So they nerfed the only thing keeping Meta engi Afloat... Grenade kit? OK so what's the plan?

[shion.2084]

"Grenade: Reduced the power coefficient from 0.33 to 0.25 in PvP only."

So competitive engineer builds typically run with one stun break, have no port, can't deal with condi, have no stability, have no invuln..... and the trade-off was one weapon we cold rely on that hit hard.   

So what's the plan guys, what are we supposed to use now, harsh language?

I mean I meme a mortar kit, but that's not really competitive.... and to do any viable damage at all with nades we had to run yolo zerker and an aggressive rune... so there's nothing left to compensate with this for by way of going even more glassy... we're already there.    

What's the thinking? 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

20 minutes ago, shion.2084 said:

What's the thinking?

The people in this community want everything to be a toe to toe melee bruiser fight.

They do not understand the balance behind something with say Attack Power 6 & Defense Power 1. In their eyes, if it has damage it's OP, regardless of how glassy it is.

They do not understand the balance behind something with say Attack Power 1 & Defense Power 6. In their eyes, if it's very tanky it's OP, regardless of how little damage it has.

They only understand the idea behind everything being Attack Power 3 & Defense Power 3 where everything does virtually the same thing and there is no variation in style of play. Until the game functions like this in whole, there will always be people crying out about how OP something is just because it's different and utilized its gimmick properly. Even when that build they complain about shows no representation in tournaments and is for all intents & purposes underpowered in the patching, they will still complain about it because it is different.

This is exactly what the thinking is.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

23 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

The people in this community want everything to be a toe to toe melee bruiser fight.

The people in this community advocate for nerfs like they want this but dont play "toe to toe melee bruiser" in game at all.

don't mind me just rambling~

Edited November 29, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[shion.2084]

Like I mean seriously... was grenade engi with almost no stealth still stealing the show?   You used to see a bunch of bandwagon jumpers, when the stealth gank one shot thing was viable, but now it's pretty much only the real engi players who are willing to take the rather poor reward to risk trade-off.  And yet they decided just to nerf it more without giving any other path for it to take.... I just... it's baffling.  

I mean you already can't bust a scourge, a reaper, a tempest, a virt, a Spell Breaker/Bladesworn, because you can't apply the DPS burst reliably.... in some cases, after a real long time and lots of dodging around you could wear them down.  You certainly can't mele those classes.... but now they've removed what allowed you to try to wear them down over time... And did they give us some new awesome source of damage, condi immunity, ability to disengage... nope.  They essentially just made the bad match-ups impossible now.   

[Gotejjeken.1267]

lol Engi is more than fine:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1990111292?t=03h00m59s

Can't count the number of holos I'm facing in high level play now. 

All with crazy damage and mobility--the next game after this one I actually faced Naru on that build and he didn't even have to do much meanwhile I had to piano keyboard to stay alive (still lol'd at 'oh where'd he go? *looks around*' tho--had to do a ninja vanish magic act just to survive).

[ccccc.4963]

4 hours ago, shion.2084 said:

it's pretty much only the real engi players who are willing to take the rather poor reward to risk trade-off.  And yet they decided just to nerf it more without giving any other path for it to take.... I just... it's baffling.  

Against all odds condi/support slaves will find a way to make any power build look cwazy

[Flowki.7194]

37 minutes ago, ccccc.4963 said:

Against all odds condi/support slaves will find a way to make any power build look cwazy

High burst jump specs are never popular across most playerbases, in their extreme, they essentially push encounters into a very quick and narrow binary encounter

A: He gets the jump, you die

B: He fails the jump, he dies

 

Nobody likes dying for 1 mistake, and nobody likes being instantly on the back foot becuase rock paper. The person jumping knows when he is going to jump, the person being jumped does not.. and has to react fast, taking all the initial risk and pressure of making a mistake = dead. The justification of  ''if I fail the jump I die" is a bad one, becuase the key word is "if".

Evidently, when you blur the lines of A+B, you end up with a low risk jump spec, we know who. This just confirms the fundemental flaw of the concept.

[ccccc.4963]

This games too old for people so passionate about "game balance" to not fathom map awareness 

[Last Crab.6054]

3 hours ago, Flowki.7194 said:

High burst jump specs are never popular across most playerbases, in their extreme, they essentially push encounters into a very quick and narrow binary encounter

A: He gets the jump, you die

B: He fails the jump, he dies

 

Nobody likes dying for 1 mistake, and nobody likes being instantly on the back foot becuase rock paper. The person jumping knows when he is going to jump, the person being jumped does not.. and has to react fast, taking all the initial risk and pressure of making a mistake = dead. The justification of  ''if I fail the jump I die" is a bad one, becuase the key word is "if".

Evidently, when you blur the lines of A+B, you end up with a low risk jump spec, we know who. This just confirms the fundemental flaw of the concept.

Sigh

Then use "you know who" to climb where you belong guru

[Kuma.1503]

ANet: We nerfed grenades!

Engi Mains: Finally! So you can improve Engi in other areas right? 

Anet: ...

Engi Mains: So you can improve them in other areas right...?

[Spellhunter.9675]

12 hours ago, shion.2084 said:

So competitive engineer builds typically run with one stun break, have no port, can't deal with condi, have no stability, have no invuln..... and the trade-off was one weapon we cold rely on that hit hard.   

Poor engies are dying insta when they fail their cheap 3-buttons burst opener. Like if only they can use dodge, or evadeframes, or block, or superspeed. So sad they don't have it.
Engie has another good build which is pretty strong. But it takes actuall skill to play it properly. 

 

[Terrorhuz.4695]

Hi, I'm your daily reality check

 I'm here to remind you that scrapper with grenades is currently meta in high level gameplay, thanks to its very good stunbreaks on affordable cooldowns (Bypass Coating, Slick Shoes) and one of them is also an excellent setup for further bursts, it has stealth and superspeed, insane AoE damage (Grenade Barrage with Explosive Entrance can quite literally oneshot several people at once), and hammer provides mobility and damage, on top of  some decent defensives in the form of blocks\projectile reflects\evades. You are probably playing it in the wrong way, as a bruiser, when this current iteration excels as a ROAMER.

I'm also here to remind you that your AA is a fast ranged AoE you can cast while running away, with an extremely fine 0.75 coefficient, so it's not the end of the world YOU CAN STILL PLAY THE GAME.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Terrorhuz.4695

[Kuma.1503]

4 hours ago, Spellhunter.9675 said:

 But it takes actuall skill to play it properly. 

 

Until the meta shifts and it starts to gain popularity. Then it's braindead. 

I've been around long enough to know how things work around here~

Edited November 30, 2023 by Kuma.1503

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

12 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

ANet: We nerfed grenades!

Engi Mains: Finally! So you can improve Engi in other areas right? 

Anet: ...

Engi Mains: So you can improve them in other areas right...?

*Cries in berserker empathy*

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

5 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Until the meta shifts and it starts to gain popularity. Then it's braindead. 

I've been around long enough to know how things work around here~

correct.

It's bad : "it takes actual skill to play it properly." by people that don't play it and think the people floundering are all skill-less. 

It works : "Autoplay build" by people that don't play it and think the people having success are all skill-less. 

Spoiler

There is never actually a build designated as skillful unless the player playing it is jumping through so many more hoops than the opponent that calling them skill-less would cripple the person fighting it with introspection. And then the people that manage to make it work despite all that are used as examples as for why the build should never see QoL, like succeeding on a weak class justifies it being weak. 

Anet, you can't just spend months=years nerfing around the problem the class mains are pointing out while removing all their functionality, then quietly axe the problem when the workarounds don't fix the issue and not rebalance to return some functionality to all the skills that suffered up to that point. 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Goosekilla.2796]

Use mortar kit because it was already more useful anyway.

[Vinny.7260]

It is time to adopt new tactics!

We need new memes going around. Especially if they're doing such dastardly things like nerfing an auto attack! 😡

 

Instead of throwing explosives, we need the engis to BECOME explosives!

 

Rise the age of Photonic Blasting Module !

Let's see those smoke field + leap/blast finishers to surprise someone with a 15k burst!

[wasss.1208]

On 11/29/2023 at 7:07 PM, shion.2084 said:

What's the thinking? 

They probably buffed Scrapper sustain, to nudge players toward a bruiser playstyle. They'll probably follow-up these changes next patch (hopefully not in 3 months), if they weren't enough. In the meantime, there is Tools Holo, that wasn't relying on 'nade kit, so that should be unaffected.
And with nade out of the picture now, they can actually adress the issues of the profession, and start buffing things, because "It'll be broken with 'nades." should no longer be an issue.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

2 hours ago, wasss.1208 said:

And with nade out of the picture now, they can actually adress the issues of the profession, and start buffing things, because "It'll be broken with 'nades." should no longer be an issue.

If I had a dollar for every time "now that x mechanic is out of the way, class y can be buffed or have its issues fixed" got floated as a silver lining for weird balance changes I'd have enough to buy gizmos  I'd have a nice stack of dollars. Rarely do people with interest in the class float that about the class that's undergoing it, and if they happen to do so many a time I've seen them disappointed as they realize that is the baseline for their class now, not a transitory period. 

Classes should never be in between builds. That deletes morale. 

They should have buffed something that was nerfed instead of grenade kit to give indication that they expect to revisit some of the other changes that led engie to be stapled together by nade kit to begin with. 

Gyros? Superspeed? Rifle adjustments? There's a ton of stuff they could have touched that were axed because of grenades to show that they're willing to keep engies out of farm land. Instead they made pve changes and a couple of minor adjustments. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[bethekey.8314]

There were some minor buffs that opened build variety. Stab on Spectrum Shield is probably the most impactful? Support is interesting, but not relevant outside of tournaments.

I'm doing well on my Core build lately with these relic changes.

I don't mind the Grenade change at all and it's the first necessary step toward buffing other ways of play, finally.

Edited December 1, 2023 by bethekey.8314

[whooot.5784]

Scrapper is still really strong bro.. It still does lot of damage, aoe vomit, have billion super speed, reflect, block, stealth, unblocable cc, reveal with lock-on, it's just a bit less degenerated than it used to be, but still excellent with it's well played.

But now yeah you perhaps have to play it better in order to do something, and not just stupidly throw your nades and annihilate all player in your range.

I think HOLO is the way to go now, but scrapper is still very good.