This is how good Balancing works:(in PVE)

[Karagee.6830]

4 minutes ago, Raven.1793 said:

 

I'm not really sure what you mean when you say that Mechanist does not have tradeoffs. Since you're comparing with Firebrand, I'm going to assume that you mean heal alacrity mech (HAM). First, it's important to note that HAM itself is very well-balanced against other heal support specs like healbrand and heal alac tempest. Barrier output on HAM is very good but that makes up for the poor raw healing output that mostly comes from regen and medical dispersion field. HAM relies on core engi utilities like medkit, elixir gun, and mortar kit for condi clear, burst healing, and some cc. HAM does unusually good dps for a pure support but 5k dps over the 0 dps from a heal alac tempest is not much to talk about. From this perspective, HAM is not out of line with other heal support builds.

 

If we expand the scope to include build flexibility and dps support options, then I should point out that firebrand and tempest both have an equivalent dps support build. As far as I am opposed to having pure dps and support dps based off of gear, I don't think this is a problem for heal support vs dps support. This is because some groups decide to go no-healing and it's convenient for the healer to switch to an equivalent dps support build. Nobody is going to stack healers with partial boon support.

And here we have another trying to explain to us like 25% group representation on kills is due to people being idiots and not playing all the other op support builds (plural) in line with mech.

It's not hard to see that ham is currently dominating the meta because of how many utilities it gets for free (like the barrier). It's not balanced and the numbers very much reflect that. On average you have 2.5 mechanists per group and typically mech covers both support and alac slots. So yeah, if in order to have the barrier you had to drop something else, like no access to stab for example, then it would be comparable to other specs. FB is the same, it just gets so much utility for free or minimum sacrifices that if ham didn't exist, you'd simply have 2 hfb and someone else providing alacrity.

At some point people will need to stop fantasy land arguments and look at the numbers and group composition. Otherwise please just play tempest and convince a LOT of other people to play all these other support builds you say are on par with ham. So we can see a reduction in mech representation and not weekly increases like we are still witnessing 5 weeks after the patch. We you are successful in reducing ham and mech dominance, we will talk.

[Raven.1793]

4 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

And here we have another trying to explain to us like 25% group representation on kills is due to people being idiots and not playing all the other op support builds (plural) in line with mech.

It's not hard to see that ham is currently dominating the meta because of how many utilities it gets for free (like the barrier). It's not balanced and the numbers very much reflect that. On average you have 2.5 mechanists per group and typically mech covers both support and alac slots. So yeah, if in order to have the barrier you had to drop something else, like no access to stab for example, then it would be comparable to other specs. FB is the same, it just gets so much utility for free or minimum sacrifices that if ham didn't exist, you'd simply have 2 hfb and someone else providing alacrity.

At some point people will need to stop fantasy land arguments and look at the numbers and group composition. Otherwise please just play tempest and convince a LOT of other people to play all these other support builds you say are on par with ham. So we can see a reduction in mech representation and not weekly increases like we are still witnessing 5 weeks after the patch. We you are successful in reducing ham and mech dominance, we will talk.

If we're looking at the representation numbers, that explanation is simple. Mechanist has 5 good builds: HAM, condi-alac, power-alac, rifle-mech, and condi-dps. Add those up and it shouldn't be surprising to see 5 times as many mech players as elite specs that only have 1 good build.

I should also add that most of the mech representation probably comes from rifle-mech which is a really easy pure-dps build that has nothing in common with HAM except showing up under the same elite spec.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Raven.1793

[Karagee.6830]

1 hour ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

The numbers are arbitrary, but currently support do about 20% less DPS than Pure DPS.

The idea speaks to your idea of “make specs viable at entry and able to carry at elite” which is why I quoted both of you. 

By making the skill level required for good DPS and Support the same, you allow all players the ability to join in (assuming they meet that minimum skill level).  By giving Support builds the ability to stretch into ‘elite skill’ makes a lot more sense then giving some DPS builds the ability to reward high skill Pure DPS players with more DPS.   Instead, an already handicapped Support build isn’t expected to add that extra DPS only to provide boons or heals. So any additional DPS they provide would be a bonus.
 

Thusly, a design space capable of rewarding high skill high APM players and builds could be found in Support DPS.  This would work well for PvE, probably warp PvP and WvW a bit but given how skill splits are, likely not that much. 

Not all support (let's call it hybrid) builds are close in dps to their 'pure dps' counterparts...some builds are more equal than others, as usual. Everything that needs gearing heavily for BD will have a significant drop off the equivalent dps build.

[Karagee.6830]

16 minutes ago, Raven.1793 said:

If we're looking at the representation numbers, that explanation is simple. Mechanist has 5 good builds: HAM, condi-alac, power-alac, rifle-mech, and condi-dps. Add those up and it shouldn't be surprising to see 5 times as many mech players as elite specs that only have 1 good build.

Ok I'll bite, since you appear to like being contrarian and irrational and decided to die on this hill.

Which are these equally good support specs that can be taken instead of ham?

You said tempest. Tempest can only be support and has 1% representation. What else is equal to ham and can eat into this 20% share that ham covers?

Even better, lets do things properly. It's heal, quickness and alacrity. If we assume 4 players are needed for those 3 things, then it's 40% of the slots. 1% is covered by tempest, I'll even magnanimously give you all specters at 4% and harbinger at 3% who else covers quick and alac and healing other than ham and hfb/qfb? We will sum all of those and we are left with the number that is covered by mech and fb.

Also note that 1% v 25% is 25 times not 5 times...

Edited August 6, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Raven.1793]

Just now, Karagee.6830 said:

Ok I'll bite, since you appear to want to be contrarian and irrational and decided to die on this hill.

Which are these equally good support specs that can be taken instead of ham?

You said tempest. Tempest can only be support and has 1% representation. What else is equal to ham and can eat into this 20% share that ham covers?

 

HAM does not have 20% representation. Mechanist does and most of that rep comes from rifle-mech. There is not enough room for more than 1 healer in a group and it's preposterous to think that HAM is always chosen as healer-support. There are at least as many healbrands. Druids are common in raids while heal tempest is new and only starting to get recognition. What I see is that rifle mechs are extremely popular, it's rare to see a group without one. The reason rifle mechs are popular has nothing to do with what HAM. Rifle mechs don't even have barrier.

[Karagee.6830]

28 minutes ago, Raven.1793 said:

 

HAM does not have 20% representation. Mechanist does and most of that rep comes from rifle-mech. There is not enough room for more than 1 healer in a group and it's preposterous to think that HAM is always chosen as healer-support. There are at least as many healbrands. Druids are common in raids while heal tempest is new and only starting to get recognition. What I see is that rifle mechs are extremely popular, it's rare to see a group without one. The reason rifle mechs are popular has nothing to do with what HAM. Rifle mechs don't even have barrier.

Never claimed ham has 20% representation, mech has 25% as a specialisation. Note that in a scenario with power alac mech and hfb, the mech is also a support slot providing one of the 2 key boons.

Druid is 3.9%. So even if we sum all tempest, druid, harbinger and spectre we are at a grand total of 12% out of 40% (and that assumes that druid also provide alac on their own). So if ALL harbingers and specters in raids are there to provide quick or alac, then it means that 28% of support is shared between mech and fb. Do you agree? Mech and fb pose the exact same problems in terms of balance and should both be nerfed to level them with the field. Note that fb has a 16% total representation and some people do play cfb so at least close to half of that 28% is mechs (let's say 13% mech and 15% fb).

Since only tempest and druid are healers, then it means that 5% is covered by these and 15% either by ham or hfb. Since we have seen above that fb and mech are around 50/50 in the larger subset, we can assume that they are 50/50 on healer slots as well (even though ham+qfb is a superior combo than hfb+alac mech).

Based on all of the above mech is 25% in total, of which 7-8% is ham (assuming the 50/50 split with hfb), 6% is alac dps and 11% is dps.

I never claimed that braindead LI or AA rifle mech has barrier, I claimed that ham has a barrier with no trade-off. Hard to confuse one with the other.

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Karagee.6830