July 18 - no announced changes to engineer when some are needed

[Jash.3104]

I'm a disabled player and before these recent balance changes I was able to comfortably contribute to most roles in group play between Scrapper and Mechanist. Gameplay was fun and reactive now it's just a clunky mess which makes it very very difficult for me to properly contribute.

Specifically, Kinetic Accelerators and Mechanical Genius are the problem. Kinetic Accelerators make it hard to keep up quickness in group play with leap finishers jumping me all over the place. While in solo play it's almost impossible because of how clunky it is putting down my own combo fields outside of gyros. Mechanical Genius is just ridiculous with how much the mech zooms around on its own. It really feels terrible to play now when it used to be so fun.

I've since quit playing this game as Engineer has been my main since release and I'm not interested in switching to any other class when the balance of this game is so unstable, lacking any coherent balance philosophy and completely ignores the fun factor when making changes. 

[Thron Stal.9367]

On 6/30/2023 at 6:19 PM, WipZedKay.5316 said:

After having gone through the preview for the July 18 balance fixes, it's quite disheartening to see no mention of engineer at all. Given that there were a lot of active discussions here about both the scrapper and mechanist changes, to see none of the feedback be substantial enough to be at the very least mentioned kind of doesn't bode well for us engineer players. So let's summarize the main pieces of feedback in case anyone from Anet does read this post.

 

Core

• The cooldown reduction from Power Wrench (for tool-kit skills), Gadgeteer (for gadgets) and HGH (for elixirs) was removed and instead moved into the skills baselines, except not for all of them. There are notable examples for PvE such as Elixir S and more notable for WvW/PvP such as Box of Nails, Prybar, Gear Shield, Magnet.

It feels quite bad that these cooldown reductions were added onto the skills baselines except for ones that were used quite heavily. If they were given less cooldown reduction because of their common use that would be okay but keeping them at the old base cooldown doesn't feel too good, especially for some which don't become broken from the lowered cooldowns. Instead of the 20% HGH used to give, perhaps giving Elixir S 10% would be fine?

 

Scrapper

• Being limited to leap and blast finisher to provide quickness give you less room to move freely as leap finishers tend to make you move.
• Requiring combo fields makes it rather punishing to dodge attacks overall since you need have access to the combo field when the combo is completed. This makes you more stationary as opposed to the superspeed runner that made a lot of people fall in love with Scrapper to begin with.
• The type of combo requirement makes it a lot more tedious to pre-stack for fractals since you need to swap a lot of utility skills to have more blast finishers since leap finishers will most likely throw you off a cliff.
• For PvP and WvW which is very focused on movement makes the combo requirement detrimental. Leap finishers would most likely lead to death since you are animation locked for quite some time or are usually used to escape from a situation. In a similar vein, you can't guarantee that you will be within a combo field when you need the boons since you're usually dodging stuff forcing you in and out of combo fields. When it was tied to superspeed, you could give yourself boons before an engagement without having to worry about waiting for combo finishers to trigger or provide boons independent of your positioning, movement and active evasion.

Some ideas to solve these issues I have seen was to change the combo requirement from leap/blast to just be completed combos but with lower base boon duration as to not re-create the current thief problem. This would allow you to use shredder gyro in conjunction with some other gyro to provide boons that follows you independent of your evasion and movement again. It would also let you have more superspeed like previously since you could run more gyros for combo fields and finishers. This wouldn't directly remove the current iteration either since leap and blast finishers would still provide quickness as it does not.

Is this the right answer for scrappers boon application? Hard to answer but it's an idea I have seen floating around.

 

Mechanist

• Mechanical Genius is currently too punishing since it applies the penalty instantly. The removal of the 6 seconds grace period give you no leeway when it comes to dodging or moving into better positions. The fact that you usually have to wander outside of the MG range in order to properly position the mech does not help the fact. Likewise, the mech has a tendency to overshoot your position when recalling it making it even more annoying place it properly in order to receive the buff.
• Mechanical Genius forces your eyes to be more on the buff bar to see the icon now that it is so punishing. It being small and now flickering as you try to place yourself correctly is rather annoying. This is due to the mech being so easily lost in any fight with more than 5 players and the lack of dedicated marker on the mech when it's so essential to be close to it does not make it any better.
• The cooldown penalty in combination with the current iteration of Mechanical Genius is far too punishing. Playing around your mech with zero leeway is bad enough but is it really necessary to give the player +50% longer cooldowns on top of that?

Mechanical Genius makes Mechanist the only build in the game that punishes you just for playing it. Not playing it poorly but just playing it overall since you cannot exactly control where it goes and you need to stay within it's range in a game with emphasis on movement and active evasion. The previous iteration was okay, it punished you for just letting the mech be AFK with some leeway to correct where it stood. This doesn't change the fact that original pet class, ranger, does not punish you for just playing the class. It lets you experience the fantasy of having a companion without a care in the world yet the mechanist players have to micromanage something that cannot be fully control and are punished for trying.

Returning Mechanical Genius to the previous iteration is an okay solution. Removing the proximity mechanic in its entirety would let you focus solely on your own movement and dodging attack while making the support mech players need to learn to properly position the mech to maximise its effect.

• Moving barrier application from mace auto attacks to mace 2 has made it practically speaking, impossible to maintain permanent alacrity without using F2 or barrier signet.

Heal Alacrity Mechanist uses F2 and barrier signet to great effect in the hands of experienced players as you can react to mechanics with them. Need to stunbreak or provide stability? Use F2 when needed. Need to block projectiles or need more barrier to reduce incoming damage? Use barrier signet. It's understandable that alacdps doesn't retain this given it's heavier focus on doing damage at the cost of utility but it doesn't make much sense for HAM, the dedicated healer who uses utility slots for utility to be forced into the same requirement of using utility skills for boons.

There are different ways to solve this problem. Easiest would be to revert the change to put barrier on mace AA3 instead of mace 2. Power alacdps and condi alacdps doesn't use mace at all so it wouldn't indirectly buff them by accident. If you were to increase the amount of alacrity given when you provide barrier, then it would allow the alacdps variants to bring less boon duration and I don't think we want every boondps option to do 40k now would we? cough cough thief cough cough.

 

This post is meant to summarize the feedback from the latest balance patch to show that the changes negatively affected both performance and playing experience for these specs. While the scrapper changes are mixed from some not really caring to many (myself included) preferring the berserker playstyle scrapper used to have. The changes to mechanist punishes you for just playing it and has forced the healer to use reactive skills to maintain boons when healers sacrifice damage to provide utility. All I hope is that these issues are at the very least addressed but ideally fixed by July 18:th when the next balance fix is released.

If I have forgotten anything, let me know and I will edit it into the post!

I logged on to check specifically the status of my scrapper and Mech.  Screwed up before June (See Teapots post), screwed up after June patch and still screwed up even worse than before....

While Rangers get immediate attention.. Give me a kitten break!

[jason.1083]

10 minutes ago, AreohCobing.5092 said:

I logged on to check specifically the status of my scrapper and Mech.  Screwed up before June (See Teapots post), screwed up after June patch and still screwed up even worse than before....

While Rangers get immediate attention.. Give me a kitten break

Why am I not surprised. Oh I know why, because this is business as usual. 

[Tuskali.6417]

Oh man...

Does Anet even read the forums?

When you look at how Herald got buffed even further I feel like Anet has 9 people, 1 for every class and they don´t talk to eachother.

Can we please get some acknowledgement for all the engi enjoyers?

[Tuskali.6417]

I really hate to be that guy that complains a lot... I don´t normally do that ever.

After playing new scrapper more I still have some issues with it. Everytime I think that I get used to it something happens that just makes me a little mad.

I really hate that you´re basically stationary when providing quickness except if you´re using Blast Gyro (which is a damage loss if you´re playing dps) and if you don´t use Blast Gyro you don´t have a stun break anymore. And if you´re stunned you can´t provide quickness anymore.

As far as I remember an activated gyro still gave you quickness and did damage when you were stunned, plus you had more mobility because you could move around with the field.

If you´re fighting a boss that moves around a lot it´s really a pain to give people quickness.

I just can´t get over it.

I get how people like the new playstyle. It can really be fun. But to me it feels like dps scrapper is for raids and strikes only now.

Feels so weird playing it in Open World.

It´s really such a shame. I felt so at home with that class. And even though it potentially does more damage now it feels like they clipped my wings.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Tuskali.6417

[Crain.4789]

15 hours ago, Tuskali.6417 said:

I really hate that you´re basically stationary when providing quickness

That's it. That is why it feels clunky. It's not about the DPS oder boon duration. Numbers are okay as far as I see but only as long as you don't want or need to move. 

Last week we had Mai Trin fractal. Someone struggled and had to move away. Mai Trin jumped after that player and because I had just dutifully placed my little combo field and activated hammer 3, I of course followed. Half of the quickness went to the mists while the rest of the group couldn't follow fast enought. 

I know this seems like a small thing to ignore. But such situations accumulate and thereby aren't fun. We play t4 fractals, but we are not a perfect group. Mistakes happen like in most groups and while scrapper used to be able to easily fix them (at least the way I played him), it just feels weird and forced now.

[Thron Stal.9367]

On 7/26/2023 at 5:58 AM, Tuskali.6417 said:

I really hate to be that guy that complains a lot... I don´t normally do that ever.

After playing new scrapper more I still have some issues with it. Everytime I think that I get used to it something happens that just makes me a little mad.

I really hate that you´re basically stationary when providing quickness except if you´re using Blast Gyro (which is a damage loss if you´re playing dps) and if you don´t use Blast Gyro you don´t have a stun break anymore. And if you´re stunned you can´t provide quickness anymore.

As far as I remember an activated gyro still gave you quickness and did damage when you were stunned, plus you had more mobility because you could move around with the field.

If you´re fighting a boss that moves around a lot it´s really a pain to give people quickness.

I just can´t get over it.

I get how people like the new playstyle. It can really be fun. But to me it feels like dps scrapper is for raids and strikes only now.

Feels so weird playing it in Open World.

It´s really such a shame. I felt so at home with that class. And even though it potentially does more damage now it feels like they clipped my wings.

Anet wants you to play like they play it. 

[doc.9162]

On 7/27/2023 at 2:10 AM, Crain.4789 said:

That's it. That is why it feels clunky. It's not about the DPS oder boon duration. Numbers are okay as far as I see but only as long as you don't want or need to move. 

yeah its a bit clunky, but it's very much stronger now. mia trin can be frustrating when it goes wrong, that's the tradeoff i guess.. scrapper comes with banana levels of passive barrier. paired with its ability to stun lock mobs or break defiance bars like they don't exist, its still my favourite all rounder.

[Crain.4789]

5 hours ago, doc.9162 said:

its still my favourite all rounder

In spite of everything mine too. My Engi was the fourth character I created back in 2013 and it became my main soon. Shortly after HoT came out, I switched to the scrapper and although I tried other classes in between, none were as interesting for me as this one. Even after various patches (some were better, some hurt) this hasn't changed. Even now I'm still playing the scrapper as main. I would just be a lot happier if they at least went for the whirls instead of the leaps.
This doesn't solve all the problems, but would give back the class' mobility to those who appreciate and use it, without taking anything away from others who enjoy the new mechanic already.

Leaps in general have often been a source of debate. It wasn't necessary to choose such an unreliable finisher when there is such a simple alternative.

[Kalli.4506]

Why did they change the quickness scrapper to this? It's too clunky and not fun at all to play now 😠 Can't they just change it back to how it was before the June update? Why are they always doing these bad choices, for what reason? Are they even playing their own game?

[Nevartius.2459]

Will this change be reverted? I joined back after a break to prepare for the new expansion and got hit with the realisation that the spec I've put 600 hours into -qdps scrapper, the entirety of my play time - has gone from something I've enjoyed playing so much I've never felt the need to try anything different, to a horrible, stationary, clunky, *slow* mess. It's not fun to play.

Have they discussed the impact of the changes and any feed back they've received? Otherwise I think I'll put this game aside again until, if ever, the charge is reverted. 

Was a shame too, after they changed Gyros to give superspeed on use rather than on expiry (for Blast and Shredder gyro) the class had never felt smoother to play. The rotation felt so straight forward and intuitive, it had great mobility, you weren't ever stressing about keeping uptime up. Flow your gyros into each other, hammer 2, grenade kit 2 and 5, weave some autos in there, cast your gyros off cooldown, the timings all synced up again for your hammer 5 while not being bound to 1 spot, was great. 

Not sure why you would change something that wasn't broken to begin with. Really off putting. 

Don't usually do stuff like this, but having 600 hours of time into a character thrown away will do that to someone. 

 

 

[Wurzy.5182]

20 hours ago, Nevartius.2459 said:

Will this change be reverted? I joined back after a break to prepare for the new expansion and got hit with the realisation that the spec I've put 600 hours into -qdps scrapper, the entirety of my play time - has gone from something I've enjoyed playing so much I've never felt the need to try anything different, to a horrible, stationary, clunky, *slow* mess. It's not fun to play.

Have they discussed the impact of the changes and any feed back they've received? Otherwise I think I'll put this game aside again until, if ever, the charge is reverted. 

Was a shame too, after they changed Gyros to give superspeed on use rather than on expiry (for Blast and Shredder gyro) the class had never felt smoother to play. The rotation felt so straight forward and intuitive, it had great mobility, you weren't ever stressing about keeping uptime up. Flow your gyros into each other, hammer 2, grenade kit 2 and 5, weave some autos in there, cast your gyros off cooldown, the timings all synced up again for your hammer 5 while not being bound to 1 spot, was great. 

Not sure why you would change something that wasn't broken to begin with. Really off putting. 

Don't usually do stuff like this, but having 600 hours of time into a character thrown away will do that to someone. 

 

 

Its interesting to see how this topic gets ppl here. For me it feels the same in all this years of GW2 i never felt the need of posting something here. But the scrapper changes almost felt personal. Because the Scrapper was such an easy to execute and fun to play class as casual. I would really like to know how many casual players are out there in this situation. 😛
I think i will probably buy soto at some point in the winter or something, but right know i also feel like: fu, when ur killing the fun im not buying the game. Maybe there will be a real rework at some point, but for now it seems like devs dont give a kitten. (hopefully just a lot work with soto)