How to nerf Scrapper properly

[Ruufio.1496]

I don't like that I have to make this thread but I fear that Anet will nerf some things that don't need it.

I have mained scrapper for years so I have a good idea of what to nerf - some have always needed to be nerfed but are exasperated even more now because of some other buffs.

 

* **Rocket Boots**

Remove the ammo count. Remove the traited 1200 range. Keep the traited superspeed. Gives swiftness without trait. Fix the blast.

 

This skill has always been ridiculous since the ammo buff. Ridiculous build like menders/minstrel scrapper really are unkillable with this. Zerker holosmith's are very difficult to kill as well. To much mobility across most classes. Nerf soulbeast bird swoop as well while you're at it.

 

* **Bulwark Gyro**

Change skill behaviour to AOE barrier. Increase cooldown from 20s to 25s

 

This skill should simply grant AOE pulsing barrier in the vicinity of the scrappers AOE circle rather than it's current effect. (Keep the lightning field) The current barrier is incredibly OP in 1vX and the lingering effect allows allies to leave the circle and still take reduced damage.

 

* **Sneak Gyro**

Pulses reduced from 6 to 5. Stealth on pulse reduced from 3s to 2s duration. If revealed, the skill ends. Cooldown increased from 45s to 60s. "Smoke poof" animation effect added when the skill is first used. While sneak gyro is active (meaning during it's pulsing stealth) it makes the old "gyro sound" for enemies to hear.

 

This decreases the amount of time in stealth, truly reveals by not getting stealth at the last pulse, gives a "tell" when the scrapper uses it and makes a sound while it's pulsing so you know he's near you.

 

 

* **Purge Gyro**

*Increase cooldown from 20s to 25s.

 

 

* **Shocking Speed**

Reduce superspeed duration from 5s to 3s.

 

* **Adaptive Armor**

I'll be honest - this trait is the most mindless passive in the game. It' effectively 20k HP every 60s. It needs to be changed somehow.

 

 

 

 

This would be a good start (and hopefully end) to the nerfs. Medic Gyro does not need to be touched in any way because it is now only on par with healing turret.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

no lol, rocket boots is fine. its no worse then other specs with high mobility sadly, so unless they get a nerf too then this should stay. rest look good to me.

[Ruufio.1496]

I agree completely. Soulbeast bird swoop, mirage sword leap, and a few other things need nerfed also. I'm not going to suggest anything specific on thief mobility wise because I'm not sure which skills in particular to nerf there. I'm tempted to say nike warrior too but that's currently less mobile than some others funnily enough.

[Vagrant.7206]

I'll repeat what I said in the other thread:

 

* Bulwark's barrier is just too damn high for no investment, and not relative to your nearby teammates. If the personal barrier scaled based on the # of teammates near you, it would be better in WvW, and less stupidly tanky in PvP. It should also provide a lower base barrier but more strongly affected by healing power. In theory, as you suggested, you could just make it pulse AoE barrier and reduce the base barrier provided.

* Sneak gyro needs a tell when it's activated (IE smoke field visible) and its cooldown lengthened. I would also shorten the duration of stealth in PvP only -- Sneak gyro has some niche uses in PvE that would be obliterated if it got weakened there.

* I agree with Wooden Potatoes assessment that cooldowns should be increased for most of the gyros. Because the cooldown now starts as soon as the skill is activated (rather than waiting for the gyro to die like before), the cooldown should reflect that difference. The only exception I would make would be for blast gyro and shredder gyro, which are not defensively oriented.

[mortrialus.3062]

TLDR:

 

1. All Gyros need longer activation wind ups with the possibility for fast reacting players to interrupt them especially the Medic Gyro and the Stealth Gyro.

2. All gyros need cooldowns increased, some of them extremely dramatically given their current power level. Medic Gyro with it's current tuning should be bumped up to 25s, Purge Gyro should be bumped up to 35-40 seconds to be comparable with other similar skills like Well of Power. Bulwark Gyro with it's current tuning seriously deserves a 75s cooldown and Sneak Gyro at it's current Tuning deserves a 240 second cooldown that's how out of line it is with other group stealth skills like Mass Invisibility (Mass Invisibility is 2 Second activation, 5 seconds of group stealth, 90 second cooldown) now that it doesn't have a tell.

3. All gyros need bigger and more obvious animation tells are the sprites are too small to see in the heat of combat as well as active effects on the players status bars similar to Soulbeast and Warrior stances so we can clearly understand what effects are active and respond in kind.

4. Bulwark should not pulse out barrier to the degree it does while the scrapper is alone 1vXing.

5. Sneak Gyro's field needs to be visible and it's stealth duration needs to be brought in line with other similar skills like Mass Invisibility. If the field is visible it justifies a higher duration of stealth but with no field it is completely and unjustifiably out of line.

6. Hammer 2-4 should have their damage nerfed and rolled into the auto attack chain. Right now in a PvP match hammers 2 and 3 are going to be DPS increases (4 isn't a boost but isn't that much of a loss) as well as providing excellent defense leading to hammer's weapon kit being skilllessly spammed on cooldown rather than reacting appropriately to incoming threats. Scrapper is far too easy of a spec for how survivable it is and how much sustain it has due to the spammyness of hammer and it's gyros.

7. Adaptive Armor shouldn't reduce incoming condition damage. Traits like these defeat the purpose of condition damage as a unique damage archetype that bypasses defenses but can be negated through cleanse.

8. For years both Alchemy on it's own and especially Alchemy+Inventions combo have been over powered, providing too much effortless sustain and defense against both physical and condition attacks allowing Holosmith, a spec designed to be such a high risk high reward glass cannon it's in danger of blowing itself up, be far far too self sufficient and with far too much ability to resustain for having top tier damage on top of it as well as allowing Prot Holo to side node too effectively given the mission statement of the Holosmith as a specialization. Combined with Scrapper it makes a build that competently played literally cannot die 1v1, and will only die 1v2 to extremely high power pressure and CC. Alchemy+Inventions combo is at least 50% of the reason Scrapper is so over the top. Holosmith's sustain and self sufficiency should be akin to Glint+Shiro and scourge where it really needs the support to shine and Scrapper's defensive capabilities should be about where Prot-Holo currently is, maybe a bit higher. It's time to seriously nerf Alchemy and Inventions.

 

 

All of the Gyros but Especially Heal Gyro and Purge Gyro and Sneak Gyro need far better tells. The sprites are barely visible in the middle of an actual fight and are obscured from damage numbers alone. The gyro itself needs to be floating Engineer Turret in scale and the gyro needs to appear on the player's status bar similar to a soulbeast stance.

 

Should I use poison (Lol like that would stay on) when the scrapper uses Medic Gyro or maybe wait to use my big damaging cooldown skills until after it has finished healing him? I don't know I'd never be able to see it and react. Should I avoid using damaging conditions because purge gyro is up? Again, I'll never be able to see it. Shredder, Blast, and Bulwark Gyros are the only ones that have good tells and Bulwark's tell is only good because it's hard to miss the 10k barrier stacked onto the scrapper.

 

And worst of all is Sneak Gyro. Previously the stealth was very high but it was always balanced by the fact that you can see the gyro and kill and CC it as well as it giving you an okay idea of where they might be. Now you can't even see the field. And it's also absurdly overtuned. As strong as it is deserves something like a four minute cooldown. It's 18 seconds of straight stealth on a 45 second cooldown. That's kitten near 50% stealth up time for a skill with less than 1 second activation. And you can get even more if you leap and blast in the field. Just compare that to Mass Invisibility, a 2 second channel on a 90 second cooldown for a whopping 5 seconds of stealth. Sneak Gyro's stealth is so powerful you can basically portal lock someone onto a node with stealth on side nodes. Pop Sneak gyro in a fight you aren't going to win: Is he sticking around? Rotate elsewhere. If he leave get a free decap on him. The person on the other side has absolutely no idea what the right play is because it's 18 seconds of stealth with no tell. And it's on a shorter cooldown than Portal ever was.

 

All of the gyros need activation times and the ones that have activation times should be considerably longer. Medic Gyro at 1/2 second activation speed and 20 second cooldown is nuts. It's heal coefficient needs to go down as well. On a mender's amulet it's a 10k heal on a 20 second cooldown. The animation wind up for Medic, Purge, and Bulwark Gyro should be 1s minimum. Purge Gyro could be bumped up to 30-35 seconds comparable to similar effects and Bulwark Gyro in it's current form genuinely deserves a 70+ cooldown or to be seriously nerfed. Really it's barrier should scale based on how many players are near the scrapper.

 

Sneak Gyro's stealth field needs to be visible, the skill needs a considerably longer wind up animation, around 2 seconds similar to Mass Invisibility, the total stealth stacks should cap out at 8s unless you actively blast and leap in the field and the cooldown should be bumped up to 120 seconds-180 seconds.

 

Scrapper feels too easy to play and braindead in general. Instant cast save gyros on such low cooldowns that you can just spam them without thinking. Hammer is a top tier defensive weapon set but again everything on it is too spammable. Hammer 2, 3 and 4 get spammed off cooldown by most scrappers because they're damage increases, or in 4's case isn't much of a loss, rather than saving them when they need to actively reflect projectiles, or when they really need to evade. This is one of the few cases where loading the damage more onto the auto attack with be a good thing promoting more thoughtful game play.

 

It's also time to nerf Inventions+Alchemy Combo. Hard. They've always been overpowered, allowing Holosmith which was supposed to be a glass cannon build that's intended to be such a high risk high reward glass cannon it's in danger of blowing itself up to defensively 1vx. These two trees combined are so absurdly power crept in terms of their condition cleansing. It's so badly power crept and synergetic it constantly impacts power builds as well. They are loaded with tons of easy addition condition cleanses as well as just effortless survivability: Cleanse and protection on heal. Cleanse when receiving protection. Gain free boons at 75% health. Auto convert 3 conditions when you have 3 conditions on you. Gain protection when disabled. Drop a smoke field when disabled. Heal yourself when you give yourself a boon. When you cleanse a condition convert it into a boon. All this effortless passive conversion. Even power builds suffer because pretty much every power build is packing vulnerability which becomes Protection and that's how Scrappers and previously Prot Holos maintaned so much protection uptime, which in turn cleanses even more boons, like some sort of messed up condition cleanse ouroboros.

 

So yeah combine that with 10k instant cast barrier with Bulwark Gyro, 15k on mender's amulet, plus hammer's absolutely fantastic array of defensive options including reflect, evade, block and barrier on one weapon kit plus the Scrapper minor that makes barrier even more powerful and you have a fundamentally unkillable monster. Permanent effortless condition cleanse where conditions leave as soon as they land on the target and become boons without any input from the engineer themself. Near permanent protection up time from effortlessly cleansing vulnerability which every build is running (Not To mention Adaptive Armor reducing condition damage by a further 20%, why? Traits like this and Soulbeast's Second Skin defeat the point of condition damage as a unique damage type that bypasses toughness but can be cleansed)

 

[RisenHowl.2419]

That's a well thought out list that would tone scrapper down nicely

[Ruufio.1496]

You cannot make sneak gyro circle visible on the scrapper because it is then literally no longer stealth stealth. Imagine if thief had shadow refuge following on top of them while they're stealthed. The change I suggested to it should make it way better than how it currently is.

 

You also cannot do what you suggest to purge gyro because then there is no reason to use it instead of elixir c which would be superior since the cooldowns would be similar.

 

I agree with the second skin comment and the barrier 20% dmg reduction. To be honest, I also think adaptive armor is one of the dumbest traits in the game passive wise. It might as well say "gain 20k HP every 60 seconds" - in fact, I should add that in the first post. I personally prefer kinetic stabilizers for the utility. Adaptive armor does need to be changed somehow, though, IMO.

 

Purity of purpose and inventions protection is _not_ an issue. Engineer has to take 2 defensive trait lines _and _spec for protection. You lose out on a lot of potential damage doing this - you will never hit like a warrior does. There is nothing wrong with bunkers but scrapper does have a few over performing things at the moment.

[mortrialus.3062]

> @"Ruufio.1496" said:

> You cannot make sneak gyro circle visible on the scrapper because it is then literally no longer stealth stealth. Imagine if thief had shadow refuge following on top of them while they're stealthed. The change I suggested to it should make it way better than how it currently is.

 

If someone leaves Shadow Refuge Early they're revealed and the shadow refuge field is visible to enemies. Sneak Gyro should operate on the similar principals. If there is no tell for Sneak Gyro then shouldn't be providing 4x the level of stealth in far more useful pulsing increments and with half the cooldown of other stealth elites like Mass Invisibility. Even with a visible field it has immense value for stopping stomps and reviving allies with fuction gyro as well as providing peels for teammates being focused and allowing them to resustain in relative safety.

 

> You also cannot do what you suggest to purge gyro because then there is no reason to use it instead of elixir c which would be superior since the cooldowns would be similar.

Purge Gyro is AoE group cleanse. At it's most effective it's 25 conditions cleansed. Elxir C is only for the Engineer themself and thus only has a theoretical maximum of 12 conditions. That's why you would use it over Elixir C.

 

> I agree with the second skin comment and the barrier 20% dmg reduction. To be honest, I also think adaptive armor is one of the dumbest traits in the game passive wise. It might as well say "gain 20k HP every 60 seconds" - in fact, I should add that in the first post. I personally prefer kinetic stabilizers for the utility. Adaptive armor does need to be changed somehow, though, IMO.

Cool.

 

> Purity of purpose and inventions protection is _not_ an issue. Engineer has to take 2 defensive trait lines _and _spec for protection. You lose out on a lot of potential damage doing this - you will never hit like a warrior does. There is nothing wrong with bunkers but scrapper does have a few over performing things at the moment.

 

Holosmith has always been too efficient in too many areas of ranked and Alchemy and Alchemy+Inventions (And Healing Turret being the most overloaded heal in the game) combo are the reason why. It's great on the side nodes because it's ability to resustain so heavily makes it completely self sufficient. It's great in the team fights because of it's AoE CC and high pressure. It's also good in team fights regardless if your team has support unlike Scourge because of this self sufficiency. It's great rotating into fights and +1ing. Prot Holo is as defensively orientated as we should want Scrapper to be just through Inventions+Alchemy Combo while still having immense pressure in Photon Forge. It's too good in too many areas at once and it should be forced to be more specialized in damage.

 

And when you combine Alchemy+Inventions with defensively power crept scrapper you have a build that in decent hands can only really die if it gets CC'd to death through power.

[felincyriac.5981]

Bulwark gyro just gives way too much barrier in 1vX, sneak gyro is busted. Pretty much every gyro at least needs a CD increase , sneak gyro smoke field needs to be visible. Purge/bulwark gyro needs a cast time.

[titibalbon.7495]

Just nerf this spec to the ground so mesmers can dominate again. Bunker builds have no place in pvp.

[Rodzynald.5897]

> @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> no lol, rocket boots is fine. its no worse then other specs with high mobility sadly, so unless they get a nerf too then this should stay. rest look good to me.

 

It took people few years to see that mobility across the board is one of the main issues that low scale PvP (and WvW skirmishes) fights are so weirdly twisted. It is ridiculous to be able to keep a fight at constant rinse and repeat. Heck, even WoW rogues or hunters have long cooldowns on their engage/disengage skills that when they make too many mistakes, they just die. Here you can escape or engage combat every mere handful of seconds, which gives too much control over the flow of a fight to some classes, making them far superior than they are supposed to be, while lowering the skill ceiling at the same time.

[Ruufio.1496]

Keep seeing people whine about medic gyro when medic gyro isn't even part of the issue.

 

Again, any nerfs to medic gyro will just force everyone to use healing turret again since it's _also_ 2 water field, a much larger AOE and grants vigor and reflection and the cooldown is 15s if you know how to actually engi.

 

Small nerfs/shaves to the barrier spam (bulwark gyro/adaptive armor) and maybe to superspeed duration is all that is needed.

[Odik.4587]

> @"Ruufio.1496" said:

> Keep seeing people whine about medic gyro when medic gyro isn't even part of the issue.

>

> Again, any nerfs to medic gyro will just force everyone to use healing turret again since it's _also_ 2 water field, a much larger AOE and grants vigor and reflection and the cooldown is 15s if you know how to actually engi.

>

> Small nerfs/shaves to the barrier spam (bulwark gyro/adaptive armor) and maybe to superspeed duration is all that is needed.

 

You mean a spec that can 1x3 need few small nerfs? Just wow...

Scrapper deserve the same treatment as mirage - overkill. Not small nerfs to keep this AED's (you know what I mean). Not like engi desperately need another OP spec . Better to see ele with at least 1 meta/close to meta build

[Rusty.9348]

> @"Odik.4587" said:

> Scrapper deserve the same treatment as mirage - overkill. Not small nerfs to keep this AED's (you know what I mean). Not like engi desperately need another OP spec . Better to see ele with at least 1 meta/close to meta build

 

This is not constructive. Just throwing specs away won't change the situation for the better.... if only you want teams consisting of the same classes. And do you realize that if Elem gets boosted it will receive the same "overkill" feedback from many people?

[Odik.4587]

> @"Rusty.9348" said:

> > @"Odik.4587" said:

> > Scrapper deserve the same treatment as mirage - overkill. Not small nerfs to keep this AED's (you know what I mean). Not like engi desperately need another OP spec . Better to see ele with at least 1 meta/close to meta build

>

> This is not constructive. Just throwing specs away won't change the situation for the better.... if only you want teams consisting of the same classes.

 

So what you say is clueless QQ threads without any constructive suggestions and crying NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF are constructive enough to get mesmer nerfed over and over but this cant be applied to any other class because ?

 

[Odik.4587]

> @"Rusty.9348" said:

> Just showing some support to this. See no reason why a scrapper can't have some power (at last). It has been redesigned well. See no need to nerf it just because somebody can't kill it.

Oh wait...

Scrapper is alot better than chronobunker while every single mesmer agree scepter is now OP and need nerfs(its something that carry the build/class)

BUUUUUUUUUUUT SCRAPPER DOESNT NEED NERFS ... Are you serious ?

In that case can we buff chrono until it becomes OP as scrapper to be equal at least?

[Sigmoid.7082]

It's going to get nerfed. Be it a shave or a hammer it's going to happen. Then this forum can be filled with the opposite threads.

 

"My class was finally fine. Why have you nerfed it."

[Rusty.9348]

> @"Odik.4587"

> So what you say is clueless QQ threads without any constructive suggestions and crying NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF are constructive enough to get mesmer nerfed over and over but this cant be applied to any other class because ?

Your personal open wound caused by mesmer nerf should not interfere with your opinions concerning other classes. Personally I never claimed to nerf anything ifn case you want to know

 

[derd.6413]

> @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> It's going to get nerfed. Be it a shave or a hammer it's going to happen. Then this forum can be filled with the opposite threads.

>

> "My class was finally fine. Why have you nerfed it."

 

like that's exclusive to scrapper

[Sigmoid.7082]

> @"derd.6413" said:

> > @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> > It's going to get nerfed. Be it a shave or a hammer it's going to happen. Then this forum can be filled with the opposite threads.

> >

> > "My class was finally fine. Why have you nerfed it."

>

> like that's exclusive to scrapper

 

It's not. When it does it will be filled with posts like the above, some about how they nerfed it but not X, and the new FOTM class that is now op.

 

I also find the argument used, it hasn't been strong in a while so it's ok if it's OP, poor. Whatever class it gets used on.

 

It leads me to my conclusion that people don't want balance, they want their preferred class(es) to be strong/the strongest.

[Rusty.9348]

Well, nerfing anything without any compensation always leads to underperforming and totall mess in general. The situation when some 3-4 builds prevail is never healthy. Mirages crying in map chat about being unable to carry fights are also not making me happy.

[kiranslee.4829]

"I dont wonna learn how to counter current meta build, anet pls nerf it so i can go back on old meta and complain how nothing is changing". will it ever happen that there is any positivism toward shake up of boring current metas ?

[Rusty.9348]

> @"kiranslee.4829" said:

>Will it ever happen that there is any positivism toward shake up of boring current metas ?

 

No. We all exept some progressive few prefer to stay within our comfort zones. And some people just seek vengeance for their nerfed classes.

[Odik.4587]

> @"Rusty.9348" said:

> > @"Odik.4587"

> > So what you say is clueless QQ threads without any constructive suggestions and crying NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF are constructive enough to get mesmer nerfed over and over but this cant be applied to any other class because ?

> Your personal open wound caused by mesmer nerf should not interfere with your opinions concerning other classes. Personally I never claimed to nerf anything ifn case you want to know

>

Personal wound? May be ... aside this its staright up fact they handed million nerfs in wrong places over and over driven solely by QQ but once their main is must be brought down next its suddenly need precise balancing. It shouldnt be overkilled like many of you want with class you dont play.

 

[Yannir.4132]

I agree with this mostly. However I don't think Rocket Boots needs a nerf. It's in no way OP, it's just a tool for making some fun builds.

The other day in unranked, I played a Rifle SD Scrapper with Rocket Boots/Gadgeteer for mobility, and I legit felt like a thief while playing it.