An Idea to Help Fix the Mechanist Playstyle

[nomir.4597]

Issue: Very passive playstyle that can output really good damage. For many people it isn't fun to play nor fun to play against.

Part of the Cause: Adding a pet/mech and signets to a specialization encourages a passive playstyle.

One Possible Solution: Adjust the signet skills and the pet/mech to be more active.

 

CHANGE SUGGESTIONS BELOW

 

Mechanical Genius: Remove the recharge penalty when mech is too far away. The current recharge penalty fix is not much fun. It can feel frustrating with the mech controls and it can feel like we are fighting the mech's controls instead of our opponents at times.

 

Signets: Change most of the signets' passive affects to flip between you and your mech. The active effects occur around you and the mech. Add ammo to help keep the passive on who you want while still being able to use the active ability. This could create more meaningful and fun choices while helping control some of the passive damage.

 

Rectifier Signet:

      Passive: Heal you or your mech every second.

      Active: Flip who has the passive effect. Heal yourself and your mech. Lower the healing as you can cast it two times close together.

      Maximum Count: 2

      Count Recharge: Lower than current recharge

      Recharge: Around 5 seconds

 

      Reasoning: The signet change is to match the other signet changes and keep the same overall healing power.

 

Barrier Signet:

      Passive: Incoming strike and condition damage is reduced on you or your mech.

      Active: Flip who has the passive effects. Create a blocking dome around yourself and your mech. You and allies gain barrier once per second. You and your allies cannot receive more than one barrier from this skill each second. The mech's dome is no longer larger.

      Maximum Count: 2

      Count Recharge: Keep the same as current recharge.

      Recharge: 5 seconds

 

      Reasoning: You control if you are tanking or your mech. Opponents can also react to who has the passive. You also have to actively position yourself to barrier more people. The active should stay relatively the same strength. The 2 ammo should allow you to choose who tanks while still using the active.

 

Force Signet:

      Passive: Increase strike damage dealt by you or your mech.

      Active: Flip who the passive effect. Knock foes away from yourself and away from your mech. Lower the damage due to being an ammo skill.

      Maximum Count: 2

      Count Recharge: Lower than current recharge

      Recharge: 5 seconds

 

      Reasoning: Control who does the extra damage by flipping the passive. Before activating mech skills, you can switch the power to the mech. Before you use your big damage skills, you flip the power to yourself. A passive playstyle could still work, but you will lose damage by not controlling the passive effect.

 

Superconducting Signet:

      Passive: Increase condition damage dealt by you or your mech

      Active: Flip who has the passive effect. Create a damaging field around you and your mech. Opponents can receive conditions from you and your mech. Condition durations lowered to 2 seconds.

      Maximum Count: 2

      Count Recharge: Keep the same as current recharge

      Recharge: 5 seconds

 

      Reasoning: You decide if you want to stack the damage in a smaller area or cover more area by moving away from your mech. Also control who does the extra damage from conditions by flipping the passive. Before activating mech skills, you can switch the condition damage to your mech. Before you use your big damage skills, you flip the condition damage to youself. A passive playstyle could still work, but you will lose damage by not controlling the passive effect.

 

Shift Signet: The signet is too overloaded and feels mandatory. Some of the power is moved elsewhere and the shadowstep is reworked to create a more active playstyle with counterplay.

      Passive: Increase movement speed of both you and your mech. Remove the passive, boons you gain are copied to your mech.

      Active: You shadowstep to your mech's location while your mech shadowsteps to your location. Removes conditions from you and your mech.

      Recharge: Same as before

 

      Reasoning: This keeps the speed bonus for both you and your mech to keep movement speed similar, but still has the flipping feel as you flip positions. This could create fun setups as you crash your mech down and flip locations, or flip who your opponent is attacking. It also loses power if you are stacking with your mech. You need to control where you are compared to your mech. It also creates counterplay as the opponent can anticipate where you will shadowstep to and play accordingly. This is not an ammo skill to control its power and make misusing it more impactful.

 

Exigency Protocols: Remove the current effect. New effect, boons you gain are copied to your mech.

 

      Reasoning: Exigency Protocols isn't something I think about much when making my build, but not having my boons copied to my mech feels bad. Moving the boon gain to the minor makes Shift Signet not as mandatory and thus can create more diversity in builds.

 

Overclock Signet:

      Passive: Reduce recharge of the other signets.

      Active: You and your mech receive the passive effects of all your signets, gain 25 stacks of might, and 2 stacks of stability for 8 seconds. Allies around you or your mech gain 10 stacks of might for 8 seconds. Allies cannot gain more than 10 stacks from this skill. If your mech is not present, your mech is summoned.

      Recharge: Same as before.

 

      Reasoning: The summoning your mech is nice, but the mech buster cannon doesn't feel impactful and is just another long range shot from your mech. I want an overcharge that feels impactful if I use it at the right time, but if I misuse it, I lose out on an opportunity. The added might to allies also makes it more helpful on support builds. This is not an ammo skill to control its power and make misusing it more impactful.

 

Mech Core J-Drive: Remove grants passive bonuses while recharging. This is due to the flipping nature of many of the signets and the Overclock Signet's active doing a similar role.

 

Mech Auto Attacks and Skills: Move some of the mech's passive auto attack damage to the mech's active skills. This removes some of the power from a passive playstyle and using your signets properly becomes more impactful.

 

Conclusion: Overall, I am trying to create some more choices for the character which can be fun to play with and against. I also don't want to completely remove the passive playstyle, but add more of a reward when you use your skills well.

[Arantheal.7396]

Overall I like your changes, but some are questionable, and one in particular is really bad.

the worst: exigency protocols.
reason: mech healer builds are currently up there in the meta tier, and part of it is the increased effectiveness of regeneration, due to engineer having a lot of access to regenration via healing turret, elixier gun and mortar kit. Removing this passive would severely weaken mech healer builds for no reason at all, as they need active kit flipping and proper cd management already anyways. Adding the boon sharing to this trait is fine in and of itself, to turn shift signet away from mandatory, but not at the cost of its current effects. 

bad: shift signet: 
Mech has a really wonky pathfinding AI, and especially with ranged mech, you will end up in really akward places most of the time. This would make its hochade-effect really frustrating to play with, so it should remain a tragetable shadowstep, giving players the positioning controll they need with mech anyways.

bad: Mech core J-Drive:
Yea, no. I get offering new playstyles for mech because it's a bit too dull, and I really like your changes so far, but I don't get removing playstyles for the same reason. Your taste isn't the end-all-be-all definition of fun. Some people enjoy the passive playstyle of mechanist, and they have all rights to do so. With your proposed changes, this trait should still remain as is, giving passive signet effects to both you and your mech. It is a loss you have to trade for anyways, since you miss out access to quickness and reduced cd's from Jade Dynamo, which is a better pick in almost all cases where it matters, and where it doesn't - like open world and event farming - Mech core J-Drive is amazing QoL. 

questionable: Mech Autoattacks and Skills
Offloading its AA dmg to its skills worsens the problem of mech having great burst potential in PvP and WvW. Some people get chain slapped into oblivion. I'd rather see its dmg output overall decreased, but provide bonuses to the engi's own attacks. Blades would give a condition duration modifier to the engi only, Fists give strike dmg increase to engi only, and guns would increase crit chance for engi only. Lets see how these changes play out, and if it's still too powerful, add the restriction of these bonuses only applying to targets the mech is currently succesfully hitting with its AA.

[zaced.7948]

tl:dr

probably cool ideas, won't happen tho because nobody at anet cares or reads this forum. you may as well have written it down and burnt the paper.

apart from that passive playstyle is what anet seems to want for popular classes since it makes winning by facerolling the keyboard easier and therefore caters to the biggest demographic in gw2: the mechanically impaired.

[nomir.4597]

 Zaced, I understand. I have been reading the forums for quite a few years. I see many posts complaining and just suggesting removing Anet's attempted fixes. I see fewer ideas for fixing the problems, though I have seem some. I am just trying to encourage a little bit more positive discussions instead of all the negative.

Arantheal, I think you make some really good points.

For exigency protocols, I don't play the healer mech build myself, but I see where it could be important. I still like moving the boon sharing to the minor traits and exigency protocols seems to make the most sense. I do worry it could overload the exigency protocol trait. Maybe keep regen you apply is stronger and remove the mech under half health part to keep it from getting overloaded.

I thought about the shift signet problem after I posted as well. I mentioned earlier with Mechanical Genius can feel like fighting the mech controls. Then I fell into the same trap with my suggested shift signet. Maybe shift signet would have to stay the same and just move the boon sharing part.

I still think the J-Drive change would be needed though. The biggest complaint I remember before the Mechanical Genius change was about the specialization dealing the top damage while pushing one button. Some of this was overexaggerated, but there was some truth to it. It felt like Anet was trying to give us something to manage, but what they gave us isn't fun. Giving the passive to yourself and the mech on the minor wouldn't fix anything. We would have the same passive issue. I would hope the flipping signets would not kill the passive playstyle, but lower the damage just enough for the passive playstyle to be in a good place. I do agree J-Drive might need something more though if the passive is removed. Any suggestions?

The problems with the burst damage was something I didn't know about, though I am a casual PvE player and have just been getting into WvW this year. I think there is potential for the bonuses to the Engineer's skills. I wouldn't want just a straight increase of damage though. I would like it to create some synergy or feeling of working with your mech. Maybe along the lines of Spark Revolver adding a mark on the enemy. The Engineer's next crit attack would consume the mark and have increased ferocity. For the Rolling Smash, it adds a mark and the next Engineer skill would consume the mark and have increased condition damage. You then wouldn't want to just use the mech skill on autocast, but want to time it a little more.

[Arantheal.7396]

2 hours ago, nomir.4597 said:

 Zaced, I understand. I have been reading the forums for quite a few years. I see many posts complaining and just suggesting removing Anet's attempted fixes. I see fewer ideas for fixing the problems, though I have seem some. I am just trying to encourage a little bit more positive discussions instead of all the negative.

Arantheal, I think you make some really good points.

For exigency protocols, I don't play the healer mech build myself, but I see where it could be important. I still like moving the boon sharing to the minor traits and exigency protocols seems to make the most sense. I do worry it could overload the exigency protocol trait. Maybe keep regen you apply is stronger and remove the mech under half health part to keep it from getting overloaded.

I thought about the shift signet problem after I posted as well. I mentioned earlier with Mechanical Genius can feel like fighting the mech controls. Then I fell into the same trap with my suggested shift signet. Maybe shift signet would have to stay the same and just move the boon sharing part.

I still think the J-Drive change would be needed though. The biggest complaint I remember before the Mechanical Genius change was about the specialization dealing the top damage while pushing one button. Some of this was overexaggerated, but there was some truth to it. It felt like Anet was trying to give us something to manage, but what they gave us isn't fun. Giving the passive to yourself and the mech on the minor wouldn't fix anything. We would have the same passive issue. I would hope the flipping signets would not kill the passive playstyle, but lower the damage just enough for the passive playstyle to be in a good place. I do agree J-Drive might need something more though if the passive is removed. Any suggestions?

The problems with the burst damage was something I didn't know about, though I am a casual PvE player and have just been getting into WvW this year. I think there is potential for the bonuses to the Engineer's skills. I wouldn't want just a straight increase of damage though. I would like it to create some synergy or feeling of working with your mech. Maybe along the lines of Spark Revolver adding a mark on the enemy. The Engineer's next crit attack would consume the mark and have increased ferocity. For the Rolling Smash, it adds a mark and the next Engineer skill would consume the mark and have increased condition damage. You then wouldn't want to just use the mech skill on autocast, but want to time it a little more.

In my opinion, the mistake you make with these proposals, is the same mistake I've seen all too often when people make balance suggestions: To apply the narrow focus of their own playstyle for sweeping changes that impacts the game beyond their window of recognition.

exigency protocols f.e. might feel bloated if you add the boon sharing to it, on top of its other effects, but that doesn't negate the value you get from its current effects throughout PvP / WvW content, and to an extend even in PvE. The mech regen and damage reduction is there for a very important reason: Players in WvW and PvP often can and will burst your mech down, so exigency protocols give you valuable split seconds to react to that, by soaking additional dmg. And in PvE solo content, it maintains your ability to tank and juggle several elites or a champs effectively, without your mech going on cd after a few seconds.
Without it, you'd actually force players in various situations into more passive play, by opting to keep their mech ranged and staying out of the fray that you have to kite, because it would get slapped out of existence like a wet noodle without its dmg soaking abilities. And that's counter productive to what you want to achieve with your changes, of more active, invloved utilization of your mech.
The reason you don't think much about this minor when making your build choices, is because it just works its magic when needed, being a safety meassure, that you naturally don't value as long as it's there, but would miss direly if removed. The mech is the mechanists's class mechanic, and this effect keeps it from getting shut down far too easily.

And I see the same issue with your J-Drive change. It is not a minor trait, having effects to all builds, it is a mayor pick, and it's exclusatory to high-dps quickness builds via Jade Dynamo, and alacrity builds via barrier engine. If you Pick the QoL / Reliability that is J-Drive, you kitten yourself out of high dmg or support builds. And that 3rd option then should come with the reward you deserve for putting down the other avialble, great choices.
Especially in PvP, J-Drive is a popular choice, precisely BECAUSE it allows signet passives to stay active while they are on cd. You need all the healing you can get your hands on, and the last thing you want to do is trade in a passive heal for an active one. You need both, at all times, because the damage creep is real, and builds slap like crazy these days. You also need the mobility from shift signet to be up at all times, because a shadowstep, that slows you down after using it, defeats its own purpose. The same is true for the elite in PvP, which is almost never used for its beam, but as an oh-kitten button to recall your mech, after it got burst down by the various builds that are capable of doing so already. And if you hit that oh-kitten button, the last thing you want to trade in for are increased cd's on your emergency teleport, and your heals at the same time. An oh-kitten button worsening the functionality of your other oh-kitten buttons is a kinda bad oh-kitten button.
And precisely because this is an option you have to commit to when crafting your build, J-Drive is perfectly fine to stay as is, because it is added build variety, that you'd loose if you wanted to kill the passive signet use.
Your other changes already do enough to make mechanist more engaging to play, even without the passive flipping. But removing consistent signet uptime, would not only kill a huge variety of PvP / WvW focused builds, and get rid of a huge chunk of QoL for open world farming, but ultimately commit to the mayor sin of balance changes: dictating to people what should be fun and what shouldn't.
People complain about passive mechanist playstile being too dull for their taste. Ok. I guess that's true (without having any data on the issue). You already fixed that. Don't break it again, by making people mad that think engineer is too complicated/stressful to enjoy most of the time, and cater to mechanist precisely because they enjoy the chill faceroll that is Mechanist open world farming, or for its reliability throughout high octane PvP fights.
Nothing needs to appeal to everyone, especially because there are engineer options that have way higher skill ceilings like holo and scrapper, that everyone can opt to play with, who gets borred by mechanist. People have different taste, and enjoy different things, so they should have different places to go to find what they enjoy. Someone who complaints about mechanist being too passive to play, and then actively picks a trait that makes it even more passive to play (arguably passive to play in the first place), should be asked why they keep slapping themselves.
So my suggestion for your J-Drive change would be this: Leave it alone. Same for Exigency Protocols.

As for the AA, I also was thinking about a mark on targets enabling these damaging effects in the first place, but the game has already strayed far from its original easy readability (there were nothing but boons and conditions on your bar or the target readout) and I don't think further icon spam on the target info serves gw2 overall any good. Maybe if they were only made visible to the mechanist, or be floating icons above targeted players, but we both know a-net would be lazy on implementation, and therefore I'd rather go with an effect targeted at the one running this build, instead of receiving icon spam from their build. And since mechs already change optically from running one of the 3 AA options, this is enough visible distinction to boot.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

Mechanist damage output isnt even high at all. The passive build has garbage damage output for a DPS and the good Mechanist build with competitive damage requires a lot of input and micro management that almost no one actually play it and most people would rather switch to Holosmith just to get rid of the extra micromanagement. 

 

Mechanist needs 2 thing in all gamemode : having our toolbelt skill back at least when the pet isnt on field and getting rid of mechanical genius. There is 0 reason for Anet not to give us our beltskill back they removed almost all trade off spec used to have. And mechanical genius is just punishement for playing a pet spec as you're supposed to do.

 

Mechanist in PvE is actually in an decent state if we remove mechanical genius. Power is still meh but Power Hammer Mechanist is doing ok. Condi and support mech are both performing solid. 

 

Mechanist in both PvP and WvW needs some drastic buff, even after removing mechanical genius. It's extremely easy to exploit the pet's poor pathfinding, the range on their melee weapon is so pathetic it can only hit if your opponent doesnt move for 3 sec while standing next to it and whether its melee or ranged, the coefficient on their attack has been nerfed so heavily it barely tickle. And I will not even talk about how fragile your own character is. Shift signet is simply mandatory because instant teleport in any PvP gamemode is just too strong to pass on but that's just not enough. You have to heavily invest into survival skill to even stay alive and hope that your pet is able to kill your opponent before it kills you.  But good luck killing your opponent with a pet that go through all traps, CC/condi field,mark only to either get feared, stunned,pushed back and so on.