core engineer. 

 Ranger Axe is also just... good, and doubles as a good power weapon. I'd also kill for this on core engi. 

 

tl;dr You have a good shield, but you have to pair it with a hunk of garbage. Even if you want to continue defending the nerf, it is hypocritical to defend core engi nerfs because of elites, then complain about core mesmer nerfs because of Mirage/Chrono. Shield nerfs should have come packaged with a compensation pistol buff. 

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[semak.7481]

6 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

At least mesmer's scepter can still deal damage into reflects with the 2 and 3 skill. Does good power damage on the 3 skill. Has a usable, albeit situational 1 skill thanks to the clone gen. And has a block. 

Honestly when you said sc3 does good power damage... desire to read the rest of wall is gone

Edited June 9, 2022 by semak.7481

[Kuma.1503]

22 minutes ago, semak.7481 said:

Honestly when you said sc3 does good power damage... desire to read the rest of wall is gone

2.0 Power Coefficient was stated as the upper limit of what a "Hard Hitting Skill" should be after Feb 2020. 

Confusing Images has a 1.785 power coefficient. 

That is good power damage. 

For context, Sevenshot has a 1.68 coefficient in PvP. 

Grenade Barrage is 1.8 (if all 6 nades land.)

 

Edit: Tested to make sure the wiki wasn't lying to me. It's always a pain comparing multi-hit power skills because of crit RNG. But from my 10 minutes of testing: Using Zerker/Eagle for both Engi and Mesmer

Grenade Barrage - Did anywhere from  4.8k -5.6k damage against light golem. (Nade and crit rng dont want to cooperate...)

Confusing Images - Did anywhere from 5k-5.7k, against light golem. 

Numbers can fluctuate depending on traits, crit RNG, ect. but it is what it is. 

 

Mes Scepter 3 hits (roughly) as hard as Grenade Barrage. Plenty usable in a power build. 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[myun.6395]

Why people say the CMC guy should change job or be fired?

He probably gave anet a +50% in sells of all EoD for his decision to balance/powercreep those two professions.

 

He did his job. Bringing anet lots of money more than anyone else, even more than the story creators 🤣.

[Ghos.1326]

39 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Fragmentation shot - The worst auto attack in the game. Low damage, countred by projectile hate, long aftercast, one measly stack of bleed that doeesn't even apply on the AoE Explosion.  but you don't auto with pistol you use kits so I'll let this one slide.

Lets not forget, also, that the tooltip lists .5s cast time, but because of the elongated aftercast it's actually closer to 1s cast time (to add onto how bad everything else that you pointed out is).

Comparison to further support your statement, Ranger shortbow. Usually I'd say "'nuff said", but to educate others here: the autos shoot extremely fast, correctly matching its tooltip of .5s cast time.

Engi MH pistol is so bad, that actually matching its AA cast time to be what the tooltip suggests it is (.5s) would be a SIGNIFICANT buff to the weapon.

But, I'm just digressing. it's like I said before when it comes to Anet as of late: no hope and no cope.

[apharma.3741]

3 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

2.0 Power Coefficient was stated as the upper limit of what a "Hard Hitting Skill" should be after Feb 2020. 

Confusing Images has a 1.785 power coefficient. 

That is good power damage. 

For context, Sevenshot has a 1.68 coefficient in PvP. 

Grenade Barrage is 1.8 (if all 6 nades land.)

 

Edit: Tested to make sure the wiki wasn't lying to me. It's always a pain comparing multi-hit power skills because of crit RNG. But from my 10 minutes of testing: Using Zerker/Eagle for both Engi and Mesmer

Grenade Barrage - Did anywhere from  4.8k -5.6k damage against light golem. (Nade and crit rng dont want to cooperate...)

Confusing Images - Did anywhere from 5k-5.7k, against light golem. 

Numbers can fluctuate depending on traits, crit RNG, ect. but it is what it is. 

 

Mes Scepter 3 hits (roughly) as hard as Grenade Barrage. Plenty usable in a power build. 

 

While I do agree on paper confusing images does good power damage we are also overlooking the channel aspect of it which is 2.25s long and breaks if someone was to walk through you unless you stand still which isn't a great idea.

We're ignoring the power of grenade kit in general, which is great on any and all engineer builds, scepter on a power build is good for a block and if you somehow manage to land a full confusing images but that's about it, even buffing through vuln (engineer will do the same with grenades+explosives) it's just not a good power weapon. At the end of the day we're looking at 2 different skills in a vacuum without considering the wider classes, buffs and skills, they're very different in characteristics. It's very much an apples to oranges situation.

[semak.7481]

1 hour ago, apharma.3741 said:

While I do agree on paper confusing images does good power damage we are also overlooking the channel aspect of it which is 2.25s long and breaks if someone was to walk through you unless you stand still which isn't a great idea.

We're ignoring the power of grenade kit in general, which is great on any and all engineer builds, scepter on a power build is good for a block and if you somehow manage to land a full confusing images but that's about it, even buffing through vuln (engineer will do the same with grenades+explosives) it's just not a good power weapon. At the end of the day we're looking at 2 different skills in a vacuum without considering the wider classes, buffs and skills, they're very different in characteristics. It's very much an apples to oranges situation.

He dont seems to be interested in all that from what I could understand. He was looking at numbers on full zerk meme build with virtuoso. He also dont understand that if we look at holo, he rolls on 25 might almost all the time. Nor the fact that scepter was used only in power chrono post buff and then disappeared after a huge nerf. And never been part of any power build, I wouldnt want to cast 3s channeling skill even on condi build, let alone squish power, given how fast you will die while trying to cast it, pure suicide.

At least you understand it ❤️

Edited June 9, 2022 by semak.7481

[Kuma.1503]

 

1 hour ago, apharma.3741 said:

While I do agree on paper confusing images does good power damage we are also overlooking the channel aspect of it which is 2.25s long and breaks if someone was to walk through you unless you stand still which isn't a great idea.

We're ignoring the power of grenade kit in general, which is great on any and all engineer builds, scepter on a power build is good for a block and if you somehow manage to land a full confusing images but that's about it, even buffing through vuln (engineer will do the same with grenades+explosives) it's just not a good power weapon. At the end of the day we're looking at 2 different skills in a vacuum without considering the wider classes, buffs and skills, they're very different in characteristics. It's very much an apples to oranges situation.

Fair points all around. 

The point of that post probably got lost in translation. The reason behind the Nade Barrage comparison was to make sure that the numbers listed on the wiki were accurate. The numbers I got for both skills were roughly equivalent so the wiki checks out in this case. 

Scepter's power damage does not compare to Grenade kit. Grenade kit is an objectively better power kit. 

The larger point I across the discussion was as follows:

Engi shield is very good in a vaccum. 

Engi shield can only be used with MH pistol on core. 

MH pistol is the weakest condi weapon in the game. I compared it to other condi MH weapons to prove this was the case. Even than Mesmer Scepter is a stronger weapon. (and I will admit, that isn't a high bar). 

The overall combination of MH Pistol and Offhand shield (the only possible combination) is not broken overall and didn't warrant nerfs. Mechanist should have been nerfed if their intent was to nerf Mechanist. 

Then in response to another post, I gave an example of the damage mesmer scepter is capable of, and why, even though it is a deeply flawed weapon, it is still workable on power builds as well as condi builds. The damage is at least relevant enough to warrant some level of counterplay from the opponent, either by LoS'ing the skill, running through the mesmer, or dodging it. 

Example: this power virtuoso build.

In short the point Shield nerfs unjustified, or at the very least, should have been paried with pistol buffs. 

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Zizou.2358]

On 6/6/2022 at 11:50 PM, thepolishman.2348 said:

Pvp balance guy needs to change his job, for the good of us all

Fun fact. There is no such person.

[Sahne.6950]

fun fact. This person exists.. and hes playing Necro and Guardian.

[Fueki.4753]

38 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

fun fact. This person exists.. and hes playing Necro and Guardian.

No, there is no person for balance.

CMC may be in charge of numerical changes, but what he's doing is fundamentally different from trying to balance the game.

[Sahne.6950]

Just now, Fueki.4753 said:

No, there is no person for balance.

CMC may be in charge of numerical changes, but what he's doing is fundamentally different from trying to balance the game.

i was just trying to act funny:D

[Ghos.1326]

15 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Mechanist should have been nerfed if their intent was to nerf Mechanist.

Unfortunately, with Anet logic, it's "we're going to nerf Mechanist, AND nerf something else about the profession that doesn't need nerfed", in this case it was Mech's Rectifier signet (understandable nerf, it was pretty much pre-nerf Warrior's healing signet) and Shield nerfs (core nerf which didn't need a nerf).

One thing I've come to understand about this team is this: they'll nerf AND buff things that don't really need it just for the sake of shutting up the crying toddlers that are whining day in and day out about said things they nerf/buff.

Not saying all suggestions is just a whine fest, there are some solid recommendations on changes for a lot of things out there (shoutout to you legends), but yes there are a TON of cries of outrage with no solid foundation of truth for things.

It's a shame really. 😞

[Curennos.9307]

Anet's changes rarely make sense because they're not consistent across the board, imo. Okay, sure, engineer's shield was almost 4 skills packed into two, and both had a variety of uses. What about ranger's block, then? Why are warrior's shield skills terrible in comparison with no apparent compensation? What about rev's blocks, all of which do multiple things? I've hit people for 10k on my vindicator using GS4 and it's on a...what, I think it was 20 second cooldown?

 

Now, different strokes for different classes is understandable - but there has to be SOME kind of consistency. Instead, anet forces some classes and specs to suffer certain constant rules, drawbacks, whatever, while other classes/specs just...don't, for some reason. Where there can and should be consistency, there isn't, and where there SHOULDN'T be, there is for some unfathomable reason - such as certain things singled out and required to adhere to certain design paradigms but nobody else is. The only consistency there is consistently screwing stuff up. 

[Myror.7521]

@Curennos.9307 gimme a sec did you say that warriors shieldstance does more than hust block? cause it actually only do more then block only with a traitline. While other classes like engi rev and such get it straigth on weapon itself. To me the engi shield nerf Was for sure a bit harsh. But if you see what it does compared of what warrs shield does the nerf Was only fair enough.

[Curennos.9307]

6 hours ago, Pati.2438 said:

@Curennos.9307 gimme a sec did you say that warriors shieldstance does more than hust block? cause it actually only do more then block only with a traitline. While other classes like engi rev and such get it straigth on weapon itself. To me the engi shield nerf Was for sure a bit harsh. But if you see what it does compared of what warrs shield does the nerf Was only fair enough.

 

On 6/10/2022 at 10:48 AM, Curennos.9307 said:

Why are warrior's shield skills terrible in comparison

 

[Chromazene.4807]

On 6/6/2022 at 5:07 PM, Choyacute.8591 said:

And i forgot he even nerfed core engineer!

 

It must be that core engineer was very detrimental for the game, even more than willbender and harbinger.

 

Dammnit core engineer was S tier not like willbender or harbinger.

 

What is inside the head of the person doing the balance????????

I made a post exactly about this and STILL got forum naysayers to deny the reality.  It's sad.

[bethekey.8314]

On 6/9/2022 at 4:45 PM, apharma.3741 said:

channel aspect of it which is 2.25s long and breaks if someone was to walk through you unless you stand still which isn't a great idea

Huh. This is the case for almost any skill, especially Engi pistol skills.

On 6/9/2022 at 4:45 PM, apharma.3741 said:

We're ignoring the power of grenade kit in general, which is great on any and all engineer builds,

Pls show "great" condi grenade build.

On 6/9/2022 at 5:51 PM, semak.7481 said:

He was looking at numbers on full zerk meme build with virtuoso

It was also full zerk meme build with Engineer? Your point?

On 6/9/2022 at 5:51 PM, semak.7481 said:

if we look at holo, he rolls on 25 might almost all the time

What game are you playing?

I get that you're upset about the state of Mesmer, but don't throw around wild claims.

Edited June 11, 2022 by bethekey.8314

[Exalted Quality.8534]

it's just funny to me that they nerfed prot holo cuz boons and then they give harb a skill that gives every boon, every damaging condi, AND power dmg on top of that.  even if they made the cooldown 120s and did only offensive boons, that would still be a great skill. 

 

they just contradict themselves all the time...pretty dumb

Edited June 20, 2022 by Exalted Quality.8534

[Bale.3851]

@Kuma.1503 I just want you to notice that all your posts had one confused smiley and you were discussion things pretty lively with another guy i dont want to call out (read above but silently cause its secret). So im just here to solve this mystery. With the magic of a new developed algorithm which is also used for wvw reconstruction i got the answer. If you want to know pm me.

[Kuma.1503]

1 hour ago, Bale.3851 said:

@Kuma.1503 I just want you to notice that all your posts had one confused smiley and you were discussion things pretty lively with another guy i dont want to call out (read above but silently cause its secret). So im just here to solve this mystery. With the magic of a new developed algorithm which is also used for wvw reconstruction i got the answer. If you want to know pm me.

I have a preeeeety good idea of who it is. I don't mind it though It's an internet forum, so not everyone is going to agree with you. 

 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

19 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

I have a preeeeety good idea of who it is. I don't mind it though It's an internet forum, so not everyone is going to agree with you. 

 

I confused reacted because I can't comprehend how you're still coherent after getting core engie nerfs again. 

Aren't you tired of being nice?

Don't you wanna go apekitten?

[Bale.3851]

8 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I confused reacted because I can't comprehend how you're still coherent after getting core engie nerfs again. 

Aren't you tired of being nice?

Don't you wanna go apekitten?

 

Sorry if you want to outrage and burn everything down you have to go down the dark path of crab fear. Read his latest thread and be enligthend by his pure genius.