Power Rifle Mechanist Problem

[Alcatraznc.3869]

14 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The comparison was made between sword holo and power mech.

k fine.

14 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Yes, bladesword is very powerful. That's why there are none more around atm. In fact warriors are barely visible atm.

Good for me, I get to enjoy my 1 button demolish everything build for longer. 

 

Back when EoD released, Hammer Catalyst was able to reach 40k while providing a lot of quickness, which no one complained. But afterward some people complained that Mechanist could reach 40k while providing perma alac uptime to everyone while tanking. Of course these people just proved to everyone who actually has experience with the class that they are ignorant who spread bs but it mostly highlight that if it is executed by some classes and not another specific one, they will turn a blindeye.

 

14 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

As far as power builds, yes they are being overshadowed by condi builds for open world. Which makes it even more questionable when suddenly a power build emerges and dominates squads. If power was so behind condi, something about that build must be above and beyond all other power builds I'd say.

The issue with power build isnt the damage but the survivability.  The damage has always been there but due to how berserker works, due to how some boons/condition are more prevalent than other, condition will always be a better pick than berserker for at least 95% of the content.

 

The build didnt dominate squad more than any other meme full X class party. I've seen on YT only Scourge runs, only Firebrand run, only Berserker runs and so forth.  But again, until the rifle change no one even thought of this as a mean to say this is OP/Broken. 

 

[Cyninja.2954]

6 hours ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

Back when EoD released, Hammer Catalyst was able to reach 40k while providing a lot of quickness, which no one complained. But afterward some people complained that Mechanist could reach 40k while providing perma alac uptime to everyone while tanking. Of course these people just proved to everyone who actually has experience with the class that they are ignorant who spread bs but it mostly highlight that if it is executed by some classes and not another specific one, they will turn a blindeye.

True, and yet squads both in instanced content or open world were not overrun with catalysts.

What did happen though was that catalyst was nerfed based around top end performance, while it still was far harder to achieve.

Quote

 

The issue with power build isnt the damage but the survivability.  The damage has always been there but due to how berserker works, due to how some boons/condition are more prevalent than other, condition will always be a better pick than berserker for at least 95% of the content.

 

The build didnt dominate squad more than any other meme full X class party. I've seen on YT only Scourge runs, only Firebrand run, only Berserker runs and so forth.  But again, until the rifle change no one even thought of this as a mean to say this is OP/Broken. 

 

How much content where one can assume players have EoD have you actually played over the last week? Even in its nerfed state, power rifle mechanist and virtuoso are dominant in squads (though virt now outclasses rifle pmech and is trailed by good bladesworn on melee only fights). Now less in instanced content after the nerf but still very present.

Meme builds and runs are run a few times, not continuously present.

True, the rifle change simply pushed the spec above and beyond. Mechanist as a whole is busted atm.

Here is what is going to happen, given the developers have mentioned a rework of Aim- Assisted Rocket: if Mechanist remains over represented in squads, it will get toned down because the developers balance around metrics. The fact it got already nerfed via a hotfix, which happens 1 in a full moon is indicative enough of its over-representation directly post patch.

 

Power Mechanist dps is about where it should be, maybe 1-2k above that depending on how much one values difficulty in rotation. Given Mechanists overall utility and customization options though, the class will likely see "reworks".

Edited July 3, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Fwog.9387]

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

it will get toned down because the developers balance around metrics. 

Gave me a good chuckle reading this. 


No. They don't. We had that unfortunately confirmed recently. 

[Artemis.8034]

Man you people are salty, power mech was bottom of the barrel and the only way a pmech could get into raids was to bring alac that lowered their dps even more. So they got a little buff so what? They still cant compare to the big hitters, you all act like they can do 40k dps provide squad alac 100% uptime heal the squad tank the boss all at the same time lol , no just no. Honestly what I see is jealousy because people think its all true and its not.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Artemis.8034

[Alcatraznc.3869]

18 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

True, and yet squads both in instanced content or open world were not overrun with catalysts.

 

By using your logic if tomorrow every single player starts playing CDPS Warrior with greatsword then it means the spec is OP. Popularity doesnt always means it is OP plus, this was the first week of patch days where everyone wants to play with new toy. You dont see Mirage S/S spam dodge very often in OW or instanced content and yet it doesnt mean it's weak.

 

I can only speak for myself but outside of YT/Streamer I havent experienced full Mech overrun you and many other people claim.  

 

19 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

How much content where one can assume players have EoD have you actually played over the last week? Even in its nerfed state, power rifle mechanist and virtuoso are dominant in squads (though virt now outclasses rifle pmech and is trailed by good bladesworn on melee only fights). Now less in instanced content after the nerf but still very present.

 

It isnt more present than Holosmith, Firebrand, Scourge, Renegade or pretty much any popular class.

 

19 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Here is what is going to happen, given the developers have mentioned a rework of Aim- Assisted Rocket

 

Where's the source on that ? Because it is definitely not in the patch note, just like the rifle AA nerf.

 

19 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

if Mechanist remains over represented in squads, it will get toned down because the developers balance around metrics. The fact it got already nerfed via a hotfix, which happens 1 in a full moon is indicative enough of its over-representation directly post patch.

 

It has more chance to get nerfed because people are crying over something they know nothing about than because it is "over represented". Barely 24 hours following the patch some people were saying there is a bug that allow the golem to trigger AAR and this skill needs an ICD of at least 3 seconds to balance it. If these players had the ability to read further than their own bias they would notice the skill description explicitely said the mech CAN use trigger the trait. And if they read the trait description they would see there IS a 3 sec ICD. 

 

But this time Anet did half good and half bad. They didnt completely trash the rifle and nerf the Mech however they didnt bother mentioning the rifle AA nerf. 

 

19 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Given Mechanists overall utility and customization options though, the class will likely see "reworks".

 

If by rework you mean a nerf then yes it may happens sooner than later. It will depends if Anet is like the rest of the playerbase, unable to understand why the Mech has to be very strong in order to be viable. For a true rework to happens we would have to wait 4-5 years at least.

[LunieL.1738]

24 minutes ago, Artemis.8034 said:

Man you people are salty, power mech was bottom of the barrel and the only way a pmech could get into raids was to bring alac that lowered their dps even more. So they got a little buff so what? They still cant compare to the big hitters, you all act like they can do 40k dps provide squad alac 100% uptime heal the squad tank the boss all at the same time lol , no just no. Honestly what I see is jealousy because people think its all true and its not.

True. After last nerf (not last, will see more nerfs for sure) I hardly reach 31k, but usually 30k on dummy, that rare has smth common with real fight, and I don't see potential for this to reach any higher numbers, maybe only in case if you have VERY fast hands with absolute muscle memmory (saw guy making 35k but it includes leaps at one place that is not really possible for me personally to do in another situation but dummy hitting). Lazy p/p no kits viper build still performs better and more natural I guess. 

As for alac uptime - no chance using rifle, only with the really large dps loss and full diviner, which doesn't make much sense since M/P can provide perma alac. The only thing such build bould do not bad, but not awesome is DPS, but now it can't again.

As for selfish builds  with perma or at least 80% quickness - you still need lot of concentration after mech nerf, I've tested it with up to 50% boon duration and even with enogh uptime coudn't override fully berserker build's damage because of dmg loss, so it doesn't make sense.

The place power build shines is open world. But come on, who cares about it, you can use exotic cele gear and flamethrower and annihilate anything including legendaries in OW. But it kills veterans really fast *sarcasm*

Maybe i am doing something wrong, but there is no potential in rifle itself. Take anything and it will be performing better. It's not dead at all as it was before patch and you can really have fun with it till some cap like t4 fractals or raids where you will be just kicked from for 'meme build'.

[LunieL.1738]

4 minutes ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

I can only speak for myself but outside of YT/Streamer I havent experienced full Mech overrun you and many other people claim.  

Disagree, using rifle mechanist I always perform much better (difference may be like up to  their 4k dps and my 17-20k) than 99% of other players in t1-t2 fractals but other rifle mechanists 😄 Maybe the thing that people do not care but anyways :DDD

Edited July 4, 2022 by LunieL.1738

[LunieL.1738]

11 minutes ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

 

Where's the source on that ? Because it is definitely not in the patch note, just like the rifle AA nerf.

They've mentioned that it may (will) be reworked (nerfed to the kitten) in august patch.

Edited July 4, 2022 by LunieL.1738

[AliamRationem.5172]

On 7/2/2022 at 5:41 AM, Jaricko.6143 said:

Spend 5 minutes in any random pug or map meta and you very quickly learn most of the player base doesn't have the slightest clue how to play their classes but these same individuals are very quick to say when something is overpowered just because it performs better than them. 

And half of them are playing mechanist. 🤣

[Fwog.9387]

11 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

And half of them are playing mechanist. 🤣

I fail to see how this is any different from when they were all necros and rangers. Its not a new problem. Just a different coat of paint.
Also are you implying mechanist isn't so easy a noob can't trip over good dps. Because that hasn't been the sentiment lately. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

Just now, Jaricko.6143 said:

I fail to see how this is any different from when they were all necros and rangers. Its not a new problem. Just a different coat of paint.
Also are you implying mechanist isn't so easy a noob can't trip over good dps. Because that hasn't been the sentiment lately. 

It's not a new problem.  But if they're going to pretend they give a crap about balance, introducing do-everything specs with super low skill requirements is about the worst way I can think of to manage that.

I mean, we've been complaining about firebrand for 4 years.  ANet's response?  Firebrand 2.0! Now with AI so the game can roll face for you!

[Fwog.9387]

I again have to point out there is a flaw in this outlook. How do we have a map full of bad player mechanists doing poorly, putting out bad dps and not knowing how to play their class if mechanist is faceroll. These two points contradict each other. I will agree... mechanist is very good. Its the most versatile class in the game atm and it has a lot of competitively strong builds (I don't agree that all of them are faceroll), but I don't necessarily think that is a problem. I wish all classes could be versatile and diverse. It's probably more than anet knows how to balance so we only see it on their favorite classes. 

I am actually of the belief that some elites are unbalanced on purpose and that some skills are intentionally never updated so they have less work on their table to worry about when it comes time to tweak numbers. Also certain builds becoming incredibly powerful and competitive might just be an accident. I do not believe for a second anet planned for a 40k condi untamed build to come out of the last update. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

21 minutes ago, Jaricko.6143 said:

I again have to point out there is a flaw in this outlook. How do we have a map full of bad player mechanists doing poorly, putting out bad dps and not knowing how to play their class if mechanist is faceroll. These two points contradict each other. I will agree... mechanist is very good. Its the most versatile class in the game atm and it has a lot of competitively strong builds (I don't agree that all of them are faceroll), but I don't necessarily think that is a problem. I wish all classes could be versatile and diverse. It's probably more than anet knows how to balance so we only see it on their favorite classes. 

I am actually of the belief that some elites are unbalanced on purpose and that some skills are intentionally never updated so they have less work on their table to worry about when it comes time to tweak numbers. Also certain builds becoming incredibly powerful and competitive might just be an accident. I do not believe for a second anet planned for a 40k condi untamed build to come out of the last update. 

Sure. That's why both SC and HS stacked mechanist for harvest temple cm.

[Fwog.9387]

I don't think this qualifies as a debate or an argument. We are having entirely different conversations. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Jaricko.6143 said:

I don't think this qualifies as a debate or an argument. We are having entirely different conversations. 

It's not that difficult to understand.  The spec does too much too well and too easily.  At the skill floor, skill ceiling, and everywhere in between it as dominant as firebrand ever was. And that is reflected in its representation. 

[Tails.9372]

2 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Now with AI so the game can roll face for you!

The "AI" can't even "faceroll" a single veteran T4 fractal golem on its own. In fact it constantly loses to it while barely doing more than 2k dps (and we're talking about the version "powered by the oh so "OP" AAR trait" here). Ofc. anyone who actually did some proper testing would have known what it can / can't do and most of the claims I commonly see about the mech lead me to believe that they did not (well either that or they're just making things up for the sake of their own agenda which wouldn't really surprise me as many people in the past openly proclaimed that they oppose the concept of a viable AI companion on principle).

2 hours ago, Jaricko.6143 said:

I don't necessarily think that is a problem.

Indeed it is not, a class being able to deliver a good performance in every area would not be an issue in the slightest. A single build "being able to deliver a good performance in every area" hoever would be but this wasn't the case with the power rifle mechanist builds people were talking about which made the complaints about "but other mech builds tho" ring nothing but empty. If "build A" can do X but not Y then "build B" being able to do Y is not something one can hold against "build A".

Edited July 4, 2022 by Tails.9372

[Kodama.6453]

28 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It's not that difficult to understand.  The spec does too much too well and too easily.  At the skill floor, skill ceiling, and everywhere in between it as dominant as firebrand ever was. And that is reflected in its representation. 

Yep. The problem is that it needs to do that much because of it's design.

Anet removed the toolbelt as the class mechanic from mechanist, which is highly complex and customizable. And it is also a mechanic which holds alot of power by having important mechanics baked into it like condi cleanses, stun breaks, important boons like stability, etc.

Then Anet replaced this class mechanic with the mech, which is an auto attacking pet that grants us also access to 9 new mech command skills.

The spec is trading access to 27 different toolbelt skills for just 9 new mech command skills. Of course the mech is doing alot of stuff well and is generally loaded. Because the mech now has to compensate the spec here, otherwise you have no reason to use the elite spec.

If you replace a highly complex system with a way simpler system and want both of them to be on equal power level, then of course the simpler system needs to hold more power in their individual components.

Mechanist is just a flawed design from it's very beginning. And I fear that it will either stay at an OP top performer or fall into uselessness, not finding a standing in between.

[Fwog.9387]

54 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It's not that difficult to understand.  The spec does too much too well and too easily.  At the skill floor, skill ceiling, and everywhere in between it as dominant as firebrand ever was. And that is reflected in its representation. 

If every class were like mechanist, i would have no issues with anet. Also correlation does not imply causation. Ranger was one of the most played classes and historically its kinda been trash. Doubly so in the hands of a newbie. I think people just like the idea of having a pet that doesn't suck and barrier to entry is low. Not all mech builds are easy to play. And i don't think we need to be worried about what the top 1% of the players are doing. Its also not relevant when talking about the bottom of the player base and their skill level. 

A jack of all trades master of none would be taken to nothing, because you would just pick something better suited to each job. So if its gonna have a job in its build, it needs to be good at it. Take banner warriors for example right now. They are trash. They have to commit far to hard to 1 job and a harbinger could come along and do their job with zero commitment in vipers. That is poor balancing. I would like to see banner warriors be an alternative to quickbrand, not a poor imitation. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 minutes ago, Jaricko.6143 said:

If every class were like mechanist, i would have no issues with anet. Also correlation does not imply causation. Ranger was one of the most played classes and historically its kinda been trash. Doubly so in the hands of a newbie. I think people just like the idea of having a pet that doesn't suck and barrier to entry is low. Not all mech builds are easy to play. And i don't think we need to be worried about what the top 1% of the players are doing. Its also not relevant when talking about the bottom of the player base and their skill level. 

A jack of all trades master of none would be taken to nothing, because you would just pick something better suited to each job. So if its gonna have a job in its build, it needs to be good at it. Take banner warriors for example right now. They are trash. They have to commit far to hard to 1 job and a harbinger could come along and do their job with zero commitment in vipers. That is poor balancing. I would like to see banner warriors be an alternative to quickbrand, not a poor imitation. 

Ah, right. It's not that mechanist is overtuned.  It's just that everything else sucks by comparison.  The obvious answer is to make all classes mechanist (and all restaurants taco bell)!

[Artemis.8034]

4 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Sure. That's why both SC and HS stacked mechanist for harvest temple cm.

Umm they didnt stack them they had 2 hams and a possible jade dynamo mech, 2 quickbrands a ranger and 4 freaking virtuosos , by that logic Virtuoso should be nerfed.

 

Edited July 4, 2022 by Artemis.8034

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Artemis.8034 said:

Umm they didnt stack them they had 2 hams and a possible jade dynamo mech, 2 quickbrands a ranger and 4 freaking virtuosos , by that logic Virtuoso should be nerfed.

 

Virtuoso is obviously overperforming.  Who doesn't realize that?  In this case they stacked virtuoso for portals, but even if they didn't need portals they probably would have stacked virtuoso because it's top tier DPS despite being ranged with an easy rotation, meaning it performs at much closer to maximum performance even when forced to deal with mechanics.

That's the problem with balance in this game.  How can a class like weaver (selfish melee DPS with a complex and sensitive rotation) possibly compete with virtuoso when even under optimal conditions (i.e. golem benchmark) it underperforms?  That means in a real scenario it will almost never be competitive, which is why virtuoso is stacked and weaver is virtually never played.

It's the same story in the support category with HAM.  Like I said, it does too much too well and too easily.  There's little room for other specs to compete.  That it's also competitive on DPS when specs that bring nothing to the table but DPS are underperforming is just icing on the trash balance cake that is ANet's half-assed attempts to balance this shitshow.

[Raizel.8175]

Reasons why Rifle Mechanist is fundamentally broken/overpowered:

• fully ranged > isn't being punished for disengaging due to mechanics
• auto attack does ~24k DPS being the main damage source > isn't that much reliant on boons (Alacrity isn't really necessary for decent DPS, Quickness is what matters most and Mech skills do provide Self-Quickness) and will have consistent high DPS
• no resource management > won't have resource management interrupted by mechanics which usually leads to a sizeable DPS-loss on builds which need to manage resources

Apart from its limited DPS potential, Rifle Mech has basically no downside whatsoever. You do consistently high - or at least decent - DPS without any skill requirements apart from knowing encounter mechanics. You can simply blast away in a game where DPS doesn't really matter since the vast majority of instanced content is predominantly about mechanics. Downplaying Rifle Mechs OP'ness is shamelessly outrageous.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

18 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Reasons why Rifle Mechanist is fundamentally broken/overpowered:

• fully ranged > isn't being punished for disengaging due to mechanics
• auto attack does ~24k DPS being the main damage source > isn't that much reliant on boons (Alacrity isn't really necessary for decent DPS, Quickness is what matters most and Mech skills do provide Self-Quickness) and will have consistent high DPS
• no resource management > won't have resource management interrupted by mechanics which usually leads to a sizeable DPS-loss on builds which need to manage resources

Apart from its limited DPS potential, Rifle Mech has basically no downside whatsoever. You do consistently high - or at least decent - DPS without any skill requirements apart from knowing encounter mechanics. You can simply blast away in a game where DPS doesn't really matter since the vast majority of instanced content is predominantly about mechanics. Downplaying Rifle Mechs OP'ness is shamelessly outrageous.

 

Been playing it since mid last week, and I gotta agree. Maybe not OP anymore, but I think calling it REALLY good for what it is is fair. I think I need to sit with it more to see if it is too good.

[Artemis.8034]

I wish people would start posting their raid logs, because open world isnt that special, anyone on anything can do it. Lets see those competitive logs 

[Kuma.1503]

On 7/3/2022 at 8:55 PM, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

It has more chance to get nerfed because people are crying over something they know nothing about than because it is "over represented". Barely 24 hours following the patch some people were saying there is a bug that allow the golem to trigger AAR and this skill needs an ICD of at least 3 seconds to balance it. If these players had the ability to read further than their own bias they would notice the skill description explicitely said the mech CAN use trigger the trait. And if they read the trait description they would see there IS a 3 sec ICD. 

This reminds me of the time I was playing PvP with my friend. He was trying out a bunker scourge build for the first time in PvP. 

A Mech ported on him and killed him. He asked me what killed him and I told him "Mech can double proc Aim-Assisted Rocket. You need to use your Corrosive Poison cloud if there is no LoS nearby"

After which he complained that it was OP and that there was nothing he could have done to survive. Then he said ANet should remove the explosive from the rifle auto attack because it procs Aim Assisted Rocket too quickly.

So often, people complain about this class while having absolutely no clue what they're talking about. And they do it with such confidence. Go onto places like the forums or reddit and they have the validation of so many other misinformed players backing them up. 

All I can hope is that the devs are smart enough not to cave into these people.