Phazon.3975

I assume this is a response to my second post. If you are going to cherrypick the one sentence where I said "I joked to players that EoD was a P2W expansion due to protocols." out of my entire post, at least acknowledge that the word "joke" is in it. I think the context is pretty clear in that I joked about it because I thought protocols as they were before were overpowered. What in the world? Come on, man. Nowhere in that post did I say or even imply for everyone to "GET GUD." Don't twist my words. If there is any fairness, I could say your response has an incredibly condescending tone, so thanks for the "I don't care about your opinion, so shut it." post. I just think the protocols were OP and needed to be nerfed. Did they go overboard? Yes, I think so. I gave my reasoning on why it was OP but I also shared some ideas for some kind of balance, a compromise, so that everyone can still have fun and for the protocols to still be useful. Agree to disagree. That's what I'll leave it as. I wish everyone luck who wants the protocols back the way they were. I want everyone to be happy (within reason) but I also want the game to be balanced.

I never knew I needed a penguin minipet ingame until now. If there is no penguin minipet this Wintersday, ima riot.

"Feature."So you are telling me nothing was ever remotely weird about having only one of either protocol clearly demonstrating that they had an internal cooldown to boon application, but when you had both there wasn't any? The patch notes clearly revealed that it was bugged. I will chuckle at the "not bugs, features" joke every so often someone brings it up, but I think that is now being taken too literally. Some bugs, unfortunately, took years to fix. So does that mean that Ranger pet crit chances were never bugged and were an actual "feature" because they were bugged for years? And pets were bugged for how many years exactly? They barely fixed them a couple of years ago. I guess we should just go back and "fix" that too. Look, I get that players had fun roleplaying "Pressing One: A 2022 Mechanist's Story" on all their classes with the previous jade protocols, but we are being selective now on what is a "bug" and what is an "intended feature". I will say that it was never 100% obvious how Jade Protocols were supposed to work and it should have been made more clear. The patch notes should also have specified that it had been a bug too, so they missed the mark there. The ACTUAL nerf was overkill and needs to be toned down. But do I still think it was overpowered when it was bugged? Absolutely. Heck, I would always joke about EoD being a "P2W" expansion to players because of the protocols, which players often haven't even tried out to my surprise. Adding extra stats to the protocols, reducing the boon application cooldown to 45 seconds, and reducing EoD/SoTO enemy health pools should balance things out and keep them relevant without making any other build that's not "Power Berserker's Stats" trivial. (I apologize for all my very long posts btw. It's a curse. And please stop making the new expansion mobs walking DPS training golems, Anet. 😂)

The Tools traitline while playing Mechanist completely stops working each time your character scales in maps below level 80. I think this also happens in level 80 maps but rarely. The only way to fix it is to change your build and then change it back. But this is annoying as it happens every time you enter a chunk of the map that causes downscaling/upscaling. Update: Mounting and form changes fix it as well. It might be the golem itself that bugs the traitline each time it scales. For players that constantly mount up, it will be less of an issue. But for players who like to adventure mostly on foot (like myself lol), this can be very annoying.

Why is this even on the bug forums? The protocols are working as stated in the patch notes. I also have no idea why the players saying that the protocol cooldown was bugged before this update are getting confused reactions (incoming confused reactions for me kek). Before this update, if you only had either the Offensive or the Defensive charge, the cooldown worked as intended, but if you had both of them, it would proc each time you entered combat. This isn't just QoL, but also a bugfix. Let's be honest here, Jade Protocols before the fix completely made most builds less viable than what they were before like, for example, Celestial builds. Some Celestial builds are still quite good with or without the protocols, but the major benefit of Celestial for solo play is Concentration, because you could maintain boon uptime, making up for the loss of power stats, possibly helping you do higher and more consistent DPS than most glass cannon builds, and making you very tanky to boot. But with the protocols added, and with the bug, Celestial stats for example, have lost value and you'd be kitten lying if you said playing something other than Berserker was worth it. You would tear anything apart in seconds in any power build with the constant application of the protocol boons. It was overpowered. And come on now. The game is now suddenly unplayable? I heard zero complaints before protocols were added. However, there are a couple of issues that should be addressed. The cooldown change to 90 seconds is definitely too much. I would lower it to something more reasonable, like 45 seconds. The boons last long enough to give you an extra kick entering combat and against tougher opponents, you will get your occasional "second wind" in combat. I would also add 150 Precision in Offensive Charge and 150 Healing Power in Defensive Charge. The Condition Damage bonus on Offensive Charge can be useless in mostly power builds so adding one extra stat on both will make them more viable for every build. (It's still free stats, people.) The other problem is that the expansion that introduced the protocols, being EoD, buffed enemy mob health pools to obnoxious levels which I assume was to encourage players to use them. If you don't play a build that is somewhat optimized to pump consistent damage, I would say the threshold is about 15-17k consistent solo DPS, going through EoD mobs is a slog without the charges (I'm looking at you Veteran Nagas). They continued this with SoTO monsters as well in that they are much much beefier than mobs from PoF and before. Take any Open World meta build to Core/HoT/PoF without the charges, and then try it in EoD/SoTO and the difference in mob clearing speed is night and day. I rather have more dangerous but glassier HoT mobs in all expansions than the annoying roaches introduced since EoD. EoD and SoTO mob health pools should be lowered to balance the nerf to the protocols.

Thanks so much for the advice guys! Yeah, I think one of the problems I still have is that there are moments where the enemy team has one player chilling on an uncontested point (mostly mid at the start of the game) and my teammates sometimes are chasing the other enemy players around outside the point so I get OCD and try to contest the point so they don't capture it. I question why my team rather scatter everywhere/chase than fight on point but I'll just try to stick to the team until fights are 100% clear now. Interesting! I've gotten the impression that having more than one support isn't optimal from some players but that's good to know. I'll see if I can find some players to duoQ. Yeah, I think sometimes I might linger around for a bit longer than I should sometimes. But sometimes I just want to make sure the coast is clear before moving elsewhere. And thanks! Yeah I'm low Plat 1, pretty much bordering Gold, as in I basically got there right when I got my amulet so all I've been really doing is just play every 3 days to counter decay. I sure hope I can stay there or at least at >100 for Baron. Yeah I've read a lot about how much matches are manipulated at the top ranks which sometimes helps me brush off toxic behavior from teammates. It's pretty unfortunate. And you're right in the last part. I feel that as a support, I'm much more dependant on who I get on my team than vice versa. Like yeah, I can do great supporting but if they can't kill anyone, going to the wrong places at the wrong time, or just thinking I'm granting them immortality, which honestly feels it's what some players expect sometimes, then I just have to deal with it I guess. I've heard that some players just turn off team chat and just rely on pings/map awareness. I might try it but I feel cutting communication just goes against a team game. PvP for sure isn't nearly as abundantly toxic as I thought it was going to be but there definitely are players who just ruin the experience.

Hi all. So this is my first season in ranked PvP season I have participated in. Well PvP in general (if WvW doesn't count) since what got me to start was the bonus event about a month ago. I'm a low Plat 1 Staff Tempest Support main (really love playing Aurashare since WvW), and I just want to know from experienced supporters of what I should absolutely be doing and avoiding in games besides trying to keep my team alive. I'm not a perfectly consistent player and I definitely have some rough games on my end but there are also times when I question if it's me or if it's just things like bad match-ups, teammates, or getting hard-focused by the enemy team. In situations where my teammates are respawning and I've respawned sooner than them or am still alive, is there anything I should be doing meantime? I feel pretty self-conscious during these downtimes because I feel it's better to wait for my teammates to respawn when the enemy team has the upper hand and have points captured or pushing. These moments also sometimes lead to some salty teammates calling me out even tho I feel I have my hands tied. Also, how do you deal with salty teammates? I've been blocked by players for what feels like literally no reason lol. Players just telling me to "l2p" and blocked right after without any chance of even asking what I was doing wrong, hence why I'm asking here. And I just keep racking up blocks. Like why even play a team game if you are going to cut all communication for trivial things? And admittedly I also get tilted by this attitude where I just can't help but retaliate lately. I don't feel I'm the worst support, like if I was as bad as they say I am, then obviously I would've dropped to a lower rank many games ago, but I do get doubtful and possibly lost when it comes to situations in the first paragraph. And I won't lie these kinds of players really damper my confidence as a player lol. Even if others have told me that I do amazingly. Just have a bad habit of picking up the negative comments more than the positives. Like it makes me feel as if I don't even deserve Transcendence. xD Probably a worthless post and tbh I'm not sure if I'll continue to PvP or not since I only ever wanted to obtain Transcendence and Champion Magus and those are done with. I don't think I can deal with the kind of entitled, toxic players that I run to. But I want to at least want to see if I can obtain higher "Of The Arena" titles before the season ends so some supporter pointers would perhaps help clarify things. Thank you all and apologies in advance.

I noticed that the boon durations for Infusion Bomb were reduced from 10 seconds to 6 in PvE. This was not on the patch notes and has not been updated on the wiki. Granted if you are playing Healmech maintaining Regeneration and Vigor shouldn't be an issue but just thought I'd throw this out there. It isn't worth reporting as a bug is it?

I agree that the Rifle range nerf for Deadeye is unwarranted and I'm glad people are passionate about the classes they like in the fantasy aspect. But as a player who always wanted a customizable, trusty robot companion for my Engineer for years that would defend me and kick some butt, a golemancer if you will, and when they announced Mechanist I was some of the happiest I've ever been for this game. "Another pet spec?! And a ROBOT?! My dreams came true!" What I got on release was exactly what I always wanted! But the community said "No no no.No fantasy for you. We don't take kindly to AI around here." And I don't mean to sound toxic or at all vengeful because that isn't my intention...buuuuuuut... WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS CAN WE?! (PS- Look I understand Mechanist needed some tuning but this new change is already going overboard. Holo got buffed. Wait for more nerfs until we see how things perform after these changes please!)

Most specs look better than Vindicator by comparison. And any healer spec is going to be bringing alac or quickness with them. Mechanist currently only has 3 roles in the meta following Snowcrows site as PowerAlac, HealAlac, and cDPS, with Rifle Mech now removed from the list. Firebrand for years could fulfill the role of Healer, BoonDPs, and DPS. Mechanist is good and flexible but far from overpowered. Sure it's easy to play but with it's lower skill ceiling it also has a lower benchmark ceiling compared to other specs. Even it's PowerAlac build has the lowest benchmark compared to other meta at a not so great 25kdps while a good amount of the support DPS specs bench in the 30s. As for the experience in Open World, before the last balance patch, yeah Mechanist was kinda nuts lol. But Rifle Mech for Open World just felt more broken than it did raids, not to say that it did or did not need nerfing for the latter. It was just really easy to give yourself max might via traits, sigils, runes etc plus fury and quickness uptime and you would easily do around 24k dps. Not sure how it does now but you have to consider the fact that Engineer can not weapon swap, it loses it's toolbelt, and unless you are running Overclock Signet, you better be micromanaging or have a tanky golem because as soon as that golem needs to recall for repairs, you can kiss your DPS goodbye for a minute. There's plenty of specs that dominate open world however and I really don't think Mechanist blows them at all out of the water. Specs like Reaper, Tempest, Soulbeast, Renegade, Scourge etc have been top tier for years and are much much better brawlers compared to Mechanist against the likes of solo content or fighting champions thanks to some having insane sustain. Now what I really do want is them to split PvE-Instanced content balance from Open World. Rifle Mech was a clear example of things being too strong in Open World but there are specs that are really good in Raids that are not as good in Open World. Probably already Off-topic but there are a lot of traits that aren't at all viable for group content that are clearly meant to use for solo play but even in solo play they're still lacking. Just split Open World and Raid/Fractal balance please. That way things like "golem benchmark" nerfs won't affect players AND raiders who enjoy solo Open World, like myself. (PS- Anet please buff ranger pets already. I love Mechanist as it's straight to the point and functions like how a summoner/pet class should but holy kitten do pets hit like a wet tissue compared to a Jade Golem. Sincerely, a core ranger enjoyer.)

I think Blowtorch as off-hand pistol 4 is fine as it synergizes with Mace and Sword. I don't like the idea of a 900 ranged Blowtorch either. That sounds kinda silly lol. What they could do is maybe make Blowtorch and Glueshot have a special interaction where the glue is flammable and if Blowtorch hits the puddle at it's range, is causes a pulsing fire field that burns and damages enemies inside for a few ticks. That would add more range to pistol off-hand with the fire field's radius with this combo while also having some fun synergy with both skills. Might be complicated to make Glueshot work this way but just my 2 cents.

So I just made my first Gen 3 weapon a while ago and after some time I decided to test how the kill effect works. Doesn't seem to have a required amount of mobs to kill before it procs but I did notice that it wasn't triggering on multiple mobs in quick succession and it seemed like it had some sort of internal cooldown. Now I completely understand that this is because they didn't want an obnoxious amount of effects and cause a huge amount of lag on populated events/metas, but wouldn't it be better to just have the kill effects to only be visible to the user and remove the internal cooldown with a more reasonable trigger chance. Or perhaps making it like an passive where you can have up to 3 kill effects happen soon after another (if you are lucky) and behave like ammo skill cooldowns. Feels sorta "predictable" or something the way it works atm; kinda lessens the surprise factor and removes some of the fun out of it. I just would like to see some surprise fireworks displays every once in a while and see like a garden of branded crystals.

One more thing to add is that normally offensive Kits are used to add to your skill rotation, usually better with the lower cooldown skills taking priority. Like open with Smoke Bomb then go Fire Bomb->Concussion Bomb->Poison Darts->Static Shot->Blowtorch->swap to Mortar for Poison Gas Shell and Flash Shell if you still need more blind then swap to Bomb Kit for Fire Bomb, yadda yadda. Only use autos while everything else is on cooldown. But since this is mainly a question for open world, you can just go by my previous post.

Gadgets need work to be viable for open world. They're pretty underutilized and for good reason. For farming builds, Rocket Boots can come in handy tho for faster, non-static, farms. Kits are much more useful for open world than Gadgets altho I would say Grenade , Bomb , Flamethrower, or Mortar kit mainly. Grenades do good damage, are a nice ranged option if you are using a Mace or Hammer, and come with the powerful Grenade Barrage but they can be a bit annoying for casual open world play even with the Grenadier trait as they tend to miss a lot when enemies aggro to you. They're solid for farming tho. Flamethrower and Mortar are also the ultimate farming pair for events imo. Flamethrower does poor damage however but has great boon synergy with Mechanist. Mortar is nice for the Elite slot as the Flash Shell and Elixir Shell can come in handy in high pressure situations. Bomb Kit is similar but is pbAoE. If you want to try out kits, I would give Bomb Kit and Mortar Kit a shot. You can try Grenade Kit too and toggle "Snap Ground Target to Current Target" for ease of use and really helps while kiting.

#1 bothered the kitten out of me big time. Even when they previewed Shing Jea months before release I was crossing my fingers for them to change the color of the vegetation in the screenshots. Shing Jea is just so kitten bright compared to every other map outside of EoD that it actually hurt my eyes for a bit at first. It doesn't look like an area that even belongs to the same game. Kitten, when I went to go to Sandswept Isles for LWS4 dailies at the end of my first day in Shing Jea, I had some kind of "color whiplash" of how bad the difference was. The island just looks so unnatural. All the maps need polishing. Big time. And for me the biggest insult to injury is that if you actually take time to go to the islands Southwest of New Kaineng, they are color detailed with how Shing Jea SHOULD HAVE BEEN. It makes me so sad. The colors and textures are just so unnatural and inconsistent.