The problem with Scrapper in sPvP

[Kstyle.5829]

I have been playing this game since the beta and over the years I have played every class in the game till at least high gold rank and most of them to plat elo.   My favorite class is by far scrapper and I'm just disappointed that it has been pretty weak for the most part.  It is by far my most played class and also my weakest.  Classes that I barely have 200 games on like spellbreaker, chrono and scepter catalyst perform far better than a class I'm considerably more experienced.  I'm probably just going to quit the game because I'm kind of bored of wasting my life waiting for my class to be viable in games like this and WoW which is out of my control.  But anyways I'm going to give my input regardless on what the problems scrapper has compared to other classes and what I feel that it does right.

 

The good things scrapper has going for it is the function gyro providing ress and stomps on people, decent access to stability, stacking vulnerability quickly, superspeed to allies and killing power with thunderclap and rocket charge combo finishers proccing dazes.  It also has good utility with mortar kit which provides some sustain for your team, but for the most part your healing and defensive talents are selfish.  It does good dps at the points that it has quickness and can spam auto attacks but if you don't have quickness or uptime on your target you get easily kited and ignored while you spam the weaker and easily dodged mortar kit 1 ability.  In the current meta having no access to on-demand burst makes your class relegated to the lower end of the tier lists. 

 

The big problem was removing the quickness from the grandmaster trait.  I understand removing it from benefiting allies, but I think that it should at least be given back to the scrapper itself, if not at least in a reduced capacity (maybe 2 seconds?).  Losing this has had people make the decision to ditch explosions and take tools to provide the quickness scrapper needs.  The problem is you really do need explosions because most of scrapper's damage comes from the additional damage modifiers not just through traits themselves but from vulnerability granting them increased damage.  You can easily stack vulnerabilty to 25 in a couple of seconds which gives you a 37.5% damage increase.   It's hard to justify trading explosions for quickness in tools and losing that damage but you need quickness as well. 

 

Basically your only option is to take explosions and tools if you want to deal damage anywhere near what the meta classes are capable of.   You can't really run berserker amulet though because you don't have one shot potential, you need to get off AA chains and have a little bit of sustain.  So you kind of need demolisher amulet.  If you want to use berserker amulet you need to take alchemy or inventions, which means your quickness will have to come from chronomancer rune, or you're ditching explosions and dealing mediocre damage once again.  There are no good options for scrapper right now.

 

I know it's an mmorpg and not all classes will ever be balanced but I think we can do a little better than this with the outliers that are doing poorly right now.  And giving quickness back on the scrapper grandmaster trait is the easiest solution.  It was removed just because people were doing some dumb flamethrower build that only noobs were running in the first place, but there were other options to nerf flamethrower than gut the whole class which is the move you guys seem to be making lately.  Doing the same thing to mechanist which effected builds other than rifle mech, like rifle scrapper and condi mech.  

 

Anyway if there are any other scrapper players that have input let me know.  I know scrapper is doing well in WvW and that is part of the reason for these changes.  Maybe they can do a 3 way split with the ability working differently in sPvP than in WvW.   Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[Kstyle.5829]

-deleted-

Edited January 12, 2023 by Kstyle.5829

[Kodama.6453]

I agree that the removal of quickness from scrapper in competitive modes has hurt the spec alot. Would be great if we could get that back for PvP at least.

Another point I keep thinking about recently is that scrapper, as a bruiser spec, lacks stability.

If we look at bruiser type elite specs of other classes, then they usually get very frequent access to stability to allow them to stay in prolonged fights.

• Spellbreaker: grandmaster trait gives stability every time they hard CC a target with just 1/4s ICD (basically just there to prevent them getting multiple stacks from AoE CC abilities) + stability on full counter on 8 seconds cooldown
• Untamed: has a master trait giving them stability when they hard CC a target with 1s ICD (again, just there to prevent multiple stacks at once)
• Catalyst: grandmaster trait gives stability every time they grant themselves an aura with no ICD

These traits can give alot of frequent stability while playing into their fighting style. Scrapper's choices on the other hand..

• adept trait gives 1 stack of stability on function gyro, which has at least 25 seconds cooldown
• grandmaster trait gives 1 stack stability if you are above a might threshold of 10 with 10 seconds ICD, the relatively long ICD compared to the other traits mentioned above coupled with that awkward trigger (allies can trigger the stability when you don't need it, for example) makes this very unreliable as a source

And then, there is the one trait which allowed us a similar stability spamming playstyle like other bruiser specs

• Juggernaut: gain stability every 3 seconds while using a flamethrower kit

This trait was what made scrapper have comparable stability to other specs and had good synergy with the other stability focused traits in scrappers arsenal. It was considered to be annoying, but at the same time I don't think it was really overpowered because of the downsides of the flamthrower camping.

And then, the nerf happened. Flamethrower damage got thrown under the bus, making it not worth to run this setup anymore.

To really make scrapper shine as a bruiser, I think we should also take another look at stability access. Our traits to give ourselves stability are pretty bad now. Maybe it would be best to also give scrapper a trait that grants stability on CC with a very short ICD.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Kodama.6453

[noneHotBuildTest.7251]

Scrapper deserve it to got the nerf.

Should any class be this strong for such a low risk? No.

[Kstyle.5829]

14 hours ago, noneHotBuildTest.7251 said:

Scrapper deserve it to got the nerf.

Should any class be this strong for such a low risk? No.

Lol.  Flamethrower scrapper yes, I agree.  But I don't think regular hammer scrapper was ever in a dangerous place.

[Kodama.6453]

8 minutes ago, Kstyle.5829 said:

Lol.  Flamethrower scrapper yes, I agree.  But I don't think regular hammer scrapper was ever in a dangerous place.

Might have been justified, since it seems low elo players really struggled with that build.

I still think that scrapper needs better access to stability, tho. Remove juggernaut, but give us another alternative for frequent stability, just like all the other bruiser specs.

[freakcoco.4287]

I don't think that have need to buff scrapper that much.

Scrapper will melt on heavy cc pressure, but most of class will melt on it too.

The problem is our enemy,  vindicator/catalyst/untamed /spellbreaker.

If there has no such OP class on match, scrapper feel pretty good.

 

6 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Might have been justified, since it seems low elo players really struggled with that build.

I still think that scrapper needs better access to stability, tho. Remove juggernaut, but give us another alternative for frequent stability, just like all the other bruiser specs.

Juggernaut is the power source forwvw dps scrapper which is only role scrapper can fit on big squad wvw.

 

No meta build match game play:

 

Edited January 13, 2023 by freakcoco.4287

[Kstyle.5829]

22 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Might have been justified, since it seems low elo players really struggled with that build.

I still think that scrapper needs better access to stability, tho. Remove juggernaut, but give us another alternative for frequent stability, just like all the other bruiser specs.

 

Well spellbreaker is completely broken right now.  The main problem with scrapper is having to choose between necessary traits or damage.  

 

If they don't want to give quickness back, they could just buff overall damage on scrapper.  Then you could justify taking tools/inventions/scrapper probably.   Inventions and tools give good condi cleanse and overall sustain plus movement speed.  Then you can take the first trait on scrapper maybe for stability instead of the gyros giving superspeed and make something out of that.  

 

In reality scrapper probably needs a lot of work and having it's entire traitline remade for pvp.  

[Kuma.1503]

It still boggles my mind that CMC is so terrified to buff Scrapper in PvP. 

Even before they deleted quickness from it, it was a mid tier build at best. And if they were that worried about the quick rifle builds at low ranks... they more than killed that when they nerfed rifle autos by 33% in PvP. 

Just give it quickness back. It won't break PvP. I think Anet thinks PvP Scrapper is the same beast as WvW Scrapper when those two aren't even close to the same thing. 

 

CMC has a personal bias for holo or something because he keeps throwing buffs at Holo when it doesn't need them, while being terrified of this non-existant scrapper build that will terrorize the meta if he gives it back a fraction of what he ripped away. 

Edited January 14, 2023 by Kuma.1503

[Kstyle.5829]

On 1/13/2023 at 11:07 PM, Kuma.1503 said:

It still boggles my mind that CMC is so terrified to buff Scrapper in PvP. 

Even before they deleted quickness from it, it was a mid tier build at best. And if they were that worried about the quick rifle builds at low ranks... they more than killed that when they nerfed rifle autos by 33% in PvP. 

Just give it quickness back. It won't break PvP. I think Anet thinks PvP Scrapper is the same beast as WvW Scrapper when those two aren't even close to the same thing. 

 

CMC has a personal bias for holo or something because he keeps throwing buffs at Holo when it doesn't need them, while being terrified of this non-existant scrapper build that will terrorize the meta if he gives it back a fraction of what he ripped away. 

 

There is definitely some kind of bias going on here because the game is continually balanced in favor of the power dps assassin-like roles.  These classes can one shot each other in less than a second, making the current meta require insanely twitchy fast reflexes.  The elitist players who play these classes always loath bunkers and consider them  "low skill ceilling".   Of course this makes sense because bunkers are the counter to the physical burst assassins that are so prevalent, yet you rarely see any of them.  Naturally every single spec that is a hard counter to the beloved power assassin meta has been nerffed into unviability.   What a strange coincidence

[shion.2084]

On 1/11/2023 at 8:32 PM, Kstyle.5829 said:

I have been playing this game since the beta and over the years I have played every class in the game till at least high gold rank and most of them to plat elo.   My favorite class is by far scrapper and I'm just disappointed that it has been pretty weak for the most part.  It is by far my most played class and also my weakest.  Classes that I barely have 200 games on like spellbreaker, chrono and scepter catalyst perform far better than a class I'm considerably more experienced.  I'm probably just going to quit the game because I'm kind of bored of wasting my life waiting for my class to be viable in games like this and WoW which is out of my control.  But anyways I'm going to give my input regardless on what the problems scrapper has compared to other classes and what I feel that it does right.

 

The good things scrapper has going for it is the function gyro providing ress and stomps on people, decent access to stability, stacking vulnerability quickly, superspeed to allies and killing power with thunderclap and rocket charge combo finishers proccing dazes.  It also has good utility with mortar kit which provides some sustain for your team, but for the most part your healing and defensive talents are selfish.  It does good dps at the points that it has quickness and can spam auto attacks but if you don't have quickness or uptime on your target you get easily kited and ignored while you spam the weaker and easily dodged mortar kit 1 ability.  In the current meta having no access to on-demand burst makes your class relegated to the lower end of the tier lists. 

 

The big problem was removing the quickness from the grandmaster trait.  I understand removing it from benefiting allies, but I think that it should at least be given back to the scrapper itself, if not at least in a reduced capacity (maybe 2 seconds?).  Losing this has had people make the decision to ditch explosions and take tools to provide the quickness scrapper needs.  The problem is you really do need explosions because most of scrapper's damage comes from the additional damage modifiers not just through traits themselves but from vulnerability granting them increased damage.  You can easily stack vulnerabilty to 25 in a couple of seconds which gives you a 37.5% damage increase.   It's hard to justify trading explosions for quickness in tools and losing that damage but you need quickness as well. 

 

Basically your only option is to take explosions and tools if you want to deal damage anywhere near what the meta classes are capable of.   You can't really run berserker amulet though because you don't have one shot potential, you need to get off AA chains and have a little bit of sustain.  So you kind of need demolisher amulet.  If you want to use berserker amulet you need to take alchemy or inventions, which means your quickness will have to come from chronomancer rune, or you're ditching explosions and dealing mediocre damage once again.  There are no good options for scrapper right now.

 

I know it's an mmorpg and not all classes will ever be balanced but I think we can do a little better than this with the outliers that are doing poorly right now.  And giving quickness back on the scrapper grandmaster trait is the easiest solution.  It was removed just because people were doing some dumb flamethrower build that only noobs were running in the first place, but there were other options to nerf flamethrower than gut the whole class which is the move you guys seem to be making lately.  Doing the same thing to mechanist which effected builds other than rifle mech, like rifle scrapper and condi mech.  

 

Anyway if there are any other scrapper players that have input let me know.  I know scrapper is doing well in WvW and that is part of the reason for these changes.  Maybe they can do a 3 way split with the ability working differently in sPvP than in WvW.   Any feedback is appreciated.

 

You could try this one out....
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeQAIlRwaYQMHWKO+XWtUA-z5gfGlqA6VCoyBA

The gist is you stack vuln with stun, you have fury up time, moderate levels of might, and you get a burst of quickness with each of your gyros.  Since its short you got to plan to capitalise on it... which has the tradeoff of not wanting to trigger the gyro too early... but then the possibility of getting interrupted once you engage and want the quickness.

Edited January 18, 2023 by shion.2084

[wasss.1208]

On 1/14/2023 at 8:07 AM, Kuma.1503 said:

CMC has a personal bias for holo or something because he keeps throwing buffs at Holo when it doesn't need them

What? Bias towards holo? Nooo waaaay... just because they listed grenades buffs under holosmith, during the balance announcement stream? This seriously shows how they view core engineer, or any non-holo build, in PvP.

And to not just off-topic: Them removing quickness - while makes sense in the big picture, since they are removing a lot of quickness access in PvP - doesn't really takes into consideration, that Scrapper doesn't really have a lot going for it. It had multiple reworks, and really hazy identity, which landed on "quickness and superspeed" during the latest rework. Now it only has superspeed, which still isn't enough mobility, to make it a decent roamer.
In my oppinion, they should've just make the quickness personal, so the scrapper has an opportunity for a burst window, where they try to pump out all of their damage, during the quickness. Or a way to finish a fight, by popping superspeed+quickness, and literally run down their opponent. Them pointing at flamethrower, or rifle is a non argument, since both weapons aa are nerfed heavily. Mortar and grenade could be the only kits, that could abuse quickess+superspeed, but this playstyle was already dying out, before the nerf.

tl;dr: venting post

[shion.2084]

1 minute ago, wasss.1208 said:

What? Bias towards holo? Nooo waaaay... just because they listed grenades buffs under holosmith, during the balance announcement stream? This seriously shows how they view core engineer, or any non-holo build, in PvP.

And to not just off-topic: Them removing quickness - while makes sense in the big picture, since they are removing a lot of quickness access in PvP - doesn't really takes into consideration, that Scrapper doesn't really have a lot going for it. It had multiple reworks, and really hazy identity, which landed on "quickness and superspeed" during the latest rework. Now it only has superspeed, which still isn't enough mobility, to make it a decent roamer.
In my oppinion, they should've just make the quickness personal, so the scrapper has an opportunity for a burst window, where they try to pump out all of their damage, during the quickness. Or a way to finish a fight, by popping superspeed+quickness, and literally run down their opponent. Them pointing at flamethrower, or rifle is a non argument, since both weapons aa are nerfed heavily. Mortar and grenade could be the only kits, that could abuse quickess+superspeed, but this playstyle was already dying out, before the nerf.

tl;dr: venting post

I mean technically you can get quickness from Elix U.... every 32 seconds if traited and 40 otherwise.... but when I try to work it into my builds it basically pushes out something more fundamental.

[wasss.1208]

4 minutes ago, shion.2084 said:

I mean technically you can get quickness from Elix U.... every 32 seconds if traited and 40 otherwise.... but when I try to work it into my builds it basically pushes out something more fundamental.

Technicly you can solve any problems. Low mobility? Gadgeteer+Rocket Boots. Need quickness? Elixir U, or (or, since your build reminded me, that it exists) Chronomancer runes. Need damage? Bring out the big boy Explo+Firearms+Berserker ammy... all of them technicly work, all of them have a great opportunity cost, that cripples the build in the end.

[shion.2084]

45 minutes ago, wasss.1208 said:

Technicly you can solve any problems. Low mobility? Gadgeteer+Rocket Boots. Need quickness? Elixir U, or (or, since your build reminded me, that it exists) Chronomancer runes. Need damage? Bring out the big boy Explo+Firearms+Berserker ammy... all of them technicly work, all of them have a great opportunity cost, that cripples the build in the end.

Try the chronomancer one.  Its actually not horrendous and it might give you a smile.

[coro.3176]

1 hour ago, wasss.1208 said:

What? Bias towards holo? Nooo waaaay... just because they listed grenades buffs under holosmith, during the balance announcement stream? This seriously shows how they view core engineer, or any non-holo build, in PvP.

I think this just shows how backward their balance philosophy is. They first consider viable builds that exist (or existed), and then buff/nerf skills and traits that the build uses. Instead, they should aim to balance class skills and traits first such that any build can be viable.

That's how you end up with skills/traits/specs just not working for nearly a decade. "Core" was just not one of the builds they wanted to be functional. Scrapper *was* a build that they wanted to work, and then it wasn't. Who knows, maybe they'll decide they want it back in a year or two.

[wasss.1208]

19 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

I think this just shows how backward their balance philosophy is. They first consider viable builds that exist (or existed), and then buff/nerf skills and traits that the build uses. Instead, they should aim to balance class skills and traits first such that any build can be viable.

This is exactly the impression, that I got during the past few patches. They want nade holo -> they buff nades. They want tools holo -> they rework tools. Instead of reworking tools (and inventions+firearms), because it is bottom of the barrel, and see what comes out of it, and further balance whatever becomes an outlier in the process.

[shion.2084]

Note that I've been having fun with the build I posted.  And it's enough to get me into top 100.  I encourage PvP scrappers to give it a try.

[shion.2084]

For anyone paying attention to this topic.  I've recently tried scholar/zerk with nades, bulwark, stealth, and blast.    It's sorta fun and as long as you don't mind being complete glass can basically use auto and delete lot of the stuff out there.   I haven't tried it rank yet... cause if you get one counter I suspect you'd be farmed the whole match.  For unranked though its much fun and the damage is ... amusing.

 

[Kstyle.5829]

1 hour ago, shion.2084 said:

For anyone paying attention to this topic.  I've recently tried scholar/zerk with nades, bulwark, stealth, and blast.    It's sorta fun and as long as you don't mind being complete glass can basically use auto and delete lot of the stuff out there.   I haven't tried it rank yet... cause if you get one counter I suspect you'd be farmed the whole match.  For unranked though its much fun and the damage is ... amusing.

 

Yeah I'm kind of similar.  I'm using explosives and tools, zerker amulet and chronomancer rune and run around shooting mortar kit into teamfights and clearing everyone out.  Still have good duelist potential but cant run into melee range in teamfights anymore.  Basically I just cast gyros get quickness and hit 3.7k every mortar crit 

[shion.2084]

1 hour ago, Kstyle.5829 said:

Yeah I'm kind of similar.  I'm using explosives and tools, zerker amulet and chronomancer rune and run around shooting mortar kit into teamfights and clearing everyone out.  Still have good duelist potential but cant run into melee range in teamfights anymore.  Basically I just cast gyros get quickness and hit 3.7k every mortar crit 

If you want to do mele, then use the spec I posted above.  It lets you run in and do an aoe spike (part of which involves firing mortar).

 

I currently am undecided between scholar and chrono.  The consistent damage from scholar is quite appealing.

[Kstyle.5829]

2 hours ago, shion.2084 said:

If you want to do mele, then use the spec I posted above.  It lets you run in and do an aoe spike (part of which involves firing mortar).

 

I currently am undecided between scholar and chrono.  The consistent damage from scholar is quite appealing.

yeah I made a build almost exactly like that one you posted. thats probably the best bruiser spec you can make right now. It's great bc it can stack up vulnerability fast

[Kstyle.5829]

I changed my mind.  I been playing untamed all week and it just made me realize how horrible scrapper is.  Even if you go full glass its still pathetic damage compared to other dps right now but you die twice as fast.  If you go regular meta build you have 0 damage.  You have no way to remove immoblize like holosmith so you literally just SIT IN IMMOBILIZE.  People know this by the time you're in like gold 2 so they just say "rotate immob on scrapper" and you just sit in immobilze for like 30 seconds straight.  Meanwhile you have catalyst able to fulfill every role in the game.   Straight GUTTED scrapper a year ago due to one flamethrower build  and just left it that way.  Man this game sucks.  Just gonna go play overwatch or something.  

Edited January 31, 2023 by Kstyle.5829

[shion.2084]

14 hours ago, Kstyle.5829 said:

I changed my mind.  I been playing untamed all week and it just made me realize how horrible scrapper is.  Even if you go full glass its still pathetic damage compared to other dps right now but you die twice as fast.  If you go regular meta build you have 0 damage.  You have no way to remove immoblize like holosmith so you literally just SIT IN IMMOBILIZE.  People know this by the time you're in like gold 2 so they just say "rotate immob on scrapper" and you just sit in immobilze for like 30 seconds straight.  Meanwhile you have catalyst able to fulfill every role in the game.   Straight GUTTED scrapper a year ago due to one flamethrower build  and just left it that way.  Man this game sucks.  Just gonna go play overwatch or something.  

I just can't do pets... I'd really like to do ranger if there was a legit option that didn't make use of pets. 

[Kodama.6453]

1 hour ago, shion.2084 said:

I just can't do pets... I'd really like to do ranger if there was a legit option that didn't make use of pets. 

Well, soulbeast is a very legit option and usually you stay perma fused in that elite spec,