When will Mech Wars 2 return to being Guild Wars 2?

[Kuma.1503]

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I think you are over-representing firebrands effect on groups. At the very least, there is a huge difference between a good firebrand and a bad one, and a weak firebrand does none of those things.

I don't think so. You're comparing what things look like if just 1 player in a squad has firebrand levels of utility vs what things look like if 4+ players in a squad has mech levels of damage. Which isn't a fair comparison. 

I'm imagining what happens if every DPS is on par with condi quickbrand. Meaning they all have the same level of flexibility and utility. We'd find that the game breaks far worse than it does with Mech.

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Meanwhile, something else which enables skipping mechanics? High dps and as such, a power mech even if on a weak player will vastly outperform any other class and lead to easier encounters.

Pmech is literally at 35k with LI build rotation. Most LI builds are 3-4k lower under golem conditions AND golem conditions versus actual fights benefit pmech since most of its damage comes from auto casts, even more so with auto cast active on mech. The build literally can't drop below 26-27k dps as long as one keeps the boss in target.

Everything you said here is true, and is a reason why I do not think Mech needs auto cast. It was ~24k dps if memory serves before auto cast which was more than enough. 

I'm also upset that priority was given to giving Mech auto cast, which didn't need it. Instead of giving untamed autocast on unleashed pet, which absolutely would benefit from having it. That build's APM requirement is so absurd that tiny mistakes literally cuts your DPS in half. 

Things like this are why I can empathize with people who say "Developers have favoritism towards Mech". Making untamed not require you to give yourself carpel tunnel to play it should have been a higher priority since that class could definitely use some ease of use improvements. It would still be a difficult build even with an automatic pet. 

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

That is not reflected in the current logs. The higher access to boons has made content overall easier and pushed average damage. Pmech has done the rest and that's clearly visible in overall damage output.

 

There is no other build with as little interaction as power mech or even mech in general, that's the issue here but even "if" it got replaced by scourge, virtouso and specter, that's already 3 classes versus 1.

 

The alternative is to make even more classes afk performance as high as mech, which I find undesirable.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. My statement was that mechanics would get easier, but rotations would not.

To clarify, Rotations would get harder because Mech, (especially with auto cast which I also believe is excessive) is the single best low intensity (Or "No Intensity" as some have called it) build in the game. I do not disagree with you here. 

I'm not sure what you're looking for in the logs to prove that mechanics do not get easier. 

If people constantly fail mechanics, go downstate, but no one dies because of specter and scourge rezzes, DPS won't be good, but the content would still get cleared by way of attrition. DPS logs won't reflect that mechanics were brute forced by sheer rez power. (Which is what pugs are already doing on Boneskinner for example).

 

Either way, I think we're arguing a small point in the grand scheme of things. This seems like aggressive agreement with small nitpicks here and there, but the overall course of action should still be the same. 

 

Tone down or add more skill expressiveness to mechanist. One way to accomplish this is to first nerf the mechanist traitline across the board, then give them toolbelts when the bot is stowed. And make the process of stowing and unstowing the bot less time consuming so it feels fluid to alternate between the two like swapping weapons.

You'd have a sort of "stance swap" type of gameplay if you did that where you'd alternate between playing with your bot and using your toolbelt utilities. 

Then finally address firebrands utility monopoly and role compression. Take some of it away, and spread a portion of that power to other classes as promised, but do so in a way that actually matters. 

 

Edited August 30, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Nephalem.8921]

5 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

From what I'm gathering our stances aren't far off. We recognize that both builds pose problems, and the only contention seems to be which problem is bigger. 

I believe FB is a much bigger issue due to it's overwhelming utility, and you believe that mech is a bigger issue because bringing other classes in line with mechanist would allow AFK/automation style gameplay for all and trivialize content. Both unhealthy, but mech is more unhealthy.

I don't think that's entierly correct. I believe that BOTH allow for afk gameplay, but in different ways. Mech allows you to AFK your rotation. Firebrand allows you to AFK mechanics. 

Im going to imagine a world where everyone is at Mech level and one where everyone is at FB level. 

The Mechanists would still need to do mechanics, but rotations would be simple enough that everyone can focus on them with greater ease. DPS Uptime issues are a thing of the past on any fight without reflects. 

The concept of rotations would be undervalued. While you could still gain more value by putting in the extra effort, putting in that effort becomes optional because the skill floor has been reduced so much. The satisfaction of seeing your DPS increase tenfold as you master your class becomes a thing of the past. Something old vets talk about to the newbies over camp fires as they ramble on about how "things were so much different back in the day".

Also ANET would need to increase the minimum specs of this game due to the sheer amount of pet spam. 

In  Firebrand world , we just laugh at the idea of doing any mechanic that does not ignore aegis/stab and ignore them. There's be no need to time stab because every class would have so much in their kit "perma uptime stability" would become as commonplace as perma uptime quickness/alac. 

Healers become obsolete. We all have minor healing, cleansing, boon conversion in our kits so once we stack together we can just time our healing together and top ourselves up. Or take passive healing on our AoEs to have it happen as we do our normal rotation. Esentially, auto healing. We would also block so much damage from aegis that damage would be signifcantly cut. Not even mentioning the huge uptime of prot and resolution for when damage actually gets through. I don't even think we'd need fractal pots anymore. 

We'd pull mobs together constantly and vommit Aoes on them while aegis/stabbing through their attacks. Trash mobs become even more of a joke than they already are. 

Enemy projectiles become a thing of the past since we can dedicate two FBs to reflect duty as the rest deal their dps. 

I suppose it comes down to which you view is worse. Non existant rotations or non existent mechanics and non existant damage due to all the aegis and reflect spam. As well as the death of healers. 

I believe the later is more damaging because the gap between a LI build and Mech isn't that large. PMech isn't far off already from Scourge, Specter or Virtuoso wheras the gap between other supports/ dps hybrids and firebrand is massive. 

I don't think hard nerfing PMech does as much good to make the game harder as people think because once these other builds replace it, the game would arguably get even easier. Not from a rotation standpoint, but from a mechanics standpoint. With mech gone, we'd still have all the FB utility plus the easy (but not entirely AFK) rotations from the other classes, plus scourge/specter barriers and revives, with virtuoso dealing easy ranged dps. 

Wheras hard nerfing FB literally makes 90% of mechanics in this game harder over night. The entire game gets harder with FB gone, and unlike mech, nothing can fill that void.

That's without considering the ramifications it would have on WvW as well

 

Lots of wrong points about firebrand on your side. Have you played within last year?

Firebrand does not have tons of aegis anymore. You have to either take retreat now or use f3. Its not free anymore like it used to be. Stab uptime is not as high aswell and its not that op in most encounters anyways. one fb per subgroup is usually enough to stab all important mechancis. There are various ways to achieve no healer groups. Firebrand is not that great for it. Specter is the most busted here.

Actually no healer rifle mech would be kinda easy with ~600hp per second regeneration from big boomer, regen and signet.

You underestimate how much rifle mech dps trivializes mechanics. Its not just high dps. Its high ranged dps with massive aoe cleave range. There is not a single boss where its bad. This build has not a single downside. Just a balance failure. Mechanist should not be able to do power dps in the first place. Engineer has 2 other elite specs which both focus on power dps and are both just inferior to this afk thing.

A full rifle mech group steamrolls through raids much easier than a firebrand stack. Fb is kinda balanced now actually. You can do more dps on other quickness supports so the fb utility comes at a cost now and its just strong and not op like old healing mantra aegis spam.

Rifle mech needs a 20% dps nerf. Dps does trivialize encounters. Especially if it has close to 100% uptime on every boss and cant be messed up.

[Kuma.1503]

31 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Lots of wrong points about firebrand on your side. Have you played within last year?

Firebrand does not have tons of aegis anymore. You have to either take retreat now or use f3. Its not free anymore like it used to be. Stab uptime is not as high aswell and its not that op in most encounters anyways. one fb per subgroup is usually enough to stab all important mechancis. There are various ways to achieve no healer groups. Firebrand is not that great for it. Specter is the most busted here.

Actually no healer rifle mech would be kinda easy with ~600hp per second regeneration from big boomer, regen and signet.

You underestimate how much rifle mech dps trivializes mechanics. Its not just high dps. Its high ranged dps with massive aoe cleave range. There is not a single boss where its bad. This build has not a single downside. Just a balance failure. Mechanist should not be able to do power dps in the first place. Engineer has 2 other elite specs which both focus on power dps and are both just inferior to this afk thing.

A full rifle mech group steamrolls through raids much easier than a firebrand stack. Fb is kinda balanced now actually. You can do more dps on other quickness supports so the fb utility comes at a cost now and its just strong and not op like old healing mantra aegis spam.

Rifle mech needs a 20% dps nerf. Dps does trivialize encounters. Especially if it has close to 100% uptime on every boss and cant be messed up.

I've played frequently within the last year, including time spent on Firebrand (hence the sig)

From my experience, Aegis uptime on firebrand is still very high. It's the only dps build that gets it with no trade-off. And if going full support, you have Shield 4, 2 charges on retreat with short CD, and f3. You can easily slot all of that into your build while still providing perma quickness. 

Compare that to... 1 stack on aftershock or banner of defense every 30 seconds?

Stab is in the process of being shared to other classes, but Stand your Ground is still the best stab skill in the game bar none. And they also get it baseline with tome of courage. No traits required. 

Firebrand is not balanced. Not yet. 

Agree that specter does no healer groups better than FB. I mentioned it frequently within my own posts for that reason. 

Also agree on rifle mech needing a DPS nerf, but I would accomplish that by making mech a condi elite spec. Holo and Scrapper already have power covered, a kitten solid condi/support spec with traits to enhance the gameplay would've been ideal. 

 

Edited August 30, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Mell.4873]

16 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Guardian doesn't have hoards of non-mains spamming nerf threads about it on its own sub forum. 

 

At least not at the same level of Mechanist or even Thief sub forums.

[nucklepuckk.1805]

Looking at the popularity chart - which I am assuming is something of a "use-case" chart. It seems that all of the meta shares previously held by Warriors, Chronomancers, and Renegades has been completely supplanted by Mechanist as well as significant meta shares of Druid and Scourge.

 

I know people think the problem with Mechanist is that it is too easy and too rewarding, but this graph indicates that the problem is that it is invalidating long time party composition staples. The meta is literally 50% Mechanist, Firebrand, and Virtuoso. Clearly, Mechanist is doing too much.

[Katary.7096]

I decided to put together a power Mechanist build yesterday. Before I took on any actual content, I got in a bit of practice on the training golem. The first time of me trying the Grenade Kit rotation I got 90% of the snowcrows benchmark, which is an experience I have not had with any other builds I used to play in the past. Typically that level of performance required that I actually practise playing the build in question well, not just reading the instructions once and then giving it a go. To be fair though: I played some amount of power Holo in the past and was already familiar with swapping in and out of kits for high yield skills. Out of curiosity I set up a 10 million HP golem, ordered my Mech to attack it and went afk to get a few things done around the house. The minimum recorded DPS of the Mech was 10.200 and the maximum 10.700. No wonder that Mechanists tend to outperform in actual encounters, their damage floor is effectively 10k DPS as opposed to most other builds in the game which get 0. I am thinking that it probably wasn't a good idea to implement the ability to put the Mech skills on auto-cast. Oh well, for the foreseeable future I will be topping DPS charts when doing my daily strike runs. Although Grouch said that going forward "ideal condition" benchmarks will be less important for balance considerations compared to "realistic output" and Mechanists do very well when it comes to realistic output. So perhaps this phase is going to be more short-lived then I am expecting right now.