Engineers, how do you feel about spear?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

I'm planning to.... diversify my class playtime due to reasons, but I am still at heart someone that likes to be in your face doing damage to you.  Because of that I've never had much drive to play engineer more than a change of pace, because hammer doesn't really scratch the itch I have. 

Before I do something I may regret  how does engie spear fare in competitive? Does it work properly with kits? Does it push condis appropriately?

@bethekey.8314's opinion sought in particular since I saw something I liked in the spear mechanist, but don't like green. @shion.2084, @Kuma.1503, and Alien (wherever he is) opinion/s would also be valuable.

Does it translate to holo? Assume I'll take flamethrower for incindiary if its available. 

Edited Wednesday at 05:43 PM by Azure The Heartless.3261

[RidleyDay.3056]

plenty good at first glance, deals nice damage, but borderline unplayable in practice

to elaborate, things that are wrong with it:

1. it's melee with no defensive utility outside of the evade on 5
2. meh power scaling, decent condi scaling
3. underwhelming numbers if you can't land 2
4. 2 struggles to hit moving targets, especially ones moving toward you 🙃 
5. you can only "focus" (the thing applied by 2) one target at a time so your teamfight damage is bad despite having huge flashy visuals
6. 2 doesn't count as a leap finisher if you don't have a target or you don't have a target in range 🙃
7. 3 is very good since it can knock blind off before you land 2. the second half that fires the spear off and roots ignores LoS. that's probably the best thing about the weapon.
8. 4 is a 1s cast time stun... that stuns for 1s 🙃 would help if it had any damage or burning but nope. it's a 2s stun in pve but i guess cmc thought that was too much? lol
9. no boons, little to no synergies with traits, a terrible (and i mean TERRIBLE) stun and a meager evade on a skill you don't want to be using for the evade (talking about 5). unlike guard spear that poops out blinds this one only applies vuln and burning (bleed on autos too, but cmon). incendiary powder is the "best" trait for the weapon with a 10% burning... duration increase. in a tree that is purely offensive.
10. 5 is a very good skill but you miss out on a huge chunk of damage if you can't land 2 first. it's also extremely telegraphed so you basically HAVE to lead with a stun (4 on a focused target works i guess but imagine thinking someone won't stunbreak in the long kitten 1s cast time 5 has.)
11. 5 has an evade but you probably want it for the damage. it's tricky.

so yeah, it's similarish to burn guard in how the condition application is linear so it's countered by cleanses, except it's anet's forgotten child instead of their golden one so you have minimal utility and freedom with utility slots. that and the burning lasts way longer than guard's for nearly the same damage. no utility, synergies, defense, damage is telegraphed and extremely easy to avoid... pretty much screams "i am a pve weapon". the visuals and sfx are satisfying though.

i'm mad about it to say the least.

[shion.2084]

1 hour ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I'm planning to.... diversify my class playtime due to reasons, but I am still at heart someone that likes to be in your face doing damage to you.  Because of that I've never had much drive to play engineer more than a change of pace, because hammer doesn't really scratch the itch I have. 

Before I do something I may regret  how does engie spear fare in competitive? Does it work properly with kits? Does it push condis appropriately?

@bethekey.8314's opinion sought in particular since I saw something I liked in the spear mechanist, but don't like green. @shion.2084, @Kuma.1503, and Alien (wherever he is) opinion/s would also be valuable.

Does it translate to holo? Assume I'll take flamethrower for incindiary if its available. 

I found spear to be suicidal and not a viable option for a power build on scrapper.  If my opponent was a lesser skilled player than me I could do things that were obscene to them.  Against an equally skilled one the glaring drawbacks of it could be far too easily exploited.   

  @Exalted Quality.8534 did a post where he  gave it a bit more favourable review in the engi forum.  It still didn't convince me, but he's an OG engi as well and so his opinion is worth considering.   

 The main problem for me is not having any defensives while you are supposed to be trying to mele with the thing.   For a scrapper to be relevant face to face in a power build, you're running maybe 18k health. You got one stun break.  Possibly one source of stab.  Poor condi cleanses.

  Spear doesn't have the block and reflect of shield offhand, nor the electro whirl and shock shield of hammer.    But it wants you to be toe to toe in mele.   While in the weapon you can't block or reflect.        It also is predicated on doing damage to a single opponent as it has a "target" component.   

  It essentially causes you to be in the worst possible situation cause it wants you up close but severely limits your survivability in that context.

 I can't get it to work for a power scrapper build... maybe others can.

Edited Wednesday at 06:53 PM by shion.2084

[bethekey.8314]

1 hour ago, RidleyDay.3056 said:

it's similarish to burn guard in how the condition application is linear so it's countered by cleanses, except it's anet's forgotten child instead of their golden one so you have minimal utility and freedom with utility slots. that and the burning lasts way longer than guard's for nearly the same damage. no utility, synergies, defense, damage is telegraphed and extremely easy to avoid... pretty much screams "i am a pve weapon". the visuals and sfx are satisfying though.

Pretty much this.

[Etaoin.4362]

I'm not hardcore competitive, but I am an engineer enjoyer and I have the same impression of engineer spear as pretty much everyone else posting so far. If you can land the big attacks, and your opponents aren't cleansing the burn, then you can subtly wrack up some quick damage (12 burn stacks is no joke).

That said...yeah, making it work in PvP is unlikely. Engineer specs are still almost entirely locked into 'nades or nothin' for damage.

[bethekey.8314]

Lol Devastator was bug fixed faster than Full Counter.

@Azure The Heartless.3261 made a good holo build with it, whisp me in game if you want.

Edited Thursday at 04:02 AM by bethekey.8314

[Terrorhuz.4695]

Yesterday fought some scrapper with spear. I know nothing about engineer so I couldn't identify what he was doing, I know he was using elixir S, tool kit and mortar kit

Very weird build, and spear very clearly lacks coefficients, but he was playing it wonderfully, with the ranged immob in particular being a really nice tool.

[Shagie.7612]

13 hours ago, shion.2084 said:

 I can't get it to work for a power scrapper build... maybe others can.

Isn't that sorta to be expected though?
I know they called it a hybrid weapon in the blog, but it's pretty heavily leaned towards condi, especially in SPvP where we don't have great hybrid weapons typically.

I'm not an Engi player because I am not a giant math nerd, but I think their spear is by far the coolest visually. I am however a carrion amulet enjoyer, on something that was also in the same situation for a very long time.

If it's that heavily loaded into one singular condition, it isn't really playable in the modern game. You will never hurt like half the specs that way, no matter how long you survive or how many times you exhaust their cooldowns. You won't stick any damage, just like Holo did to condi builds for a long time, so... kinda deserved tbh.

Jokes aside, condition weapons that lack good spread on specifically damaging conditions just don't work currently. It's hard to fix that in a way that isn't just making the weapon capable of vomiting out tons of varied conditions so it IS competitive (hello revenant spear), so I don't know what a good solution to its damage delivery is.

But on the utility and defensive side, without weapon swap I think it's hard to make a weapon that's very heavily offensively oriented work unless one of the kits sees a rework to make it the defensive complement to something like the spear, so perhaps it would have been a better approach to give it a similar non-damaging kit to hammer, just as the condition 2h choice instead.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

16 hours ago, bethekey.8314 said:

Lol Devastator was bug fixed faster than Full Counter.

@Azure The Heartless.3261 made a good holo build with it, whisp me in game if you want.

Tonight if I catch you. 

Still got a grudge against Janthir but I'll be flexible

[lotus.5672]

id rather play hammer

[coro.3176]

11 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

If it's that heavily loaded into one singular condition, it isn't really playable in the modern game. You will never hurt like half the specs that way, no matter how long you survive or how many times you exhaust their cooldowns. You won't stick any damage, just like Holo did to condi builds for a long time, so... kinda deserved tbh.

Even if you can land cover condi, why bother? Power builds are currently doing more damage with one hit, than your condi skills would do if they ticked for 15s, so at that point, just why?

The condi traits like Incendiary Powder need to be updated for competitive, higher stacks, shorter burn, and with a lower ICD. Also, Engi needs more condi trait support in general. It's got like 5, total, with half of them in Firearms.

[Langeball.9351]

If it wasn't for hammer being god tier, I might be willing to use spear.

[Melumi.6432]

It's honestly not good enough for anything higher than G3, unless you're running a very awkward and difficult multi-kit setup (which means you're inherently using less spear anyway).

By far, and most importantly, Skill 2 needs to be fixed and/or changed. Overall, the weapon is too slow and predictable for PvP. I can never hit Skill 5 without landing a stun beforehand, usually with Blast Gyro. Skill 4 is useless since the cast time is too slow, and the stun isn't long enough for the aftercast, combined with the entire animation of Skill 5. The power values are too low for how much damage manages to hit in battle. It feels like the condition burst is cleansed too easily in comparison to Necromancer, for example; once the burning is negated, you're dealing barely any damage outside of bleed.

It's a great weapon visually, but it's lackluster and doesn't provide enough defense, which Engineer desperately needs.

Moreover, the Engineer forum will say that core issues exist with Firearms and that it needs a rework, but I sound like a broken record at this point, and nothing ever gets changed.

Edited Thursday at 10:32 PM by Melumi.6432