Engi spear presentation speculation

[draxynnic.3719]

15 minutes ago, Ale.3280 said:

This because we can't swap and a lot of players likes to play WITHOUT kits --> as full signets Mech or full gyros scrapper, or full elixirs holo.

Not to mention that grenades are the only ranged kit that isn't support, and I for one am sick and tired of grenades being nailed to just about every skillbar that isn't for healing.

[mirage.8046]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I disagree on the 'done to death' bit, on the basis that there are a lot of ways to add a bit of it, but not a way to really specialise in it. Elementalist is always flipping between at least two attunements, while for engineer, it's very easy to have a bit of electricity in there, but hard to really focus on it. Hammer holosmith is probably the closest at the moment, and spear probably will be soon enough when it's introduced, but that's obviously mixing with the hologram theme of holosmith, and possibly more importantly... it's still basically a melee build skinned over with a few electricity-based graphics. There are obviously ways to do scrapper and mechanist with electricity as well, but similar issues apply.

The electricity/lightning theme, in fantasy and sometimes in science fiction, is more normally associated with throwing lightning bolts and electricity arcs at range - but the playstyle associated with that seems to be something that ArenaNet has been actively avoiding. Elementalist? Staff and pistol air are notoriously bad, and sceptre air has proven to be one of the most boring interpretations of the concept I've ever seen (running weaver for dual skills, especially Plasma Beam, does help but only so much) feeling more like a continuous laser with an electricity skin rather than a lightning-themed playstyle. Engineer's electricity-themed ranged options are basically pistol's Static Shot, Static Discharge, the shield throw (which is another case of having an electricity skin rather than really feeling like part of an electricity playstyle) and Orbital Strike. The closest is, ironically, mesmer - the purple lightning might be something other than lightning according to the fluff but it comes close in look and feel - although that's obviously mixed with mesmer stuff.

And part of my disappointment here is that having a second electricity-themed melee weapon just adds to the paradox of electricity simultaneously having been done to death while still not having been done right, and by making the "done to death" side of that paradox even stronger it makes the other side less likely to be resolved. I wasn't expecting spear to be a ranged lightning weapon - I was hoping for spear to be something similar to what you're thinking - but "melee electricity" is the thing I absolutely least wanted to see because it makes the chance of getting a proper lightning playstyle further down the line less likely. It's probably going to be more electricity-themed than hammer is (from what I've heard, hammer was originally more explosives-oriented, shifting it to electricity was something that happened relatively late in development) but it's still just another melee weapon.

So I can be harsh or overly critical about things. It's just that holosmith did this theme the best. We charge up energy to do more damage inside photon forge, even. Hammer holo is what I use in PvE and WvW yeah. It's the absolute closest you'll get to the electricity style until spear's release. Anet has done so badly on ranged lightning playstyles. I'm not sure if it's because they don't like it or had boring interpretations. Don't even get me started with the elementalist's flop pistol, staff, or boring scepter. Not even Weaver makes scepter stand out more on the electricity front. Confusion, burns, blinds, vuln, weakness, superspeed, and the like are what I would love to see on a lightning-focused weapon.

I'm not sure why a melee lightning spear is now going to compete with melee hammer either! I don't wanna say it's uninspired to do a 4th melee weapon, but there have been 3 already, what does the 4th one add apart from theme and playstyle? I do agree that this route makes a cool proper lightning playstyle less likely in the future.

Edited June 14 by mirage.8046

[karsa.8513]

From what I've read most of the spears add some sort of mechanic which is NOT fun at all. Just make the spears for all classes simple and fun to use. Right now all the classes have at least 1 complicated profession with a lot of button to press, it is enough.

Soto was the skyscale expansion, a new way(was fun and simple) to get the skycale without that mindless LWS4 grind.

Now the WoJ is the spear expansion. They could have made these spears FUN&SIMPLE but NOOOOO, they had to come back to their old habits, aka "making complicated weapons just for the sake of it".

But there is still hope, the dlc is not out and the beta will start soon.

 

 

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, mirage.8046 said:

So I can be harsh or overly critical about things. It's just that holosmith did this theme the best. We charge up energy to do more damage inside photon forge, even. Hammer holo is what I use in PvE and WvW yeah. It's the absolute closest you'll get to the electricity style until spear's release. Anet has done so badly on ranged lightning playstyles. I'm not sure if it's because they don't like it or had boring interpretations. Don't even get me started with the elementalist's flop pistol, staff, or boring scepter. Not even Weaver makes scepter stand out more on the electricity front. Confusion, burns, blinds, vuln, weakness, superspeed, and the like are what I would love to see on a lightning-focused weapon.

Holo is also the best elite spec for a static discharge build due to Particle Accelerator, and a lot of holo effects start showing electrical discharges at high heat. Problem I find with hammer holo (and will probably persist with spear holo) is that you end up being pretty much obligatory melee unless you bring a mortar or grenade kit. I've generally resorted to running The Predator myself since at least some of the bullets are plasma bullets, but that's still a poor substitute.

Oh man, I just realised that I hadn't even thought about how spears charge-up mechanic is going to work with holoforge! I have a sneaking feeling the answer is "not well", since they talk about how other spear skills serve to maintain or build up the focused effect, but maybe you can pop Lightning Rod, switch to holo while it builds, and then switch back to a spear spike from high heat? 

I think weaver is better with scepter because plasma beam hits hard enough to have some of the feel of a lightning bolt rather than being a tickle, even if it's a mix of fire and lightning, and the Air/Earth dual skill is a decent CC. This is a bit of a case of condemnation through faint praise, though. I don't think it's even just due to interpretations - in early development there was a sceptre (or maybe dagger, they switched roles shortly after release) skillset that had the channelled beam as skill 2, and an explosion-of-lightning-from-a-central-point field (similar to Chaos Storm but more lightningy) as skill 3. Don't recall the autoattack, might have been a less powerful and non-instant version of the current skill 2, but there's a degree to which I wish we could have actually had that skillset. Instead the third skill got ditched altogether and the beam became a defanged autoattack. It does feel, though, that they've just been overcautious whenever ranged lightning comes up. Staff? Made it so heavily utility-oriented that even power builds prefer to use earth, if they swap away from fire at all, and it's been steadily powercrept to boot. Pistol? Condition weapon but air attunement has no damaging conditions. Sceptre? Spent most of its existence only being useful for supporting Electric Discharge/Fresh Air spikes.

5 hours ago, mirage.8046 said:

I'm not sure why a melee lightning spear is now going to compete with melee hammer either! I don't wanna say it's uninspired to do a 4th melee weapon, but there have been 3 already, what does the 4th one add apart from theme and playstyle? I do agree that this route makes a cool proper lightning playstyle less likely in the future.

I suspect that the idea is that they can go all in on damage with it, since hammer is fairly defensive, mace is supportive, and sword is designed to be used with holo.

[Bomboed.5697]

On 6/14/2024 at 5:04 AM, EdwinLi.1284 said:

At this point, I won't be surprised they make Staff  a melee weapon for Engineer. At this point, I think Anet just want to make us use melee as main weapon and have kits be our range weapon we switch to.

And most of our kits are already pure melee, like flamethrower and bombs, and other are the most usefull while in melee, like grenades.

Even our longest range weapon (rifle) forces us to melee because of boomstick.

Edited June 15 by Bomboed.5697

[Dirame.8521]

My 2 Cents on spear: "EPIC!!!" for PvE. "Meh" for spvp. "Not bad" for WvW.

[James.6435]

i did not read the post.

why is there absolutely no defence on the spear, everyone else gets blocks or evades, but kitten us right

[tyburok.3420]

On 6/6/2024 at 2:55 AM, tyburok.3420 said:

I'm hoping it's a melee condi weapon. Only condi weapon we got is pistol (mace is jack of all trades). Pistol is cool, but it feels a little weird to play condi mech and be forced in melee with a ranged weapon. I also hope it gets some sort of lightning rod effect. They said one of the classes is getting a skill that applies a unique debuff to the enemy. So if that's engi, then it could be like a superconductor where the target gets struck by lightning every time you crit. Whatever it is, I hope its good on day 1 and not trash like shortbow was. 

I was almost spot on with this! 

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, James.6435 said:

i did not read the post.

why is there absolutely no defence on the spear, everyone else gets blocks or evades, but kitten us right

Because other professions apart from mesmer already had full-on offensive weapons. Engineer already had options for fairly defensive melee sets (hammer, sword/shield, mace/shield), but sword/pistol was the only full-on offensive melee set and that mostly only works on holo. Spear seems to be filling that gap. Sometimes it's not about what the others are getting at the same time, it's about what gap is being filled in your own profession.

Now, I still don't like engi spear in principle, but I think that's what they're going for.

[mirage.8046]

Well I like what I saw with the spear and emphasizing focused targets. I now think they shocked me with the lightning theme; I was being harsh. Spear being a melee two-handed does cover a role previously unfulfilled. There's a melee condi weapon that isn't defensive There's finally a substitute for dual pistols and main-hand mace. It's nice to have the explosion mechanic on a weapon again, since EOD with main-hand mace. :)) I can only imagine what holosmith will do with all that burning, or mechanist with something that isn't confusion after nerfs to that condition. For what it's worth, keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole. 

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

You know, an electricity based condition would have been a nice addition. I know confusion is used as a substitute on occasion but considering Engineer and Ele exist, it would've made sense here AND it could've also been brought to the Air pistol, instead of being the awkward one element on pistol that isn't used for condi. 

In the game Gigantic (which fun fact, some original GW2 devs worked on!), they have a similar condition system with bleeds and burns, and there's a Shock condition there, dealing DoT and then a massive spike of damage when it expires, causing a lightning strike AoE on whoever had it. Obviously that would not work as well in GW2 because you typically don't want your DoTs to expire, but rather keep rolling, but some sort of unique effect would be cool.

[Dirame.8521]

53 minutes ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

You know, an electricity based condition would have been a nice addition. I know confusion is used as a substitute on occasion but considering Engineer and Ele exist, it would've made sense here AND it could've also been brought to the Air pistol, instead of being the awkward one element on pistol that isn't used for condi. 

In the game Gigantic (which fun fact, some original GW2 devs worked on!), they have a similar condition system with bleeds and burns, and there's a Shock condition there, dealing DoT and then a massive spike of damage when it expires, causing a lightning strike AoE on whoever had it. Obviously that would not work as well in GW2 because you typically don't want your DoTs to expire, but rather keep rolling, but some sort of unique effect would be cool.

That wasn't a condition. That must have been a hex. The condition for Lightning/Air is Cracked Armour which is Vulnerability in GW2.

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

7 minutes ago, Dirame.8521 said:

That wasn't a condition. That must have been a hex. The condition for Lightning/Air is Cracked Armour which is Vulnerability in GW2.

Are you talking about GW1? I'm talking about a completely different game, Gigantic.

If so, there's something different than Cracked Armor called Shock / Major Shock. It's mostly on Tripp's kit, but I think there were a couple of characters who could also apply it someway. I believe Roland can apply it through traits, as well as T-Mat.

 

[Dirame.8521]

17 minutes ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

Are you talking about GW1? I'm talking about a completely different game, Gigantic.

If so, there's something different than Cracked Armor called Shock / Major Shock. It's mostly on Tripp's kit, but I think there were a couple of characters who could also apply it someway. I believe Roland can apply it through traits, as well as T-Mat.

 

OH my bad. Sorry about that.

[Bomboed.5697]

4 hours ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

In the game Gigantic (which fun fact, some original GW2 devs worked on!), they have a similar condition system with bleeds and burns, and there's a Shock condition there, dealing DoT and then a massive spike of damage when it expires, causing a lightning strike AoE on whoever had it. Obviously that would not work as well in GW2 because you typically don't want your DoTs to expire, but rather keep rolling, but some sort of unique effect would be cool.

It could be a new type of condition, which stacks damage, but not duration, and has a baseline duration of 10 sec for example.
So basically it could be a delayed burst damage condi: you stack it on enemies, it deals some DoT damage and then explodes for huge damage based on number of stacks.

[EriskRedLemur.7153]

On 6/14/2024 at 6:36 AM, karsa.8513 said:

From what I've read most of the spears add some sort of mechanic which is NOT fun at all. Just make the spears for all classes simple and fun to use. Right now all the classes have at least 1 complicated profession with a lot of button to press, it is enough.

Soto was the skyscale expansion, a new way(was fun and simple) to get the skycale without that mindless LWS4 grind.

Now the WoJ is the spear expansion. They could have made these spears FUN&SIMPLE but NOOOOO, they had to come back to their old habits, aka "making complicated weapons just for the sake of it".

But there is still hope, the dlc is not out and the beta will start soon.

 

 

Play Warrior 😄 Look not everyone likes everything, I get where you're coming from sorta, but I'm sorry I can't agree less, I don't want headache complex but having mechanics within the weapon if we don't get elites, is good and fun, and ex: thieve's make me want to dust my thief off for it but I loved the assassin style/combo stuff. To me TOO simple is boring, to me and many. You may dislike it, and fair, many don't want it but I mean tbh only a few seem actually complicated, and tbh Ele's Spear when get the etching is sorta simple imo. But anyways, of course many feel meh about mechanics within a weapon so I get it. Now not liking how a mechanic works yeah that tbd with these. Personally, the engi one looks meh, but I never liked focus target like DE, esp melee. But other parts look like could be good.

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

4 hours ago, Bomboed.5697 said:

It could be a new type of condition, which stacks damage, but not duration, and has a baseline duration of 10 sec for example.
So basically it could be a delayed burst damage condi: you stack it on enemies, it deals some DoT damage and then explodes for huge damage based on number of stacks.

That'd be interesting, but it'd be a bit too hard countered by condi cleanses. The issue would also be the application of it from different sources, kinda like the issues we had with conditions when the game launched.