Nerfing Magnet

[ccccc.4963]

10 minutes ago, N A T E.3108 said:

We need something in return.

Grenade buffs

[N A T E.3108]

57 minutes ago, ccccc.4963 said:

Grenade buffs

That I'm not a huge fan of at this point.

[Flowki.7194]

Abiliys that can pull people from large distance into massive damage (even just into an enemy group) are OP by nature. If you make them too obvious they rarely work, so nobody wins. Its just a shame they put that kitten in the game to begin with, so that this kind of thing happens. On the other hand I have a relatively short range anguish, which can pull an entire mid fight into 1 spot, on a 3 second CD.  I also think that is toxic design in a pvp setting, but thats the kind of tools they have riddled the game with. It doesn't matter if the spec is meta, good or bad, most weapon/abilitys are hinged on designs that shuold never have made it outside a pve setting.

Edited May 29 by Flowki.7194

[Master Ketsu.4569]

If you can't land a 1200 ranged unblockable pull just because they increased counterplay options, your problem is an L2P problem as a result of relying too much on mechanics which lack counterplay. Learn to count and predict your opponents dodges and you will quickly find that even after these changes magnet remains one of the best CCs in the game. If you need everything to be an ezmode no-brain-required goes-through-all-defenses winbutton to play PvP, you don't know how to PvP. 

 

 

Edited May 29 by Master Ketsu.4569

[Vinny.7260]

I'm disappointed they removed yet another unique interaction.

I know the reason was WvW related as it's straight up impossible to register the animation on the enemy engineer in a zerg/gvg situation... But there had to be a better way, this was definitely replacing the headlight unit when the bulb went out situation.

[Flowki.7194]

1 hour ago, Master Ketsu.4569 said:

If you can't land a 1200 ranged unblockable pull just because they increased counterplay options, your problem is an L2P problem as a result of relying too much on mechanics which lack counterplay. Learn to count and predict your opponents dodges and you will quickly find that even after these changes magnet remains one of the best CCs in the game. If you need everything to be an ezmode no-brain-required goes-through-all-defenses winbutton to play PvP, you don't know how to PvP. 

 

 

I agree, but there are very few specs that are not hard riding casual/toxic game design.

Mesmer is uninteractive to fight, dazed, block/confusion/target drop/stealth

Thief is uninteractive to fight, evade/stealth/mobility

Mace ranger/SPB are so failsafe there is 0 insentive to fight them, about as uninteractive as it gets

DH/WB aeg/block and renew mechanics ensure they have to be afk to die in under 15 seconds, yet both specs can kill in 5, coz gaurdian.

I don't enjoy dueling ele so much anymore either, not since the rise in double arcane shield, yet more specs with block covered burst. 

 

I use to find necros annoying with double life etc, but the game/meta has changed so much in just a year or so, it has turned into one of the few enjoyable fights. They are pretty honest duels.

Edited May 29 by Flowki.7194

[N A T E.3108]

2 hours ago, Master Ketsu.4569 said:

If you can't land a 1200 ranged unblockable pull just because they increased counterplay options, your problem is an L2P problem as a result of relying too much on mechanics which lack counterplay. Learn to count and predict your opponents dodges and you will quickly find that even after these changes magnet remains one of the best CCs in the game. If you need everything to be an ezmode no-brain-required goes-through-all-defenses winbutton to play PvP, you don't know how to PvP. 

 

 

Right, because a 1 1/4 channeled soft cc with high warning animations & sound must be the highest ranks of competitive CCs and must be super-duper effective 🙃 Sure, people can stun break it; sure, most people port or evade out of it;  sure, it has a random failure rate of probably 20-30% due to target lag/terrain; sure, everyone with half a mind will dodge it; sure, a single aegis or blind defeats the entire Prybar followup burst; sure, it's only one use every 25s; sure, it's on a class that already struggles to hold its own vs a bloated meta; sure, sure, sure... it's definitely a l2p issue if it never lands vs slightly competent players on meta classes. ZZZ... please.  More like the ability to retarget magnet has been one of the few things that has allowed non-holo engis to compete vs classes with 5x the mobility, evades, & sustain. It certainly doesn't guarantee wins either in duel or team situations in the slightest.

This nerf makes the skill very difficult to land, and therefore, instead of being a meaningful CC, it becomes 3-4s of dedicated time wasted (swapping in and out of kit to access + cast time). I'm not saying it has to maintain the retargeting ability, I'm saying we need something in return for this hard nerf to an already underperforming class. Magnet hasn't been OP in 12 years, and it's not OP now. It's actually in the most nerfed state currently that it's ever been.

ALIEN

Edited May 29 by N A T E.3108

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

17 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Yes, this and Moa are changes to reduce annoyance of sniping enemy commanders.

Ngl I think turning a commander into a bird successfully is strategy that should be encouraged.

[AlPower.2476]

8 hours ago, Master Ketsu.4569 said:

If you can't land a 1200 ranged unblockable pull just because they increased counterplay options, your problem is an L2P problem as a result of relying too much on mechanics which lack counterplay. Learn to count and predict your opponents dodges and you will quickly find that even after these changes magnet remains one of the best CCs in the game. If you need everything to be an ezmode no-brain-required goes-through-all-defenses winbutton to play PvP, you don't know how to PvP. 

 

 

People say some saucy words, it doesn't matter how wrong they are,  they think they wrote an actual useful comment.

How in the world is Engi pull magnet one of the best CC in the game? Did you read your own words before posting?

Edited May 30 by AlPower.2476

[AlPower.2476]

7 hours ago, N A T E.3108 said:

Right, because a 1 1/4 channeled soft cc with high warning animations & sound must be the highest ranks of competitive CCs and must be super-duper effective 🙃 Sure, people can stun break it; sure, most people port or evade out of it;  sure, it has a random failure rate of probably 20-30% due to target lag/terrain; sure, everyone with half a mind will dodge it; sure, a single aegis or blind defeats the entire Prybar followup burst; sure, it's only one use every 25s; sure, it's on a class that already struggles to hold its own vs a bloated meta; sure, sure, sure... it's definitely a l2p issue if it never lands vs slightly competent players on meta classes. ZZZ... please.  More like the ability to retarget magnet has been one of the few things that has allowed non-holo engis to compete vs classes with 5x the mobility, evades, & sustain. It certainly doesn't guarantee wins either in duel or team situations in the slightest.

This nerf makes the skill very difficult to land, and therefore, instead of being a meaningful CC, it becomes 3-4s of dedicated time wasted (swapping in and out of kit to access + cast time). I'm not saying it has to maintain the retargeting ability, I'm saying we need something in return for this hard nerf to an already underperforming class. Magnet hasn't been OP in 12 years, and it's not OP now. It's actually in the most nerfed state currently that it's ever been.

ALIEN

I think he's joking, no one that has played at least 10 games can't say that engineer magnet is one of the best CC skills AND then dare to say that if you think it's bad to have it nerfed is because you don't know how to PvP 😄

I mean, he really thinks that there's a build that bases his gamestyle only in magnet and that's why engi users are not happy with this change?, how are you basing a build in a 1 1/4  with 25cd skill, easy to evade, slow pull (compared to similar like mesmers, dh spear and sb passive trait; engineer's pretty slow and by the way easy to stunbreak), blind can cancel it, and in a meta with boonball spammers (stab included, hello tempest and dh overall) 

And then he talks about knowing pvp xd

Edited May 30 by AlPower.2476

[N A T E.3108]

12 hours ago, AlPower.2476 said:

I think he's joking, no one that has played at least 10 games can't say that engineer magnet is one of the best CC skills AND then dare to say that if you think it's bad to have it nerfed is because you don't know how to PvP 😄

I mean, he really thinks that there's a build that bases his gamestyle only in magnet and that's why engi users are not happy with this change?, how are you basing a build in a 1 1/4  with 25cd skill, easy to evade, slow pull (compared to similar like mesmers, dh spear and sb passive trait; engineer's pretty slow and by the way easy to stunbreak), blind can cancel it, and in a meta with boonball spammers (stab included, hello tempest and dh overall) 

And then he talks about knowing pvp xd

I hope so. Clearly just someone that has little to no experience playing engineer. You're completely right on the rest. The question is, when was the last time a Toolkit-carrying engi was in any way meta or even remotely effective? I know there was some variant of holo a while ago that carried it at one point, but it never seemed to be hard meta, and it definitely isn't now. Toolkit has been the non-meta -only choice for years.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

What absolutely destroys me is that they will be hyper specific and aware when it comes to interaction nerfs like this but not seem to have any direction when it comes to hyper specific adjustments that would bring unplayed profession specs into viability. 

If you're going to listen to a slim minority of people getting pranked by invisible yoinks that you can predict or react to during the pull, why not listen to the people telling you that a minor adjustment to a trait or two would fix (insert spec variant here that struggles in competitive)? 

[Voegelin.5642]

I started playing again recently. They nerfed rifle turret a bit, so i tried tool kit. It is not easy but I was trying to learn to use it. Now, even though it's hard to use successfully as is, they nerf tool kit. Do they just want me not to play? I don't have infinite amounts of time to relearn things after changes.  I'd like to just play.

Edited May 31 by Voegelin.5642
More info

[N A T E.3108]

5 hours ago, Voegelin.5642 said:

I started playing again recently. They nerfed rifle turret a bit, so i tried tool kit. It is not easy but I was trying to learn to use it. Now, even though it's hard to use successfully as is, they nerf tool kit. Do they just want me not to play? I don't have infinite amounts of time to relearn things after changes.  I'd like to just play.

If you’re wanting a class that is at all viable without years worth of experience poured into it, I would recommend just about anything other than engi. Core Engi, Scrapper, and Mech have been in pretty bad places for the majority of the last several years. Holo has seen its time here and again of being “viable” but even that is rarely kept for long. The general engi rule of thumb is that the devs hate you and will most certainly nerf any slightly viable build into the ground as soon as it comes up. I love the class, so I wish I could be more positive, but engi hasn’t seen much love in a long, long time. If you’re going to waste time on it, focus on Holo- for some reason it normally fairs better with balance. 

[Saiyan.1704]

On 5/29/2024 at 2:20 PM, Vinny.7260 said:

I know the reason was WvW related as it's straight up impossible to register the animation on the enemy engineer in a zerg/gvg situation... But there had to be a better way, this was definitely replacing the headlight unit when the bulb went out situation.

There has been so many sPvP mechanic specific changes or straight up nerfs, that came directly from some WvW issue. Been that way for every class but Guardian has been the most noticeable.

Rewind back to 2017 - 2018. Basically EVERY Firebrand nerf in sPvP came about from WvW. When FB officially died as a spec in spvp, they were Still nerfing it in spvp because of some WvW "balance" issues. It was pretty ridiculous.

[N A T E.3108]

22 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

There has been so many sPvP mechanic specific changes or straight up nerfs, that came directly from some WvW issue. Been that way for every class but Guardian has been the most noticeable.

Rewind back to 2017 - 2018. Basically EVERY Firebrand nerf in sPvP came about from WvW. When FB officially died as a spec in spvp, they were Still nerfing it in spvp because of some WvW "balance" issues. It was pretty ridiculous.

If it truly is a WvW-only related change, then they need to split the skill, like they have with so many, and give PvP magnet a shorter cast time/cd to accommodate for the heavy nerf. The phrase "beating a dead horse" hardly begins to describe how bad the situation is for the already underperforming core/scrap/mech with incoming nerfs on the horizon.

Edited June 3 by N A T E.3108

[Last Crab.6054]

On 5/25/2024 at 11:32 AM, N A T E.3108 said:

• Magnet: This skill now properly plays its visual effect during the full channel. This skill cannot be retargeted. This skill now applies bonus defiance damage to targets with defiance bars.

This is the upcoming change to Magnet in Toolkit. This skill requires a 1 1/4 channel to activate the pull. The skill can only be used once every 25s. The skill has a very obvious animation and sound. Retargeting has been the only thing that made this skill even remotely viable, and yet rarely used in high level play- definitely not on the abusive skill list when you compare it to all the other pulls & CC in game that are far more oppressive. What gives. You are making this skill literally useless. What idiot isn't going to avoid this every. single. time. Good job nerfing Engi to the ground yet again.

Retargeting has been an option for this skill from the beginning of the game for those that wanted to put in the work to learn it. Here we are so many years later making it literally useless.

Scew you Anet and your braindead balance decisions. Go nerf something that actually needs nerfing.

ALIEN

Thank you Anet for making the skill obvious like it needed to be.

Once engineers realize they have more skills than other classes, that doesnt mean they are better, it just means they have an advantage with a bigger kit.