[Rejected] [Engineer] Cannon Smash

[dur3al]

Sign, this thread is pointless and stupid, I'm sorry to say.

Cannon Smash has nothing to do with current state of engineers, it has nothing to do with the recent buff in damage/range that was made, which transformed them & magus, to possibly, the best ranged classes in the game currently. Specially for pug groups, pug play and oRvR.

If people can't see this, it'll be a long and rather pointless discussion thread imo.

Exemplifying:
You (for some reason) give SHs 50% additional damage & range, and then you try to nerf Unshakable Focus moral because it is making them 1 shot most targets without any sort of counter-play....

[Bozzax]

Do consider

1. CS was being whined about on live even though Engies was much weaker in end game then all other dps
2. New morale rates greatly affects availability of CS
3. Engi damage/range buff greatly affect how effective the "CS burs sequence is" even though CS itself is unaffected
4. The ability itself is OP for a M3, this is simply indisputable.
5. CS secondary effect itself is as strong it actually could have been a M3 (without DD).

If dps could choose what M3 wo restrictions to slot from all every single dps in the game would pick CS.

For all that think CS is "fine" I suggest we replace the SuperChop on Choppa with a CS mleee mirror. Alt. we add a CS on magus that dd 2400 and drops resists 20% for 30s. If you feel adding CS on either of those classes is to much you've pretty much answered why CS in its current form is a problem.

Lastly I think the engi class just like WLs (pounce) will suffer long term from having this op M3 overshadowing all future attemps to make them balanced. Every single thread is likely sooner or later to turn into "CS op" whine

[Glorian]

...
Lastly I think the engi class just like WLs (pounce) will suffer long term from having this op M3 overshadowing all future attemps to make them balanced. Every single thread is likely sooner or later to turn into "CS op" whine

That is what I actually fear the most.
Balancing on Engineer is not finished by far:
-There needs to be done an ability swap, Phospohorus shell<->Strafing Run
-Different turret Buffs
-And something to the fluff Damage of the AoE Grenades. Even if it is something like "Endless Pandemonium" Magus Tactic

[dur3al]

Since I didn't had to much time to elaborate on my previous posts, I shall do so now since I've some insight into the whole engi situation since lately I've been grouped a lot with them.

The brief history of cannon smash nerf (important background information to understand the origin of these proposals)

Spoiler:

please don't consider the following post as omnislashing or inflamatory as i honestly try to be as respectful and factual as possible.

Cannon smash. OMG I love this ability. Recipients hate it. This is the engineer's big move. Apparently people don't like dying from this ability.

The marked part is the reason for this topic. It was Porkstar on Saus (low lvl sorc in premade) one evening before the thread was created when fighting a double engineer 4 men. From a trustworthy source I know that those guys disbanded after a couple of ragequits when getting spawn camped. The first time cannon smash came up for discussion on this forum was due to Nikys post. Why did that happen? Well, because of the same reason, the OP made this balance proposal. Someone died in PvP. It is no secret that some guys are obviously mad about the recent game changes as they are not able to deal with certain classes e.g. the engineer. The big question is (once again): Is that really a balance issue or a l2p issue? Anyway, we are not discussing the class itself but its morale 3. I just wanted to clarify why the proposal was started by the OP before going into detail.

Anyway, since I love it and I spec enough morale gear to use it every 60s, maybe some gripers have a point that it's a bit OP. I almost always use this ability as a finisher. I wait until I see a target at about 40% health (25% for tanks), I cannon smash, focus fire, hip shot and that target will die more than 90% of the time. I will never waste cannon smash on a healthy target in the hopes that the debuff will help it die faster although this is probably extremely effective in a coordinated burst of physical dmg. If this ability must be tempered I would propose the following:

I checked OPs gear on the database and he currently has +8 morale regen. That means his m3 is up every 100s without people around. As the engineer is a long range class you most likely don't have much people around. Hence even with the new formula, it takes you 100s most of the time without moralpush. The maximum amount of morale regen available for one character is +19 (without weapons which are not viable)(m3 in 62s). For that you would lose quite a lot of other stats. In general his statement can be considered a claim and is not trustworthy at all considering the itemization would lead to a one-trick-pony. Not really reflecting the actual state of engineers at the moment with all at their disposal.

In general make cannon smash defendable/mitigatable with other morale abilities to include dodge, dmg reduction, block etc. (maybe it already is but I don't think so)

Not a single morale in the game is defendable/mitigatable hence why cannon smash shouldn't be so either. That's not a solution at all.

Also just general comments: cannon smash seems more powerful than any M4 ability. I think it was intended to be a unique ability and generally very powerful single target attack. I would never even consider using and engineer M4 with cannon smash available. All engie M4 are just some underwhelming aoe dot or cone dmg crap.

A problem which does not only affect the engineer or would you recommend to use a M4 on a Marauder for example when you got FoF? More examples: DoK cleanse, Focused Mind on any Caster, Unshackable Focus on Squig/Shadow Warrior and so on. Literally most of the M4's in the game are quite useless unless you're not a tank.
Please note that we have several 2,4k+ dmg morale 4 and they all do ae dmg, instantly.
Even on classes that got morale pump themselves (bw,sh) and can reach m4 faster than any engi his m3.

1. Re-work this ability to function as a finishing move. If the target is below 25% health, target takes 2400 dmg and 30% armor debuff for 15s. If target is 25% or above, target takes 1200 dmg and 30% armor debuff for 15s. <--- remember cannon smash is very slow moving and a target can easily be brought above the 25% mark in this time. In other words, if I cast at a target below 25%, there is no guarantee that it will be below 25% when the ball hits.

That simply doesn't work considering the super slow animation of this ability and it would be way too unreliable. Engineer got exactly 1 offensive morale left after the nerf of unshackable focus and that is Cannon Smash. Right now you play with 2 defensive morales (M1+M2) and one offensive morale (M3).
Ofc you can argue back and forth, while claiming that FM can be used offensive but that affects rather the magus than the engi as you won't see a engi spamming Gunblast. You usually use it to break FoF or to get rid of CC effects. If you nerf Cannon Smash to such an unreliable dmg morale, you also have to make it instant otherwise the class will be left with not a single reliable offensive morale. Hands down m3 takes a long time to build. Especially after the latest AM changes. The nerf of morale push affected the Cannon Smash very hard.
I honestly think it's justified considering a lot of melees do have an instant 1800 m3 with an additional effect. Compared to the mdps version Cannon Smash is not instant and does have a long travel time e.g. time to react for the enemy - a (slow) flying rocket is quite obvious.

Why engineer is not using FM as an offensive moral:

Spoiler:

Unlike the magus the engineer does not profit from FM as much as the magus. Let's have a look on their burst rotations:
For engi that is:
- Incendiary Rounds
- Signal Flare
- Snipe
- Hipshot
- Focused Fire
For the magus it is:
- Baleful Transmogrification
- Withered Soul
- Bolt of Change
- Surge of Insanity
- Surging Violet Fire
- Indigo Fire of Change
First of the magus has something equal to Sear/Gloomburst. On the engi that ability would be Flashbang Grenade. Due to travel times (Gun Shots) you simply can't time FG and the magus got 1 more ability to hit with in the same timestamp. Hence why the range increase on Grenadier is not worth it - unlike Daemonic Reach which is usually a must have.
Besides that the only rotation which would profit from FM on the engineer is: Snipe -> Gunblast -> Hipshot -> Focused Fire. Again unlike the magus, the engi does not have a mirror of Mutating Blue Fire, a second 3s cast - first one is Snipe/Bolt of Change - which deals a lot of damage.
In general the magus will cast a lot more than the engi does and his casts will deal more damage than the one of the engi. As an engi you usually just Snipe and get your instants off before trying to setup a new rotation and make use of Hipshot and Focused Fire again. Gunblast also has super high AP costs and you are in most of the cases better off by keeping FM for your surivability while the magus will use it to reduce the casttime of his high damage casts.

2. cannon smash always does 2400 dmg and reduce X armor for X seconds but it is 1s cast with a very recognizable indicator/reveal so targets can have a chance to activate a defensive morale.

That's already the case so it's not a proposal. What else besides a super big rocket which moves super slow do you need as an indicator?

3. This would be much more fun and my personal choice but likely not possible. Give Magus something AWESOME and leave cannon smash alone! Modify the Firewyrm of Tzeentch M4 and make a new M3 called Wyrmling of Tzeentch. Wyrmling of Tzeentch is a single target little bastard that cannot be killed or commanded and does 2400 dmg over 15s and reduces target's spirit and elemental resists by 400 for 15s. It follows the target for the full 15s. Magus dots would blow **** up.

This point determines that OP doesnt think cannon smash is overpowered.
He is discussing a engi m3 and his proposal is to buff a whole different class? That is not a proposal for the so called proplem with Cannon Smash and it would only bring up a second "problem" if you honestly think Cannon Smash is already one. What would most likely happen is that some premades will die to it and go to the forums, asking for nerf.

My solutions for the topics are as followed:

Leave cannon smash as it is. Destru already has an exclusive morale 4 rotation which can be considered a counterplay. They don't even need a second class to push their morale as they can do it themselves. There are quite a lot of counterplays to the engineer anyway (see spoiler below). The main issue in this whole topic is that people still don't know how to play against a engineer and mostly the "elite" premades are mad because they have something new to deal with. Cannon Smash was never a big deal in 5 years of AoR. Why is it here? Well the engi finally started to deal damage, like any other dps - if you leave him alone - and the fact that a character does not have much wounds due to the current BiS equipment. The more gear we (especially wounds boni) the worse Cannon Smash will be.
Another point which I was about to raise is what Karast already stated: the Armor debuff is more or less useless. Cannon Smash is used as a finisher in combination with other morales so the armor debuff effect is irrelevant.
The last thing I want to say is that Cannon Smash was (as stated before) heavily affected by the morale push nerf. The class is almost never in range of others so it takes a huge amount of time to build morale 3. Most of the time you have to pop defensive morales or the enemies already died to non-morale damage.

Engineer’s counter:

Spoiler:

1.) Pressure
Pressure the engi and he won't be able whether to snipe, channel, nor to keep his stacks. It's a huge damage loss.
2.) Use Shatter
If you remove Flak Jacket, the engineer will be left with low armor and is rather squishy.
3.) Snare(s)
He has no significant kiting tools i.e. range snare to keep enemies away from him. In a common scenario the aoe stagger is unreliable and most people will have immunities or be hit by aoe abilities.
4.) Hard CC
Should be self explaining: Terrible Embrace, Flames of Fate, Champions Challenge.
5.) Group Cleanse
DoK is able to purge Signal Flare which causes the Engi to lose 15% of his damage. Other classes do have a flat damage buffs/tactics e.g. Flanking / Shadow Warriors VoN which can't be removed that easy.
6.) Deft Defender & adaptability
Since Trivial Blows is gone, range dps classes can't be ignored any longer and a lot of people seem to enjoy them. A huge problem is the mindset of the people; On live you had a few guys stating that TB is a must have and they made the math to show everyone how good it is. Hence everybody used it. Here on RoR you had enigma for that (renown exploits and such ) but no TB. Guess what? You need to itemize and spec around the opponents you are facing. A simple solution to avoid a part of the engis damage is Deft Defender. with RR40 for example you can spec 30 crit 10 deft defender and you will feel a huge difference (l2addapt issue). If you go full glas cannon with mediocre tanks and heal, your opinion can't be taken serious on balance discussion as this is a simple l2p issue and not a balance issue.
7.) Defensive Morales
Dodge Disrupt m1 on dps
Tank m4 (2 classes can rotate them every 60s)
8.) LoS
Use line of sight, break it and force the engi to come closer. If he does punish him (see points 1, 2, 3 and 4).

[Tesq]

@dural, appart that the magus combo is not like that since the channeling do less damages and so the magus need to stay more close and spam undefitable rend wind to have the same damges of the engi channeling
The travel time dosen't really matter much since you can make almost all hits in a organized group situation all tick togheter. Some times it's even better if something have a travel time while the other stuff have none ; idk if engi have some hits which hit istantly and have no travel time but for exemple magus/bw have it.

then even with these trade off the value of a moral would be off

2400 dmg vs 1800 for all other moral 3
30 sec of debuff vs 10 of all moral 3

have a slower charge time because you have no enemy near to build morale jsut mean you are free to pick target with no disturb is not something that justify defend a over the top M3 which anyway when it hit it's better than others morales.

That was the same problem that the live had, dosen't matter how much time you need to load it, when it hit , it hit for too much.
Also the class should work with out a M3 over the top, defend something becuase the class is not super performing is not right.
It was ok when the engi /magus where so many times underperforming on live compared to anyother class but not now and here.

i could understand 2400 vs 1800 due the travel time(still feel like not right) but not also a 30 sec eff.

Again it was "not" a problem in 5 years of live because 1 kill every 1 min in a class that couldn't kite and dps compared to a bw/sw simply was not played and 1 kill every 1 min for those who played it was not something possible to nerf the class for when all the other 60 sec you were doing crap damages.

[porkstar]

Since I didn't had to much time to elaborate on my previous posts, I shall do so now since I've some insight into the whole engi situation since lately I've been grouped a lot with them.

The brief history of cannon smash nerf (important background information to understand the origin of these proposals)

Spoiler:

please don't consider the following post as omnislashing or inflamatory as i honestly try to be as respectful and factual as possible.

Cannon smash. OMG I love this ability. Recipients hate it. This is the engineer's big move. Apparently people don't like dying from this ability.

The marked part is the reason for this topic. It was Porkstar on Saus (low lvl sorc in premade) one evening before the thread was created when fighting a double engineer 4 men. From a trustworthy source I know that those guys disbanded after a couple of ragequits when getting spawn camped. The first time cannon smash came up for discussion on this forum was due to Nikys post. Why did that happen? Well, because of the same reason, the OP made this balance proposal. Someone died in PvP. It is no secret that some guys are obviously mad about the recent game changes as they are not able to deal with certain classes e.g. the engineer. The big question is (once again): Is that really a balance issue or a l2p issue? Anyway, we are not discussing the class itself but its morale 3. I just wanted to clarify why the proposal was started by the OP before going into detail.

Anyway, since I love it and I spec enough morale gear to use it every 60s, maybe some gripers have a point that it's a bit OP. I almost always use this ability as a finisher. I wait until I see a target at about 40% health (25% for tanks), I cannon smash, focus fire, hip shot and that target will die more than 90% of the time. I will never waste cannon smash on a healthy target in the hopes that the debuff will help it die faster although this is probably extremely effective in a coordinated burst of physical dmg. If this ability must be tempered I would propose the following:

I checked OPs gear on the database and he currently has +8 morale regen. That means his m3 is up every 100s without people around. As the engineer is a long range class you most likely don't have much people around. Hence even with the new formula, it takes you 100s most of the time without moralpush. The maximum amount of morale regen available for one character is +19 (without weapons which are not viable)(m3 in 62s). For that you would lose quite a lot of other stats. In general his statement can be considered a claim and is not trustworthy at all considering the itemization would lead to a one-trick-pony. Not really reflecting the actual state of engineers at the moment with all at their disposal.

Clarifying some of Dur3al's speculative statements above

(1) I've played engineer constantly since the changes. I've had M3 up before cool down many many times times with +8 regen gear. It's easily possible in a good fight. Dur3al, you seem to be good at maths so you know it is true.
(2) I haven't played rifle spec since months before the changes. I was grenade and now I'm tinker/grenade. I'm usually within 100ft of the fight because it's more fun for me. If you like, PM me for my tanky/brawling build that can do plenty of damage with very high defenses and it is designed for assist dps.
(3) The reason for starting this thread was because someone mentioned that if Engineer cannot be brought more closely in line with Magus through range changes and mastery tree adjustment, Cannon Smash would be adjusted next. (I believe it was AZ in one of the change logs). I love using Cannon Smash so I wanted to start this thread so that everyone has a chance to provide input in case it does get adjusted. Please refrain from speculating about my reasons for starting this thread.


I do however, appreciate your comments regarding my suggested changes. Thank you

[Tankbeardz]

@ Dureal
1. The slow travel time can be as effective as insta cast because it allows you to hit several burst damage abilities at once...the same as you would with the slow traveling BoC.

2. Trivial blows is the most over-rated thing from live...I NEVER ran it and I think you remember how tanky my knight and chosen were. Initiative was much more reliable in keeping burst damage down...the one exception may have been Sorc/BW.

3. FM is probably the best morale 2 available for engi/magus now since Snipe and BOC are on 5 second cooldowns. With the proper rotation you can easily squeeze 2 off and blow someone up. Magus just gives you the option to use another 3 second cast instead but both classes have 2 second casts that you can swap in and out of your rotation, if you like.

[porkstar]

I know we're trying to avoid balancing abilities inside the vacuum of the two mirror classes. This suggestion might be slightly off-topic but I did start the thread because cannon smash is being considered for adjustment because Engie is out-performing magus. Wouldn't it make more sense to give magus an auto attack similar to engineer instead of trying to adjust ranges and morales?

[Gachimuchi]

(3) The reason for starting this thread was because someone mentioned that if Engineer cannot be brought more closely in line with Magus through range changes and mastery tree adjustment, Cannon Smash would be adjusted next. (I believe it was AZ in one of the change logs).

You do realize this was still when the devs were under the impression the range buffs to engineer/magus also affected the range of their morales?

And no. Engineer is not outperforming Magus. Engineer has less damage due to multiple-attribute dependancy(ballistic/WS) compared to Magus needing only int. Additionally, Magus usually has around 40% or less mitigation to get through. Engineer has much higher armor values to contend with when dealing with something other than light armor classes.

[porkstar]

(3) The reason for starting this thread was because someone mentioned that if Engineer cannot be brought more closely in line with Magus through range changes and mastery tree adjustment, Cannon Smash would be adjusted next. (I believe it was AZ in one of the change logs).

You do realize this was still when the devs were under the impression the range buffs to engineer/magus also affected the range of their morales?

And no. Engineer is not outperforming Magus. Engineer has less damage due to multiple-attribute dependancy(ballistic/WS) compared to Magus needing only int. Additionally, Magus usually has around 40% or less mitigation to get through. Engineer has much higher armor values to contend with when dealing with something other than light armor classes.

Good to know. But are you sure? The following was on 08/11/16.

All Morale-Affecting Skills

- The amount of morale regenerated by any morale pump or removed by any morale drain is now linked to the morale scaler. A pump or drain will use its tooltip value only when the morale gain rate is 3.6x.

Engineer

- Snipe is now a 13 point skill, swapped with Phosphorous Rounds.
- EXPERIMENTAL: The maximum range increase is 25% rather than 40%.

Spoiler:

If lowering the range kills the class outside of pug / solo, the range will go back up and we'll hit Cannon Smash directly instead.

This is from 28/10/16:

Engineer/Magus

Fixed an issue causing non-channeled Engineer turret and Magus daemon skills to have a cast time. Because the cycle rate for a cast time ability (but NOT a channel) is its cast time plus the cooldown, this should make the Magus Pink Horror significantly more efficient when compared with the Engineer's Gun Turret, as it will cast more often.

Magus daemons will now correctly use the Magus stats as their baseline and not the Shadow Warrior stats. This is worth an additional 150 intelligence to the Magus daemons.

The damage and range buffs are no longer experimental, and are now part of the classes.

The maximum range bonus has been reduced to 40ft from 50ft.

Fixed an issue causing the Blue Horror ability Warping Energy not to work at the correct range.

The Engineer turret's range will increase by half as much as the Engineer's range per stack, resulting in final ranges of 140ft for the Engineer and 120ft for the turret. The Magus pet's range is unaffected.

This is because the Engineer turret is outperforming the Magus daemon, and the Engineer itself is slightly outperforming the Magus.

Please send any objections in the form of a balance proposal to the balance forum, not here.