Remove Mech's Trade-off too

[Alquinon.2957]

6 minutes ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

Word of God says 20% of the specs played in raids are Mechanists.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/xhd54d/comment/ip0ltvt/

 

Grouch gives no context behind that number. Is it based on successful kills or is it based on playtime in raids? While Wingman does have its own biases, it is much more obvious to us. Wingman is focused on more tryhard groups while Grouch's number applies to all raid groups in general (we can assume).  The main argument from the pro power mech people seems to be "power mech's dps is fine because it doesn't have the highest benchmark", but in reality mech has an even higher representation in the tryhard groups (who bother to upload their logs to wingman).  Often times in training groups, the less experienced players are just told to bring what classes they're comfortable on.

 

Regardless, even Grouch himself says 20% is pretty high (based on their internal numbers) and promised incoming changes to help fix that.

[Alquinon.2957]

7 minutes ago, soul.9651 said:

Eeeh, you should check numbers at fractals and you will see back at cfb stacking meta fb was like 36%+, i can still rememeber how bad it felt back then seeing one spec beeing stacked while other specs were considered so bad that if u ran anything but cfb you were just trolling.. and now when it got nerfed (at least cfb) people still remember how opressive it was and still hold that hate for a spec in general, and the same with a mech at the current meta. Its just not healthy for the game when one spec can be so opressive. People shouldnt be surprised why so much hate are towards mech rn at forums, people will always hate if they cant play their main specs just because its beeing overshadowed by 1 or a few way better meta picks. In the ideal world all specs should be a worthy meta picks in one situation or the other but reality is almost opposite and its kinda sad because i think you cant rly solve this problem, there will always be better and worse specs and hate from one or the other side of people playing different specs.. but who knows, maybe anet will find the way so eveyone is finally happy what ever they play in this game(which i doubt would ever happen)

Fractals are a completely different ballgame from raids.

The phases in fractals are much, much shorter so it favours burstier classes. That's why anet felt the need to change how exposed works regarding power vs condi, hoping to allow condi specs to be competitive in fractals. However, what they failed to realise is that condis are not made equally. The burstiest condi, burning, made condi firebrand oppressively strong.  That's further compounded by prestacking shenanigans using the mistlock. Firebrand has been since nerfed somewhat, but I felt like they should have just removed the players' ability to prestack ashes/venoms which was super cheesy.

[TexZero.7910]

1 hour ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

Take another look my guy, in the data no other era had a single spec that had over 30% representation. Right now, we have the greatest number of elite specs available and yet one single spec accounts for 32%.

You do realize that the site uses arbitrary reporting to dps.report right ?

That before arcdps was main stream there were entire eras of multiple classes being stacked.

If you don't let me remind you of when condi bersker was so dominant it took most of the DPS slots in a raid. We also had the age old 6/6 Necro and Ele dps days. Now we have people complaining about upto 4 slots being played by Mech. SMH.

[soul.9651]

28 minutes ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

Fractals are a completely different ballgame from raids.

The phases in fractals are much, much shorter so it favours burstier classes. That's why anet felt the need to change how exposed works regarding power vs condi, hoping to allow condi specs to be competitive in fractals. However, what they failed to realise is that condis are not made equally. The burstiest condi, burning, made condi firebrand oppressively strong.  That's further compounded by prestacking shenanigans using the mistlock. Firebrand has been since nerfed somewhat, but I felt like they should have just removed the players' ability to prestack ashes/venoms which was super cheesy.

The cfb burst was insane, i think they tried to fix ashes prestack even several times. But another problem was how much build variaty it had and still has. Like sure, if your spec is insane in dps, it just doesnt make sence for it also to be a top tier supp pick. Rn seems they chose not to gut the hfb and tone down the dps part with fb but still..

So its a design problem in general how they made those specs, both can offer so much variaty of builds especially mech. Its never good idea in general to let a spec to fill every possible role, and on top to make it a best pick in those roles. While keeping in mind some other specs have only 1 or even none builds which can compete with this. 

Edited September 26, 2022 by soul.9651

[Alquinon.2957]

3 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

You do realize that the site uses arbitrary reporting to dps.report right ?

That before arcdps was main stream there were entire eras of multiple classes being stacked.

If you don't let me remind you of when condi bersker was so dominant it took most of the DPS slots in a raid. We also had the age old 6/6 Necro and Ele dps days. Now we have people complaining about upto 4 slots being played by Mech. SMH.

What is more arbitrary is your anecdotal evidence. 🤣

 

Every spec you mentioned has been nerfed so I don't know what you're on about. Just because there were op/broken builds in the past doesn't mean mech is in a healthy place right now. What kind of logic is that?

[TexZero.7910]

2 minutes ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

What is more arbitrary is your anecdotal evidence. 🤣

 

Every spec you mentioned has been nerfed so I don't know what you're on about. Just because there were op/broken builds in the past doesn't mean mech is in a healthy place right now. What kind of logic is that?

Except by every measure of the numbers it is balanced.

It's nowhere close to top bench, it's nowhere near top support either.

Yet if we go by your arbitrary nature of balancing by feels it should be nerfed because you feel it's not healthy.

Edited September 26, 2022 by TexZero.7910

[Alquinon.2957]

2 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

Except by every measure of the numbers it is balanced.

It's nowhere close to top bench, it's nowhere near top support either.

Yet if we go by your arbitrary nature of balancing by feels it should be nerfed because you feel it's not healthy.

How is mech not the top support? Mechanist can easily stack alacrity on the group while the player themself is over 1200 range away doing mechanics (we can see how useful that is in the HT cm groups, everybody runs mech for that reason). It is able to stack alacrity way better than any other option out there right now.

 

You need to play the game to understand how classes perform in real scenarios in raids/strikes. Bench numbers might look nice for some other classes but you have to consider what they need to do to hit those numbers. For example, bladesworn needs to stand in place for a few seconds waiting for their dragon trigger to charge, they need to be within 300 range of their target, and they also need to flank. You also lose 200-300k damage whenever your dragon trigger gets interrupted somehow if you're not careful. That's not very good for a lot of the encounters in the game. Meanwhile power mechanist just pew pews from any range they want, only having to step in briefly to land a rifle 2, even then around 30% of their dps is a freebie from the mech existing.

[Lynx.9058]

1 hour ago, felix.2386 said:

don't you like the spec because it is half automated?

I don't dislike it for that, but I was looking forward to mechanist long before the changes that made it 'meta' like it is now.  Reminds me of my gaige/deathtrap in borderlands 2, who doesn't love having a big kitten robot to beat stuff up for you?

[TexZero.7910]

23 minutes ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

How is mech not the top support? Mechanist can easily stack alacrity on the group while the player themself is over 1200 range away doing mechanics (we can see how useful that is in the HT cm groups, everybody runs mech for that reason). It is able to stack alacrity way better than any other option out there right now.

 

You need to play the game to understand how classes perform in real scenarios in raids/strikes. Bench numbers might look nice for some other classes but you have to consider what they need to do to hit those numbers. For example, bladesworn needs to stand in place for a few seconds waiting for their dragon trigger to charge, they need to be within 300 range of their target, and they also need to flank. You also lose 200-300k damage whenever your dragon trigger gets interrupted somehow if you're not careful. That's not very good for a lot of the encounters in the game. Meanwhile power mechanist just pew pews from any range they want, only having to step in briefly to land a rifle 2, even then around 30% of their dps is a freebie from the mech existing.

If anyone needs to play the game to understand anything here it's you.

You honestly somehow believe that Mech is overpowered while not having a bench in the top 15 builds. You seemingly think that just because players are taking the most reliable way out that must make it overpowered. Heal Tempest right now is multitudes strong than Heal Mech. Firebrand is and has been the premier support in everything PvE since PoF. But you'd know that if you actually played since it's the only constant with the alacrity source being whatever is reliable and easy to play be it alacren, hat or ham. 

 

Just because it's reliable doesn't make it overpowered.

[Alquinon.2957]

1 minute ago, TexZero.7910 said:

If anyone needs to play the game to understand anything here it's you.

You honestly somehow believe that Mech is overpowered while not having a bench in the top 15 builds. You seemingly think that just because players are taking the most reliable way out that must make it overpowered. Heal Tempest right now is multitudes strong than Heal Mech. Firebrand is and has been the premier support in everything PvE since PoF. But you'd know that if you actually played since it's the only constant with the alacrity source being whatever is reliable and easy to play be it alacren, hat or ham. 

 

Just because it's reliable doesn't make it overpowered.

How is heal tempest "multitudes" stronger than heal mech? Have you even played it? You need to constantly cycle through your attunements to overload for alacrity, and only then you get the alacrity at the end of a full overload (meaning it's extra punishing if you have to cancel your overload, that you have to continuously channel, for whatever reason).  You also have to give up the healing on auras to give alac. Firebrand's healing is weaker than mechanist's healing + barrier, the only reason why it was the "premier" support is because there weren't other good quickness sources until anet introduced things like scrapper and herald.

 

Once again you're bringing up benchmarks that are performed in perfect conditions. In fact, right now on SC's website power mech is #14 on the benchmarks list. If we have mech at 38k, there are only 7 builds that are >= 38.5k with 2 being pretty unrealistic to pull off in raids (condi untamed and power deadeye) and 2 being essentially the same build (condi/hybrid slb).

 

I think I'll stop wasting my time replying to someone who tells me to play the game and yet can't offer any constructive arguments without resorting to bringing up benchmarks done in perfect golem conditions by other players.

[LSD.4673]

2 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Wrong. Elite specs were suppose to be a different way to play professions, not replace them as "upgrades".

Wrong. Elite specs were supposed to be a way to get people to buy rushed expansions.

[TexZero.7910]

33 minutes ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

How is heal tempest "multitudes" stronger than heal mech? Have you even played it? You need to constantly cycle through your attunements to overload for alacrity, and only then you get the alacrity at the end of a full overload (meaning it's extra punishing if you have to cancel your overload, that you have to continuously channel, for whatever reason).  You also have to give up the healing on auras to give alac. Firebrand's healing is weaker than mechanist's healing + barrier, the only reason why it was the "premier" support is because there weren't other good quickness sources until anet introduced things like scrapper and herald.

 

Once again you're bringing up benchmarks that are performed in perfect conditions. In fact, right now on SC's website power mech is #14 on the benchmarks list. If we have mech at 38k, there are only 7 builds that are >= 38.5k with 2 being pretty unrealistic to pull off in raids (condi untamed and power deadeye) and 2 being essentially the same build (condi/hybrid slb).

 

I think I'll stop wasting my time replying to someone who tells me to play the game and yet can't offer any constructive arguments without resorting to bringing up benchmarks done in perfect golem conditions by other players.

You're the one who told me i should play more. I already play plenty and most of the time it's support builds. But hey you're the one whose feelings are hurt over using emperical data such as benchmarks and using to suit you when you want and reject it when it doesn't.

 

HAT heals more, has more reliable boon output and uptime and has more reliable downstate management all in one. But sure tell me that HAM is better because in 1 scenario HT CM people are using Shift Signet.

Edited September 26, 2022 by TexZero.7910

[Xenesis.6389]

11 hours ago, LSD.4673 said:

Wrong. Elite specs were supposed to be a way to get people to buy rushed expansions.

And so were gliders, and mounts, and new zones, and new gear, and new stats, and new legendaries etc etc.

Doesn't change the fact that anets own words for elite specs was to allow professions to play differently, not to be total upgrades to the profession that made everything behind it useless, why would they still be tinkering with older specs otherwise?

I'm not going to dispute that some specs are obviously op or broken compared to their core or elites, but that comes down to anets balancing process being utterly terribad in changes in wrong areas, and the amount of time it takes for them to even bother doing them, and fairly obviously biased at this point. No spec should be exempted from the nerf bat when they're overperforming. Engineers have been riding a buff ride for 3 years, it's time they got put in line.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Xenesis.6389

[Warscythes.9307]

38 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

You're the one who told me i should play more. I already play plenty and most of the time it's support builds. But hey you're the one whose feelings are hurt over using emperical data such as benchmarks and using to suit you when you want and reject it when it doesn't.

 

HAT heals more, has more reliable boon output and uptime and has more reliable downstate management all in one. But sure tell me that HAM is better because in 1 scenario HT CM people are using Shift Signet.

HAT really doesn't have reliable boon output and uptime, most importantly alacrity due to the strict requirement on completing overload. If you actually play it in more content then you will notice this. Any interrupt and your alacrity uptime goes down a cliff and you don't have stab to protect you from it. You also cannot dodge during it because it will interrupt it as well. I love HAT but to say it is better than HAM is just laughable. Maybe if every fight is like chess then maybe but that is almost never the case.

I'd agree it is better in term of helping with downstate due to arcana though.

Edited September 26, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[TexZero.7910]

3 minutes ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

HAT really doesn't have reliable boon output, most importantly alacrity due to the strict requirement on overload. If you actually play it in content then you will notice this. Any interrupt and your alacrity uptime goes down a cliff and you don't have stab to protect you from it. You also cannot dodge during it because it will interrupt it as well. I love HAT but to say it is better than HAM is just laughable. Maybe if every fight is like chess then maybe but that is almost never the case.

It most certainly does have more reliable boon output.

If you play bad sure, your alac can be interrupted. I'm not comparing just alacrity.

Also, it sure is a good thing you can have stab from yourself or other sources.

So your only argument here is, i don't know how nor do i want to manage cooldowns so mech is better.

Edited September 26, 2022 by TexZero.7910

[Warscythes.9307]

13 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

It most certainly does have more reliable boon output.

If you play bad sure, your alac can be interrupted. I'm not comparing just alacrity.

Also, it sure is a good thing you can have stab from yourself or other sources.

So your only argument here is, i don't know how nor do i want to manage cooldowns so mech is better.

What sort of cooldown management are you even talking about? HAT need to overload fire and earth practically on cooldown. There is a rotation to maximize your boon, damage and healing. That's not the problem, the problem is that HAT alacrity is very much interruptible and very likely too in a lot of fights which means is not realistic. I mean you can call me bad but the fact is that HAT need to complete overload and HAM just press a button to provide alacrity. What do you think is more reliable? The overload that need a couple second of channel to complete or the heal mech? 

Also alacrity is by far the most important boon to provide between HAT and HAM so of course how well the build can do it is incredibly important. What do you think the A stand for?

Edited September 26, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[TexZero.7910]

16 minutes ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

What sort of cooldown management are you even talking about? HAT need to overload fire and earth practically on cooldown. There is a rotation to maximize your boon, damage and healing. That's not the problem, the problem is that HAT alacrity is very much interruptible and very likely too in a lot of fights which means is not realistic. I mean you can call me bad but the fact is that HAT need to complete overload and HAM just press a button to provide alacrity. What do you think is more reliable? The overload that need a couple second of channel to complete or the heal mech? 

Also alacrity is by far the most important boon to provide between HAT and HAM so of course how well the build can do it is incredibly important. What do you think the A stand for?

Thank you for proving my point.

You legit said "1 button > playing good".

Also, just to remind you since it appears to be lost a HAT isn't solely responsible for just alac, they generate more boons than just that and can extend boons given by others making them far more reliable for boon output. There's very little situation where HAM does more boon output than HAT I.E the HAT is bad or its a condi heavy area and the HAM is taking advantage of Purity of Purpose instead of HGH to convert condi's on their group to boons.

[Warscythes.9307]

11 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

Thank you for proving my point.

You legit said "1 button > playing good".

Also, just to remind you since it appears to be lost a HAT isn't solely responsible for just alac, they generate more boons than just that and can extend boons given by others making them far more reliable for boon output. There's very little situation where HAM does more boon output than HAT I.E the HAT is bad or its a condi heavy area and the HAM is taking advantage of Purity of Purpose instead of HGH to convert condi's on their group to boons.

What point? That HAT alacrity is not as reliable as HAM because one need to channel for a second seconds and one just need a button? I mean in the literal sense one is harder, this is not really debatable unless you think channel a few seconds is the same thing as pressing a button. So yes we are settled that HAT is not better than HAM because it can't provide alacrity as consistently? Like we are not talking about missing swiftness, this is alacrity the literal other 50% of your role's job besides healing. Is not just a boon, it is THE boon. 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[TexZero.7910]

25 minutes ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

What point? That HAT alacrity is not as reliable as HAM because one need to channel for a second seconds and one just need a button? I mean in the literal sense one is harder, this is not really debatable unless you think channel a few seconds is the same thing as pressing a button. So yes we are settled that HAT is not better than HAM because it can't provide alacrity as consistently? Like we are not talking about missing swiftness, this is alacrity the literal other 50% of your role's job besides healing. Is not just a boon, it is THE boon. 

and one is better at it than the other.

It just happens to be HAT. Unless you're opting for just pressing 1 button.

Nice talk.

[Warscythes.9307]

27 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

and one is better at it than the other.

It just happens to be HAT. Unless you're opting for just pressing 1 button.

Nice talk.

At applying alacrity? Are you honestly saying that HAM pressing 1 button is better than HAT overload channeling at applying alacrity?  Am I reading this right? You do realize pressing 1 button means the alacrity application will be much more consistent right because you can't screw it up while as HAT you have plenty of chances to. If not then what are you even talking about?

Edited September 26, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[Ashen.2907]

10 hours ago, TexZero.7910 said:

This is no different from any other era of play when other classes had multiple viable roles.

It might be different in that it is a single spec vs other eras of play when a single class with high representation might have been drawing from multiple specs.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

6 hours ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

Fractals are a completely different ballgame from raids.

The phases in fractals are much, much shorter so it favours burstier classes. That's why anet felt the need to change how exposed works regarding power vs condi, hoping to allow condi specs to be competitive in fractals. However, what they failed to realise is that condis are not made equally. The burstiest condi, burning, made condi firebrand oppressively strong.  That's further compounded by prestacking shenanigans using the mistlock. Firebrand has been since nerfed somewhat, but I felt like they should have just removed the players' ability to prestack ashes/venoms which was super cheesy.

With that said, keep in mind Fractals and other 5man content means your group is more sensetive to which classes are brought to the fight. While Machinist is okay in raids, in Fractals its irritating to have most of your party made up of Machinists with only someone to give Quickness and maybe one random DPS.

 

A single class having 20% composition in a 10man comp is 40% composition in a 5man comp. And that's on average, in reality its not uncommon to have 4/5 Machinists.

@ Thread:

As earlier posts suggested, I am 100% in favor of giving back tool-belt skills when the Mech is stowed. In particular this could help the class with its horrible underwater performance. It would also raise the skill floor by giving the class a Soulbeast-like gameplay flow.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Lynx.9058]

Y'know, everyone complaining about mechanist needs to see some comments from the other side.  These are taken from reddit comments:
 

Quote

"having played an engie since the beginning, I still find it a challenge. The mech build is the best of all of them but it is still tough. Autoattacks do not cut it, I have to resort to Bomb kit 1 for the best dps. 3400 dps I can crawl thru carefully to get to areas. I wish I could do the 14k dps auto that some streamers claim to be able to do. I think it's sometimes just smoke and mirrors to look good. I just wish my mesmer could do 3400 dps, they would be fun sorta"

 

Quote

"With the Xyonon build in all Exotics, with no food or utility and no outside buffs, but subtituting a Rifle for the Mace/Shield, I am mostly doing 2.2-2.6k DPS autoattacking with the mech helping. I had spikes of almost 8k on some fights when the crit gods favored me, or if I could align foes to take advantage of piercing. I ran around in PoF picking fights that had caused me trouble on other characters and generally they were really easy. Then I tried to solo a Bounty and that went hilariously badly. I will need to try harder and "git gud" before I can manage those."

I get the feeling that streamers and posters with an agenda are viewing top-geared mechanist builds as the standard, when that's clearly not the case.  When you have some posters running rampant crying that "Mechanist autoattack is doing 36k DPS!", while the vast majority of actual players aren't even getting half of that while obviously working in more than just AA spam, it creates a false narrative, and these people scream the loudest on the forums in order to get their way, where the devs and reps see this as valid feedback.

"The squeaky wheel gets the grease", as the old saying goes, doesn't really apply when the wheel isn't squeaking nearly as much as the neighbor is claiming.

[Serephen.3420]

So after playing mostly ele for 10 years, I decided to give power rifle mech a go before the patch...took it to a raid, read the snowcrows rotation. Did wing 1 and Xera. It was...appalling....in both a good and bad way. I dealt damage so easily, and for Xera was at top dps with around 41k dps.

 

The flood of numbers coming up caught me off guard. Playing catalyst or weaver at my best would be a struggle to reach that, if not impossible. 

 

I don't think mech needs any trade off removal, it has all it needs and then some. I honestly wish ele had gotten even half of this much love out into it. Though I do think it's high time mech gave some of what it got for other classes. 

 

I both love and hate this spec now😑

It is definitely overtuned 

Edited September 27, 2022 by Serephen.3420

[draxynnic.3719]

10 hours ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

Fractals are a completely different ballgame from raids.

The phases in fractals are much, much shorter so it favours burstier classes. That's why anet felt the need to change how exposed works regarding power vs condi, hoping to allow condi specs to be competitive in fractals. However, what they failed to realise is that condis are not made equally. The burstiest condi, burning, made condi firebrand oppressively strong.  That's further compounded by prestacking shenanigans using the mistlock. Firebrand has been since nerfed somewhat, but I felt like they should have just removed the players' ability to prestack ashes/venoms which was super cheesy.

Yeah, fractals are just a completely different environment.

Partly because fractals rarely have mechanics come up that push you to change what you're playing. The typical organised fractal PUG is that you get quickness, alacrity, 3DPS, and go. You don't really care about the type of DPS. Raids and, to a lesser extent, strikes encourage having a bit more variety because you're more likely to need a specific build to deal with a specific mechanic, there are times when you specifically want condition damage and not power or vice versa, and so on.

The other, probably more significant, reason is that the builds used in fractals are a lot "stickier" than they are in raids and strikes. In raids and strikes, you can try a build out in exotics if you want to. You won't be optimised, but you're not going to get immediately wiped by an agony check. For fractals, just to avoid being agony checked in tier 4, you need pretty much full ascended, including increasing the slots available in rings and backpieces, and +9 agony resistance infusions in almost every slot (having one in every slot will overcap you, but not by a lot). That's a big enough investment that people generally aren't willing to experiment much in fractals - they're likely to stick to one build, then maybe expand to another build on the same profession to fill a different role, and maybe go as far as to extend to another profession if their initial profession can't fill all three. As a result, it takes a lot to get someone to switch once they've made that investment (which is why renegade still survives in fractals despite being basically wiped out from other instanced content), and professions that are regarded as being relatively safe from the nerfbat get favoured more than they would be otherwise because people don't want to make that investment only to have their build dumpstered.

If anything, it's remarkable that metanist has climbed to ~20% of fractal representation so quickly despite all the factors in the way of switching builds in fractals. But the reason it hasn't climbed as rapidly as it has in raids and strikes is probably a combination of people needing to get the gear before they can do it, and people thinking that metanist is too good to stay as it is and being conservative about adopting a build that will probably get nerfed.

9 hours ago, TexZero.7910 said:

If anyone needs to play the game to understand anything here it's you.

You honestly somehow believe that Mech is overpowered while not having a bench in the top 15 builds. You seemingly think that just because players are taking the most reliable way out that must make it overpowered. Heal Tempest right now is multitudes strong than Heal Mech. Firebrand is and has been the premier support in everything PvE since PoF. But you'd know that if you actually played since it's the only constant with the alacrity source being whatever is reliable and easy to play be it alacren, hat or ham. 

 

Just because it's reliable doesn't make it overpowered.

Let's compare like to like here, since generally speaking in raids you don't take condi to a power fight or vice versa.

Among power builds, power rifle metanist is outbenched by power bladesworn, power deadeye, power soulbeast (two variants, but still basically the same build), and power virtuoso. Soulbeast and virtuoso only beat it by a hair, while bladesworn and deadeye both have significant mobility issues that can heavily impact their performance in practice.

Among conditions builds, condition mechanist, well, exists.

As for HAT being stronger than HAM:

Nope. My static has tried it. It isn't. The main issue is as has already been described: HAT requires completing overloads (including water overloads, which a heal tempest might otherwise prefer not to do in order to avoid being locked out of water). Best case scenario, this delays the first application of alacrity in a fight, and at worst, the overload gets interrupted and you lose alacrity uptime. HAM, by contrast, generates permanent alacrity and a significant amount of barrier pretty much just for existing, as well as having access to on-demand stability and aegis if it holds off on using Crisis Zone (which it can probably avoid to do because it's likely already overcapping alacrity).