Nov 29 engineer changes

[Krexen.9057]

The 2 shot burst on the rifle feels lame now.

[Sindust.7059]

Just give us toolbelt skills when mech is dismissed, and buff the aerial bombardment from J-drive, so that we can do the same DPS when the mech is away, but at the cost of having a more complex rotation. Because isn't that what you wanted in the first place? That would free us from this annoying pet management that wasn't fun even when it did 38k dps.

[Cernow.3974]

These changes are really poorly thought out and implemented.

 

The 360 range on the mech is ridiculous, it is far too small. Mech AI was very poor anyway and it frequently dashes off of its own accord, gets stuck on terrain, latches onto to random targets which it follows doggedly, even lags behind while moving. And Mechanist has too few ways to control the mech's positioning, the Return To Me skill is all we have and it is unreliable. But instead of improving the mech AI and positioning tools before making changes, instead you just slap down this thoughtless, senseless, fun crushing nerf.

 

Not everyone wants to play their mechanist as melee. So why are we forced into melee range to keep the mech at full dps? And why does a single dodge roll take you out of the mech's radius? Even when just running around out of combat the stupid thing is often breaking its own radius. It's implemented terribly. And please don't just fix this by lazily glueing the mech even closer to the Mechanist, the things are so ridiculously large my Asura is frequently obscured by his mech already (why don't Asura have appropriately sized mechs anyway?). 

 

If you must have some kind of range on the mech to fix abuses, it needs to be much much larger. Why shouldn't it be the same range as a rifle at 1200? At bare minimum it should equal Grenade radius of 900. Why are you forcing rifle and grenade kit users to negate the whole point of a ranged weapon in the first place? It is utterly senseless design. And if you are going to force rifle mechanist or grenadiers into melee range to maintain mech dps, then you must allow Mechanist to swap between weapon sets during combat so they can switch to hammer + shield or whatever they prefer.

 

Which brings me to the rifle changes. The new animation is horrible (my Asura mech points the gun at the ground while shooting), boring and unfun. Rifle was already pretty dull for visuals and sound effects but miraculously you managed to make it even more dull! Quite a feat. Rifle dps is definitely nerfed in PVE whatever anyone says about it not being supposed to be. It is. And it's taken a big hit in WvW for reasons I don't really understand. Yes the Rifle Mechanist did pretty well in WvW, but was never in the same league as many other classes and it was never much of a team-oriented spec anyway. So all you're hurting is roamers and there's plenty of other classes far better at that which never seem to get balanced properly. I can't speak for PvP as I don't play that mode much.

 

If the Mechanist needs balancing in some game modes then of course you must do so. I don't usually come to the forums to complain about changes as I understand this. But this is just so sloppy. If you must balance,  please do it properly and in a way that keeps the class fun and doesn't cause collateral damage to other game modes. These changes have sucked much of the fun out of Rifle / Grenade Mechanist in PVE and WvW and made even Hammer + Shield frustrating to play.

[Dawdler.8521]

Question: does anyone know how the new box of nails work?

I tried it many times yesterday and see exactly zero immobilization no matter the state of the enemy.

[Infusion.7149]

6 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Question: does anyone know how the new box of nails work?

I tried it many times yesterday and see exactly zero immobilization no matter the state of the enemy.

Yesterday it didn't have immob. 
patchnote = The first pulse of this skill will now immobilize enemies affected by crowd control or a movement-impairing condition. Increased ammunition from 1 to 2.

[Dawdler.8521]

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Yesterday it didn't have immob. 
patchnote = The first pulse of this skill will now immobilize enemies affected by crowd control or a movement-impairing condition. Increased ammunition from 1 to 2.

The patch was yesterday. But yes thats what I am wondering.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[ThunderX.6591]

You need the movement-impairing condition like Cripple or CC like Daze, Stun and so on to activare Immobilize, at least as the note say, so maybee you missed them, or maybee a normal bug.

[Bookah pls.9352]

Not a fan of the rifle change because it looks and sounds weak now with just the 2 shots, like a quiet double barrel shotgun firing single barrels at a time. 

 

The mechanical genius thing not a fan of either, i understand partly why they want this but honestly if they wanted to increase the skill cap required i think they should have just had the stat reduction be tied to mech auto casts.

Cast them manually = no stat loss higher skill cap, set them auto cast = stat loss for each auto cast enabled, promoting a more active and less passive playstyle while still allowing the LI aspect for who wants it.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

You need the movement-impairing condition like Cripple or CC like Daze, Stun and so on to activare Immobilize, at least as the note say, so maybee you missed them, or maybee a normal bug.

But box of nails itself apply cripple... it should always immobilize the first tick.

Even not assuming that I tried it on mobs with glue shot (waited for immo to expire, take that long to swap anyway since it's so slow lol). When using box of nails cripple extended, immo never applied.

Maybe I'm just missing something or is blind.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[SleepyBat.9034]

18 hours ago, Love.1975 said:

Rifle change deletes Core, Scrapper, Holo, and Mechanist build diversity in all modes. It is probably the worst in PvP/WvW.

Probably not, it deletes any build that relied on spamming the auto-attack which was a pretty low energy build anyway. In PvP/WvW the auto-attack is worse then pre-rifle rework now but the other rifle skills are still pretty strong so I doubt any good rifle builds will get deleted because of these changes.

[ThunderX.6591]

8 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

But box of nails itself apply cripple... it should always immobilize the first tick.

Even not assuming that I tried it on mobs with glue shot (waited for immo to expire, take that long to swap anyway since it's so slow lol). When using box of nails cripple extended, immo never applied.

Maybe I'm just missing something or is blind.

 

Could be a bug.

Maybee try with some stun or daze that are like 2 seconds duration on monsters without defiant bar on them.

[Snafu.4930]

I admit my Mech (jade bot) needed a solid nerf. I do not think this was the right one. The point should not be to chase your pet's AI targeting all over the map. Not well thought out IMHO.

 

If you want to address AFK crap: Perhaps a power drop off or sleep mode if you do not give it orders (attack, f1-f3) after 5 seconds?

 

Or just drop boon/stat sharing 25% across the board, no range limits.

 

 

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

Maybe it would be better to just let the mech be tied to the player like a leash with 360 range, instead of nerfing mech when its being out of range?

The way it is now, player gets punished for bad AI of mech.

It is okay for the mech to get a nerf, but that is not a nerf, it is just plain and simple very bad design on the developers part.

[VPX.1325]

The Idea behind the mechanical genius is understandable, but it has been executed with poor consideration, or at least with only one consideration in mind, make any form of ranged mechanist unpleasant to play, regardless of skill, resulting  in actually impairing the abilities of skilled mechanists in some game modes.

-Choosing spark revolver and having a power based build is less viable in any game modes.

-Now any form of crossfire tactics between pet and owner is dead, even the crash down / recall mech onto enemies to get a distance margin is not a viable tactic anymore; what is the point for crash down to be ground target if you have to be already, or soon to be, in melee range of enemies.

-The range should be not less of 425 to go at least on par with flamethorwer's flame jet and not 360.

-The mech should not dash foward but always stay behind and stop only when it reaches you.

-The mech should not randomly wander around you on small character movements sometimes positioning further away than the 360 units margin.

-The mech should not go to the other side of enemies, (this is probably tied to the dash foward problem) especially bosses when used the return to me command, on may encounters positioning over the 360 units and not responding to further return to me commands forcing you to reposition yourself.

-Return to me command should make the mech interrupt at least it's normal attacks (if not anything it's doing) especially when spark revolver is chosen as trait and respond faster to the command.

-The the crash down / recall mech command should not bug 1 out of 3 times it's used with full mech health cycling between the recall and the crash.