Engi changes next week

[Stalima.5490]

6 minutes ago, santenal.1054 said:

Weapons/skills should be good without being traited, traits should be a mere nice to have, not a necessity. (balance devs obviously disagree with my balancing principle) I dont know what game mode you play but inventions is a must for condi cleanses in my builds.

They haven't taken anything away from it though, this is just completely buffed and for the main traitline you would want to use in a power build. It means you can run both firearms or explosives effectively with the rifle rather than neither working all that well with it, if traits don't buff your capabilities then what would be the point in having traits?

[santenal.1054]

3 minutes ago, Stalima.5490 said:

They haven't taken anything away from it though, this is just completely buffed and for the main traitline you would want to use in a power build. It means you can run both firearms or explosives effectively with the rifle rather than neither working all that well with it, if traits don't buff your capabilities then what would be the point in having traits?

Not saying that what they did was bad, just that they could have done alot more good with alot less effort. This if you take this trait and that trait argument is so lame, there are already too many traits too necesarry (you cant slot them all) not that the specific trait combination you pointed out is necessary for rifle builds, I just dont like that way of justifying these changes (since most people are not going to be able to afford/willing to slot that specific trait combination anyway)

[Stalima.5490]

37 minutes ago, santenal.1054 said:

Not saying that what they did was bad, just that they could have done alot more good with alot less effort. This if you take this trait and that trait argument is so lame, there are already too many traits too necesarry (you cant slot them all) not that the specific trait combination you pointed out is necessary for rifle builds, I just dont like that way of justifying these changes (since most people are not going to be able to afford/willing to slot that specific trait combination anyway)

you are ignoring the general updates they did to the rifle:

 

Jump Shot: Maximum range increased from 800 to 900. The launch blast is now an Explosion. Animation updated for more bounce. Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 18 seconds in PvP and WvW.

so jump shot is likely not only usable a bit more often but also is likely going to be less of a lockout which is good for everyone I am hoping this "bounce" part means you don't hover for like a second over the enemy before stomping.

 

Blunderbuss: Moved from third to second in the Rifle sequence. Now additionally applies might to up to 5 allied targets within a range of 360. Might applied is 5 stacks for 8 seconds in PvE and 3 stacks for 5 seconds in PvP and WvW. Cooldown reduced from 9 seconds to 6 seconds in PvE and from 12 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased minimum power coefficient from 0.5 to 0.87 in PvP and WvW.

The blunderbuss will hit also apply might naturally and have a lower cooldown which is also good for everyone.

 

Whichever way you put it the rifle is gonna be alot better with or without traits, and obviously it is going to be better when using a build specifically specialising in the rifle, if you got no real benefit from the traits then it would just feel alot more bland since everyone would just tank up with them not getting anything for sacrificing it.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Stalima.5490

[santenal.1054]

18 minutes ago, Stalima.5490 said:

you are ignoring the general updates they did to the rifle:

This is going nowhere, I was just commenting on the invested time/effort of changing the hip shot skill/animation, not the rifle changes in it's entirety. They buffed rifle a bit which I like ( they buff, they nerf, they buff, they nerf,...the cycle of meaningless  tweaks continues), nothing major for core engineer was done though, in the end nothing major changed.

[Stalima.5490]

7 minutes ago, santenal.1054 said:

This is going nowhere, I was just commenting on the invested time/effort of changing the hip shot skill/animation, not the rifle changes in it's entirety. They buffed rifle a bit which I like ( they buff, they nerf, they buff, they nerf,...the cycle of meaningless  tweaks continues), nothing major for core engineer was done though, in the end nothing major changed.

what do you mean nothing major changed, they literally updated almost a whole traitline of core and fundamentally upgraded the main power weapons ineractions with another traitline for the better in basically every single way, I honestly don't know what more you would want if you aren't satisfied with that, i mean alchemy and inventions are mostly already solid, the only other thing they could do is look into tools and gadgets.

[santenal.1054]

1 hour ago, Stalima.5490 said:

what do you mean nothing major changed, they literally updated almost a whole traitline of core and fundamentally upgraded the main power weapons ineractions with another traitline for the better in basically every single way, I honestly don't know what more you would want if you aren't satisfied with that, i mean alchemy and inventions are mostly already solid, the only other thing they could do is look into tools and gadgets.

You thinks these changes will increase the amount of core rifle engineers you will meet in WVW or PVP ? nope. 

Impactfull changes would be:

-Putting stun breakers on F5 skills (the (only 3) utility slots of core engineer are just too limiting to slot the necessary defensive/offensive skills for core engineer to be reasonably competitive)

-Making grenade kit usefull without having to slot the grenadier trait giving more freedom to choose other traitlines (Read grenadier part of this topic (a few things may be outdated/changed my opinion))

-Giving Flameblast (flamethrower #2) power damage back so all power builds can make good use of flamethrower and not just (specifically traited) flamejet spammer builds.

here you go ... 3 easy to implement changes that would be way more impactful without being too overpowered, I can come up with more suggestions but it's a complete waste of time.

Edited June 26, 2022 by santenal.1054

[Ghos.1326]

21 hours ago, Stalima.5490 said:

i mean alchemy and inventions are mostly already solid

This is false, Alchemy is more than solid, and Inventions is just a supportive trait line for Alchemy. Inventions alone is garbage and will continue to be until Anet gives it a little love. Most of the changes that should be made are simply, I've outlined a few before.

[ThrakathNar.4537]

21 hours ago, Stalima.5490 said:

what do you mean nothing major changed, they literally updated almost a whole traitline of core and fundamentally upgraded the main power weapons ineractions with another traitline for the better in basically every single way, I honestly don't know what more you would want if you aren't satisfied with that, i mean alchemy and inventions are mostly already solid, the only other thing they could do is look into tools and gadgets.

I mean, I wouldn't call 4 changes on firearms "almost a whole traitline of core", especially when 2 of those changes come down to changing range thresholds, 1 of them is a crit increase that (almost) every profession got, and 1 is a rework into a dumb "passively pulse 5 might" thing. The inventions change is weird and clunky (and may end up being a nerf in all gamemodes), and they really should just remove the minimum range on the explosives trait instead of just lowering it.

 

Also, as well as tools and gadgets, could they not consider reworking turrets?

[Stalima.5490]

21 hours ago, ThrakathNar.4537 said:

I mean, I wouldn't call 4 changes on firearms "almost a whole traitline of core", especially when 2 of those changes come down to changing range thresholds, 1 of them is a crit increase that (almost) every profession got, and 1 is a rework into a dumb "passively pulse 5 might" thing. The inventions change is weird and clunky (and may end up being a nerf in all gamemodes), and they really should just remove the minimum range on the explosives trait instead of just lowering it.

 

Also, as well as tools and gadgets, could they not consider reworking turrets?

You are thinking too linearly, if the rifle works the way i think it does from the description then this also changes the interaction of sanguine array with the rifle substantially, making it more likely to generate bleeds with multiple hits and therefore might and just generally widens the build paths, you could easily get a might pumping firearms build now with the rifle which is made even more possible with rifle AA triggering short fuse for passive fury tho somewhat making no scope a bit redundant but whatever, fix that later.

 

This is also fully available to core engineers for a significant increase in core rifle performance, especially in pve where it will have a drastically higher damage ratio, perhaps we will see some static discharge builds through this.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Stalima.5490

[ThrakathNar.4537]

13 hours ago, Stalima.5490 said:

You are thinking too linearly, if the rifle works the way i think it does from the description then this also changes the interaction of sanguine array with the rifle substantially, making it more likely to generate bleeds with multiple hits and therefore might and just generally widens the build paths, you could easily get a might pumping firearms build now with the rifle which is made even more possible with rifle AA triggering short fuse for passive fury tho somewhat making no scope a bit redundant but whatever, fix that later.

 

This is also fully available to core engineers for a significant increase in core rifle performance, especially in pve where it will have a drastically higher damage ratio, perhaps we will see some static discharge builds through this.

I mean, the exact quote from you I was arguing against was the phrase "updated a whole traitline of core". To me (and in the dictionary) the word update means "to make something more modern or suitable for use now by changing its design", it does not mean to change something tangentially related that has synergies with that thing. If it means something different to you then that's fine, but it's not what I was disagreeing with.

 

My point being - if this is what a full traitline rework looks like, and if the firearms traitline is now "fixed" in the eyes of ANet, it's not. Firearms is not in nearly as bad a place as Tools, but it still has major issues. Pinpoint Distribution, before and after this patch, is one of the most boring, lazy, and passive traits in the game. The gameplay that Juggernaut encourages is unhealthy, but outside the specific scenario of flamethrower camping builds, it's pretty useless. As a whole, the traitline mostly comes down to passive damage modifiers, which are fine, but also makes for a very boring and glass cannon playstyle. Contrast this with explosives, where not only do you have some options for survivability in a DPS traitline, but most of the traits have a visual impact on the world instead of just making your numbers 10% bigger. You can feel the increased projectile speed of Grenadier, feel and see the impact of EE, see the aim-assisted rocket, it just feels a lot more interesting to play.

[ParadoX.3124]

Remember when we were trash tier with piano gameplay and ANet didn't care about engis ? I'm glad this time is over and I'm sad for warior main players

I hope they will do something about turrets and tonics in the futur, you can't even use the belt skills as mecanist

[Endaris.1452]

I don't know if this is just my imagination but does the new Jump Shot animation give you less height compared to the previous one?

[Tails.9372]

I like the QoL changes for rifle and Mechanist, the rifle AA changes seem to have increased "AA spam" DPS by about 20% which is a decent buff but not a "gamechanger". However, something about it being a multi hit skill now makes it (at least for me) really fun to play with, especially with "The Predator" skin.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Tails.9372

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

The new jump shot animation is pretty lackluster compared to the old one.

The auto attack animation is now completely broken on charr. It also still has the old icon which isn't a big deal but it doesn't fit the "animation" at all. Also, all the other skills are still using the hip shot animation as well so it's all kinda moot. Incredibly rushed job. 

[RabbitUp.8294]

19 minutes ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

The new jump shot animation is pretty lackluster compared to the old one.

The auto attack animation is now completely broken on charr. It also still has the old icon which isn't a big deal but it doesn't fit the "animation" at all. Also, all the other skills are still using the hip shot animation as well so it's all kinda moot. Incredibly rushed job. 

Jumpshot looks great for asura at least.

Edit: I can confirm that they indeed added more bounce, you can actually gain height using Jump shot now.

Edited June 28, 2022 by RabbitUp.8294

[santenal.1054]

 Since Rocket punch doesn't stun anymore they could add power damage to the skill in PVP/WVW just like it has in PVE.

Jump shot doesn't have the satisfying animation/sound anymore.

Muzzle flash animation of rifle burst trails behind while moving to the side.

"Time to do some real damage" (human female) soundbite overlapses with Blunderbuss sound/animation.

Edited June 28, 2022 by santenal.1054

[Rising Blade.9206]

the new rifle jump animation needs some tuning on jump speed, it's too fast and doesn't feel like it has any weight at all. somehow i expected the new autoattack to act like a chain, it's currently a tad too fast and much like the new jump shot lacking any weight

Edited June 28, 2022 by Rising Blade.9206

[Endaris.1452]

34 minutes ago, RabbitUp.8294 said:

Jumpshot looks great for asura at least.

Edit: I can confirm that they indeed added more bounce, you can actually gain height using Jump shot now.

You could always gain height from Jump Shot. Personally I even feel like it might be less than before.

[Forestnator.6298]

On 6/23/2022 at 5:42 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

They probably just swapped skill 2 and 3 and claim its an entirely new experience now.

They swap it because skills are sorted by cooldown, Sherlock. And since they reduce the cd of blunderbuss drastically it has now shorter cd than Net Shot. Simple.

[Tails.9372]

14 minutes ago, Rising Blade.9206 said:

i expected the new autoattack to act like a chain, it's currently a tad too fast

Not really, it's just a "multi hit" attack now which is why the skill appears to be faster than it actually is.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Tails.9372

[Rising Blade.9206]

6 minutes ago, Forestnator.6298 said:

They swap it because skills are sorted by cooldown, Sherlock. And since they reduce the cd of blunderbuss drastically it has now shorter cd than Net Shot. Simple.

No, they did it because they don't want to remove rocket punch and just have it be restricted to mace 3, so they just swapped net swap with blunderbuss and have the soft CC skill work in combo.

3 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

Not really, it's just a "multi hit" attack now which is why the skill comes of faster than it actually is.

I know, it just feels out of touch with the theme of the rifle, not a fan of it being that fast

Edited June 28, 2022 by Rising Blade.9206

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

1 minute ago, Rising Blade.9206 said:

No, they did it because they don't want to remove rocket punch and just have it be restricted to mace 3, so they just swapped net swap with blunderbuss and have the soft CC skill work in combo.

I know, it just feels out of touch with the theme of the rifle, not a fan of it being that fast

Yeah, I have to say I'm also not a fan of the auto attack skill one mindless gameplay.  It feels like it has some insane trolling potential in WvW, especially on a glassy static discharge build.

[Tails.9372]

4 minutes ago, PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

Yeah, I have to say I'm also not a fan of the auto attack skill one mindless gameplay.  It feels like it has some insane trolling potential in WvW, especially on a glassy static discharge build.

That's a pretty empty complaint though. Realistically there is nothing more or less "mindless" about it then before the change and if someone feels "trolled" by it then he just gets upset over nothing.

[Mavis.1572]

Bad at using forums

Edited June 28, 2022 by Mavis.1572
Bad at using forums

[Mavis.1572]

15 minutes ago, Forestnator.6298 said:

They swap it because skills are sorted by cooldown, Sherlock. And since they reduce the cd of blunderbuss drastically it has now shorter cd than Net Shot. Simple.

"Looks at Flamethrower"

 

Easy with the attitude, Sherlock.