LilBiM.3581

I have to say that for the most part, I'm pretty happy with where it is. It's performing and much better to use. Good job on the changes. There's a lot of boon synergy to be had from regen but yeah, I think I've changed my mind on regen on skill 3. If I were to add it, I'd slap it on skill 4 for both regular and the chain reaction for let's say about 4s each. Then slap 12 stacks of vuln for 5s on skill 5 for justification of the long CD and to help the team make the big plays if you drop it correctly. Everyone knows the vuln stacks are definitely not for me ;3

I'll say that for now if a slight change was made to SB#3, add 7s of Regen as the Chain Reaction Bonus and plausibly an increase in Vulnerability from 1 Stack to 3 Stacks for SB#1, we could then re-evaluate it's performance and go from there.

The cover art for the shortbow skills ( 1 - 5 ) on Engineer.

I love the art for the skills :3

It is my belief that the balancers simply want a handful of builds to be viable and that's it. Ultimately whether kits get nerfed or not is not in our control, they could wake up and decide to do it whenever it makes them happy. Blaming the average joe is laughable. Kits are core to condi PvE builds that ANet wants to stick around. When they no longer think that (whatever skill or utility or weapon) should be viable it will be ground out of existence just like turrets, gadgets and anything else they don't think should be used in whichever game mode they are targeting. Having said that, if you believe that buffs will come elsewhere as a result of kits being nerfed, feel free to state your evidence for this as well as which skills and utilities are marked for buffing as a direct result of kits being nerfed. It should be noted that Bomb Kit, Toolkit and Grenade kit have all been subjected to nerfs over the years.

Just give it like.. 3 years and they'll get back to it. Maybe. How much it is used (or not used) will determine what happens.

The goal appears to be to make Mechanist unplayable in PvP. Therefore players should play something else. As for grenade kit. You will need to find something else as filler and there are not many competitive filler options remaining.

To sum up my experience: OUT OF RANGE, OBSTRUCTED, 1 maybe two impacts if you're lucky This weapon really isn't powerful enough to justify 900 range and the inability to stand behind any object, including blades of grass, and watch all of your traps that you meticulously set up spam obstructed messages. Also people spend all of 0.5s standing in them. Essentially this is like playing bomb kit with LoS issues and the guy is 700 range away so nothing you do matters. I know what you're thinking, but support your allies. Look, herding cats is equally as good of a strategy as herding Charr. You would need to predict movements or spray these things on downed targets while your gang is beating the crap out of some poor soul whose legs have been on Charlie Murphy's couch for too long. It requires your enemy and your allies to cooperate and stay in one place for too long to make an impact. Also the impact isn't noteworthy, it's like a medkit without regen, vigor and reliability. Everybody else makes the plays, you just swoop in and pretend you're helping.

If you ask me, Unblockable and Slow could be rolled into a minor trait in the Inventions line, given a duration (3-4s) and a trigger of when you use a CC and a CD. Might see more use of the Inventions Tree elsewhere or in specific circumstances. Autodefense Bomb Dispenser could go in the trash bin and Protection, Regen and Vigor could be brought to the weapon. This would free up the weapon itself to do more meaningful and useful things in life, other than making sure we all get our 8hrs of sleep.

Didn't they nerf access to alacrity on Mechanist? So it's probably just to bring the numbers back up a bit such that it (Mechanist) is not even worst off in solo PvE content.

Thank you. It was designed in a few minutes. Obviously I don't know of all of the design considerations/limitations that the devs have to endure when making a new weapon however I tried to keep to the flavor and nature of the Engineer while maintaining it's concept of a typically low mobility, stand and fight duelist. The Engineer is typically one that buffs itself primarily and as such having a skill that could transfer those buffs on the Engineer to others could provide lasting utility when assuming the role of support. We do have challenges in providing high uptime might and ferocity to allies, while this weapon concept is unlikely to solve the ferocity issue the access to a fire field and boon transfer may help to increase might uptime in the group. It does provide Explosion on two traits to allow for triggering Ferocity traits. Overall it was designed to have skills that could be used effectively in a duel but also to provide support in ways that the Engineer currently does have access to, maintain high uptime on conditions such as vulnerability which is something that the Engineer traditionally is capable of and to provide access to conditions such as poison and burning for those out there who are crazy enough to think about running it in an alternative style. What it does lack is access to a barrier skill for synergy with alacrity traits. Honestly it could be flavored into skill 3, instead of AEGIS on shatter it could instead provide ~1.2k barrier to yourself if you just mash it and nobody attacks you. Alternatively we could have the Engineer come up with a new field type, Holographic Field: Blast - 500 Barrier Leap - 1 clone Shatter on the user Projectile - Confusion for 5s Whirl - Slow for 2s Slap that as the field on Skill 4 (Crashing Shot) and see how it goes. Now you can support with the right execution, utility skills and traits.

Let me just offer my own suggestion for SB for Engineer: AA Chain: Standard 1/4s SB animation. Jolt Bolt: First Attack: 1x Vuln (5s). Second Attack: Hammer Bolt: 2x Vuln (5s) .Final chain: Poisoned Bolt: 3x Poison (3s). All bolts bounce between 3 Targets, Projectile Finisher (20%) 2 Skill: Explosive Bolt: A bolt streaks across the ground that pierces, crippling foes and applying a Timed Charge ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Timed_Charge ) on all struck targets. Projectile travels in a straight line. Cripple for 3s. 1200 range. 3 Skill: Holographic Shot: You evade for 1/2s as a holographic image fakes out your opponent. If you successfully evade an attack you and nearby allies (240 radius) are granted Super speed (3s) and 5x Might (8s) (at your location) and the holograph creates 3 clones that shatter, granting aegis (3s) and inflicting weakness (3s) (240 radius at the clone's location). 4 Skill: Crashing Shot: Drop a lightning field (240 radius) that removes conditions from allies and strips boons from foes. When it ends static electricity built up erupts (200 base x ( 1 + number of conditions / boons removed, up to a total of 20). Pulses: 4, Removes 1 Condition and 1 Boon per Pulse. Alt: Instead of Damage on eruption: Keep lightning field and condition / boon strip and simply offer Protection (5s) and Resolution (5s) on target location. 5 Skill: Singularity Shot: Launch a bolt that produces a wave of infused magical energy (fire) that pulls all foes (5 targets) in a funneling cone from the user to the target location ( up to 600 range away). After Knocking Back foes the arrow detonates on the target location copying your boons to allies at the target location. Knock Back (600), 240 radius Fire Field (3 Pulses), Explosion, Transfer Boons on the Engineer to 5 Allies at the target location.

Try The Predator, HMS Divinity or the Super Rifle if you want a different sfx~

Yeah I think this would work better IF the Engineer had access to weapon swap so that they aren't locked into that role. In circumstances where you are ambushed, you will need a weapon set to protect yourself from ambushes due to weaker mobility once you equip this thing. That said, it has potential for WvW however if you look at the current WvW Meta, people (organized 10 or more member groups and some classes such as Willbender (very high uptime but not necessary perm in all cases)) are running around with permanent 4 - 10 stacks of stability as well as permanent everything other that quickness and alacrity. As a result these 2 - 5 skills will need to do a lot more than push out support boons. I would like to think that they would need to do boon stripping as well in order to be relevant to the existing meta. Alternatively it may have some good synergy with Purity of Purpose which I think is plausible and good but it doesn't offer much value in the current WvW Meta. All of that said, we don't know what it does yet however, it is important to note that, well organized groups in WvW do not currently have any challenges with support; with the exception of alacrity uptime and quickness uptime, all other boons can be applied permanently. Edit: And just to be crystal clear, 5 man groups who are properly organized can achieve the prior mentioned perm boon uptime in WvW as well too. The support identity for this weapon would need to be unlike what we're accustomed to seeing and be impactful enough to be brought to a 5 man group (thus replacing or being a viable alternative to some class in that group. Let's be honest, it is most likely that, this will impact the flavor of Support Engineer).