We Need An Argument

[Mostadio]

So liek... did the game actually change yet? Or are we still theorycrafting stuff that doesn't exist yet?

[Cistie]

Testserver got patched with a big change. so its not longer a theory^^
we just need to find the bugs and find a way where everyone is happy then we´re good to go

[lufa1982]

Patch doesn't have much of importance for us, so doubt it will bring any old faces back.

Reflect aura is now 1% better then best sold aura, which is nice, but I doubt anyone actually cares.

New MA weapons have Sneak Attack, meaning Uaint will be be able to sort of PvP. I'm sure he's thrilled as much as the rest of us.

New dog at level 150 - about time.

New pet heal is great for PvM and useless for PvP. I guess it addresses longtime concerns about PvM soloing, which is great. In PvP, Dog will be dead as soon as you cast him, which is not so great.

Think that about sums it up so far.

Some decent QoL changes in here, but nothing that would actually address all biggest concerns we've had for many years. Nothing is being done about absurd reqs for nanos, being locked to Control symbs only, not nearly enough individual blockers, hilariously outdated pets and last but not least, obscene amount of short term pet buffs that will make your eyes bleed.

Can't help but notice that lack of professionals probably doesn't help.

Crats had been given extended duration on their one short term pet buff. I guess having one short buff to keep up on one pet is a nightmare, but having several buffs plus bunch of trimmers to keep on two pets, one of which dies every 3 minutes and needs to be rebuffed, is not a problem.

Overall I gotta say its pretty underwhelming. At least the ridiculous idea to cast with tradeskills seems to be dead and buried.

[Mostadio]

Ehn, yeah, not really worth a resub. Tradeskill casting not happening? That's kind of a bummer. They're so much easier to buff than nanoskills and then we'd still be able to make crap on the side without gimping ourselves. The big draw to the engineer prof for me was the convenience of being able to make whatever I wanted while still being viable. Then I started PVPing and well... there went the convenience I don't even know why people are opposed to that change. You might have to reequip your alphas? It's not like you have to wait 3 days to do a single perk reset anymore.

[lufa1982]

Lol, you got me there. It was so many years ago when they started pushing the idea to cast with TS, I don't remember anymore why I hated it

But, I do remember calcs were done and to everyone's surprise, it turned out it didn't actually help with casting much, if at all.

The whole thing would take massive overhaul of countless nanos, perks and various items, force everyone into resets, only to accomplish literally nothing when it comes to making casting easier.

Also, basically forcing everyone to become a TSer is a bit crude. There must be people out there who did make engi with zero intention to be org TS monkey.

[sannz]

Ehn, yeah, not really worth a resub. Tradeskill casting not happening? That's kind of a bummer. They're so much easier to buff than nanoskills [...]

And that's probably why they are holding off on it. It would require a complete rework/rebalancing of every item and perk buffing tradeskills. That's a huge amount of work.

As an example: I calced some time ago, that if tradeskills were used to cast and the casting requirements were taken over 1:1, then a lvl 60 engi could self the highest non-lvl-locked nanos and still be able to dish out a lot of dmg himself.

Maybe it'd be better if casting requirements were simply lowered for the higher end nanos - as is happening for keepers, shades, and others atm - and be done with it. Add a little self-only nano skill buff on top, say something along the lines of composite mochams or infuses and you're golden.

Sorry, I'd have loved to see Tradeskill Casting happen, too, but with the amount of people working on AO, I'd just rather hope they spend the time on rebalance in general.

[Poko]

I vote for pvm blockers!

[Mostadio]

There must be people out there who did make engi with zero intention to be org TS monkey.

You can always say no. Even when I was a TS monkey I still said no. Quite often, actually. Just because you can doesn't mean you will Though the extra scratch never hurt. Do people even charge for tskills anymore? I know I did, except for friends... funny how I had a lot of friends back then...

[Ciex]

It seems that this new patch will be "love for everyone" so we could maybe ask for a bit longer duration on ISOTOS? It takes my atrox engi around 2 minutes to cast it with all those swaps

BTW black slayerdroid has lvl 176 lock now. https://tl.aoitems.com/item/223313/

[lufa1982]

All SL Slayers have been made black.
Pistol setup is now pretty much useless. With 1.6 AS recharge on Troa'ller there's no point using it at all, when you can go with new unlocked Silverback, which also has been nerfed to 1.6. Capping 1.6 recharge will require sacrificing up to 2k HP, so that's gonna be painful.

Essentially its either Silverback and lose gigantic amount of HP, or back to 2005 and using KEC3. Progress.

Also, Deflect works against pets. Woohoo.

As an example: I calced some time ago, that if tradeskills were used to cast and the casting requirements were taken over 1:1, then a lvl 60 engi could self the highest non-lvl-locked nanos and still be able to dish out a lot of dmg himself.

But people have been doing that with nanoskills at level 60 since 2005. I'm not sure what the problem is, with potentially being able to cast it with tradeskills as well? And yes it, takes some twinking with nanoskills, but I doubt you were doing it in carb, either

Anyhoo, lowering the reqs is more elegant solution, that wouldn't require reworking half a game and then doing separate balance passes on every title range. And even more elegant is opening more symbiants. Engineers are most versatile ranged profession apart from Soldiers. We can do Pistols, Shotguns, RE, Grenade, Dsharks, and we're doing all this stuff well. It never made sense to me that there's 0 symbiant support for any of it.

[Cistie]

All SL Slayers have been made black.
Pistol setup is now pretty much useless. With 1.6 AS recharge on Troa'ller there's no point using it at all, when you can go with new unlocked Silverback, which also has been nerfed to 1.6. Capping 1.6 recharge will require sacrificing up to 2k HP, so that's gonna be painful.

Essentially its either Silverback and lose gigantic amount of HP, or back to 2005 and using KEC3. Progress.

The old setup with troaler/pewhr isnt that bad. ok the the AS is now at 18sec recharge (need about 200 AS more for capping) but it isnt that bad. And with Silverback you lose 600 HP and 30 off. not to say the Pistol perks with the 80% def check, Burst we lose too. ah and dont forget the +120 Pistol buff (dont see a Shotgun buff in engi nanolist). Why shotgun? dont find the sense in it....

[Uaintseenme]

I'm not sure what the problem is, with potentially being able to cast it with tradeskills as well? And yes it, takes some twinking with nanoskills, but I doubt you were doing it in carb, either

Well, the main issue, for me atleast, was that, unlike traders, we where not getting the OPTION of casting with trade skills OR nanoskills, the original rebalance was forcing us in to ONLY tradeskill casting.
now weather that leads to an easier time with casting or not is irrelevant, the numbers dont make any difference when, as a result, on day of patch, you render and entire profession broken, and not just a little bit broken, but unplayably broken.
And its not like its just a matter of an ipr and re-equiping alphas to fix them, its going to require a pretty extensive respec of your whole set up.(unless you are a trade skill monkey allready).
Then on top of that, you can wave goodbye to the most *fun* aspect of being an engie, "no more strange set ups for engies", and i realise this mostly only aplies to me, but there is a reason i have so many engineers on my character listing, its because i *Can* use a dshark if i want, i *Can* use smg's if i want and i *can* use 1hb hammers if i want, and all of those weapon choices work because the idea of buffing nanoskills applies to all professions and so there are many items out there that are designed to work with buffing nano skills while fitting nicely in to varrying weapon style set ups.
just a quick example from one of my own set ups, if i NEED to have mech engie in my right arm or my eye slot in order to cast my top buffs, there will be no more Dshark engies.
I think when we are all forced in to cookie cutter pistol set ups, instead of ending up that way by choice, it will be a very sad day.
For me atleast, that would be a very sad day for our profession.

[sannz]

But people have been doing that with nanoskills at level 60 since 2005. I'm not sure what the problem is, with potentially being able to cast it with tradeskills as well? And yes it, takes some twinking with nanoskills, but I doubt you were doing it in carb, either

See, that's the thing. Those 60s today can't do it self buffed. That's the difference. Complete lack of outside buffs. Just standing there, in Azzy's room, logging in, buffing up, and popping out the very top rk nanos.

[Louderer789]

The old setup with troaler/pewhr isnt that bad. ok the the AS is now at 18sec recharge (need about 200 AS more for capping) but it isnt that bad. And with Silverback you lose 600 HP and 30 off. not to say the Pistol perks with the 80% def check, Burst we lose too. ah and dont forget the +120 Pistol buff (dont see a Shotgun buff in engi nanolist). Why shotgun? dont find the sense in it....

Shotgun has an even lower def check perk, and silverback AS are a lot better than Troa'ler ones. Anyway capping it requires a total endgame setup but is not that hard, we were doing it with Ofab Tiger back in 2008/2009 - shotgun will be even easier with perk and symb support. Also it only requires about 100 more AS to cap Troa'ler (1747 vs 1617 according to aoitems).

[lufa1982]

@Rocker, Silverback and Troa now share the same 1.6 recharge and the same cap.

The old setup with troaler/pewhr isnt that bad. ok the the AS is now at 18sec recharge (need about 200 AS more for capping) but it isnt that bad. And with Silverback you lose 600 HP and 30 off. not to say the Pistol perks with the 80% def check, Burst we lose too

You kind of just described why exactly Pistols are bad now. Your only reliable special attack is now 60% slower. It will be just as slow with Silverback, but it will do on average 3x more damage. What's the point of being pistol, then? Burst, perks, who cares? If I can perk and land burst on people who aren't Solds or Docs, they're so gimp they'll be dying just from pets.

Then on top of that, you can wave goodbye to the most *fun* aspect of being an engie, "no more strange set ups for engies", and i realise this mostly only aplies to me, but there is a reason i have so many engineers on my character listing, its because i *Can* use a dshark if i want, i *Can* use smg's if i want and i *can* use 1hb hammers if i want, and all of those weapon choices work because the idea of buffing nanoskills applies to all professions and so there are many items out there that are designed to work with buffing nano skills while fitting nicely in to varrying weapon style set ups.
.

Worry not, its not just you. I definitely don't want to be shoehorned into one-size-fits all setup. Coming up with weird **** to use was always the most fun of endgame Engi.

[Mostadio]

I thought we had the option to use nanos OR tradeskills. As for weird setups, if you found a way to cast all your crap with a dshark, sofc, or whatever weird thing you had on before, I'm pretty sure you'd still be able to reach the skills in something else. But then again, if it steps on the toes of the three people that simultaneously have active accounts and a non-oe dshark equipped on an engineer... sky is falling, do not want. What you SHOULD be looking at, is the amount of possibilities that would emerge. As for being shoehorned.. we're already shoehorned into putting IP into nanoskills. I really don't get the fuss. Suddenly instead of having apples, we'll need oranges. Tskills still play into our favor because well... we can actually buff those. As for the dev time being spent on important things, we're talking about the same folks that put a giant yellow duck in Newland Lake. Mkay.

[lufa1982]

Final tradeskills in a combat ready setup aren't actually higher then nanoskills at all. Not without swapping bunch of stuff and/or reperking to tradeskills. And you know you won't be doing that, because its the exact same trap we've been stuck in for a decade.

Nanoskills have zero usefulness in combat, so we eliminate as much of them as possible from our setups, to replace them with something that has combat viability. Then we end up having to spend 10 minutes buffing a dog and wanting to blow our brains out after 30 minutes of Battlestation. Then we cancel our subscription after a month of reactivating and we become bitter people on the forums.

Besides, tradeskilling in a PvP setup is not a problem at all. All PvP Engineers that I know of, have at least a bit of tradeskills. IP wise it was possible to TS everything in full PVP setup back in 2006, and that's without research, DB buffs, q300 symbs, etc.

I honestly have no problem swapping into TS gear, when all I plan to do entire weekend is to afk in Borealis. I have a problem swapping into nanoskill gear, when someone killed my dog for the 5th time in 20 minutes. That problem can be fixed a lot easier then reworking entire profession from the ground up, which is a massive undertaking even by this patch's standards. And we're talking about by far the biggest patch since Lost Eden came out.

[Uaintseenme]

I thought we had the option to use nanos OR tradeskills.

Traders where geting hte option of tade skills OR nano, we wherent we where getting flat out trde skills casting.

And like i said, i know the lack of being able to do dumb set ups really only effected me, but its still a loss of options.

to keep my shark from OE right now, i need right arm imp, exterm occular and 3 out of 6 huds, plus a suit of supple based armour and 2 fred sleeves.
if i had to lose arm and eye for tradeskill items, there realy isnt anything else i could use in other slots to make up that difference, items for buffing nano skills are FAR more common than items for buffing trade skills in an end game set up.
I may have to hit up test server and see where my trade skills end up in an MA set up too, i *think* that would also be screwed over. (and thats a legitimate choice for us)

[lufa1982]

Like I said, give me Artillery symbiants and that will flat out fix half the problems that I have, as well make things easier for nearly all of our viable setups. Its a simple convenience change without any impact on our offensive power, so it shouldn't cause balance concerns for the devs or the uproar from forum trolls. As opposed to casting with tradeskills, which not only requires reworking half the game, but we'd all go bald having to listen to all the whining how we don't deserve anything because of free tradeskills.

Speaking of MA, I noticed that Transference had a pretty decent buff on test. 400 MA on it now, as and a bit of Brawl I think.

[Uaintseenme]

ssshh! dont mention the transferance buff! I get B!tched at somethign fierce when any +ma goes in to our set ups, cus... yeah, its pretty much just for my benefit.

but yes, 100 more MA plus 50 brawl and multi melee that it didnt have before....

also -50% scale to make me cute and adorable.


now, MICH!!! wtb black paintjob on it please!