How is mechanist nerfed but not...

[jcgreece.6870]

Soulbeast, Bladesworn and Power Virtuoso? These builds were doing more damage than Power Mechanist even before the 10% nerf.

How about you nerf everything to the same level?

[Yellow Rainbow.6142]

7 minutes ago, jcgreece.6870 said:

Soulbeast, Bladesworn and Power Virtuoso? These builds were doing more damage than Power Mechanist even before the 10% nerf.

How about you nerf everything to the same level?

How about big NO. Anet finally made something fun but you can't have fun in this game. Let them send Mech to Abyss where it belongs, so people can't have fun.

Out of curiosity, what is the benchmark now?

[A Hamster.2580]

1 hour ago, jcgreece.6870 said:

Soulbeast, Bladesworn and Power Virtuoso? These builds were doing more damage than Power Mechanist even before the 10% nerf.

 

Because Anet looks at other metrics besides the Snowcrows benchmark page. All those numbers on that page were calculated using a stationary punching bag.

 

Using the Snowcrows benchmark page as justification to not nerf power mechanist is a flawed argument to make. On that same page, the condi untamed spec deals the highest damage at over 42k yet we rarely see them played anywhere. If you went into a dragon's end meta map, you will maybe see one untamed player out of 50. You will however easily see over 20 mechanists, and the top 9/10 dps in that meta will be a mechanist.

 

Even after the nerf, I suspect the rifle mechanist is still very strong and they will have to nerf it again in November.

Edited October 6, 2022 by A Hamster.2580

[jcgreece.6870]

Just now, A Hamster.2580 said:

Because Anet looks at other metrics besides the Snowcrows benchmark page. All those numbers on that page were calculated using a stationary punching bag.

 

Using the Snowcrows benchmark page as justification to not nerf power mechanist is a flawed argument to make. On that same page, the condi untamed spec deals the highest damage at over 42k yet we rarely see them played anywhere. If you went into a dragon's end meta map, you will maybe see one untamed player out of 50. You will however easily see over 20 mechanists, and the top 9/10 dps in that meta will be a mechanist.

I never said anything about benchmarks on the golem. I am talking about high level instanced content such as Fractals/Strikes/Raids. Also just because you see less players of one class doesn't always mean it's worse to play if you know what you are doing. It sometimes means it's less fun to play for the majority of people. If 50% of the playerbase find mechanist more fun to play even after the nerf, then there is something wrong with the general design of gameplay with all the other classes in gw2.

[Xerxez.7361]

2 hours ago, jcgreece.6870 said:

Soulbeast, Bladesworn and Power Virtuoso? These builds were doing more damage than Power Mechanist even before the 10% nerf.

How about you nerf everything to the same level?

 

More damage on the top end and less damage on the bottom end. You have to look at both ends of the spectrum because the game isn't just about doing the absolute max there are plenty of other aspects to the game. Mech is still pulling higher numbers on average than two of those classes in majority of gameplay.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Xerxez.7361

[Infusion.7149]

The fact that you don't think mechanist wasn't a problem after the rifle changes represents how skewed your perception is. At End of Dragons launch mechanist was relatively fine, it was something akin to 20K-25K autoattacking (with bomb kit or mace by the way) which was more or less what you'd get on reaper shroud or photon forge with normal conditions. Before banners and spotter were changed you could easily get 20K on soulbeast as well ; daredevil staff was ~22K .

Then the rifle changes happened along with AAR (aim assisted rockets) and having the mech fully at range while doing so was extremely over the top. Arenanet even added autocast mech skills.

It only makes sense to have a strong condition build and alacrity support on mechanist. There's two specs that are power specs (holo, scrapper) already on the class.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Infusion.7149
because someone is nitpicking my abbreviation and being offtopic

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, jcgreece.6870 said:

I never said anything about benchmarks on the golem. I am talking about high level instanced content such as Fractals/Strikes/Raids. Also just because you see less players of one class doesn't always mean it's worse to play if you know what you are doing. It sometimes means it's less fun to play for the majority of people. If 50% of the playerbase find mechanist more fun to play even after the nerf, then there is something wrong with the general design of gameplay with all the other classes in gw2.

What are you talking about?  Mechanist is absolutely top tier DPS for instanced group content as well.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

33 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

The fact that you don't think mechanist wasn't a problem after the rifle changes represents how skewed your perception is. At EOD launch mechanist was relatively fine, it was something akin to 20K-25K autoattacking (with bomb kit or mace by the way) which was more or less what you'd get on reaper shroud or photon forge with normal conditions. Before banners and spotter were changed you could easily get 20K on soulbeast as well ; daredevil staff was ~22K .

Then the rifle changes happened along with AAR (aim assisted rockets) and having the mech fully at range while doing so was extremely over the top. Arenanet even added autocast mech skills.

It only makes sense to have a strong condition build and alacrity support on mechanist. There's two specs that are power specs (holo, scrapper) already on the class.

 

And interestingly, with the new tools buff, core engineer provides another viable rifle build.

[Infusion.7149]

2 minutes ago, lorddarkflare.9186 said:

 

And interestingly, with the new tools buff, core engineer provides another viable rifle build.

Core engineer isn't doing 28k+ autos is it?

edit: seems 36K full rotation , large hitbox

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[Nephalem.8921]

5 hours ago, jcgreece.6870 said:

Soulbeast, Bladesworn and Power Virtuoso? These builds were doing more damage than Power Mechanist even before the 10% nerf.

How about you nerf everything to the same level?

Play bladesworn in the strike cms or fractals. You should notice very fast why its not nerfed.

[Tiviana.2650]

4 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

Because Anet looks at other metrics besides the Snowcrows benchmark page. All those numbers on that page were calculated using a stationary punching bag.

Cant wait to see what the masses scream nerf on next, maybe it will be your spec.

[soul.9651]

3 minutes ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

Cant wait to see what the masses scream nerf on next, maybe it will be your spec.

The next flavour of the month for nerfs will be virtuoso for dps(especially considering after buffs they got which wasnt needed at first place, some bugs aswell), im not sure about supp meta tho.

Edited October 6, 2022 by soul.9651

[anbujackson.9564]

Out of the three you mentioned, soulbeast doesnt need a nerf.

Bladesworn is a mixed bag. Personally I think that adjustments will come in november (they kind of have to do this). Also the gap between it and the other two specs is just way too big.

Virtuoso will most likely get a nerf now because distort makes it way too strong (especially as condi with way too many blades). I dont know what they were thinking here.

And mech... Well like others have mentioned, everyone who thinks that it didnt deserve a nerf because it didnt do 40k dps (it did as much as soulbeast and virtuoso btw and not less, they are 38k), is straight up delusional. Your gameplay is literally unchanged. Keep enjoying your zero effort good damage.

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 hours ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

Cant wait to see what the masses scream nerf on next, maybe it will be your spec.

Just the ones that are clearly overperforming.  Mechanist caught the most hate because it was by far the most problematic, but there are a few others that could use a shave.

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Play bladesworn in the strike cms or fractals. You should notice very fast why its not nerfed.

I don't see too many of them, but I've seen enough to know that bladesworn can pull absolutely ridiculous numbers in fractals and there have already been a few record raid speed clears stacking bladesworn as well.  So, who are we kidding?

[David.5974]

Quote

Mech need to go. It was fun to be OP for a moment with few button smash, but It hurts all engi traits if they try to balance it (like scrapper or holo did). So just nerf mech to be medicore and kitten ANNET give us gadgets we want! :D Slick shoes should be flamable

 

[Suyheuti.1732]

8 hours ago, jcgreece.6870 said:

The famously friendly guild wars 2 community. You have been whining for months for the mechanist so now you have to find other things to whine about.

If it's now intended to perform less damage than every other class then it should also cost less gems/real money to buy builds and bag slots for engineer. If you want to sell this kind of stuff you can't have an unbalance team doing these types of nerfs every few months because it's completely immoral.

 

Your argument is nonsense. 

The most important fact about Engineer before 4th October patch is Pmech was dealing much more DPS than Power Scrapper, Power Holosmith in golem, in instanced content, in open world, in everywhere. I was doing dailies in strikes and minimum 6 people out of 10 were mechanist. In 100CM, noone allowed to play power build except power mech. Is this balance? 

Fact 2: People werent playing pmech because it was just fun. If mechanist or playing rifle was fun, why didnt people play with condi mechanist or rifle holosmith? 

The builds which you mentioned, 

Power Bladesword = Playing with against moving targets is pain. Huge DPS loss. And you need to archieve good rotation to deal good dps which is not possible too much in real scenarios. Power Bladesword is the top power spec and I still barely see in everywhere. If Anet decides to nerf it, I will be the first one who stand against. 

About Power Virtuoso: If anet shaves its dps a little, I wont say anything, because Power Chronomancer should be the top Power Spec. Power chrono is harder to play, ramp up time unlike power specs if you screw rotation, DPS loss is punishing. I will expect some buff to Power Chrono at november. 

About Soulbeast: ı dont know too much thing about rangers. But Soulbeast was dead over a year. I havent seen any rangers for a long time except OW. Let them enjoy their specs.

[Infusion.7149]

I forgot to address the builds the original topic was claiming are "as bad as power mech":

Bladesworn doesn't have a ranged attack that does the bulk of its damage. I've seen it being used to great effect in places such as Vale Guardian and Keep Construct by more experienced players but it shares the self root issue with power soulbeasts using offhand axes or longbow. There is severe risk/reward play when playing Bladesworn because if you miss a Dragon Trigger activation your damage tanks. The skill in playing bladesworn therefore is less about skill (ability) use but more about positioning and anticipation of phases.That's on top of the current builds still using Thief rune, which require flanking or you lose 10% damage bonus. Therefore bladesworn is not even in the same realm for most players, if it is nerfed I suspect that will only truly impact benchmark level players as its mostly quality of life issues holding it back.

Power virtuoso doesn't have a 28k ranged autoattack, it's maybe half of that last I checked. Keep in mind virtuoso needs to be in 600 range for the Mental Focus trait or you lose 15% DPS and bladesongs must be cast for the Deadly Blades trait. (whereas on power engineers you lose High Caliber's 15% crit chance while at over 450 range but already have 90% crit chance against bleeding targets) On top of that virtuoso has very few defensive capabilities to maintain scholar uptime (it doesn't run Jagged Mind) and the addition of distortion does barely anything for the power variant which doesn't generate nearly as many blades. I can only see the benchmark DPS dropping slightly to appease people wanting virtuoso nerfed ; if it is nerfed too hard there will be very little reason to run it over another power spec unless you can make use of the boon rips (which drop your DPS) as the default build doesn't run a focus for pulling (which is a reason you would play it on Conjured Amalgamate for example).

Soulbeast doesn't do nearly the same damage unless you combo OWP and Sic Em so the windows for damage are much narrower. On top of that skirmishing variants must flank or lose a hefty 15% damage and 10% crit chance. If you use offhand axe you are rooted mid attack as well ; the cleave on axe is poor if you just auto. Power soulbeast is within 1K DPS or so of where it was before banner changes (which had dagger and axe along with greatsword or longbow) so expecting to be nerfed is unrealistic.

The nerf to power mechanist restores faith in Arenanet's ability to gauge builds based on performance since there is no reason for a power catalyst or power holo to do less DPS than a single kit power mechanist with a rifle. In reality due to the inertia of gearing there will still be plenty of players that exclusively flocked to power mech for an easy power build that still has  respectable damage in real scenarios in addition to high scholar uptime.

[Kuma.1503]

I'm just glad that they didn't nerf Core/Holo/Scrapper along with the OP elite for a change. P Mech is now below Holo and Scrapper which is where it should be. It's the go-to condi build now which makes sense. 

Speaking of which...

The condi build was untouched, but I would like to see some pistol buffs in the future because both pistols are underperforming right now. Especially offhand pistol, which is trying to function as both a power and condi OH option, but only succeeding at one of those goals. 

This should make the p/p piano condi engi builds better by proxy, which I don't think anyone will complain about (these should pull big numbers). 

 

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Alquinon.2957]

7 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

The condi build was untouched, but I would like to see some pistol buffs in the future because both pistols are underperforming right now. Especially offhand pistol, which barely does more dps than shield.

Are you kidding me? Offhand pistol barely does more dps than shield in a power build. On a condi build, it does 4 stacks of burning for 16 seconds on a 12 second cooldown with half a second cast time. With alacrity it maintains 6.667 stacks of burning throughout the benchmark with a single skill, which accounts for roughly 5.3k dps. Tell me how you can get that much dps out of offhand shield lol. Also if you don't like grenade spamming you can always just camp mace, which does more dps in real fights than its benchmark since the golem doesn't really take confusion damage.

[Kuma.1503]

29 minutes ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

Are you kidding me? Offhand pistol barely does more dps than shield in a power build. On a condi build, it does 4 stacks of burning for 16 seconds on a 12 second cooldown with half a second cast time. With alacrity it maintains 6.667 stacks of burning throughout the benchmark with a single skill, which accounts for roughly 5.3k dps. Tell me how you can get that much dps out of offhand shield lol. Also if you don't like grenade spamming you can always just camp mace, which does more dps in real fights than its benchmark since the golem doesn't really take confusion damage.

Not sure why, I was thinking "Barely does more dps than shield on power holo" when I wrote that sentence but forgot to specify that. 

The sentence I wrote afterward certainly doesn't help either. Edited to make it more clear. 

To be more specific, since OH pistol is the only dps offhand we have for power and condi I'd like to see it reworked to a more general-purpose option to properly fit that role. I'd like to see glue bomb replaced with something more impactful.  hatT will naturally have a knock on effect for condi builds by making them a little better. This  is fine considering non-mech condi builds are underperforming relative to the effort required. (Tone down mech a little if necessary. I am aware that their benchmark is deceptive since they also apply confusion). 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Alquinon.2957]

5 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Not sure why, I was thinking "Barely does more dps than shield on power holo" when I wrote that sentence but forgot to specify that. 

The sentence I wrote afterward certainly doesn't help either. 

To be more specific, since OH pistol is the only dps offhand we have I'd like to see it reworked to a more general-purpose option to properly fit that role. I'd like to see glue bomb replaced with something more impactful.  Which will naturally have a knock on effect for condi builds by making them a little better. Which is fine considering non-mech condi builds are underperforming relative to the effort required. (Tone down mech a little if necessary. I am aware that their benchmark is deceptive since they also apply confusion). 

I think condi mech is still a very strong spec, maybe it was overshadowed before by power mech so people didn't really catch on. J-drive is the low intensity version that still puts out very competitive dps, and it's no slouch on confusion fights if you take mace. If you want to eke out more dps you can always go the more complex rotation with jade mortar/bomb + grenade kit/pistol pistol build. I still play the J-drive pistol/pistol build on fights that have a lot of mechanics and movement. You can probably also play J-drive as an LI build if you just camp mace and focus on casting your mech skills and superconducting signet. The only downside is that mace will force you to stay melee if you don't want to swap to grenades.

[Nephalem.8921]

7 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I don't see too many of them, but I've seen enough to know that bladesworn can pull absolutely ridiculous numbers in fractals and there have already been a few record raid speed clears stacking bladesworn as well.  So, who are we kidding?

This again. The same problem cata had. 2 groups stacked cata on 7year old joke golem bosses which are a pushover on any build now. The quickness coming from the dps build is a problem. Have you seen pugs playing bladesworn? Almost all of them are useless. It is a hard build to pull off outside of golem encounters. Nerf it and there is just no reason at all to play it anymore. Kinda like catalyst all over again.

In fractals its a mixed bag. It is incredible phase time dependant. And since most fractal pugs are completely useless now its hard to compare. I am top dps as bladesworn in fractals thats true. But im also top dps as quick scrapper and sometimes as alac ren....

[Kuma.1503]

9 minutes ago, Alquinon.2957 said:

I think condi mech is still a very strong spec, maybe it was overshadowed before by power mech so people didn't really catch on. J-drive is the low intensity version that still puts out very competitive dps, and it's no slouch on confusion fights if you take mace. If you want to eke out more dps you can always go the more complex rotation with jade mortar/bomb + grenade kit/pistol pistol build. I still play the J-drive pistol/pistol build on fights that have a lot of mechanics and movement. You can probably also play J-drive as an LI build if you just camp mace and focus on casting your mech skills and superconducting signet. The only downside is that mace will force you to stay melee if you don't want to swap to grenades.

Oh absolutely. Condi mech got slept on for a long time because of power mech. I'm a big fan of both variants of condi mech, but I prefer the mace version when going for condi alac. It makes life easier in more ways than one. 

What I'd like to see is some love for Condi holo and core condi. They're lagging behind where they should be right now. 

The dream is that condi scrapper also comes back one day, maybe not as a super high dps option, but as a potential utility choice over core condi, but that is unlikely. 

 

[AliamRationem.5172]

15 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

This again. The same problem cata had. 2 groups stacked cata on 7year old joke golem bosses which are a pushover on any build now. The quickness coming from the dps build is a problem. Have you seen pugs playing bladesworn? Almost all of them are useless. It is a hard build to pull off outside of golem encounters. Nerf it and there is just no reason at all to play it anymore. Kinda like catalyst all over again.

In fractals its a mixed bag. It is incredible phase time dependant. And since most fractal pugs are completely useless now its hard to compare. I am top dps as bladesworn in fractals thats true. But im also top dps as quick scrapper and sometimes as alac ren....

All of those issues apply to a number of other specs that don't have bladesworn's benchmark or its burst.  It may not be the next big thing, but it probably needs a bit of a shave and some underperforming specs brought up a bit.  This is all small potatoes to what's been going on with mechanist, of course.  I'm also not buying that your bladesworn performs similarly to your alacren and qscrapper. 😉