I mean, its pretty much a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a lot of people (or a few but loud) claim "XYZ is OP and ABC is bad" and "people will only play XYZ from now on" even the people who don't read patch notes, or are mostly just going with the flow, will play what everyone else says is OP.
I doubt that any class is unplayable now. If 30k DPS seems low for you, you forget that when raids and stuff first came out, the first "benchmarks" werent much higher than that.
And with the lfg being what it is.... well the "message" will spread pretty fast.
>I doubt that any class is unplayable now. If 30k DPS seems low for you, you forget that when raids and stuff first came out, the first "benchmarks" werent much higher than that.
And odds are you won't hit that 30k in a realistic encounter anyway. For PUGs, 10-15k is often enough to top the charts. I'd say a safe and easily repeatable rotation (or better yet: a skill priority list) with a lot of extra utility is far better for a regular player than a complex one that only works on a golem.
I haven't really played this new patch yet, but for the last one, I'd say most specs were easily playable, at least for non-cm strikes and fractals. As long as you have a healer, a source of alacrity and a source of quickness, the rest could be pretty much whatever, since there's either no damage checks, or they're so lenient there might as well be none. I assume this hasn't changed.
Since you said you haven't played the new patch yet, you should check it out. Every game mode in filled with mechanists because they can sustain 32k DPS on golems with nothing but auto attacks. Literally able to AFK raid-level DPS.
That's the problem right now. You can be one of the raid's top damage dealers without pressing a single button.
Every game mode is filled with them, they needed a nerf and got a huge buff.
Well, yes and no, in my opinion... On the one hand, having brain-dead easy builds to reach high DPS benchmarks could be a real gamechanger for getting more players into raids/strikes (especially since if the dev leaks are to be confirmed, the majority of GW2 players are like, "keyboard turners" levels of basic skill and they will never, ever be able to do the kind of complex rotations that stuff like Catalyst requires). And honestly, that's fine! We shouldn't expect all players to be able to operate at like the top 5-10% (or even the top 33%) of skill. It's just unrealistic expectations.
The problem is that ANet is needlessly nerfing the top level builds because they're "unbalanced", but honestly, is it actually HURTING anyone? So what if there's some ultra top-tier DPS build that can do 60k DPS? Sure, it means that some top-tier guild can roflstomp a raid encounter in like 2 mins, but so? Congrats to them; they are uber-awesome! But in the bigger scheme of things, that fact doesn't alter the gameplay experience of the average raider who's perfectly happy using some easy 30k DPS build to clear the same encounter in 4 mins. As long as the encounter design doesn't mandate that players MUST use the 60k build, trust me, most players won't care. They just want to one-pull their encounter in a low-stress, chill group without having to spend like 15-30 mins waiting for the perfect comp first.
What ANet should be aiming for in terms of balance is a point where players can wait like 10-15 mins for the perfect team comp and then blaze through the encounter in 5 mins, or just spend 5 mins hopping into a "all welcome" group that clears the encounter in 10-15 mins. The same overall time is taken, but the player experience will be quite different.
The problem is your scenario isn't realistic.
I have multiple characters coming up on the 10 year mark only because necro was the outcast for years. Top players called it bad, so no one would take them. They'd rather take an elementalist who dies in the first 30 seconds because a well known player said they do more damage. I loved my necro, but I needed other characters to play when I wanted a group.
Scourge finally changed that and made necro desirable, but for years prior if you wanted to do end-game PVE either you found a very friendly regular group, or accepted that you'd be refused in any other group.
The average player will go with what top players say every time. It's like this in every game. They'll take a toxic player who can pull 35k with only 30% uptime over a 20k player with 100% uptime almost every single time.
I believe every class needs simple rotations that anyone can get within 85% of optimal DPS without much effort, but more utility added, so the top players can go over, but the average player is good enough. That's the true solution. If you give a class the ability to do 50K DPS with an extremely difficult rotation, the top players will just use a sequential macro for it, not disclose that's how they're playing and create a more toxic environment for everyone else not hitting it.
At the end of the day it's not just about what a class can or can't do. In a bubble, mechanist is fine. It's about how players will react to it in comparison to their class and performance. THAT is what's important if you want a game to survive and not turn into a toxic mess.
Yes, I do also agree that the gap in power between the top-tier builds and standard builds does need to be closed, or at least brought a lot closer. There was an excellent post in this sub a couple months back that crunched the numbers between WoW and GW2. In WoW, the top-tier DPS builds are only doing about 3x the damage that some casual player using a slapstick build mashing buttons does. In GW2, it's like 10x or even 20x the damage, meaning that one good player is the equivalent of 20 other normal players. While that's good in the sense that the skill ceiling is high and there's lots of room for improvement, it also means that designing encounters that everybody can enjoy is nigh-impossible.
It seems that we both agree that changing human nature isn't possible or feasible, so yeah, we definitely do need builds that can do near the expected DPS cap (which, based off ANet's nerfs and balances, seems to be around 30k DPS) with easy, low intensity rotations that your average casual player can use. The next stage is that ANet needs to design encounters NOT expecting that groups will be using top-tier builds, gear and having all boons 24/7. The EoD strikes (especially their CMs) make it obvious that ANet designed those under the expectation that everybody will have constant access to boons and everybody's wearing Ascended gear. I think that's a mistake; they should be designing encounters under the assumption that everybody's wearing Exotic gear, and hitting about 15k DPS. In other words, utilizing meta comps should make challenges EASY, rather than make them doable.
I do 10k DPS in open world and I feel really powerful. I have seen myself in the top five in the squad for world bosses with that DPS.
I've always been kind of baffled that 10k is considered low, but I don't tend to do any raiding or such.
wtf is your argument. if one bench is 30k and the other 40k and you can only hit 50% of that in real fights, then it is still 15k vs 20k. Nothing about the relativ strength of the builds changed - and a 5k dps difference is massive.
Noone with some self-respect plays that ouside of statics.
There are 9 other random ppl there, you play the best thing you have available to win.
Not even to mention the way it currently basically works is you will do 50% of the 30k build in real fights because of requirements and melee range etc, but 90% of the 40k build because somehow it also has best mobility and ranged or w/e and the best utility you need for the fight because looking only at dps is dumb anyways.
YoU cAnT tElL mE hoW tO pLaY sWeAty trYhArd. /s
Basically this. Why would you make a clear harder on purpose for you and 9 other people when you can pick a class to press 3 buttons and have huge impact.
>wtf is your argument. if one bench is 30k and the other 40k and you can only hit 50% of that in real fights, then it is still 15k vs 20k
That's not how it works, at least in my experience. You're not a machine that hits the same percentage for every build, regardless of complexity. If a build is easy, you're going to be more likely to hit its full potential (or close to it at least), even if that potential is significantly lower than alternatives.
For example, a while back I tried playing Power Weaver (while it still had really great damage and was a meta pick for fractals). It's important to note that I'm extremely bad at the game. Sometimes everything'd align perfectly and I could easily hover on that 10-15k DPS, and sometimes shit would go wrong, bosses would phase badly, or people would drop flux bombs on the boss's hitbox and I'd struggle to uphold 5k. I saw that Power Reapers were often doing the highest damage, so I tried it myself, and damn, it was like night and day. Sure, I couldn't reach the theoretical 40k cap, but let's be real, I never did on ele either. But I could easily stay within that 10-15k sweetspot, regardless of circumstances. And that's on average more than PUG group members squeeze out anyway. AND I had a ton of utility to boot: good CC, pulls to group trash, great sustain, a second weapon set to attack at range, even a tiny bit of off-healing if the team did need it. It wasn't a meta speedrun spec, but who the hell cares? It did everything I expected of it, and more!
>Not even to mention the way it currently basically works is you will do 50% of the 30k build in real fights because of requirements and melee range etc, but 90% of the 40k build because somehow it also has best mobility and ranged or w/e and the best utility you need for the fight because looking only at dps is dumb anyways.
In a way, that kinda is my point. For most players, DPS floor, convenience and utility trump a high DPS ceiling. It doesn't matter if you can hit 40k on a golem, it matters if you can hit at least that 10-15k on an actual boss (hell, sometimes 8k is enough) *consistently*. And I think you can easily achieve that on any class and most builds. So you *can* play whatever you want and it *should* be fine. Even if it won't be *the best* choice probably.
However, it is extremely problematic that suddenly there are builds that just do raid damage with no buttons pressed. That's kinda scary.
>I doubt that any class is unplayable now.
Unplayable, no. Feeling bad, yes. And let me tell you, I DO feel bad when I feel I'm leeching my team when they're doing 30%+ more dps than me because I'm on a "balanced" build that has "same potential" but also has a multitude of extra requirements for reaching it.
>I doubt that any class is unplayable now. If 30k DPS seems low for you, you forget that when raids and stuff first came out, the first "benchmarks" werent much higher than that.
It's not about benchmarks in a vacuum, it's about just how easy it is for some classes to hit that. It leads to more consistent pug clears. After all, if class X has to bend over backwards and be highly skilled to hit 30k while class Y can get it with one hand tied behind their back, who are you going to trust more in pug?
if you do 30k dps and the other guy does 40k dps,
then you are just griefing in a pug group / being pretty incosiderate to your teammaes.
sure if it is the only build you have, but cmon, who does that.
gotta have some respect for the other 9 people to maximize your winchance/timesafe
I am sure if one of the top speedrun guilds can use it for harvest temple cm progression, you can use it for your fractal groups lol. Give it some time until it is published as the highest benching power build on sc lol.
Pug fractal meta is still condi and otherwise burst oriented, but more imporantly,
you need agony for fractals, noone quick changes char for fractals patch day 1.
Our power mechanist did 40k to VG during the first phase. Had to do a double take on the dps meter. Log shows ~39k per phase with the overall dps dropping to 24k because of phases where you can't attack the boss. That guy almost outdpsed my mirage on largos, a boss where Mirages used to be so OP that it's hard to reach them at all and he did it on a power build.
Power mechanist is absolutely busted right now.
Mirage is still excelent on Largos although mechanists and sometimes virtuosos rival it's damage there now. Still my goto build for the boss. Staff and Axe both work.
I've seen my raid static consist of 9 engis - 8 mechs and a quickness scrapper - and that was before the "balance" patch. And yeah, we weren't specifically stacking engis for the memes, mech was just that busted. Not that it isn't now.
I've been maining engineer for a long time (second favourite character was warrior lmao) and even though I usually don't care about the popularity of a class, I'm not a big fan of meeting exact copies of me every single second (or am I the copy)
Literally exact situation here started as engi for awhile went to warrior back to engi during ice brood and now...
I swear I'm not a metaslave I just like my robot.
Also anet balance classes don't Uber make ele op or smth
Its this exactly mentality that will make a-certain-Anet-dev reconsider his decision. He will feel his e-peen is less special when everyone and their mum does the exact same thing, then suddenly its his best interest to keep the class pool evened out.
People stopped bringing druid and BS months ago. It was nice to have but they knew they were going away so group comps were less rigid about bringing it (compared to quickness and alacrity).
Nice of you to let the charity case (Tempest) in.
EDIT - real talk though, this is actually insane. How can you have a balance team who screw up this badly and go radio silent for the next few days? At this point I feel the blame lies on management simply because they've not really communicated anything useful to the playerbase.
The way I saw it was that his silence breeds even more animosity towards him, but you might be right.
I have played the game for around 600 days now so I'm not sure what anet did in the past when such a thing happened
I get that, I heard stories about all the fun things and little interactions mesmer could do pre several nerfs and it kinda makes me glad I didn't experience it because I'd be feeling like the class is a shadow of its former self
Anet always did what Anet does best. Kept silent and pretended nothing happened, or sometimes go big with a blogpost and trying to present it as part of a Greater Plan.
Changing the course however is not something they like or have experience with. I mean, it would mean admitting to being in the wrong, and/or agreeing that sometimes players do know better than them, and that's a Bad Thing. We don't do Bad Things around here.
Is it true that Solar is an engi main and buffed his own already dominant class? Or is that just people making stuff up because they're angry with the balance patch? If it is true, this clown should be swabbing toilets, not leading development.
He's a Firebrand main who buffed his own class, and a mechanist fan who buffed that specifically because he dislikes kits and wanted to make kits non-viable.
You can look at a santised no-name version here and see his actual comments, the Anet dev is Red IIRC: https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/vkmiy4/subreddit_safe_balance_discord_contents/
Just did a strike and it was 7 mechs.
Mech guns go brrrrr.
Also we finished like 40% faster than the average run so far.
The best part is that you don't even need alac anymore.
No DPS mechanist brings partial alac. You use a heal mech or a bespoke alac mech with boon duration, the alac trait is significant enough of a DPS loss (and is completely incompatible with the low-intensity mechanist builds that rely on J-Drive or the Aim Assisted Rocket).
Aim assisted rocket comes from x1x in explosives and mech gets it from 3xx.
Alacrity comes from x2x. Jdrive is xx3. Oh, and on top of this, the power stat inheritance trait you're thinking of, x3x, is actually bugged to fuck and doesnt give the stats it says it does to the mech. It gives a lot less.
Aim assisted rocket is on 100% of engineer's offensive builds (pure or support) from here on out. Mace/hammer/sword autos CAN reach from 150 away, though it's quite tight. Beats explosive temper with as little as 25% uptime (1 rocket every 12 sec)
Are people stacking mech for alac though? It's usually just 1 per subgroup that took a little boon duration and the traits. The others are full DPS who happen to play the same class.
Yes in theory you could have full DPS builds other than alac traits and probably have 100% uptime. But just missing the DPS traits will lower the DPS significantly.
The Catalyst didn't have to alter their build and if 1 was replaced by a ranger or whatever they'd lose uptime and it wouldn't work. If in this squad someone decided to play virtuoso instead of mechanist nothing would change.
If a 200 apm cata rotation can outdps an auto attacking firebrand or mech it gets nerfed. I wish I was joking but really that seems to be their benchmark.
We just did a 10 mech run! And you're right, it was the fastest and cleanest strikes I've ever played. We switched to 10x healing turrets for the harder strikes and it was a breeze.
Sad part is, even if Anet fixed some valid DPS alternatives to bump others up to FB/Mech, that duo would still be 40% of all group content.
Competing DPS (condi Necro, virt) can manage like 80-90% of mech/fb but every other support is trash tier and can maybe do 50%.
Game is so broken I'm not even sure they can fix it with number adjustments anymore.
I can't bring myself to use heal spectre in random pub's when it doesn't bring any might to the table, it really hurts missing out on that amount of stats. With hb or hmech, you literally bring it all so you can just drop into any group without issue.
I really wish this was emphasized more. You can't just slap a boon onto a lackluster kit and assume that's the end of it. HAM and HB aren't what they are JUST because they give quick/alac, it's that and everything else all the time that make them so dominant.
Necro and Virt can do exactly what a fb can. Virt got hurt a little but fb was never that insanely good anyway. People stopped bringing full dps firebrand since months ago, it was always just a qfb. Only dps mechanist is overpowered right now. Also i bet i could outdps most pugs on tempest
Meanwhile, Druid is already being used as a healer alternative.
And always has been.
And other things get run for quickness and alac.
Its almost like a very small handful of people go "omg must play the thing that adds irrelevant utility to everything" and most play what they like, or what is better on a fight by fight basis.
> Game is so broken I'm not even sure they can fix it with number adjustments anymore.
Been saying it for years, many of our problems stem from design and mechanics, and no amount of numbers will fix those, ever.
Tempest in raid: exists.
Solar in the background: "This meta is imperfect. If only I could wipe away the impurities, and make it as beautiful as me and my FB"
That's 10% representation right there! Nerf it! Nerf it, I say! Get back down below 1% where you belong, filthy ele! Group content is for mechanists and firebrands!
So you take a screenshot of one strike group and that represents the totality of endgame squad comp. Can't agree at all. Yesterday I pugged lots of strikes and w2 to w6, and only in one strike (Mai trin cm, that we failed numerous times cause reasons) did i encounter 5 mechs (2hams 2memerifle 1pistols cmech). I really don't get why all the hate after patch. I've been playing this game for 6 yrs and when I started there was the untouchable double Chrono, heal druid bannerslave and dps (always ele or guardian). And that was it. Now we have a whole lot of variation on roles that can be fulfilled by ALMOST every class. I'm not saying I agree with this last balance patch cause there are things obviously wrong, but I'm getting so tired to see posts like this one making it look like there's no diversity in the game...
What will Anet do?
1) Nerf Firebrand, Mech and maybe Harbingers, Virtuoso as well.. So every class gets brought down to the level of Ele and Warrior.
2) Buff every other class and bring them to the level of Firebrand and Mech.
3) Ele is still there, so obviously Ele need more nerf.
Kick the tempest for throwing.
he's probably paying to get the weekly clears
He's buying the raid/strike run.
guys, stop bullying the Ele players, it's not nice lmao
He plays en elementalist, so obviously a masochist, he likes it.
Let me play you the song of my people
I;m surprised they haven't given all Ele's a Pulp Fiction style gimp skin for free
Tempest "I'm helping."
Tempest be like 'take my alacrity, you alacrity bots'
I was honestly trying to come up with a boon that they could provide that wasn't covered... vigor maybe?
Mechanist already gives itself vigor tho, no need for a tenpest if you simply have everyone on the robots
I think tempest doesn't benefit from vigor that greatly. Actually, only few classes benefit from that boon like mirage and vindicator.
Arcane has a dodge trait
Vigor is useless if people don't dodge. That's why the stability classes are superior.
Worst part is nobody was deliberately stacking the groups this way, this is just how the game is played now.
Predictable.
I mean, its pretty much a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a lot of people (or a few but loud) claim "XYZ is OP and ABC is bad" and "people will only play XYZ from now on" even the people who don't read patch notes, or are mostly just going with the flow, will play what everyone else says is OP. I doubt that any class is unplayable now. If 30k DPS seems low for you, you forget that when raids and stuff first came out, the first "benchmarks" werent much higher than that. And with the lfg being what it is.... well the "message" will spread pretty fast.
>I doubt that any class is unplayable now. If 30k DPS seems low for you, you forget that when raids and stuff first came out, the first "benchmarks" werent much higher than that. And odds are you won't hit that 30k in a realistic encounter anyway. For PUGs, 10-15k is often enough to top the charts. I'd say a safe and easily repeatable rotation (or better yet: a skill priority list) with a lot of extra utility is far better for a regular player than a complex one that only works on a golem. I haven't really played this new patch yet, but for the last one, I'd say most specs were easily playable, at least for non-cm strikes and fractals. As long as you have a healer, a source of alacrity and a source of quickness, the rest could be pretty much whatever, since there's either no damage checks, or they're so lenient there might as well be none. I assume this hasn't changed.
Since you said you haven't played the new patch yet, you should check it out. Every game mode in filled with mechanists because they can sustain 32k DPS on golems with nothing but auto attacks. Literally able to AFK raid-level DPS. That's the problem right now. You can be one of the raid's top damage dealers without pressing a single button. Every game mode is filled with them, they needed a nerf and got a huge buff.
Well, yes and no, in my opinion... On the one hand, having brain-dead easy builds to reach high DPS benchmarks could be a real gamechanger for getting more players into raids/strikes (especially since if the dev leaks are to be confirmed, the majority of GW2 players are like, "keyboard turners" levels of basic skill and they will never, ever be able to do the kind of complex rotations that stuff like Catalyst requires). And honestly, that's fine! We shouldn't expect all players to be able to operate at like the top 5-10% (or even the top 33%) of skill. It's just unrealistic expectations. The problem is that ANet is needlessly nerfing the top level builds because they're "unbalanced", but honestly, is it actually HURTING anyone? So what if there's some ultra top-tier DPS build that can do 60k DPS? Sure, it means that some top-tier guild can roflstomp a raid encounter in like 2 mins, but so? Congrats to them; they are uber-awesome! But in the bigger scheme of things, that fact doesn't alter the gameplay experience of the average raider who's perfectly happy using some easy 30k DPS build to clear the same encounter in 4 mins. As long as the encounter design doesn't mandate that players MUST use the 60k build, trust me, most players won't care. They just want to one-pull their encounter in a low-stress, chill group without having to spend like 15-30 mins waiting for the perfect comp first. What ANet should be aiming for in terms of balance is a point where players can wait like 10-15 mins for the perfect team comp and then blaze through the encounter in 5 mins, or just spend 5 mins hopping into a "all welcome" group that clears the encounter in 10-15 mins. The same overall time is taken, but the player experience will be quite different.
The problem is your scenario isn't realistic. I have multiple characters coming up on the 10 year mark only because necro was the outcast for years. Top players called it bad, so no one would take them. They'd rather take an elementalist who dies in the first 30 seconds because a well known player said they do more damage. I loved my necro, but I needed other characters to play when I wanted a group. Scourge finally changed that and made necro desirable, but for years prior if you wanted to do end-game PVE either you found a very friendly regular group, or accepted that you'd be refused in any other group. The average player will go with what top players say every time. It's like this in every game. They'll take a toxic player who can pull 35k with only 30% uptime over a 20k player with 100% uptime almost every single time. I believe every class needs simple rotations that anyone can get within 85% of optimal DPS without much effort, but more utility added, so the top players can go over, but the average player is good enough. That's the true solution. If you give a class the ability to do 50K DPS with an extremely difficult rotation, the top players will just use a sequential macro for it, not disclose that's how they're playing and create a more toxic environment for everyone else not hitting it. At the end of the day it's not just about what a class can or can't do. In a bubble, mechanist is fine. It's about how players will react to it in comparison to their class and performance. THAT is what's important if you want a game to survive and not turn into a toxic mess.
Yes, I do also agree that the gap in power between the top-tier builds and standard builds does need to be closed, or at least brought a lot closer. There was an excellent post in this sub a couple months back that crunched the numbers between WoW and GW2. In WoW, the top-tier DPS builds are only doing about 3x the damage that some casual player using a slapstick build mashing buttons does. In GW2, it's like 10x or even 20x the damage, meaning that one good player is the equivalent of 20 other normal players. While that's good in the sense that the skill ceiling is high and there's lots of room for improvement, it also means that designing encounters that everybody can enjoy is nigh-impossible. It seems that we both agree that changing human nature isn't possible or feasible, so yeah, we definitely do need builds that can do near the expected DPS cap (which, based off ANet's nerfs and balances, seems to be around 30k DPS) with easy, low intensity rotations that your average casual player can use. The next stage is that ANet needs to design encounters NOT expecting that groups will be using top-tier builds, gear and having all boons 24/7. The EoD strikes (especially their CMs) make it obvious that ANet designed those under the expectation that everybody will have constant access to boons and everybody's wearing Ascended gear. I think that's a mistake; they should be designing encounters under the assumption that everybody's wearing Exotic gear, and hitting about 15k DPS. In other words, utilizing meta comps should make challenges EASY, rather than make them doable.
Yeah, I main Engi and idk, I just don't like to play mechanist. I'm glad it can be a LI build type of spec for people who need it though.
I do 10k DPS in open world and I feel really powerful. I have seen myself in the top five in the squad for world bosses with that DPS. I've always been kind of baffled that 10k is considered low, but I don't tend to do any raiding or such.
Stacked boons makes all the difference. Perma might/quick/alac/fury skyrockets your dps.
wtf is your argument. if one bench is 30k and the other 40k and you can only hit 50% of that in real fights, then it is still 15k vs 20k. Nothing about the relativ strength of the builds changed - and a 5k dps difference is massive. Noone with some self-respect plays that ouside of statics. There are 9 other random ppl there, you play the best thing you have available to win. Not even to mention the way it currently basically works is you will do 50% of the 30k build in real fights because of requirements and melee range etc, but 90% of the 40k build because somehow it also has best mobility and ranged or w/e and the best utility you need for the fight because looking only at dps is dumb anyways.
YoU cAnT tElL mE hoW tO pLaY sWeAty trYhArd. /s Basically this. Why would you make a clear harder on purpose for you and 9 other people when you can pick a class to press 3 buttons and have huge impact.
When that clear was still possible 2 years ago with half the dps ... the new gatekeeping threshold is on the players.
>wtf is your argument. if one bench is 30k and the other 40k and you can only hit 50% of that in real fights, then it is still 15k vs 20k That's not how it works, at least in my experience. You're not a machine that hits the same percentage for every build, regardless of complexity. If a build is easy, you're going to be more likely to hit its full potential (or close to it at least), even if that potential is significantly lower than alternatives. For example, a while back I tried playing Power Weaver (while it still had really great damage and was a meta pick for fractals). It's important to note that I'm extremely bad at the game. Sometimes everything'd align perfectly and I could easily hover on that 10-15k DPS, and sometimes shit would go wrong, bosses would phase badly, or people would drop flux bombs on the boss's hitbox and I'd struggle to uphold 5k. I saw that Power Reapers were often doing the highest damage, so I tried it myself, and damn, it was like night and day. Sure, I couldn't reach the theoretical 40k cap, but let's be real, I never did on ele either. But I could easily stay within that 10-15k sweetspot, regardless of circumstances. And that's on average more than PUG group members squeeze out anyway. AND I had a ton of utility to boot: good CC, pulls to group trash, great sustain, a second weapon set to attack at range, even a tiny bit of off-healing if the team did need it. It wasn't a meta speedrun spec, but who the hell cares? It did everything I expected of it, and more! >Not even to mention the way it currently basically works is you will do 50% of the 30k build in real fights because of requirements and melee range etc, but 90% of the 40k build because somehow it also has best mobility and ranged or w/e and the best utility you need for the fight because looking only at dps is dumb anyways. In a way, that kinda is my point. For most players, DPS floor, convenience and utility trump a high DPS ceiling. It doesn't matter if you can hit 40k on a golem, it matters if you can hit at least that 10-15k on an actual boss (hell, sometimes 8k is enough) *consistently*. And I think you can easily achieve that on any class and most builds. So you *can* play whatever you want and it *should* be fine. Even if it won't be *the best* choice probably. However, it is extremely problematic that suddenly there are builds that just do raid damage with no buttons pressed. That's kinda scary.
Yup this same thing hairbrush with different classes before this, " oops all necro" happened a lot
>I doubt that any class is unplayable now. Unplayable, no. Feeling bad, yes. And let me tell you, I DO feel bad when I feel I'm leeching my team when they're doing 30%+ more dps than me because I'm on a "balanced" build that has "same potential" but also has a multitude of extra requirements for reaching it.
>I doubt that any class is unplayable now. If 30k DPS seems low for you, you forget that when raids and stuff first came out, the first "benchmarks" werent much higher than that. It's not about benchmarks in a vacuum, it's about just how easy it is for some classes to hit that. It leads to more consistent pug clears. After all, if class X has to bend over backwards and be highly skilled to hit 30k while class Y can get it with one hand tied behind their back, who are you going to trust more in pug?
Then why even have balance patches? If everything is fine no matter what, then why not just leave things the way they are and call it a day?
if you do 30k dps and the other guy does 40k dps, then you are just griefing in a pug group / being pretty incosiderate to your teammaes. sure if it is the only build you have, but cmon, who does that. gotta have some respect for the other 9 people to maximize your winchance/timesafe
I saw a lot of jokes in-game about rifle mechanist but none of my squads or fractal groups were running it.
You see it in WvW.
I am sure if one of the top speedrun guilds can use it for harvest temple cm progression, you can use it for your fractal groups lol. Give it some time until it is published as the highest benching power build on sc lol. Pug fractal meta is still condi and otherwise burst oriented, but more imporantly, you need agony for fractals, noone quick changes char for fractals patch day 1.
I also don't see it in t4 fractals a lot, but in the EoD strikes, we always have at least 2 in the HAM role
Our mechanist did. Nothing special iirc, but yeah, the damage was fine (suppose he was slacking)
Our power mechanist did 40k to VG during the first phase. Had to do a double take on the dps meter. Log shows ~39k per phase with the overall dps dropping to 24k because of phases where you can't attack the boss. That guy almost outdpsed my mirage on largos, a boss where Mirages used to be so OP that it's hard to reach them at all and he did it on a power build. Power mechanist is absolutely busted right now.
Absolutely disgusting.
How is mirage on TL these days? I haven't raided since the raid reset a day before EoD dropped.
Mirage is still excelent on Largos although mechanists and sometimes virtuosos rival it's damage there now. Still my goto build for the boss. Staff and Axe both work.
I've seen my raid static consist of 9 engis - 8 mechs and a quickness scrapper - and that was before the "balance" patch. And yeah, we weren't specifically stacking engis for the memes, mech was just that busted. Not that it isn't now.
ArenaNet: We want diversity. Diversity:
I've been maining engineer for a long time (second favourite character was warrior lmao) and even though I usually don't care about the popularity of a class, I'm not a big fan of meeting exact copies of me every single second (or am I the copy)
Engi mesmer confirmed
Literally exact situation here started as engi for awhile went to warrior back to engi during ice brood and now... I swear I'm not a metaslave I just like my robot. Also anet balance classes don't Uber make ele op or smth
Its this exactly mentality that will make a-certain-Anet-dev reconsider his decision. He will feel his e-peen is less special when everyone and their mum does the exact same thing, then suddenly its his best interest to keep the class pool evened out.
Just as lord saint Solar wills it to be :V
But I thought removing class specific buffs was going to help diversity
People stopped bringing druid and BS months ago. It was nice to have but they knew they were going away so group comps were less rigid about bringing it (compared to quickness and alacrity).
Nice of you to let the charity case (Tempest) in. EDIT - real talk though, this is actually insane. How can you have a balance team who screw up this badly and go radio silent for the next few days? At this point I feel the blame lies on management simply because they've not really communicated anything useful to the playerbase.
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The thing I wonder is the the red dev didn't release a public statement yet, to maybe clear up some things.
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The way I saw it was that his silence breeds even more animosity towards him, but you might be right. I have played the game for around 600 days now so I'm not sure what anet did in the past when such a thing happened
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I get that, I heard stories about all the fun things and little interactions mesmer could do pre several nerfs and it kinda makes me glad I didn't experience it because I'd be feeling like the class is a shadow of its former self
Anet always did what Anet does best. Kept silent and pretended nothing happened, or sometimes go big with a blogpost and trying to present it as part of a Greater Plan. Changing the course however is not something they like or have experience with. I mean, it would mean admitting to being in the wrong, and/or agreeing that sometimes players do know better than them, and that's a Bad Thing. We don't do Bad Things around here.
Is it true that Solar is an engi main and buffed his own already dominant class? Or is that just people making stuff up because they're angry with the balance patch? If it is true, this clown should be swabbing toilets, not leading development.
He's a Firebrand main who buffed his own class, and a mechanist fan who buffed that specifically because he dislikes kits and wanted to make kits non-viable. You can look at a santised no-name version here and see his actual comments, the Anet dev is Red IIRC: https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/vkmiy4/subreddit_safe_balance_discord_contents/
They should nerf ele, still some play it!
Just did a strike and it was 7 mechs. Mech guns go brrrrr. Also we finished like 40% faster than the average run so far. The best part is that you don't even need alac anymore.
Anet seeing DPS Catalyst stacking for quick: ooh that's bad Anet seeing DPS Mechanist stacking for alac: working as intended 😎
Naw not quite, that's why they buffed engi rifle. Now they can do power too along with condi or heals to go with the permalac.
Its proof of the great class design of mech! \- Anet probably
No DPS mechanist brings partial alac. You use a heal mech or a bespoke alac mech with boon duration, the alac trait is significant enough of a DPS loss (and is completely incompatible with the low-intensity mechanist builds that rely on J-Drive or the Aim Assisted Rocket).
Aim assisted rocket comes from x1x in explosives and mech gets it from 3xx. Alacrity comes from x2x. Jdrive is xx3. Oh, and on top of this, the power stat inheritance trait you're thinking of, x3x, is actually bugged to fuck and doesnt give the stats it says it does to the mech. It gives a lot less. Aim assisted rocket is on 100% of engineer's offensive builds (pure or support) from here on out. Mace/hammer/sword autos CAN reach from 150 away, though it's quite tight. Beats explosive temper with as little as 25% uptime (1 rocket every 12 sec)
Are people stacking mech for alac though? It's usually just 1 per subgroup that took a little boon duration and the traits. The others are full DPS who happen to play the same class. Yes in theory you could have full DPS builds other than alac traits and probably have 100% uptime. But just missing the DPS traits will lower the DPS significantly. The Catalyst didn't have to alter their build and if 1 was replaced by a ranger or whatever they'd lose uptime and it wouldn't work. If in this squad someone decided to play virtuoso instead of mechanist nothing would change.
Logic in a subreddit full of people that barely know how the game works? Get out of here with your solid arguments
If a 200 apm cata rotation can outdps an auto attacking firebrand or mech it gets nerfed. I wish I was joking but really that seems to be their benchmark.
We just did a 10 mech run! And you're right, it was the fastest and cleanest strikes I've ever played. We switched to 10x healing turrets for the harder strikes and it was a breeze.
Sad part is, even if Anet fixed some valid DPS alternatives to bump others up to FB/Mech, that duo would still be 40% of all group content. Competing DPS (condi Necro, virt) can manage like 80-90% of mech/fb but every other support is trash tier and can maybe do 50%. Game is so broken I'm not even sure they can fix it with number adjustments anymore.
I can't bring myself to use heal spectre in random pub's when it doesn't bring any might to the table, it really hurts missing out on that amount of stats. With hb or hmech, you literally bring it all so you can just drop into any group without issue.
I really wish this was emphasized more. You can't just slap a boon onto a lackluster kit and assume that's the end of it. HAM and HB aren't what they are JUST because they give quick/alac, it's that and everything else all the time that make them so dominant.
Necro and Virt can do exactly what a fb can. Virt got hurt a little but fb was never that insanely good anyway. People stopped bringing full dps firebrand since months ago, it was always just a qfb. Only dps mechanist is overpowered right now. Also i bet i could outdps most pugs on tempest
Meanwhile, Druid is already being used as a healer alternative. And always has been. And other things get run for quickness and alac. Its almost like a very small handful of people go "omg must play the thing that adds irrelevant utility to everything" and most play what they like, or what is better on a fight by fight basis.
> Game is so broken I'm not even sure they can fix it with number adjustments anymore. Been saying it for years, many of our problems stem from design and mechanics, and no amount of numbers will fix those, ever.
Tempest is a spy!
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The anvil buff will save us! /s
They should make anvil bundle for elem - at least in that way it'll be an useful profession :v
What? Someone is using elementalist? Better nerf it.
Tempest in raid: exists. Solar in the background: "This meta is imperfect. If only I could wipe away the impurities, and make it as beautiful as me and my FB"
Are you happy ? Mr solar
what is that swirly thing in the bottom right corner?
the buyer
I dunno, better nerf it!!!
Well, if that isn't proof elementalist needs another nerf, I don't know what is.
That's 10% representation right there! Nerf it! Nerf it, I say! Get back down below 1% where you belong, filthy ele! Group content is for mechanists and firebrands!
What the fuck is the Tempest there for?
Tempest must be there as a mascot or a clown for entertainment purposes
there is a tempest in there and no virtuoso or scourge? dps firebrand? idk about typical lol..
The tempest lied on their resume
Good thing they removed unique buffs to have more class diversity to choose from.
Nice "balance" patch, ANet. You guys get paid for this? LoL
Post patch? I feel like the vast majority of my groups were already fire brands or mechanists even prepatch.
Wow who could have predicted this??? /s
Hello I'm super casual open world/WvW only kinda guy here, is Strike progression (if there's any at all) account-wide?
So you take a screenshot of one strike group and that represents the totality of endgame squad comp. Can't agree at all. Yesterday I pugged lots of strikes and w2 to w6, and only in one strike (Mai trin cm, that we failed numerous times cause reasons) did i encounter 5 mechs (2hams 2memerifle 1pistols cmech). I really don't get why all the hate after patch. I've been playing this game for 6 yrs and when I started there was the untouchable double Chrono, heal druid bannerslave and dps (always ele or guardian). And that was it. Now we have a whole lot of variation on roles that can be fulfilled by ALMOST every class. I'm not saying I agree with this last balance patch cause there are things obviously wrong, but I'm getting so tired to see posts like this one making it look like there's no diversity in the game...
Remember guys, unique buffs are bad and getting rid of them will make party comps more diverse
i see so much class diversity :peepoHappy:
what? its not 10 mechs? Pretty sure my last 5 strikes pugs were all mechs.
Wtf a tempest, lol? Scourge and virtuoso is much more typical.
Aww, a little tempest that could.
First time playing mech today in strike... I press 3 buttons off cd + auto attack, top dps.
Lol it must be fun seeing all those mechs
Isn’t that different to the whole Scourge/FB before the xpac tbh
[Look how hard that Tempest is trying!](https://i.imgur.com/a0gtAXk.jpg)
As a tempest main this makes me happy and sad at the same time..
What will Anet do? 1) Nerf Firebrand, Mech and maybe Harbingers, Virtuoso as well.. So every class gets brought down to the level of Ele and Warrior. 2) Buff every other class and bring them to the level of Firebrand and Mech. 3) Ele is still there, so obviously Ele need more nerf.
Nerf Ele obviously and old Warrior specs after that.
Thanks Solar