Grenade Barrage

[DeceiverX.8361]

1 hour ago, Khenzy.9348 said:

Granade damage (not just Granade Barrage) is completely busted.

The problem is that the Engineer throwing those granades is extremely tanky, with godly utility and high stability uptime while they do a crap ton of damage. It's the most overpowered roaming spec I've come across in a long long time.

 

My only quip is it's the mixture that's busted.  The mixture they explicitly removed from everything else. 

 

I honestly wouldn't care of it hit as hard as it does, but it needs way less defense and way more risk.  Any build designed to OHKO an opponent needs to have the same rules apply back to it; it should die almost immediately to anything and have limited utility, too, should the opponent get an outplay. 

 

The GB build is problematic because like longbow Soulbeast, it has way too much low-skill, readily-available utility on super low cooldowns and it's really, really, hard to punish because engineer has so much innate durability and boon support available to it. 

Edited October 21, 2021 by DeceiverX.8361

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

15 hours ago, Shroud.2307 said:

10.4k Pry Bar, 8.5k Jump Shot, 5.5k Throw Wrench all in one combo.
12k Pry Bar
6.9k + 7.1k Throw Wrench (both ways) = 14,146k
9.1k Thwack (3rd hit in Tool Kit auto attack chain)

Every class is capable of hitting 10k+ with multiple skills, sometimes in quick succession. The reason you don't see it very often is because the vast majority of players prefer to build defensively.
Marauder is a lot more popular than Berserker in WvW because it's the smarter choice, but it's still a defensive stat.

And I say the "smarter choice" because going fully offensive is rarely a good idea. Assuming equal skill, there aren't many situations that 2 - 4k extra damage on your hard hitting skills is going to determine the winner of the fight unless you catch them by surprise.

I don't just mean stat selection either though, a lot of players also prefer to use defensive traits. Shadow Arts, Blood Magic, Alchemy, Wilderness Survival, etc. are common trait lines for roamers to choose, all of which are defensive. You won't see crazy high damage on the majority of classes/builds unless you go all in (some exceptions apply - *cough* Soulbeast*).

And please for anyone else reading this, let's not make this a "let's nerf those Engi skills too!" discussion, lol. I have an entire folder of high damage screen caps. I can make any class look like it needs to be nerfed if I want to 😈.
I mean, how about this one? Totally balanced, right? You get me.

I wouldn't call Marauder defensive in any sense.  It has 91.4% of the power damage of berserker, unless special circumstances apply.  In which case, it can be more or less.  If I were to swap out to full berserkers, I'd only gain 8.6% damage.  This is what makes me think that there's something else going on, because boosting myself from 8k to 9k isn't going to get me anywhere near 16k.

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

22 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Would there be compensatory damage buffs if grenade barrage gets nerfed?  I play a marauder scrapper in WvW quite often, and one of the things I noticed is that grenade barrage isn't just a high damage skill.  It's... the only high damage skill ... I don't know how you guys are getting such high numbers with grenade barrage.  On my explosives/alchemy marauder build with scholar runes and force sigil, I usually only hit around 8k with it.  Grenade barrage is the only thing I can put on my bar that will get me out of endless stalemates with rangers, eles, necromancers, revs, and other scrappers.  

4 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

This is what makes me think that there's something else going on, because boosting myself from 8k to 9k isn't going to get me anywhere near 16k.

Perhaps these logs will help:

From my August 29th clip:

https://imgur.com/a/eQMSVrA

From my October 15th clip:

https://imgur.com/a/unyTXbo

The one-shot burst isn't just Grenade Barrage.  It involves Explosive Entrance for 3-4K.  That's basically a free, passively-applied Backstab on every opener without any stealth or positioning requirement, refreshed by dodging.

The second clip also included Jump Shot for 6,604.  It would seem GB isn't Engi's only high-damage option.

[Khenzy.9348]

15 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

 

My only quip is it's the mixture that's busted.  The mixture they explicitly removed from everything else. 

 

I honestly wouldn't care of it hit as hard as it does, but it needs way less defense and way more risk.  Any build designed to OHKO an opponent needs to have the same rules apply back to it; it should die almost immediately to anything and have limited utility, too, should the opponent get an outplay. 

 

The GB build is problematic because like longbow Soulbeast, it has way too much low-skill, readily-available utility on super low cooldowns and it's really, really, hard to punish because engineer has so much innate durability and boon support available to it. 

It's much easier to just nerf granade damage than to nerf their utility and tankiness.

 

Also, comparing Engineer/Scrapper to the nich glass cannon one-shot Soulbeast build is a clear comparative grievance that seems completely fallacious to me. That Soulbeast build you mentioned (the only one that can be compared to this Engi damage-wise) only has one-shot potential every 60 seconds while being relatively glassy while the other still retains almost one-shot potential while also having ridiculous utility, huge sustained damage with absurd sustain/tankyness/mitigation, they are not even remotely in the same level.

Edited October 22, 2021 by Khenzy.9348

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 hours ago, Khenzy.9348 said:

It's much easier to just nerf granade damage than to nerf their utility and tankiness.

 

Also, comparing Engineer/Scrapper to the nich glass cannon one-shot Soulbeast build is a clear comparative grievance that seems completely fallacious to me. That Soulbeast build you mentioned (the only one that can be compared to this Engi damage-wise) only has one-shot potential every 60 seconds while being relatively glassy while the other still retains almost one-shot potential while also having ridiculous utility, huge sustained damage with absurd sustain/tankyness/mitigation, they are not even remotely in the same level.

10s depending on your trait loadout. OWP/Sic'em are only really needed for bunker busting.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

It's pretty simple, imagine thief a low hp burst class having that type of spamable damage, imagine sb cluster bombs deleted half or more of a tanky builds hp or into gibbed glassy targets, the forums would be a flame with nerf that skill posts so fast. Now to make it worse put it on a spec that's innately tanky that also has mobility and a long duration stealth lmao ie scrapper and even to a degree holo. It's honestly pathetic and hypocritical for any engi main to defend this skill and makes them look like a$$ hats whenever u see their names on any other nerf thread regarding any other skills on another class. This thread is a perfect example as to why anet should never take balance advice from the forums. Imagine defending nude barrage than calling another classes skill op.

Edited October 22, 2021 by Psycoprophet.8107

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's pretty simple, imagine thief a low hp burst class having that type of spamable damage, imagine sb cluster bombs deleted half or more of a tanky builds hp or into gibbed glassy targets, the forums would be a flame with nerf that skill posts so fast. Now to make it worse put it on a spec that's innately tanky that also has mobility and a long duration stealth lmao ie scrapper and even to a degree holo. It's honestly pathetic and hypocritical for any engi main to defend this skill and makes them look like a$$ hats whenever u see their names on any other nerf thread regarding any other skills on another class. This thread is a perfect example as to why anet should never take balance advice from the forums. Imagine defending nude barrage than calling another classes skill op.

I am all in favor of nude barrages, but can we focus on nade barrage here Psyco?

[subversiontwo.7501]

2 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's pretty simple, imagine thief a low hp burst class having that type of spamable damage, imagine sb cluster bombs deleted half or more of a tanky builds hp or into gibbed glassy targets, the forums would be a flame with nerf that skill posts so fast. Now to make it worse put it on a spec that's innately tanky that also has mobility and a long duration stealth lmao ie scrapper and even to a degree holo. It's honestly pathetic and hypocritical for any engi main to defend this skill and makes them look like a$$ hats whenever u see their names on any other nerf thread regarding any other skills on another class. This thread is a perfect example as to why anet should never take balance advice from the forums. Imagine defending nude barrage than calling another classes skill op.

Projection is one of them traps that people tend to fall into when they forget to think about it.

If I click your name or if I click Deceiver's name, what comes up is just talking about Thief, Thief and Thief. Your entire identity here is wrapped up in that one class. The same isn't true for other people discussing here that you are projecting at. So, it is far more likely that other people comming into this thread will see the same recurring DP/SA roaming Thief brigade up in arms over something that may pose a smidge of a threat to them than they are to see Engineer mains defending grenade barrage.

Reading the thread it is also those same people who are more prone than others to steer conversation away from discussing mechanics, design and balance towards a discussion of matching up and fighting. Interesting enough, the same can be seen in threads about the Thief, that those same players steer conversation towards very specific scenarios. So for this thread, when I read it, I can see more of a consensus about grenade barrage. Yet I see strict Thief players complaining as if Engineers were some kind of king of roaming (while the Thief still most certainly is, by far).

You can see that people arguing from a perspective of other classes tend to mention barrier more and stealth or barrage less, because the barrier is probably more broadly impactful while the barrage (especially in combination with stealth) is very specfic for something undertanked that is used to ruling that space. Most other players are used to building counters into their builds and they are used to dealing with the likes of your class that has more stealth and is more difficult to counterplay (eg., it's far easier and more effective to reveal a Scrapper).

In fact, all of the things you bring up besides the barrage here are all issues on the Thief which the Thief excels at, above the Scrapper. They are not the class with the shortest cooldowns, the longest stealths or most spammable damage. With that said, yeah, Grenade Barrage should- and will probably get nerfed some time. I don't even think the ability was designed with concentrating all the multi-hits into one place in mind (even if there are more abilities out there that burst on the same premise of fan/shotgunning multi-hits).

It's more surprising to still see this thread going and how it seems to be going on just bad arguments. Grenade barrage is an outlier and possibly something that remain in unintended ways but it isn't very permeative in the grand scheme of things, at least not yet, and out of a number of balance issues that persists I can easily think of a handful of things that are far worse and more problematic for the mode.

Edited October 22, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Psycoprophet.8107]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I am all in favor of nude barrages, but can we focus on nade barrage here Psyco?

Lol good stuff.

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

8 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Grenade barrage is an outlier and possibly something that remain in unintended ways

This is basically all I (and several others) are saying in this thread.  I even narrow it to Grenade Barrage with Explosive Entrance burst from stealth, not just GB generally.  Unfortunately, being on Thief in my clips is a major distraction for many.

8 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Reading the thread it is also those same people who are more prone than others to steer conversation away from discussing mechanics, design and balance towards a discussion of matching up and fighting.

Not exactly sure who you're referring to, but to reiterate what I (and others) have said in terms of "design and balance," it's the combination of high burst potential and sustained damage with innate tankiness and self-sustain that sets grenade engi builds apart from anything else available in the meta.  Not only is the burst from stealth reliable and fairly easy to execute (hard to flub and not difficult to set up) compared to others (except for maybe LB Sic'Em), the builds double as bruisers while the burst is on cool down.  Unlike others, it doesn't invest all its resources into the burst, and it isn't inherently squishy.

8 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

In fact, all of the things you bring up besides the barrage here are all issues on the Thief which the Thief excels at, above the Scrapper.

The difference is in the damage to sustain ratio.

[Luranni.9470]

You can tell it's broken coz every muppet group in the game is abusing it 😄

[Dawdler.8521]

5 hours ago, Luranni.9470 said:

You can tell it's broken coz every muppet group in the game is abusing it 😄

Weird, I've barely seen a nade scrapper for months.

Instead I only see muppet groups of core necro super bunkers supported by healbot firebrands, healbot scrappers or aurashare healbot tempests with a random dps thrown in that they stick on like glue (usually rev).

[Banto.8761]

It only affects WvW. Anet doesn't care.

Come back once it affects PvE and watch how fast Anet all of a sudden can react to it.

[Skada.1362]

I hope they do something quick! We must protect the thieves! 😂

[Luranni.9470]

1 hour ago, Skada.1362 said:

I hope they do something quick! We must protect the thieves! 😂

Amusingly the largest number of player types I've "seen" on stealth nadespam engis usually play dp thieves. It's a head-scratcher no doubt. An utter baffler one might say. 😄

[Melian.5368]

This stupidity is still going on... Tells you how much ANet cares about balance, and with the recent leaks, I'm convinced a dev just likes this. 

[Sleepwalker.1398]

14 hours ago, Melian.5368 said:

This stupidity is still going on... Tells you how much ANet cares about balance, and with the recent leaks, I'm convinced a dev just likes this. 

I'm pretty sure after fixing it for PvP, they put the "to do in wvw" sticky note onto "it's on the table."

Sticky note might have flew off and ended with janitor picking off the floor and throwing in the bin.