August 23 Balance Update Preview

[soul.9651]

46 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

No, you're just drawing a false equivalency here. As I said PuG commanders generally don't want to be stuck for an hour in neither the LFG nor the instance so they're just taking the safe option (as in not risking to end up with an <5k DPS "hi DPS" player) over the potentially optimal one but like I said the logs don't show rifle mech overperforming in groups where everyone actually knows what hes doing. For example this is the fastest Dhuum CM log after they made the most recent balance changes, half the group was playing mech but how did things actually perform? As you can see 2 mechs were playing support, 2 mechs were playing power DPS and 1 mech was playing coni DPS. The ones playing power DPS where on place 6 and 8 respectively outperformed by several support hybrids as "DPS only" and neither of them where just pressing "1" either. The logs just don't show any evidence of power Rifle Mech "dominating the high level meta" which they would have to if this build was actually "over-performing" in these environments.

Ok sure you are pulling one "fastest kill"log, now show me overall spec popularity on dhuum cm and dps distributions on each spec

Or even better show spec popularity of ht cm

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by soul.9651

[Orabusu.6085]

Because its saturday today and we didnt get any information regarding the whole balance patch yesterday its to stand to reason that Anet is not going to make any more changes then the ones they have announced regarding this balance patch(Mirage, Firebrand). Its sad that the community is asking for things to consider and only those two things get changed. Hoping that our voices will get heard and a new balance patch with the suggestions that didnt make the cut is on the way after this one. We are in need of a new road map now that we are nearing the end of the summer one(15 september last thing) to see forward for changes that make broken stuff work(engineer pistol 1 aftercast making the auto longer then it should be, Theif pistol/pistol build buff so you can use it in instanced endgame content without feeling you are losing to much dps in using the playstyle versus doing your you in having high dps, buffing reaper more so it can contend with outer dps builds because those buffs that they are giving it with this patch is not enough for it to contend with those other specs and it dont give any buffs or support and just hangs in the dps of those builds).

[Karagee.6830]

4 hours ago, Hesione.9412 said:

You're arguing that any nerf to mechanist won't have much, if any, effect on OW players? 

Open World is irrelevant for balance purposes, because there are literally hundreds of builds that will allow you to solo the majority of content and many that will allow you to clear what was meant to be 5 man content. Most wvw builds with half decent sustain, even with adjustments or lacking gear or sigils or runes, will make you feel immortal in OW.

Anyway this is not what Josh Davis meant with his statement about the change in philosophy. He meant that instead of focusing on benchmarks and theoretical theorycrafting they will focus on actual performance and actual group composition in endgame content. And frankly it's only logical because when you see a speedrun record you don't see the work that it takes for it to work, the wipes, the lucky breaks that go into it even with all the players being good to elite.

And the main issue with afk and LI builds is that the gap between what is theretically possible (benchmark) and what is actually achieved is MUCH  smaller than for normal and HI builds. So while one can check the benchmark for LI power mech and find it uninspiring in an ideal scenario, the actual performace in an actual encounter is comparatively MUCH better, because there is enormous room for error and any imperfection will not lower your dps or uptime. Taking an average of the dps done for each encounter will almost certainly show LI power mechanist having a much much higher floor than other dps options and a comparable ceiling in actual encounters.

[Karagee.6830]

1 hour ago, Tails.9372 said:

No, you're just drawing a false equivalency here. As I said PuG commanders generally don't want to be stuck for an hour in neither the LFG nor the instance so they're just taking the safe option (as in not risking to end up with an <5k DPS "hi DPS" player) over the potentially optimal one but like I said the logs don't show rifle mech overperforming in groups where everyone actually knows what hes doing. For example this is the fastest Dhuum CM log after they made the most recent balance changes, half the group was playing mech but how did things actually perform? As you can see 2 mechs were playing support, 2 mechs were playing power DPS and 1 mech was playing coni DPS. The ones playing power DPS where on place 6 and 8 respectively outperformed by several support hybrids as "DPS only" and neither of them where just pressing "1" either. The logs just don't show any evidence of power Rifle Mech "dominating the high level meta" which they would have to if this build was actually "over-performing" in these environments.

They just told you they will finally not balance around speedruns and you talk about...speedruns?

In that kill you don't know the relative skill of players. Maybe the mech players are weaker than the other dpsers, not in the sense that they can't hit a tougher benchmark than Mech, but maybe they have trouble staying alive or performing some mechanics on other builds.

The problem with mechanist is not just the dps that is too high for such an easy build, the real problem is overall convenience (and boon access). It's a similar problem it shares with firebrand and it has only marginally to do with rifle. Mechanist was this way even before rifle, mace is superior anyway, rifle just gave it an even easier option. This further increased the convenience and guess what? High Mech dominating numbers in raids increased even more.

To be honest they badly miscalculated with the buffs from betas to Eod and then doubled down, this spec should have never been allowed to get into the game the way it did. But I guess it's good they seem to recognise there is a problem and are willing to learn from their mistakes.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Zaret.1450]

On 8/13/2022 at 5:17 PM, Rising Blade.9206 said:

somehow this looks like someone just cobbled in boons to the shouts and wrote it off as a job well done, doesn't seem to have any reasoning aside it from "just give tempest advance and stand your ground that stunbreaks".

just get rid of aegis and stability from this skill already, it's disgustingly overloaded since it already acts as a stunbreak especially when mech has barrier generation.

 

 

Well what other reason would we need to give stab to some classes? lore? i mean if stab and aegis can help closing the gap with fb and mec its good, at least for me.

as for mech being overloaded... well it is too strong yeah, but getting rid of boons like stab and aegis now just would make hfb become even more prominent, the boons itself arent bad, its the lack of classes that can acces to those boons thats a problem, and i think its good ele and druid get those boons.

[Karagee.6830]

Ok let me ask people a very simple question about boon support builds, since it seems there is some communication disconnection between the 2 sides on this.

Right now, we have a situation where 20% of slots in raids go to boon support and of that 20% mechanist and firebrand take around 15% (when you eliminate the numbers for the alternatives). 

So what percentage of the top 2 boon support builds do you think we should see going forward, to say the balance team has done a good job to make more or all support builds viable? To be perfectly clear if in the future tempest and druid are taking 15% of the spots the situation would be the same as now, balance-wise.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Tails.9372]

1 hour ago, soul.9651 said:

Ok sure you are pulling one "fastest kill"log, now show me overall spec popularity on dhuum cm and dps distributions on each spec

Or even better show spec popularity of ht cm

This doesn't change what I said at all as going by overall statistics performance wise power mech is still just in 16th place behind Bladesworn and above Crono. Your "you are pulling one "fastest kill"log" means nothing as I said that this was just an example and for it do "dominate the meta" the build would have to be on top of neraly all DPS chats across the board which isn't even the case for a fight you yourself brought up.

HT doesn't doesn't do your claim any favors either as the sample size is way to small to really make conclusive statements about the build as a whole. But even then, in terms of average performance, power mech is still behind Bladesworn, Soulbeast and Holo with SB having the overall best, consistently high performance on that fight.

But how about you point towards something that actually proves how it "dominates high level environments". Go ahead, show us some actual generally applicable numbers that back up your claim.

36 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

They just told you they will finally not balance around speedruns and you talk about...speedruns?

Except I'm not the one bringing this up, I'm just responding to it. If you have an issue with people focusing on how it performs in "high level environments" then tell that to the ones that consistently make the argument that that is the issue with the build.

32 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

the real problem is overall convenience (and boon access). It's a similar problem it shares with firebrand and it has only marginally to do with rifle.

And yet not "boon access" but "rifle" seems to be the main point of contention for most people.

Also, I already addressed the more "low level" side of things in another post.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Tails.9372

[soul.9651]

Why do i always see every single time anyone who keeps defending mech, none of them has the simpliest kp.me account, they have absolutly nothing to make their opinion even credible :') like if you dont even do that kind of content yourself why even say anything? @Tails.9372you drop "pug commanders" "lfg" and talk about meta, when i even doubt u ever entered any kind of end game content yourself, and sure not everyone has kp.me, but its pretty safe to assume that without it these days you are never entering any high end game instanced content, especially if you are talking about lfg and pugging

Edited August 20, 2022 by soul.9651

[Tails.9372]

10 minutes ago, soul.9651 said:

Why do i always see every single time anyone who keeps defending mech, none of them has the simpliest kp.me account, they have absolutly nothing to make their opinion even credible :') like if you dont even do that kind of content yourself why even say anything? @Tails.9372you drop "pug commanders" "lfg" and talk about meta, when i even doubt u ever entered any kind of end game content yourself, and sure not everyone has kp.me, but its pretty safe to assume that without it these days you are never entering any high end game instanced content, especially if you are talking about lfg and pugging

Ah yes the classical "I lost the argument as the facts don't support my claims so let me throw some ad hominems around to be dismissive.". Well you can think that if it makes you happy it just tells me that there is no point in responding to you any further.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Tails.9372

[soul.9651]

1 minute ago, Tails.9372 said:

Ah yes the classical "I lost the argument as the facts don't support my claims so let me throw some ad hominems around to deflect from the topic at hand.". Well you can think that if it makes you happy it just tells me that there is no point in responding to you any further.

To me seems like you are the one who is loosing ^^, you cant have any meaningful discussion with a person when he himself doesnt have any experience in that kind of content 

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

17 minutes ago, soul.9651 said:

To me seems like you are the one who is loosing ^^, you cant have any meaningful discussion with a person when he himself doesnt have any experience in that kind of content 

People will always defend their cheese that carries them. It's kind of a tradition at this point since 2012.

[Zyreva.1078]

2 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

The logs just don't show any evidence of power Rifle Mech "dominating the high level meta" which they would have to if this build was actually "over-performing" in these environments.

Spec stacking leading to "the fastest kill" isn't a great argument that said spec is balanced ...

For all we know those "underperforming" dps mechs might have been simply busy dealing with mechanics and other dps builds in the same spot would be even worse. Don't look at numbers out of context.

There is a reason why mech is overrepresented in pretty much any kind of PvE content and i doubt it is only because so many players enjoy autoattacking while watching those ugly robots do half of the work ...

Edited August 20, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[ruikarikun.9402]

Thanks for reverting nerf to a mesmer.

Also there is a question about engineer heal alac. Not such nerf to barriers is ok. Maybe a little less numbers.

[Ascency.3580]

regarding tempest id like to see overloads buff, instead of global dmg bonus (or maybe both if needed). lower cooldowns, not locking you out of an atunement for the whole 20 seconds, pretty much forcing u to play fresh air. maybe add other means of lowering this cooldown during a fight. a bit faster channel, since during this channel tempest is super susceptible to cc and dmg. and the overload dmg is underwhelming for how much investement it is to use it. u have to stop doing everything else, care not to get killed during that time, u may have to use arcane shield or blink to not get interrupted or get in range, which at this point ur using utility skills just to not loose the overload, lock an attunement for 20 seconds. as a class specific mechanic it comes with huge drawbacks and invonviniences for how little dmg it deals. especially if u comapre it to catas spheres - insta cast, deal substantial dmg(yes i know its less per cast compared to overloads, but are way more spammable), spam boons, includng quickness when speccd for it, and u can keep on doing whatever when using them, u can even use one during a combo finisher animation to get the combo plus u even get a poison field on cata, while tempest has no fields in earth. im ofc talking about general gameplay. but tempest doesnt have a viable power build anyways while it wery well could, so theres some food for tought.

edit: bladesworn has it hinda similiar, but the channel is shorter, has free aegis on demand, and u can deal 200k+ dmg with it and has what? 7sec cd?. channeled skills like ranger axe 5 hit like 3 times as much as overloads canand has projectile hate, even barrage deals way more dmg, warrior axe same deal. not sure exactly why overloads needed to be tuned down so much.

also staff could use some qol improvements. maybe make air 5 deal .5sec daze on cast and then leave the stun on the ring(i know it can be a very powerful tool, but can also be useless if mobs refuse to move),small things like that. and the animation times, could really use a bit of shortening, or at least faster projectiles on auto attacks.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Ascency.3580

[Syvaris Laskaris.5247]

There were 3 Mechs in the World First Harvest Temple CM and 4 Mechs in the World Second.

That is all I have to say on this matter.

[Tails.9372]

22 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

For all we know those "underperforming" dps mechs might have been simply busy dealing with mechanics and other dps builds in the same spot would be even worse. Don't look at numbers out of context.

I'm not, the greater context here however would be the overall performance of the build in question. If what some people claim would be true you would still have to see rifle mech outperform the competition on most encounters which is just not an observable trend for the environment I was referring to.

 

[Powerfat.7294]

45 minutes ago, soul.9651 said:

Why do i always see every single time anyone who keeps defending mech, none of them has the simpliest kp.me account, they have absolutly nothing to make their opinion even credible :') like if you dont even do that kind of content yourself why even say anything? @Tails.9372you drop "pug commanders" "lfg" and talk about meta, when i even doubt u ever entered any kind of end game content yourself, and sure not everyone has kp.me, but its pretty safe to assume that without it these days you are never entering any high end game instanced content, especially if you are talking about lfg and pugging

Are you sure you are not talking about yourself here? Your sample size isn't looking that compelling. Rifle mech is fine, you have clearly never played it. It isn't even the strongest easy to play dps currently.

[kurosy.1384]

On 8/19/2022 at 12:43 AM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Hi all,

The June 28 update highlighted that our approach to balancing professions and combat in Guild Wars 2 has not been fully aligned with the needs and expectations of our community. As we communicated in several posts over the last month and a half, we’re using this an opportunity to take a hard look at our internal processes and revise the Guild Wars 2 balance philosophy. We also added some new leaders into the team to help facilitate that effort. That work is still ongoing, and we look forward to sharing our updated balance philosophy with you as soon as we can.

As we’ve been reading through your feedback on the August 23 preview, it became clear to us that one aspect of the previous balance approach was especially problematic. Specifically, making balance adjustments to PvE builds based on their potential under unrealistic, ideal conditions – conditions that are unlikely to be met unless you’re testing against a golem, or the player is extremely skilled. While these builds can definitely be an issue in a skilled player’s hands, often times the changes have an outsized impact to unrelated builds and average players. With that in mind, we’ll be reverting the changes to mirage in the August 23 update.

This change in approach raises questions about previous changes that were made with a build’s ‘potential’ in mind, rather than the realistic output. We’ll be evaluating those prior changes on a case-by-case basis in future releases. This isn’t to say that we won’t address overperforming builds in the future, but we will focus more on builds that are dominating the meta, rather than builds that could theoretically dominate.

For reference, these are the mirage changes that are being removed from the August 23 update:

Axe:

·         Lingering Thoughts: (PvE only) Torment duration reduced from 4s to 3s.

·         Imaginary Axes: (PvE only) Torment duration reduced from 4s to 3s.

Staff:

·         Chaos Vortex (Staff Ambush) (PvE only) Might stack count reduced from 8 to 5, Might duration reduced from 15s to 10s. Torment, Bleeding, and Confusion duration reduced from 8s to 7s.

Thanks,

Josh

TY, this is reassuring!

I really hope that the sentence "unlikely to be met unless you’re testing against a golem, or the player is extremely skilled" will also be applied in revising Catalyst. While putting quickness behind a traitline is a good change, gutting the damage both on boon and dps builds kinda killed the class from what i've seen and tried. EE is also a deluding gm trait since even in very skilled hands it gets triggered very discontinuously.

[Karagee.6830]

1 hour ago, Tails.9372 said:

And yet not "boon access" but "rifle" seems to be the main point of contention for most people.

Also, I already addressed the more "low level" side of things in another post.

The point of contention is that rifle was the last straw, something that allowed a build already dominating the meta to get EVEN MORE featured because rifle has even MORE margin for error and easier damage uptime than other weapons. They REWORKED a core weapon for the class with the dominant specialisation, something they haven't done for any other class mind you, and issued nerfs left, right and centre.

[Ascency.3580]

1 minute ago, Powerfat.7294 said:

Are you sure you are not talking about yourself here? Your sample size isn't looking that compelling. Rifle mech is fine, you have clearly never played it. It isn't even the strongest easy to play dps currently.

yes it is. it deals ~28k dps from range while holding down 1 button. and becouse of that it can reach those numbers so long as it doesnt die. in a group, most players have to upkeep their (often hard) rotations while dealing with mechanics, and surviving. rifle mech can focus on the easier 2 of those 3 things. becouse of that it will in most cases outdps every other dps outside of high level groups, becouse upkeeping rotation is actually tied to boss mechanics and survival. no amount of arguing will change this fact.

[Karagee.6830]

14 minutes ago, Powerfat.7294 said:

Are you sure you are not talking about yourself here? Your sample size isn't looking that compelling. Rifle mech is fine, you have clearly never played it. It isn't even the strongest easy to play dps currently.

Then care to explain the actual numbers in raids? Because you know, you are entitled to have wrong opinions, but it's best if you reconcile them with the reality of class distribution first.

[Karagee.6830]

37 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

I'm not, the greater context here however would be the overall performance of the build in question. If what some people claim would be true you would still have to see rifle mech outperform the competition on most encounters which is just not an observable trend for the environment I was referring to.

 

At the end of the day why those mechanists did the numbers they did is neither here nor there. They were picked for the job (most likely by people who can play multiple classes and builds at a very high level, mind you) and the successfully completed it. End of story.

If your point is that other classes can do better, you cannot use the ranking within that party to justify your wrong opinion. You need to prove that a different composition performs better both in terms of efficiency and convenience/ease of play. For example you could start with bringing another 10 logs with no mechanist.

What you are doing here is like saying heal scourge is not the best healer for boneskinner and then bring a log that shows he provided less sustain than the other support players. Yet somehow, not only that group, but every pug group always request and bring one scourge (except for that one time the raid leader wanted to do all strikes with only guardians)...

Edited August 20, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Kuma.1503]

20 hours ago, CourtJester.5908 said:

Wow the response in this thread is incredible. I am very proud to be a part of this community, keep up the good work devs.

 

If I may add one more observation that I hope will be considered over the next few months of changes. Overall, espec design is in a good place, and just needs balancing and refinement. But one profession that has overall suffered for years is elementalist, and let me break down why.

 

The problem with elementalist, why few people main it and why it is always getting nerfed:

As long as Ele builds continue to indiscriminately give access to all four elements, they will be overbroad and undertuned. By that I mean, as long as any build has access to twice as many abilities (spanning a greater range of utility) without a substantial limitation or tradeoff, it will tend to be tuned toward everything being half as effective. And this is a problem that plagues elementalist more than other professions because it is a *core* feature* that has defined every espec so far, instead of merely a broken espec feature like FB/Mech.  In that respect, I think after Tempest and Weaver, Catalyst took design in the wrong direction.

On Intraprofessional Gameplay Diversity:

We have been ten years in need of an ele "Spellbreaker/Druid/Scourge/Specter" concept that substantially shakes up a pretty homogenous Ele formula, something ele is desperately in need of more than the other professions because of how over-utility/undertuned the base profession is *at all times*, something that bleeds over into every espec that doesn't place heavier limitations on attunements.

Put another way, every other profession has at least one espec that almost completely overhauls their core profession mechanic (clones to daggers, life force to barrier, adrenaline to counter, etc.), and forces tradeoffs that craft job fantasies that are extremely distinct from the other core profs or especs. Ele has a core profession mechanic that has never actually been sacrificed or traded off for anything... It's just had superficial things tacked on to the same core four-attunement system: overload double tap, double attune quicktime, jade sphere F5. Weaver is the only espec that feels halfway to a substantial shakeup, but only in a way that actually doubles down on Ele's spastic "allthingsallthetime" nature. And frankly I think after Weaver achieving "ultimate core ele mode", no other especs should be aiming to try to top it.

But it has been ten years and there is not a single Ele build across core and three especs that is not a slave to the undertuning of a jack-of-all trades four-attunement system. No other profession is as homogenous as Ele, and it hurts Ele more than other professions because it does not have the option not to carry around the dead weight of attunements it does not want or need for a particular build. Because as long as more than two-weaponskills-worth of DPS/utility is a single F-press away, it is too easy to break and will trend to downtuning. 

Using the frame all of the normal, two-weapon professions, playing Ele in most cases is like carefully, lovingly choosing your axe/torch + staff and traitlines for the niches you want to fill, and then having the game thrust a scepter, sword, and two daggers into your arms and say "we literally won't let you play the class without these, too, oh and also we had to nerf your staff to compensate, your torch heals even though you're a DPS spec, and you'll always be too busy cycling through impotent scepter and unflashy dagger movesets to really enjoy your axe abilities." There is no real player choice and customization in attunements the same way that there is player choice in weapons on other professions...they all are forced on you, all the time.

It does not matter what your build is, you are always carrying around half a bag of holding of dead weight. All of the other professions deal with this by just, by design, cutting out the dead weight on specs that want to have different niches, but Ele refuses to do this, and the *closest* it comes to is having a gentle nudge in Tempest that you might want to keep that attunement a while longer. Using Tempest as an example, any other profession would have done more than that, they would have just cut out the attunements that a particular Tempest build doesn't want to use anyway, and made sure the two attunements it *is* using have competitive damage/utility--for anyone who still wants four attunements, they have Weaver and Core Ele to play with.

 

On Catalyst:

Catalyst should have been heavily incentivized to stay in only one or two elements and maybe even remove access to non-traited attunements. I do not think the idea of constant attunement swapping fits the concept of a hammer Ele, nor the "geomancer" concept it is riffing on. The only reason it really exists in this form is a lack of thinking outside of the "core ele" box that everyone presumes Ele has to play like all the time.

Imo, the hammer 3 orb ability is fine as a pewpew concept, but should be an ammo charge all in the same element. Collecting different elements is just such a narrow gimmick and really muddies the distinction between Catalyst and Weaver. Whereas summoning several orbs of the same element actually would feel more like "augmentation" or "channeling". You can still have hammer combos and combo fields, the design would just feel a lot more focused.

I truly think Catalyst is the worst designed espec in the game so far because it didn't make nearly the number of tradeoffs that other especs do to the profession's core mechanic, and as a result only *looks* like a geomancer if you squint, but doesn't really *feel* like one. It doesn't feel like other EoD specs feel like a Samurai, Psionic, Alchemist, Machinist, Assassin ... The core gameplay of Catalyst just feels like "Ele with a hammer". I say this to illustrate how Catalyst is a symptom of the prevailing Ele design philosophy outlined above.

At this point, I would even be for putting attunement restrictions on core ele just to better distinguish and balance especs:

* Core ele: Only have attunements to traited elements
* Tempest: Have access to all, can swap but on long CDs (so the same, but could maybe use even more off-attunement decentives and on-attunement utility/buffs)
* Weaver: Have access to all four attunements regardless of traiting (so the same)
* Catalyst: Only have attunements traited to like core ele, but augmented

That way at least the especs would all feel like they do something substantially different from core ele, and at least core ele could provide players more focused and higher-tuned build options if they want them.

 

EDIT: To clarify, I still think hardcore Ele players deserve especs that encourage complicated four-attunement balancing and rotations. I do not believe diversifying Ele design would or should deprive them of those options, I just think Ele's big failure is not exploring design space outside of "four attunements all the time" that would create a healthier spread of build options.

I can appreciate the effort put in here, but I don't agree with the solution.  

Having your power split between more skills is a downside because there is one important factor the players often forget. Time. 

The more buttons you have to press to do something, the less efficient you are. That lack of efficiency results in having to invest more actions to gain the same value other professions get at the click of a button. There doesn't need to be a "trade-off" to balance attunements because attunements are in an of themselves the trade-off. 

While we're frantically blasting fields to heal our allies, FB just passively heals the group as they deal their DPS rotation thanks to bigger symbols and hits empower or bow of truth when they need to pump more heals. 

Removing or restricting attunements dumbs ele down, makes it more boring to play, and adds more downsides on top of downsides.

What it needs isn't to be punished for its complexity, it needs to be rewarded for it. 

Their utility skills are also lacking in utility. Catalyst was designed to be supportive, but all of its utilities are selfish, nearly all of core ele utilities are selfish.

Supports are what rule GW2, if all you bring to the table is DPS, you're going to be less valuable than other professions. Ele really suffers from that lack of utility. Why take a weaver when you can take a specter? deal just as much (if not more) damage, and also have an extra healer, boon ripper, and CC bot on top? Why take weaver when you can take Condi scourge? Mirage? Virtuoso? ect. 

 

[Powerfat.7294]

23 minutes ago, Ascency.3580 said:

yes it is. it deals ~28k dps from range while holding down 1 button. and becouse of that it can reach those numbers so long as it doesnt die. in a group, most players have to upkeep their (often hard) rotations while dealing with mechanics, and surviving. rifle mech can focus on the easier 2 of those 3 things. becouse of that it will in most cases outdps every other dps outside of high level groups, becouse upkeeping rotation is actually tied to boss mechanics and survival. no amount of arguing will change this fact.

Why is having a build that is easy to play a problem? Maybe you should stop being ableist?

[Guy.9207]

Just want to ask, why is Glacial Heart still a thing? I don't think it makes a lot of sense for Guardian to inflict chill on somebody, and I had to dig deep to find someone actually explaining its (presumably) niche use.