Rifle Mesmers Direct Allies to the Nearest Emergency Exit

[draxynnic.3719]

6 minutes ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

but still more of a wvw thing. In pve by the time we ground target, cast it and trigger the portal we could have already ran to them and begin rezzing.

Depends on whether they're downed in bad, and pulling them over might allow others to start ressing (if you're using rifle on mesmer, you're probably the healer, and if you're the healer, taking time ressing could mean more people downing).

[HotDelirium.7984]

18 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Depends on whether they're downed in bad, and pulling them over might allow others to start ressing (if you're using rifle on mesmer, you're probably the healer, and if you're the healer, taking time ressing could mean more people downing).

I can see some usefulness in pvp/wvw but I see that as pretty narrow. LOTS of stuff going on in some heated battles.

In which worldboss, strike or raid is this going to be useful?

Edited March 15 by HotDelirium.7984

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

I can see some usefulness in pvp/wvw but I see that as pretty narrow. LOTS of stuff going on in some heated battles.

In which worldboss, strike or raid is this going to be useful?

If we're talking specifically about pulling downed players?

The first raid. Not much you can do at the moment to help a player who gets teleported and then downed in bad. Can also be a common issue with Sabetha, Slothasor, Matthias, TC, MO, Deimos, Soulless Horror, CA, both djinn, Q2, any post-IBS strike. Open world bosses are a bit gentler, but I can think of a couple where it might be useful.

Basically, any situation where someone might be downed in a position where it would be suicide to go to where they are, but they're not going to die immediately so there would be time to use the portal.

More generally, I've already seen the portal used in fractals a time or two.

[HotDelirium.7984]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

If we're talking specifically about pulling downed players?

The first raid. Not much you can do at the moment to help a player who gets teleported and then downed in bad. Can also be a common issue with Sabetha, Slothasor, Matthias, TC, MO, Deimos, Soulless Horror, CA, both djinn, Q2, any post-IBS strike. Open world bosses are a bit gentler, but I can think of a couple where it might be useful.

Basically, any situation where someone might be downed in a position where it would be suicide to go to where they are, but they're not going to die immediately so there would be time to use the portal.

More generally, I've already seen the portal used in fractals a time or two.

While I can see the slim possibility of use- why bother? This is like when traits or abilities give you 1 second of a boon lol

Why not remove that and just make skill 5's first skill even better or make the teleport even better i.e. 5 people can go through it and get boons (like the scourge portal).

 

[draxynnic.3719]

20 minutes ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

While I can see the slim possibility of use- why bother? This is like when traits or abilities give you 1 second of a boon lol

Why not remove that and just make skill 5's first skill even better or make the teleport even better i.e. 5 people can go through it and get boons (like the scourge portal).

 

I think there's a big difference between "this can save someone who'd otherwise die" and one second of a boon.

[HotDelirium.7984]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think there's a big difference between "this can save someone who'd otherwise die" and one second of a boon.

yesyesyes I'm just giving an example of usefulness. Each one is useful but mainly under certain extreme situations.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

9 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

I can see some usefulness in pvp/wvw but I see that as pretty narrow. LOTS of stuff going on in some heated battles.

In which worldboss, strike or raid is this going to be useful?

I'm gonna learn you a thing today. I'm gonna teach you to connect the dots.

So we got this rifle. It's a crap rifle, but it's the rifle we got and they said it's because we needed a support weapon. And when we were given this weapon it was literally billed as...hold on, gotta scroll up..."Rifle Mesmers direct allies to the nearest emergency exit".  That one pin, so let's just leave that there for now. Don't forget it, it's gonna be important. Now we look at where and when it came out. This is the new proficiency for Secrets of the Obscure and even though it was released with the third installment, it was tested during the second. Now what were we doing in the second installment of SotO? Inner Nayos. What's the meta for Inner Nayos? Heitors Gate. So how does Heitor's Gate go? It's a pretty typical boss fight but with one very important mechanic. Every so often Heitor....or wait, was it Ignacious? Oh who cares, they all look the same. Anyway, THE BOSS triggers a massive AoE with an instant down condition if you get hit by it. The only way to survive is to hide behind rubble meaning you have to run to safety, and if you don't mind your positioning, that could be a long way away. Now, remember that pin we stuck earlier? We're going back to that pin.

Rifle 5 was designed with this fight specifically in mind. The idea is simple. You're in safety, someone else isn't going to make it. You shoot a portal in front of them, they take the portal, and you're the hero. It's super simple and super obvious once you put those two things together. It was their inspiration and their objective when doing the weapon design. What they FAILED to account for is that requires a basic amount of coordination because even if you fire that portal there's no guarantee they'll see it OR take it. It's a perfect example of Works Great On Paper, and now we're in the position of trying to make lemonade out of it.

5 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

While I can see the slim possibility of use- why bother? This is like when traits or abilities give you 1 second of a boon lol

Why not remove that and just make skill 5's first skill even better or make the teleport even better i.e. 5 people can go through it and get boons (like the scourge portal).

And this is a point I've made before as well. Whenever you make a dual-purpose skill both effects of the skill suffer for it. Rifle one does abyssmal damage and mediochre healing. Rifle 2...is honestly fine. Rifle 3 is much like Rifle 1. Rifle 4 is a phantasm that dazes....it's fine. And Rifle 5 we're discussing now.. The portal is useless. But it's taking up resources simply by existing that could have been added into the power budget of the primary ability. Which is why so many have said the rifle is an absolute mess.

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While I'm here though I may as well throw in my two cents. The other day I was in Gyala Delve for the meta and I ran a Quick Chrono build for my rifle, since it's dreadfully slow and Quickness seems to help more than Alacrity. The meta was a success, that was never in doubt. But I have to say I don't think I've ever felt more useless. Here I am throwing EVERYTHING into the stack on the boss. I've got heals. I've got boons. I've got CC. And do I feel like I really contributed to anything? Not a god-damed-bit. I know I wasn't doing any damage; it's the rifle. And no one was going down but no one was going to go down anyway. I did run around and pick up some of the stragglers that did go down around the fight but that's more because of my Relic of Mercy than the rifle every could. Once, exactly once because I am on voice chat with my fiance while we play, was I able to spike heal her when her HP got low. Other than that, I don't even feel like I deserved participation in that fight. This rifle is absolute garbage. The only fight this rifle is helping is one you were already winning.

[Mell.4873]

9 hours ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

I'm gonna learn you a thing today. I'm gonna teach you to connect the dots.

So we got this rifle. It's a crap rifle, but it's the rifle we got and they said it's because we needed a support weapon. And when we were given this weapon it was literally billed as...hold on, gotta scroll up..."Rifle Mesmers direct allies to the nearest emergency exit".  That one pin, so let's just leave that there for now. Don't forget it, it's gonna be important. Now we look at where and when it came out. This is the new proficiency for Secrets of the Obscure and even though it was released with the third installment, it was tested during the second. Now what were we doing in the second installment of SotO? Inner Nayos. What's the meta for Inner Nayos? Heitors Gate. So how does Heitor's Gate go? It's a pretty typical boss fight but with one very important mechanic. Every so often Heitor....or wait, was it Ignacious? Oh who cares, they all look the same. Anyway, THE BOSS triggers a massive AoE with an instant down condition if you get hit by it. The only way to survive is to hide behind rubble meaning you have to run to safety, and if you don't mind your positioning, that could be a long way away. Now, remember that pin we stuck earlier? We're going back to that pin.

Rifle 5 was designed with this fight specifically in mind. The idea is simple. You're in safety, someone else isn't going to make it. You shoot a portal in front of them, they take the portal, and you're the hero. It's super simple and super obvious once you put those two things together. It was their inspiration and their objective when doing the weapon design. What they FAILED to account for is that requires a basic amount of coordination because even if you fire that portal there's no guarantee they'll see it OR take it. It's a perfect example of Works Great On Paper, and now we're in the position of trying to make lemonade out of it.

And this is a point I've made before as well. Whenever you make a dual-purpose skill both effects of the skill suffer for it. Rifle one does abyssmal damage and mediochre healing. Rifle 2...is honestly fine. Rifle 3 is much like Rifle 1. Rifle 4 is a phantasm that dazes....it's fine. And Rifle 5 we're discussing now.. The portal is useless. But it's taking up resources simply by existing that could have been added into the power budget of the primary ability. Which is why so many have said the rifle is an absolute mess.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While I'm here though I may as well throw in my two cents. The other day I was in Gyala Delve for the meta and I ran a Quick Chrono build for my rifle, since it's dreadfully slow and Quickness seems to help more than Alacrity. The meta was a success, that was never in doubt. But I have to say I don't think I've ever felt more useless. Here I am throwing EVERYTHING into the stack on the boss. I've got heals. I've got boons. I've got CC. And do I feel like I really contributed to anything? Not a god-damed-bit. I know I wasn't doing any damage; it's the rifle. And no one was going down but no one was going to go down anyway. I did run around and pick up some of the stragglers that did go down around the fight but that's more because of my Relic of Mercy than the rifle every could. Once, exactly once because I am on voice chat with my fiance while we play, was I able to spike heal her when her HP got low. Other than that, I don't even feel like I deserved participation in that fight. This rifle is absolute garbage. The only fight this rifle is helping is one you were already winning.

Did you play a full damage build since that seems to be a good use for Rifle at the moment. You can Heal even in full Berserkers.

[Chyro.1462]

"And do I feel like I really contributed to anything?"

How do you ever feel like that in a '1 in a blob of 50' event? Unless you run arcdps and see how much dmg you actually dealt or how much boons you dished out, how would you tell if your presence contributed anything? (or you play scourge and can easily tell how many downed players you rescue-pulled towards you ^^)

I'm a support player and mainly played heal tempest, the new rifle motivated me to try out heal chrono. Having a blast with it and easily carrying groups through fractals or keeping people or friends alive during the more deadly meta events. While the portal gimmick rarely 'contributes' something important, I found it really fun to just drop the rifle portal while running ahead in a fractal then blink-teleporting further ahead and be happy if someone took the portal to suddenly be same up with me - others seemed to enjoy that too. Sure over half the time the portal goes unused, but I think as time passes more people will notice it exists and make use of it. It's not really necessary or changes much, but it's fun. I know, weird to appreciate something just for being fun in a game 😄

Edited March 16 by Chyro.1462

[mirage.8046]

On 3/14/2024 at 5:34 AM, HotDelirium.7984 said:

but still more of a wvw thing. In pve by the time we ground target, cast it and trigger the portal we could have already ran to them and begin rezzing.

even so, there are several creative ways instead of risking running to your ally. you can indeed run to your ally but if they are even miles away from you, you cannot afford to run to rez them.

if the portal allowed a downed ally to take it, you could

a) interrupt a stomp
b) pull them out of aoes. a very very common scenario in raids (Vale Guardian), strikes like HT or CO, and fractals where there are so many aoes that pulse conditions or soft CC.
c) pull them away from being cleaved by enemies
d) even yoink them to higher elevation

this change alone would radically improve dimensional aperture.

[Triptaminas.4789]

Sample small: like 100 attempts, but not once people used my portal from rifle, even when they was getting ganked and it was right in front of them.

Might need further visual overhoul, maybe instead of ball some vertical thingy resembling breach? Idfk.

I like the idea of skill but people at other end of it for some reason is just not using it.

Also i think duration of portal is bit too low, either it or range of 5th skill placing need to be increased as u cant really cover enough ground for it to be really that useful.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

On 3/18/2024 at 9:16 AM, Triptaminas.4789 said:

Sample small: like 100 attempts, but not once people used my portal from rifle, even when they was getting ganked and it was right in front of them.

Might need further visual overhoul, maybe instead of ball some vertical thingy resembling breach? Idfk.

I like the idea of skill but people at other end of it for some reason is just not using it.

Also i think duration of portal is bit too low, either it or range of 5th skill placing need to be increased as u cant really cover enough ground for it to be really that useful.

This is, of course, what we've been saying the whole time. It's not that it couldn't be useful. If you had, say, voice chat over discord, teamspeak, or whatever and you could tell someone you were shooting a portal to them, it could work. But you can't just shoot it at someone and expect them to take it. They're not gonna realize it's there, not gonna know where it goes, and they're not gonna take it. We said this was poorly thought out, poorly implemented, and misguided at the concept stage. I can't even get people to take it at jumping puzzles. It's too small, too short, and without a mesmer standing there no one realizes that's a teleport up.

[draxynnic.3719]

People aren't used to it yet - although it doesn't help that the effect doesn't look anything like the portals people are used to.