Heal Scrapper - Spamming Utilities off CD = Bad Design

[Kuma.1503]

Spamming most/all of your utility skills off CD to maintain boon(s) is not good design for a support. 

On paper, Heal Quickness Scrapper has a lot going for it. You have a tool to fit almost any situation you find yourself in. Unfortunately, it isn't able to reliably use these tools due to one fundamental flaw:

It has to spam its utilities on cooldown. 

Lets take a look at Scrapper's toolkit and establish why it looks good on paper:

 

• Med Kit, Elixir Gun, and Mortar kit serve as great healing and cleansing tools. These are genuinely great, and a huge contributor to Scrapper's high carry potential.
• Blast Gyro provides CC, might, superspeed, and an AoE stunbreak
• Function Gyro is a ranged AoE rez
• Bulwark Gyro reduces the damage your party takes and stacks with Prot/resistance
• Defense Field provides group stability and a projectile reflect
• Stealth Gyro is useful for skips

These are all great tools. So why have things not worked out for Heal Scrapper?

I will repeat this for emphasis It has to spam its utilities on cooldown. 

The elephant in the room are gyros. You have to spam these off CD to provide superspeed to the party. This will also provide them with Quickness via Kinetic Accelerators. In moments when you'd like to save blast gyro for CC, save Bulwark gyro for damage reduction, or save purge gyro for cleanses, you simply have to pray they come off CD at the perfect moment, because saving these for reactive or proactive use is not an option. Trying to use these utilities as intended results in a loss of quickness uptime. 

You are punished for trying to play smart instead of spamming. 

Taking things a step further is Bypass Coating. This is an AoE stunbreak that grants superspeed. This is very useful for both breaking allies out of annoying CC and helping them to quickly reposition. 

You almost never use it for the stunbreak. This must be spammed off CD. 

 

These are flaws I'm sure most are aware of, but this issue extends to more than just gyros. To understand why, I must first explain how Scrapper provides 25 might to its subgroup. 

 

To provide 25 might, Scrapper must execute quick piano-like blast combos. They will rotate through all of their kits to accomplish this. Here is an example combo:

Med Kit 5 > Blast Gyro > Elixir Gun 4 > Stow Weapon > Shield 4 (double tap) > Elixir gun 5 > Mortar Kit 5 > Renewing Mist (Egun Toolbelt) 

 

By timing their blasts and delying the use of other combo fields so as not to interfere with blasting, Scrapper can provide 25 might on top of its other benefits. Egun 5, Mortar kit 5 and Renewing mist each provide might via the trait HGH. However... Notice how many tools they need to spam in order to do this. 

Mortar kit 5, Egun 5, Med kit 5, Shield 4... each of these are important healing CDs. Scrapper is forced to make a trade-off. 

Provide 25 might to its subgroup OR Save its healing CDs for healing. 

 

Not only are you forced to spam gyros and your healing skill off CD to maintain quickness. You are ALSO forced to spam your group healing skills off CD to maintain might.

If you decide to provide 25 might, you will be getting a lot of your reactive healing from med blaster... Which incidentally had its healing cut in half to tone down heal mech. A change that was very short sighted, however this is a discussion beyond the scope of this thread. 

 

You may have also noticed a lack of fury. This is because heal scrapper does not provide fury unless they run firearms. However this comes at a significant loss to their healing, so they are generally left to rely on others for fury. 

 

In the end. Scrapper has phenomenal tools, great versatility, and is highly adaptable, but in practice it has to spam nearly every button in its repetoir to accomplish what a heal firebrand does with just mantra of potence and empower. It will never be able to compete with firebrand even if you bloated its kit with more stuff simply because it cannot use that stuff strategically the same way a HFB can. 

Not only does this flaw limit the spec. It punishes you for playing smart and using your utilities as intended.  The way scrapper provides boons should be reworked to allow it to function better as a support. 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Atmaweapon.7345]

Quickness on Superspeed increased from 2.5 to 4 seconds (no problem in PvP now).

Hammer auto also applies Might to nearby party members.

Over Shield (Inventions) trait now causes skills 4 and 5 on all weapons to apply protection to nearby allies. Shield flip skills now also apply protection (shield skills can apply protection twice.)

 

Scrapper can now easily generate 25 Might and technically has 100% Quickness uptime with just Blast Gyro with 100% boon duration, each additional Gyro frees up a skill to not be used off cooldown.

[shion.2084]

See my posting here...
 

 

[shion.2084]

6 hours ago, Atmaweapon.7345 said:

Quickness on Superspeed increased from 2.5 to 4 seconds (no problem in PvP now).

 

Big problem in PvP... we have no quickness on superseed.

[Noah Salazar.5430]

Quote

It has to spam its utilities on cooldown. 

Objection Relevence!

You can deley some skills when you have 90-100% boon duration

i'm qheal scrap main, and i always have time to use function gyro or Bypass Coating for aoe stunbreak whenever i need it 

 

Whenever Blast gyro is ready, your shiled 4 and Acid bomb is ready also for blast

 

Also Gryos now give superspeed instantly = instant quickness

Quote

Provide 25 might to its subgroup OR Save its healing CDs for healing. 

your fine spaming 1 on med kit, 2 for smaller burst, and f1+elixir shel+super elixir for bigger burst

also med kit 3+5 as blast heal if nessesary

Quote

Scrapper can now easily generate 25 Might 

You can do using runes of pack, but don't forget you no need to solo 25 might

Alacdps brings 50% of might and fury to 5ppl  (pam)

Quote

You may have also noticed a lack of fury. This is because heal scrapper does not provide fury unless they run firearms.

I'm using runes of pack, and i provide 60% fury uptime on 5 ppl

rember also that evry class expect reaper have 50% fury themself from traits

and even so pam brings fury for you

 

I personaly like how hqs works atm, problem is cuz of that complexity, i'm like only qheal scrapper whenever i join raids or strikes/t4/drm cm, but prob cuz i'm on kp.me  ppl never questioning me when i pick that role

Edited October 14, 2022 by Noah Salazar.5430

[Jerus.4350]

3 hours ago, Noah Salazar.5430 said:

I'm using runes of pack, and i provide 60% fury uptime on 5 ppl

 

WTB Fix to boonstripping Pack Runes at the start of fights.  If it wasn't for that it'd be a much better option.

[Jerus.4350]

I actually think Heal Scrapper is where all heal builds should be.  If you want full 25 might for your group you're going to have to give something up for it.  You can go Rifle trading Protection for Might, or you can drop your 20s Gyro and pick up traited Flame Turret, or Flamethrower.  You could also get ~20 by delaying and using blast combos in Blast Gyro's fire field, but then you need to be using Function gyro to cover quickness.  Or other variations including Firearms traitline which could also be used to get group Fury.  Point is it's not really missing anything IF healers aren't actually supposed to be able to give almost every boon to their group within their standard build.

 

If we want Scrapper to keep up with some of the other options out there though, I think it needs a little love and there are a bunch of ways to do that.  A little buff to Blast Gyro's Might capacity, bumping it to 12s would allow us to upkeep the 8 stacks permanently with 100% boon duration.  I'd love a little extra wiggle room on Quickness as well so not taking a 20s Gyro is more playable.  Function Gyro's recast extends if you actually use it for it's primary purpose, that screws with quickness uptime.  I think that could be removed. 

[lorddarkflare.9186]

This is a pretty common problem when a profession is enhanced to fill a role rather than having been designed to do it from the start.

Fixing this requires a rework that may end up alienating people who use scrapper for other roles. But maybe A-Net is okay with that? They have been making big changes to scrapper and have clearly signaled their future intent.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

4 hours ago, lorddarkflare.9186 said:

But maybe A-Net is okay with that? They have been making big changes to scrapper and have clearly signaled their future intent.

 

Yeah well I hope their change will have more thought behind than just "hurr moving well now static well".

 

I really hope they will learn from this