Expand the finishers for Kinetic Accelerators? (6/27 Balance Patch)

[Hokk.1954]

I will preface that I believe the upcoming kinetic accelerators change is intriguing and I am interested to see it play out. However, I would like to suggest adding other finishers such as whirl and projectile finishers to the list of options to proc the trait adding an internal cd for the trait if necessary.

Limiting players to just leap and blast finishers feels a little too restrictive for quickness builds. The only consistent finisher for this I can think of for maintaining the boon is hammer 3, which is a skill that locks you into it for an extended period. While there are a myriad of blast finishers they are all on higher cooldowns which would likely mean we have to slot into several blast finishers arguably limiting our utility access just as much. This is besides the fact that the heal variant of scrapper won't have as much access to these skills if it wants to do the job effectively. As for the combo fields themselves, I'm not as worried about this as it's rare in actual scenarios that a combo field of some kind isn't below whatever the group is smashing.

This is why I suggest adding in other finishers as well. Projectile finishers will allow players to slot in rifle, whirl finishers will allow players to maintain quickness a little easier with shredder gyro (this skill in particular is why the trait would need an internal cooldown if whirl finishers are added) and by extension allow players to expand their utility slot options. I hope that the developers take this into serious consideration and rethink how they're approaching scrapper with this change as I do believe combo finishers are an underutilized part of the game in high-end PvE these days and would love to see it be a way to fuel boons again.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

In the first place this change was unecessary, uneeded and no one ever asked for it.

Hopefully they either change it or get rid of it

[Infusion.7149]

I do not think it would benefit the playerbase at large if Kinetic Accelerators is changed as proposed in the current notes. It requires too much effort if you camp hammer and grenades do not have finishers. It also makes heal scrapper unwieldy since the blast is only on infusion bomb.

Rocket charge is a leap finisher, shredder gyro is a whirl finisher, blast gyro is a blast finisher, throw mine used on power scrapper is a blast finisher, so if you run mortar kit you have added projectile finishers.

Whirl was probably left out due to electro-whirl.

[Jerus.4350]

It all comes down to the details, but if the quickness duration per application is going to remain the same as it is now, then we're looking pretty good.  Rocket Charge for 2 leaps, and Throw Mine for a blast, both on 12s cooldowns.  Add on Function Gyro, Aim-Assisted Rockets Orbital Strike, and potentially Healing Turret or Infusion bomb and we're golden. 

That's for DPS qScrapper though.  Heal Scrapper is looking even better.  We're natively going to take Elixir Gun and Medkit which each have a blast.  Pistol/Shield is likely a default and that means another blast, but say you want the might from blunderbuss, go ahead you have a Leap on Jump Shot.  That leaves you with 2 open utility slots (probably take Mortar still) and you can slot Flamethrower to make quickness a breeze as well as bring some utilty/might, or you can take Thumper Turret with it's 2 potential blasts and traited you get Protection.  Or, take Throw Mine for the boon strip and blast.   Heal Scrapper is looking really really good. (EDIT: I’d still like a Bulwark gyro rework, I don’t like the suicide button)

 

Of course this all hinges on the quickness duration per application remaining at 2.5s, that changes and things get a little messier but still very reasonable to keep up quickness on both DPS and Heal (and condi might be a thing 😉)

Edited June 10, 2023 by Jerus.4350

[Uvin.7406]

I concur. If this is the direction we are going in, players will need more finisher options. I would caution to adding an internal cooldown unless it can differentiate between the different types of combo finishers. 

[foxtrot.6902]

Ya...not sure what warranted the change to the core flavor of the class, seems like they think it needs it or something (that one patch attempt to change gyros to ground targeted etc etc). Scrapper easily one of favorite jobs, think it's pretty on the money minus series of wvw papercut nerfs its been getting. 

I never felt like it was too button mashy and I don't see this solving it, if anything potentially making it worse. Depends on what base duration is given. I'm still going to blow heal/shredder/blast/reconstruction likely off cd because, well...they're useful. 

I'm down to give it a go though, it could be fun and looks like it could work decently well with what's available. BUT if my rotation turns into flame kit must: flame kit swap > #2 > swap out of flame kit every 6 seconds I'm out for a few, time to take a break lol. 

This would've been a great time to revisit thumper turret & toolbelt skill cd's. Always thought would be fun to use but the cd's are just too high to make it worth slotting. 

[Baka.3489]

If they go ahead with this change, I would love them to expand the trait to all finishers, but give different amount of quickness to each finisher for balance. 0.5s quickness for projectile and whirl for example since they're more spammy, and higher duration for blasts and leaps. It means you can maintain bits of quickness with spammy finishers and give bigger chunks of quickness with other ones.  Giving the all finishers more impact would give the trait a neat identity (which it had with superspeed imo) rather than just leap and blasts especially for a Grandmaster trait.

When I play qscrapper I love being able to combo my hammer leap for break bars which will be harder to do if I'm forced to use it on cd. Or if I need more heals on myself, leaping through my F1 water fields reactively.

I feel like this trades one restrictive type of gameplay for another without making it feel any better. Sure it frees up heal scrapper a bit, but going further with finishers would make it even better.

[Zenix.6198]

This is such a weird fix, considering what they defined as the "underlying problem".
They basically wanted to move away from pigeonholing people into running full gyros and pressing them off CD....by pigeonholing them into running blast/leap utilities and using those off CD instead.

[Okhu.7948]

There was no underlying problem and it doesn't make any sense why they did this. No one asked for it. No one wants this. Scrapper is actually in a great spot right now. And doesn't need any "improving" or "tweaks".

[Noah Salazar.5430]

45 minutes ago, Okhu.7948 said:

There was no underlying problem and it doesn't make any sense why they did this. No one asked for it. No one wants this. Scrapper is actually in a great spot right now. And doesn't need any "improving" or "tweaks".

his actualy need a way to apply fury as No scope is dps traitline, and changing any utylity skill on qheal is too punishing, just to take rifle turret

Edited June 10, 2023 by Noah Salazar.5430

[Gendalfs.7521]

2 hours ago, Okhu.7948 said:

No one asked for it. No one wants this. Scrapper is actually in a great spot right now. And doesn't need any "improving" or "tweaks".

Anet: Hold my beer.

[Stalima.5490]

13 hours ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

In the first place this change was unecessary, uneeded and no one ever asked for it.

Hopefully they either change it or get rid of it

kinetic accelerators became a trait that basically required another trait to even function, they have now fixed that component to make it more usable amongst a wider variety of abilities, for example double mine+blast gyro is like a triple trigger for 2 slots.

You aren't just locked into a 5 gyro build constantly

[foxtrot.6902]

  

3 hours ago, Stalima.5490 said:

kinetic accelerators became a trait that basically required another trait to even function, they have now fixed that component to make it more usable amongst a wider variety of abilities, for example double mine+blast gyro is like a triple trigger for 2 slots.

You aren't just locked into a 5 gyro build constantly

Never was locked into a 5 gyro build though, and if anything, you could change up BD numbers to lower amount of gyros if you wanted to swap some of those out. Now however, we're likely locked out of 100% gyro build if we want due to won't have enough blast/leap finishers. 

Edited June 10, 2023 by foxtrot.6902

[Gendalfs.7521]

All I want to know is quickness duration blasting fields. If its like 10secs, then ok , I blast my field and do what ever else...

[Endaris.1452]

9 hours ago, Zenix.6198 said:

They basically wanted to move away from pigeonholing people into running full gyros and pressing them off CD....by pigeonholing them into running blast/leap utilities and using those off CD instead.

The irony is that any boon build relying on pressing any button at all will involve pressing one or multiple skills off-cooldown so as to keep the amount of boon duration on gear at a minimum to maximize damage output.

The main issue with this entire system of funneling all quickness and alacrity boon application into traits associated with utilities (or in this case finishers) is that it always allows us to fill our entire utility bar with skills of that type to minimize the loss in offensive stats. The entire issue in this entire thing is that sacrificing utility slots is always more efficient than sacrificing gear stats and that is how we arrive at these builds that just stack up one skill of a type. The only difference for scrapper now is that the type of skill you stack up on is different.

If anet wants us to have more freedom with our utility skills, what they need to do is to actually give us at least 1 dedicated utility skill for our spec that gives that boon while significantly reducing the amount that traits give so that utility skills can actually compete with gear stats.

[Gendalfs.7521]

Yeah 1 skill with 10sec quickness and 10 sec CD, problem solved. But inst that too eAsY?

[Endaris.1452]

45 minutes ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Yeah 1 skill with 10sec quickness and 10 sec CD, problem solved. But inst that too eAsY?

Make it 5s quickness and 12s CD and have there be a trait competing with a DPS trait that grants 2s extra quickness for every skill of that type.

Now you can run the 1 utility with near 100% BD, or 4 utilities with near 0% BD (assuming they all have 12s CD too). However, the impact of additional skills of the same type will be much lower impact for the boon uptime than it is now, making each additional utility slot more competitive for other skills and taking BD on gear stats instead.

The current way of doing it is not having a dedicated skill and just give each utility of that type 4s which makes taking 3 always better because you'd need 50% BD to free up a single utility slot which is way too high of a price. With the above suggestion, each extra utility is worth maybe 25% BD which is much less, making it easier for utilities to compete with gear stats.

 

The important thing to do is really to math out what price a utility skill is worth in gear stats. Because that is what these traits do for boon DPS builds.

Running 50% extra BD on current quickness scrapper cuts DPS by about 15% and allows us to replace one of our gyros. What utility skill could make up for such a humongous loss? Right, none of them even comes close in the slightest. If we only had to increase BD by 20% to replace a gyro, we only lose 6-7% DPS, which is WAY more stomachable - although probably still not worth since the gyros we run are actually pretty good.
Second problem really, the boon given has no relation to the power of the skill itself. Shredder Gyro is so good that we even run it on the DPS build where it gives no quickness so in this case the quickness trait just makes a very strong skill even more powerful for no particular reason.

(Note that the number for how much BD you need to replace a gyro is somewhat made up, I know that it works slightly different on scrapper due to more power being condensed into blast+heal gyro through traits/toolbelt - but it should still make the root of the problem obvious, the worth of utility skills that unconditionally provide sizeable boon uptime via traits is innately unbalanced)

Edited June 10, 2023 by Endaris.1452

[Gendalfs.7521]

 

8 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

No one asked for it. No one wants this. Scrapper is actually in a great spot right now. And doesn't need any "improving" or "tweaks".

22 minutes ago, Endaris.1452 said:

gyros we run are actually pretty good

Thats the whole thing. They again created problem out of thin air and try to fix something (by something I mean they actually dont know whats wrong or right with scrapper 🙂   )

[Endaris.1452]

Well, I was mostly discussing the qDPS variant here where the change probably won't do anything except force us to use Hammer 3 off CD and maybe take flamethrower over blast gyro (what a meme, really).

I was getting at a more fundamental design problem rather than how it affects the current build though.

Because if our gyros weren't good, we would still have to take them for quickness and in the case of the heal variant I would certainly argue that being able to use things like purge gyro reactively for incoming conditions is a more attractive prospect than casting it off-cd for quickness.

So overall I don't think that the general aim of trying to make gyro stacking less of a requirement is a bad goal, the way this patch does it does not serve that goal in any way though.

It's kind of funny how condi quickscrapper might become a thing for the sole reason that flamethrower 2 is the most spammable blast finisher in the game after guard's hammer 2, meaning it may not have to invest anything into BD for 100% quickness if anet wants to keep the power variant viable without forcing it onto flamethrower as well.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Endaris.1452

[Monchichi.9301]

Changing the spamming of gyros for quickness out for the spamming of finishers doesn't make qscrapper any less spammy or more reactive/flexible. We'll have to take utilities that have fields and finishers and use them every XX seconds just like we're doing now for gyros.

And leap finishers are horrible in most fights. People are already yeeting themselves off platforms because they forgot to swap out rocket boots, so I don't see builds that intentionally slot in leaps as workable in some places.

What scrapper needs is multiple sources of quickness, so it can be more flexible with what it slots in and what it uses. How about tying it to toolbelt skills. Using a toolbelt skill every XX seconds might be spammy, but at least you can use anything you want for the toolbelt skills. Or maybe keep it on superspeed and also add it on blast finishers. The you can take a mix of gyros and blasts. Or make it on any finishers at all, whirls and projectiles too. 

I think any of these options would lead to a more natural/fluid playstyle for both qdps and qheal scrapper, much more than juggling fields and some finishers but not others. 

Please reconsider.

[Endaris.1452]

15 hours ago, Monchichi.9301 said:

you can use anything you want for the toolbelt skills

It's going to be the same thing again, anything you want will be restricted to skills that have low toolbelt cooldowns so a heal scrapper would never want to take elixir R, Elixir Gun would be pretty subpar because of its high CD toolbelt, Blast and Heal Gyro would be bad too.

Any arbitrary trigger condition will be balanced around the optimal skill(s) for that trigger condition because otherwise it will be too overpowered.

The alternative is having unintuitive ICDs to play around or an approach like the one I suggested.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Endaris.1452

[MLinni.6109]

Also please, let's not forget poor scrappers in WvW. Since we have to Jump through several hoops with Kinetic Accelerators now, please return quickness instead of a paltry bit of might and fury to a GRANDMASTER trait. Tempest and Druid get alac and put out might and fury mainly by existing in the vicinity 😗.

Edited June 11, 2023 by MLinni.6109

[Banchou.5628]

19 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Thats the whole thing. They again created problem out of thin air and try to fix something (by something I mean they actually dont know whats wrong or right with scrapper 🙂   )

Exactly, if anything they are making things worst, feels more like a nerf than anything else made by someone who doesn't play as scrapper often, no matter the kind of game mode. We aren't locked into 5 gyros and, at least for me, I use them bc I like them and how they work - if I didn't wanted to use gyros I would just play as holo/mech. 

44 minutes ago, MLinni.6109 said:

Also please, let's not forget poor scrappers in WvW. Since we have to Jump through several hoops with Kinetic Accelerators now please return quickness instead of a paltry bit of might and quickness to a GRANDMASTER trait. Tempest and Druid get alac and put out might and fury mainly by existing in the vicinity 😗.

As someone who died too many times on WxW thx to leaping where I shouldn't bc the target did a step back, THIS. (and really, if I could remove the leap from the skillbar during WxW I would)  

[Ravenwulfe.5360]

I am going to have to say no this change does not intrigue me. There are a lot of builds that are going to get gutted. This doesn't fix the problem of needing to put certain abilities on cooldown it just shifts it. Scrapper utility is already falling way behind because they just keep buffing firebrand, and add on top of that we don't get the DPS or sustain to back it up either.

[Stalima.5490]

I believe the main concern of this trait is that instead of the scrapper mashing every gyro on cooldown, they will now be forced to execute rather pointless, non-sensical combos just to keep the buff going.