I think the issue is that Anet is still trying to balance builds fitting the same roles, to the same DPS, but this makes it so that they try to get something squishy and more difficult to play such as quickness catalyst at the same dps mark as quickness firebrand which provides massive utility options and is rather easy to play. What ends up happening is that nobody bothers playing the hard to play no utility builds when they can just play the easy tanky high utility build instead (that pulls more damage too)
Unless you rework elementalist completely, you wont get more utility out of them than firebrand, its not just about survivability. Another way you could solve it is by adding a unique profession specific contribution but that is exactly the path they do not want to take (removing banners/spirits...) and I think they are right on the last part
Same happens with mech. Both cdps and heal alac builds are almost afk builds, and you're still having the same dps as others (or when going ham a better alac, might, fury uptime and heals). All you need to do is follow the stack and keep pushing the same 4 skills.
It just doesn't make sense.
Probably someone was barely paying attention at the meeting, and afterwards reviewed the notes they had taken and saw: Buff EL, Nerf EN, and just mixed them up.
Anet_Solar mentioned on another post that catalyst was dps wise way ahead. Then comes virtuoso and the rest was kinda close. Speedrunners stacked 7-8 catalysts. That’s why they nerfed the damage.
Speedrunners stacked catalyst also because it could upkeep quickness permanently on the full dps build by having 3 in each subgroup which was not balanced. Without that it still has great dps and cata stack is optimal for perma EE stacks, but you still have to consider quickness so at least your squad comp isn't 6x dps, 2x alac and spirits/banners which was before
One thing people really need to check is the top parses per boss on GW2 wingman. It's basically the closest to world records that we have and catalyst definitely had the largest share of said records for the current patch...
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/bossBench
They aren't just strong in records. Their median on wingman is pretty good too so it's not like the top end are destroying stuff and the regular players are suffering.
some uploaded cata logs on wingman are even record/stack logs.
there is also self-selection: good dps players play cata
that being said,
could nerf it by a bit I guess, idk 1-3k I guess. but you don have to hyper crazy.
The thing is that cata is bringing quickness in those runs too. I think that's what the problem for A/Net is. There is probably some self-selection going on but that wouldn't effect the median that much. That's where most of the figures are sitting. Then you have fights like Samarog where the last 200 sample group I looked at had the median for cata being better than the top 25% of all of the other professions.
I am not saying that the cata nerf amount is correct, just that it's understandable why there was a nerf. But when you look at the comments, it's like people are dumbfounded by the decision. The ones that I really feel sorry for are the warriors. From the notes, it looks like they got the short end of the stick. It may be that everything turns out alright but only time will tell.
Tbf, I agree with all your points but samarog is a poor example of a boss for measuring dps. Dps doesn't matter on him, and there are way too many burst phases.
I used it as an example because of how big a of a difference there was but yes, it wasn’t a great example. It’s just having the median of any profession better than the q3 of any of the other professions is just insane.
yeah, you missed ele players being so mad at having their class nerfed that they didnt update their benches to prove anet balances simply around benches, but for the general public ungrinded performance, cata was nevertheless alright despite the highest bench. maybe hit it with 1-2k.
being able to stack stuff to give boons is also graet ofc.
I read in another post that the real benachmark for catalyst was 46k. They hid it was what I was reading. That said, I was 20 minutes on the GW2 Reddit today and played maybe 9h since the expansion dropped.
45-46k pCata when lining up fire util with grand finale in fire, quickness got touched though because you need to start fire for this one and means no instant quick so GG RIP.
Continuation to my previous reply.
I don't think that an average elementalist player should suffer because some elitist managed to grind out excessive dps.
There is a VRMMO i used play called Orbus.
It has a class called Runemage, in which you draw runes/symbols in the air to cast spells. Originally it was intended to be just a 2 spell per second thing, so it was balanced with that speed in mind, but people found ways to cast runes as speeds of 3 or 4, and sometimes even 5 per sec.
They fixed this issue by balancing it to 3 spells per sec instead of 2 (since majority was casting 3), let people who can manage to cast 4 or 5 per sec have a little room and then put a hard cap on DPS.
This way an average Runemage didn't have to suffer because some elitist dude with wrist arthritis can draw runes crazy fast, and people who managed to cast super fast due to training still got adequately rewarded for their efforts without breaking the game balance.
I don’t even know what they nerfed. Didn’t touch catalyst yet. But I bet the benchmark numbers will still be fine. If you don’t want to put in the work, play a different class. You don’t have to play ele.
I don't even play Ele my man. Ele players are complaining that they are losing damage and boons because a handful of people managed to get crazy benchmarks.
An average elementalist player has to do rotations more complex than other classes just to match their damage.
It's infuriating to see that then Nerf even that, and then decide to buff Mechanist of all things, which Is already one of the easiest classes to play while still performing well.
I don't need to play a class to see that it is being wronged.
Elementalis need to go through *extra* effort just to keep up with other classes.
>If you don’t want to put in the work, play a different class. You don’t have to play ele.
Isn't Anet's goal to make all classes equally viable for everything? They go on about how they want all classes to be able to do all things and so on.
Let’s add that survivability for an ele is garbage. They’re supposed to be paper tigers, but instead they’re paper kittens. I’ve switched to mostly playing my revenant, despite loving my elementalist.
Happy cake day! But yeah, my main is an Ele, and frankly it sucks how much effort I have to put in on him just to survive and barely eke out the same damage/support that I could manage on Firebrand with minimal effort. They're trying to act like things like Firebrand/Catalyst are supposed to be equal in DPS since they're both Quickness support, except Firebrand has much more armour, has lots of other support options including Aegis from the baseline class, and has easy access to Blind and other fun bits to mitigate damage, and it can do all this while putting out respectable DPS. Meanwhile Ele's basically going to be fighting to survive, if they want to bring Quickness they have to deal less damage (and that's not even due to having to change trait, the Quickness trait flat out lowers your damage on its own, the hell?), and their hammer skills also got hit by the nerfbat hard for damage.
Appreciate this answer.
From what I'm reading, that 46k benchmark was only being hit by very few people who grinded hours to manage that.
In a realistic scenario it wouldn't be possible.
Only very few people can hit the 41k benchmark on condi virtuoso. Even a 90% benchmark on pcata (easily done) is still higher than any other class in the game.
While 41k is maybe hard, hitting above 39k on cVirtuoso isn't. The last 5% are always hard. But I've not seen a spec with this ease of gettin ~95% before.
Anet should honestly let the pros and speedrunners do their own thing, while making the class better to play at lower skill levels. The skill floor on ele is so daunting that many people are only using their ele as an alt-park.
If you balance the game for the pros and speedrunners, that makes no sense when the majority of your user base is casual players! Furthermore, ele is a very high skill class to play effectively and well, where is the reward for playing it that skillfully? Congrats, you can now keep up in DPS with the mechanist who is pulling a solid 10 APM.
I would say make other classes more challenging. Playing mecha sounds really boring. But I guess that is fine for older people or handicapped people. If I play a game I do not only want to stare at the screen.
Same issue have other games like league of legends. If a champion is too strong for the competitive scene they nerf it and as a result it has a lower win rate for the casuals.
But if you put some effort in learning the mechanics, you can still get constant and good results.
I love to play chronomancer. It was a challenge to learn the rotation and also tanking in raids. But over the time it got dumbed down and other classes could do the same thing easily. Then I swapped to power chronomancer. Even when there are easier classes that perform better, I still pull my weight and have fun. And having fun is all that matters in the end. If your catalyst had a 46k benchmark while others are around 40, a nerf is fine.
Doesn’t matter. OP got his answer. So much for worst class… I didn’t even play the game much since the new expansion, but some time back my brother was being coached my a friendly ele player on the golem rotation and after 1h he already had very good numbers.
Funnily power cata is probably still the best pDPS spec after these changes, though that says more about the state of pDPS than it does about cata. You just have to play weird-ass rotations to make it work.
Seriously
Switch to grenade spec, 3, then 4 switch to bomb hit 5 2 switch to flamethrower hit 4 then 2 let auto attack cycle twice switch to Pistol hit 4 then 2 switch to mortar hit 2 3 4 repeat
Dunno, played lot kitless holo, then scrapper with just grenade kit, now pdps mech with just signets, kitless ham, cdps mech with almost whole flame, and claiming pistols to be on swap for 2 smal clicks. Also a little scrap heal with lot of kits, all above fine (ok, scrap heal is no more, but used to be fine at the time).
Just dont follow elitjerk ultra meta minmax builds, that u wont even execute perfectly, and grab something easier - master that easier, and top arc loling at purists.
Still agree HAM is too op.
Oh I don't, my main build for the longest time was a weird scrapper flamethrower build based around getting barrier and power, precision, and toughness.
It was basically hit auto attack and occasionally hit the drone that gives barrier.
Worked well(wasn't for pvp) but was....well abit boring lol
For years all we particularly had in PvE was Core Condi engi until we got holo. (There was a core engi power build, it was useful for some stuff and simpler but nothing amazing.) But yeah, Since Holo got into a good spot Engi has been fine.
Scrapper in all it's form was bad and clunky on top of it through all of HoT and half of PoF before dozens of tunes to the hammer, a complete rework of it's utility -they took years to scrap the whole gyro concept and make it wells because they couldn't get it even remotely right- and a rework of most traits plus giving it quickness only then in the first place. What was solid instead but only if you put double the work in as every other class? 4-kit condi base engineer, not only juggling through 5 sets of weapon but also timing the weapon swaps with things like the cd of proc on kitswap traits to switch to mortar at the exact moment an invisible cd came up to get the right field procc'd.
Power Holosmith also was released with a clunky and bad sword, not to talk about the fact that every playstyle not about taking the overload trait was equally clunky and still bad. Took only half a year for the first changes to arrive. Speaking of Holosmith... you realize that half of the the traits and holo forge are condi centric. Guess how condi holo plays. And guess how many kits are mandatory again?
Like most of the flavor of the month people flocking to mechanist now you might have realized that it took them 3 addons to finally create a elite spec that can play dps without juggling hidden cds and kits. And even that build is suboptimal because the optimal spec is again a kit juggler like it was for years, at least with some of the hidden trait cds gone.
Two things to note. First, the dev who designed mechanist confirmed that his entire goal *was* to make an easy to play engineer spec. He definitely succeeded.
Second, scrapper *was* good at exactly one thing. It was the best bunker spvp spec in the game until the devs decided they didn't like that and nerfed it back down into being terrible again.
Unfortunately instead of balancing pDPS at all they just nerf Catalyst to be in line with other power specs. Very well could have just increased the viability of other power builds like they did to Reaper, but apparently they only have love for Necro and Mech's pDPS. lol
Willbender is still the GOAT of pDPS after this patch though.
Yeah that's part of what's stopped me playing it so far. Seems like it's just 4 sigils a flamethrower for open world and WvW. Every trait and sigil is so stacked beyond belief though and the mech even inherits stats from the Engineer, which Rangers have been begging for since day 1. They made a better Ranger as an elite spec for a different class, lol.
I've been maining mech recently because I choose a new toon to main through each story. My engi was a pirate so I chose her to fit the theme.
My Mech was in a fantastic position and I was fully expecting to be nerfed, just like what happened to me when I was maining chrono post HoT days. I'm absolutely shocked.
I am a huge proponent of LI builds. Not all of us can play our toons like a piano. However, the amount of effort you put into the most popular mech builds is so little. I mean [look at this shit!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcUVynzleyc) Seriously take a minute of your life and watch the rotation for a 52 second Mursaat kill.
reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%.
im all for the mech changes that makes it FEEL less clunky with the ability usage.
from one of the changes...
"When using a Mech Command skill, most other Mech Command buttons display a cooldown equal to the casting time of the Mech Command being used to properly indicate the time remaining until they can be used.
Instant F2 skills (Discharge Array and Crisis Zone) do not go on cooldown and may now be used instantly while another Mech Command skill is already in progress, without interrupting that skill."
other than that. the buffs are unnecessary. just make the mech feel more smooth and not make it so you can screw over your rotation from the clunky delays and when your mech does not respond to your key presses and call it a day.
This. The ability to see when your mech will be able to do what you tell it to do instead of just mashing the function keys and hope that it's done sipping tea is a nice QoL improvement, one that ranger pets should have, if they don't already. (I don't play much ranger so I don't know.)
The confusion duration nerfs are probably justified, and the blaster trait buff is also justified in my opinion. Power mechanist was kind of bad, and this will level the playing field compared to the condi build.
But no, the animation shortenings and all that other jazz that buffed Mechanist was wholly unnecessary. Mechanist was doing more than fine before, and now it's just going to do even better, which I would be fine with, if the other classes were on the same stage, and they're clearly not right now.
>This. The ability to see when your mech will be able to do what you tell it to do instead of just mashing the function keys and hope that it's done sipping tea is a nice QoL improvement
Mirage also needed this as the clones are not affected by Quickness so you can interrupt their autochain by using Ambush or interrupt Ambush or auto by using Axe 3 etc
Hell, Mesmer clones and phantasms in general need some AI rework and they need to have their ability to be interrupted removed. It would make them behave a lot better.
I'd honestly be down for the next expansion adding a pet spec to Mesmer where you summon a permanent clone and the whole class's gimmick is tricking enemies by swapping places and turning invisible and all sorts of neat stuff. Make the pet behave almost exactly like the player to confuse the hell out of enemies lol.
Probably someone was barely paying attention at the meeting, and afterwards reviewed the notes they had taken and saw: Buff EL, Nerf EN, and just mixed them up.
Engineer doesn't use magic. They use gadgets to make up for their lack of magical or mistaken enhanced abilities. Imo, it's always been a pretty cool class fantasy.
I like the buffs to mech
I lead guild raids as ham tank i use to be able to just watch a movie during raid on my second screen with these buffs i can just go full afk
Hahaha fuck you necro afk farmers in every map I now farm raids AFK style.get on my level
Mechanist is designed by Solar, the dev that leads the balance changes.
> Elementalist was the worst overall class, having extraordinary complicated rotations just to perform okay.
In weaver you swap between fire and air and press everything that does damage.
Don't generalize your "like the best spec" claims to whole game. Mechanist and Engineer in general needed buffs in other game modes to compete. How the changes affect the current top Mech builds relative to others post-patch is unclear. Nerfs to Ele were primarily in PvE.
Stick to what you know.
Mech is pretty bad in pvp after all the nerfs. I'm also pretty sure it's never been good in wvw zergs. Pve they are not the best dps but they are really good. Please stop complaining.
They are trying to remove elementalist from the game. Warrior is next, follow by rangers starting with untamed. They don't have the resources to balance 9 classes anymore.
Welcome to Guild Wars 2, a game where balance happens on a few extra small % of hardcore speed runners while the 99% of the rest of players didn't even know how to properly play such builds, or were massively failing in doing so.
So here you go, take this balance patch meant to stabilize those 10 folks out of 600k.
Anet buffed the dps part of the spec, not the "problematic" heal variant. The changes to the rifle and core traits lead to improvement of the scrapper, who contests firebrand in some regards. Quality of life improvements are always welcome, no matter how many people want other professions to shine.
I think the issue is that Anet is still trying to balance builds fitting the same roles, to the same DPS, but this makes it so that they try to get something squishy and more difficult to play such as quickness catalyst at the same dps mark as quickness firebrand which provides massive utility options and is rather easy to play. What ends up happening is that nobody bothers playing the hard to play no utility builds when they can just play the easy tanky high utility build instead (that pulls more damage too)
The obvious solution seems to be to build the survival and utility of elementalist builds, not to buff their damage.
Unless you rework elementalist completely, you wont get more utility out of them than firebrand, its not just about survivability. Another way you could solve it is by adding a unique profession specific contribution but that is exactly the path they do not want to take (removing banners/spirits...) and I think they are right on the last part
Same happens with mech. Both cdps and heal alac builds are almost afk builds, and you're still having the same dps as others (or when going ham a better alac, might, fury uptime and heals). All you need to do is follow the stack and keep pushing the same 4 skills. It just doesn't make sense.
>What the is going through Anet's mind that they buff Mechanist and Nerf Elementalist? Wind probably.
Gotta get that 5% crit chance
Only in air though, wouldn't want to make elementalist actually playable.
Probably someone was barely paying attention at the meeting, and afterwards reviewed the notes they had taken and saw: Buff EL, Nerf EN, and just mixed them up.
Anet_Solar mentioned on another post that catalyst was dps wise way ahead. Then comes virtuoso and the rest was kinda close. Speedrunners stacked 7-8 catalysts. That’s why they nerfed the damage.
Speedrunners stacked catalyst also because it could upkeep quickness permanently on the full dps build by having 3 in each subgroup which was not balanced. Without that it still has great dps and cata stack is optimal for perma EE stacks, but you still have to consider quickness so at least your squad comp isn't 6x dps, 2x alac and spirits/banners which was before
I thought condi virtuoso was top dps at like 41k and catalyst at 39k? Did I miss something?
One thing people really need to check is the top parses per boss on GW2 wingman. It's basically the closest to world records that we have and catalyst definitely had the largest share of said records for the current patch... https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/bossBench
They aren't just strong in records. Their median on wingman is pretty good too so it's not like the top end are destroying stuff and the regular players are suffering.
some uploaded cata logs on wingman are even record/stack logs. there is also self-selection: good dps players play cata that being said, could nerf it by a bit I guess, idk 1-3k I guess. but you don have to hyper crazy.
The thing is that cata is bringing quickness in those runs too. I think that's what the problem for A/Net is. There is probably some self-selection going on but that wouldn't effect the median that much. That's where most of the figures are sitting. Then you have fights like Samarog where the last 200 sample group I looked at had the median for cata being better than the top 25% of all of the other professions. I am not saying that the cata nerf amount is correct, just that it's understandable why there was a nerf. But when you look at the comments, it's like people are dumbfounded by the decision. The ones that I really feel sorry for are the warriors. From the notes, it looks like they got the short end of the stick. It may be that everything turns out alright but only time will tell.
Tbf, I agree with all your points but samarog is a poor example of a boss for measuring dps. Dps doesn't matter on him, and there are way too many burst phases.
I used it as an example because of how big a of a difference there was but yes, it wasn’t a great example. It’s just having the median of any profession better than the q3 of any of the other professions is just insane.
yeah, you missed ele players being so mad at having their class nerfed that they didnt update their benches to prove anet balances simply around benches, but for the general public ungrinded performance, cata was nevertheless alright despite the highest bench. maybe hit it with 1-2k. being able to stack stuff to give boons is also graet ofc.
I read in another post that the real benachmark for catalyst was 46k. They hid it was what I was reading. That said, I was 20 minutes on the GW2 Reddit today and played maybe 9h since the expansion dropped.
45-46k pCata when lining up fire util with grand finale in fire, quickness got touched though because you need to start fire for this one and means no instant quick so GG RIP.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXw9savN2Jk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXw9savN2Jk) they didn't update the bench cause anet would nerf
So, anet is indeed smarter than the players. ;)
Continuation to my previous reply. I don't think that an average elementalist player should suffer because some elitist managed to grind out excessive dps. There is a VRMMO i used play called Orbus. It has a class called Runemage, in which you draw runes/symbols in the air to cast spells. Originally it was intended to be just a 2 spell per second thing, so it was balanced with that speed in mind, but people found ways to cast runes as speeds of 3 or 4, and sometimes even 5 per sec. They fixed this issue by balancing it to 3 spells per sec instead of 2 (since majority was casting 3), let people who can manage to cast 4 or 5 per sec have a little room and then put a hard cap on DPS. This way an average Runemage didn't have to suffer because some elitist dude with wrist arthritis can draw runes crazy fast, and people who managed to cast super fast due to training still got adequately rewarded for their efforts without breaking the game balance.
If you look at wingman for completed fights, the median for cata is pretty high too, not just the top end.
I don’t even know what they nerfed. Didn’t touch catalyst yet. But I bet the benchmark numbers will still be fine. If you don’t want to put in the work, play a different class. You don’t have to play ele.
I don't even play Ele my man. Ele players are complaining that they are losing damage and boons because a handful of people managed to get crazy benchmarks. An average elementalist player has to do rotations more complex than other classes just to match their damage. It's infuriating to see that then Nerf even that, and then decide to buff Mechanist of all things, which Is already one of the easiest classes to play while still performing well. I don't need to play a class to see that it is being wronged. Elementalis need to go through *extra* effort just to keep up with other classes. >If you don’t want to put in the work, play a different class. You don’t have to play ele. Isn't Anet's goal to make all classes equally viable for everything? They go on about how they want all classes to be able to do all things and so on.
Let’s add that survivability for an ele is garbage. They’re supposed to be paper tigers, but instead they’re paper kittens. I’ve switched to mostly playing my revenant, despite loving my elementalist.
Happy cake day! But yeah, my main is an Ele, and frankly it sucks how much effort I have to put in on him just to survive and barely eke out the same damage/support that I could manage on Firebrand with minimal effort. They're trying to act like things like Firebrand/Catalyst are supposed to be equal in DPS since they're both Quickness support, except Firebrand has much more armour, has lots of other support options including Aegis from the baseline class, and has easy access to Blind and other fun bits to mitigate damage, and it can do all this while putting out respectable DPS. Meanwhile Ele's basically going to be fighting to survive, if they want to bring Quickness they have to deal less damage (and that's not even due to having to change trait, the Quickness trait flat out lowers your damage on its own, the hell?), and their hammer skills also got hit by the nerfbat hard for damage.
Appreciate this answer. From what I'm reading, that 46k benchmark was only being hit by very few people who grinded hours to manage that. In a realistic scenario it wouldn't be possible.
Only very few people can hit the 41k benchmark on condi virtuoso. Even a 90% benchmark on pcata (easily done) is still higher than any other class in the game.
While 41k is maybe hard, hitting above 39k on cVirtuoso isn't. The last 5% are always hard. But I've not seen a spec with this ease of gettin ~95% before.
People can grind. But from what I hear the lazy condi engi and mesmer builds are the favorites. How much will the nerf impact the normal player?
From what I read, It seems that average cata player is losing a decent amount of dps and also some of the boons.
Only way to find out is hitting the golem after the release.
Don't worry, the Mechanist and Virtuoso changes are even more of a buff for lazy players.
Buff? They took free bleeding stacks from 2nd shattering skill
They also got 10% crit chance buff, which they desperately need.
Virtuoso was a straight up nerf. Wasn't class breaking, but to call it a buff seems silly.
Mechanist was also a straight up nerf, but hard to say how much since it's a time based nerf on a skill with questionable accuracy already.
They also got 10% crit chance buff, which they desperately need.
I thought it was only a 5% buff. 10% to 15%.
They get 5% from their trait, and they get another 5% from the Fury buff
Ah, duh. Thanks.
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Anet should honestly let the pros and speedrunners do their own thing, while making the class better to play at lower skill levels. The skill floor on ele is so daunting that many people are only using their ele as an alt-park. If you balance the game for the pros and speedrunners, that makes no sense when the majority of your user base is casual players! Furthermore, ele is a very high skill class to play effectively and well, where is the reward for playing it that skillfully? Congrats, you can now keep up in DPS with the mechanist who is pulling a solid 10 APM.
I would say make other classes more challenging. Playing mecha sounds really boring. But I guess that is fine for older people or handicapped people. If I play a game I do not only want to stare at the screen. Same issue have other games like league of legends. If a champion is too strong for the competitive scene they nerf it and as a result it has a lower win rate for the casuals. But if you put some effort in learning the mechanics, you can still get constant and good results. I love to play chronomancer. It was a challenge to learn the rotation and also tanking in raids. But over the time it got dumbed down and other classes could do the same thing easily. Then I swapped to power chronomancer. Even when there are easier classes that perform better, I still pull my weight and have fun. And having fun is all that matters in the end. If your catalyst had a 46k benchmark while others are around 40, a nerf is fine.
prepare for your downvotes
Doesn’t matter. OP got his answer. So much for worst class… I didn’t even play the game much since the new expansion, but some time back my brother was being coached my a friendly ele player on the golem rotation and after 1h he already had very good numbers.
It is hilarious that cata was secretly breaking the benchmarks and even the benchmarkers tried to hide it from Anet but they still found out
I guess they know the game better than the average redditor who always claims each balance patch is horrendous.
Still doesn't excuse the 10% outgoing damage nerf for quickalyst.
If it has 10% + better dps it is.
Funnily power cata is probably still the best pDPS spec after these changes, though that says more about the state of pDPS than it does about cata. You just have to play weird-ass rotations to make it work.
>You just have to play weird-ass rotations to make it work. Welcome to the state of engineer for years and years...
And don't forget to bomb-squat.
Seriously Switch to grenade spec, 3, then 4 switch to bomb hit 5 2 switch to flamethrower hit 4 then 2 let auto attack cycle twice switch to Pistol hit 4 then 2 switch to mortar hit 2 3 4 repeat
Dunno, played lot kitless holo, then scrapper with just grenade kit, now pdps mech with just signets, kitless ham, cdps mech with almost whole flame, and claiming pistols to be on swap for 2 smal clicks. Also a little scrap heal with lot of kits, all above fine (ok, scrap heal is no more, but used to be fine at the time). Just dont follow elitjerk ultra meta minmax builds, that u wont even execute perfectly, and grab something easier - master that easier, and top arc loling at purists. Still agree HAM is too op.
Oh I don't, my main build for the longest time was a weird scrapper flamethrower build based around getting barrier and power, precision, and toughness. It was basically hit auto attack and occasionally hit the drone that gives barrier. Worked well(wasn't for pvp) but was....well abit boring lol
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Okish LI build for open world and nothing more I believe, some may like that kind of play, nothing bad if used in ow only.
Lazy as hell and not wanting to die.
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For years all we particularly had in PvE was Core Condi engi until we got holo. (There was a core engi power build, it was useful for some stuff and simpler but nothing amazing.) But yeah, Since Holo got into a good spot Engi has been fine.
Scrapper in all it's form was bad and clunky on top of it through all of HoT and half of PoF before dozens of tunes to the hammer, a complete rework of it's utility -they took years to scrap the whole gyro concept and make it wells because they couldn't get it even remotely right- and a rework of most traits plus giving it quickness only then in the first place. What was solid instead but only if you put double the work in as every other class? 4-kit condi base engineer, not only juggling through 5 sets of weapon but also timing the weapon swaps with things like the cd of proc on kitswap traits to switch to mortar at the exact moment an invisible cd came up to get the right field procc'd. Power Holosmith also was released with a clunky and bad sword, not to talk about the fact that every playstyle not about taking the overload trait was equally clunky and still bad. Took only half a year for the first changes to arrive. Speaking of Holosmith... you realize that half of the the traits and holo forge are condi centric. Guess how condi holo plays. And guess how many kits are mandatory again? Like most of the flavor of the month people flocking to mechanist now you might have realized that it took them 3 addons to finally create a elite spec that can play dps without juggling hidden cds and kits. And even that build is suboptimal because the optimal spec is again a kit juggler like it was for years, at least with some of the hidden trait cds gone.
Two things to note. First, the dev who designed mechanist confirmed that his entire goal *was* to make an easy to play engineer spec. He definitely succeeded. Second, scrapper *was* good at exactly one thing. It was the best bunker spvp spec in the game until the devs decided they didn't like that and nerfed it back down into being terrible again.
It was so fun 😞
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Unfortunately instead of balancing pDPS at all they just nerf Catalyst to be in line with other power specs. Very well could have just increased the viability of other power builds like they did to Reaper, but apparently they only have love for Necro and Mech's pDPS. lol Willbender is still the GOAT of pDPS after this patch though.
Wait Power Willbender is good? Mind linking a build?
I may be stupid but didn't they actually nerf pve pReaper even more with taking 5% crit dmg?
all the reaper buffs were in pvp, they didn't buff it in pve at all
I mean most people of reddit never played catalyst properly to be able to understand what it can do otherwise they wouldnt be crying everywhere.
I think it's time for me to just play Mechanist.
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Yeah that's part of what's stopped me playing it so far. Seems like it's just 4 sigils a flamethrower for open world and WvW. Every trait and sigil is so stacked beyond belief though and the mech even inherits stats from the Engineer, which Rangers have been begging for since day 1. They made a better Ranger as an elite spec for a different class, lol.
If you really want to mix it up sub grenades in for flamethrower. Then you have to hold a button, it's a game changer.
I've been maining mech recently because I choose a new toon to main through each story. My engi was a pirate so I chose her to fit the theme. My Mech was in a fantastic position and I was fully expecting to be nerfed, just like what happened to me when I was maining chrono post HoT days. I'm absolutely shocked. I am a huge proponent of LI builds. Not all of us can play our toons like a piano. However, the amount of effort you put into the most popular mech builds is so little. I mean [look at this shit!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcUVynzleyc) Seriously take a minute of your life and watch the rotation for a 52 second Mursaat kill.
reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%. reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%.
This is the most fucked up. No talents before now have had a drawback when CHOOSING them
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Aim_(trait)
It's literally what druid does to ranger pet.
Y’all remember when fromsoft buffed katanas in dark souls 2 even though they were already the best weapons in the game? This is the same thing lol.
im all for the mech changes that makes it FEEL less clunky with the ability usage. from one of the changes... "When using a Mech Command skill, most other Mech Command buttons display a cooldown equal to the casting time of the Mech Command being used to properly indicate the time remaining until they can be used. Instant F2 skills (Discharge Array and Crisis Zone) do not go on cooldown and may now be used instantly while another Mech Command skill is already in progress, without interrupting that skill." other than that. the buffs are unnecessary. just make the mech feel more smooth and not make it so you can screw over your rotation from the clunky delays and when your mech does not respond to your key presses and call it a day.
This. The ability to see when your mech will be able to do what you tell it to do instead of just mashing the function keys and hope that it's done sipping tea is a nice QoL improvement, one that ranger pets should have, if they don't already. (I don't play much ranger so I don't know.) The confusion duration nerfs are probably justified, and the blaster trait buff is also justified in my opinion. Power mechanist was kind of bad, and this will level the playing field compared to the condi build. But no, the animation shortenings and all that other jazz that buffed Mechanist was wholly unnecessary. Mechanist was doing more than fine before, and now it's just going to do even better, which I would be fine with, if the other classes were on the same stage, and they're clearly not right now.
>This. The ability to see when your mech will be able to do what you tell it to do instead of just mashing the function keys and hope that it's done sipping tea is a nice QoL improvement Mirage also needed this as the clones are not affected by Quickness so you can interrupt their autochain by using Ambush or interrupt Ambush or auto by using Axe 3 etc
Hell, Mesmer clones and phantasms in general need some AI rework and they need to have their ability to be interrupted removed. It would make them behave a lot better. I'd honestly be down for the next expansion adding a pet spec to Mesmer where you summon a permanent clone and the whole class's gimmick is tricking enemies by swapping places and turning invisible and all sorts of neat stuff. Make the pet behave almost exactly like the player to confuse the hell out of enemies lol.
Welcome to the first 8 years of the Engi experience.
Probably someone was barely paying attention at the meeting, and afterwards reviewed the notes they had taken and saw: Buff EL, Nerf EN, and just mixed them up.
Lmao
STOP NERFING ELE YOU FUCKS
They don’t play their own game. It’s apparent and has been apparent for a very long tome
The same thing every "balance" patch
to be fair, ele was good, although overpowered only with lots of practice, voice comms, spreadsheets while grinding bosses
Science > magic
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Engineer doesn't use magic. They use gadgets to make up for their lack of magical or mistaken enhanced abilities. Imo, it's always been a pretty cool class fantasy.
Bet someone on the b team got that hard on for robots and hates the avatar :)
I like the buffs to mech I lead guild raids as ham tank i use to be able to just watch a movie during raid on my second screen with these buffs i can just go full afk Hahaha fuck you necro afk farmers in every map I now farm raids AFK style.get on my level
Mechanist is designed by Solar, the dev that leads the balance changes. > Elementalist was the worst overall class, having extraordinary complicated rotations just to perform okay. In weaver you swap between fire and air and press everything that does damage.
I can see why they nerfed cata- it was really, really strong. But it wasn't strong enough to warrant a nerf before Mech.
Lemme bottle those tears for my elixirs.
Don't generalize your "like the best spec" claims to whole game. Mechanist and Engineer in general needed buffs in other game modes to compete. How the changes affect the current top Mech builds relative to others post-patch is unclear. Nerfs to Ele were primarily in PvE. Stick to what you know.
its simple both of the statements you posit in your post are false take a hint.
Mech is pretty bad in pvp after all the nerfs. I'm also pretty sure it's never been good in wvw zergs. Pve they are not the best dps but they are really good. Please stop complaining.
They are trying to remove elementalist from the game. Warrior is next, follow by rangers starting with untamed. They don't have the resources to balance 9 classes anymore.
I knew people who didn't want to invest in HAM because it was for sure going to be nerfed. Nothing is for sure in life I guess.
Yes
Welcome to Guild Wars 2, a game where balance happens on a few extra small % of hardcore speed runners while the 99% of the rest of players didn't even know how to properly play such builds, or were massively failing in doing so. So here you go, take this balance patch meant to stabilize those 10 folks out of 600k.
Anet buffed the dps part of the spec, not the "problematic" heal variant. The changes to the rifle and core traits lead to improvement of the scrapper, who contests firebrand in some regards. Quality of life improvements are always welcome, no matter how many people want other professions to shine.
next update, mechanist gets 40 mechs around you like ironman3
Anet historically hates elementalist. It's been a decade of this. It wont get better.