I Tried Shortbow Heal SCRAPPER - Thoughts
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Could you please do a tier list on ease of use/efficiency for the healers you've reviewed?
So another healer I want to talk about: I play daily fractal cm's every day for years now. So first point is that my situation is different from your usual pug runs. In experienced fractal groups, you don't care about your res skill and you don't care about burning your heal skill (which honestly almost every single healer does).
As I said, from my experience, Shortbow scrapper is literally a better healer for fractals than hfb. First reason being massive barrier and healing and cleanse output which hfb struggles with. Then you have easy access to superspeed and stealth which is great for fast fractals. You now have the one aegis source you should ever need and you can get as much stab as you want.
I would always take the trait that gives stab and some might on function gyro instead of the superspeed trait. That way you have 2 very good stab skills already on your default tool kit. Elixir gun is your flex skill, so you can take elixir B which gives another big source of stab on the toolbelt skill.
Swiftness is easily at 100% if you use function gyro of cd which blasts its own lightning field. You can also use bulwark gyro as a lightning field and blast it for easy swiftness. Another source of swiftness is elixir gun 2, the cone is a bit scuffed, but it helps. Regen is capped with the new trait that you take over overshield which now gives regen on your f1. Vigor uptime is not 100%, but it's good enough. You do also get access to a sizeable amount of random boons in condi-heavy fights from purity of purpose, even some alac when you cleanse chill. Fury is much easier covered by using sb 5 -> 4 for double cc and in fights like fractals you often start phases with cc, so you already contribute a lot of break bars. Prot is fully covered with f1, function gyro and the occasional sb 4 which you press anyway, but you can save sb 4 which you know you need aegis soon.
In terms of cc, if more cc is needed, you take personal battering ram instead of elixir gun and you are easily among the top of the cc table. If the phases allow it, you can easily fit the elite elixir in as well to get access to even more cc with rampage or tornado, but it's only worth it if the cc phase is long enough. With the constant barrier output from sb 2 and bulwark gyro you barely need burst heal, but you always have medkit for such occasions like skill 4.
I do agree that the class is pretty spammy if you want to play it perfectly, but hfb and druid for example are not much different in terms of optimal boon and heal rotation. So I think that's just a matter of taste, I do enjoy playing heal scrapper like this. For tanking purposes you can still swap back to shield if necessary. I did play it in raids and strikes as well and the healing and barrier output is great. You do have function gyro available for the occasional res as long as you know roughly when people might go down like during shakes on sloth, so you can just save it for a couple seconds before shakes.
As for an opener there is no single best rota, but I found the following very good. Open with function gyro for instant swiftness, prot, quick and some might. Then start blast gyro and use sb 2->3 for instant might cap and sb 5->4 for fury and more might. Then medkit 5 (i always so 3->5 to guarantee a field) for some vigor and regen and f1 to cap prot and regen. And from there you can relax and give boons with basically whatever you press.
Sorry for the long explanations, but I wanted to give a complete comparison from a completely different environment with experienced groups.
One last point I forgot to mention since I just watched the ham video: ham doesn't have a revive skill while scrapper has function gyro, but very few know that the tool belt skill of elixir R also throws a ranged aoe revive field, similar to geyser on tempest or feedback on mesmer. So if you need more revival, you can bring that
I just got back into gw2 after a sometime off and now wanting to try out the new bow I thought it was rough because I didn't get what should be the main priority with the bow.
This breakdown of the skills really helps, thx for sharing!
I'm also glad the devs changed Bulwark Gyro to provide barrier to allies instead of being a suicide button.
Yeah, i completely aggree with you in a pve-context.
So i´m gonna give you a bit of WvW-context:
In WvW, Shortbow heal-scrapper actually finds its way back into the meta. In that context, Shortbow is a GREAT addition to the kit, since scrapper did actually lack a reliable support-weapon that is usable in WvW. We cannot really use Mace/Shield in large-scale, because the animation-lock on mace2 and the projectile of the mace3-cc. So until now, only hammer was our alternative to have at least some ranged CC.
but now, we have an actual support-weapon that brings exactly what we need. healing, cleansing and barrier as primary tools. Superspeed and ranged CC as secondary tools. In combination with "Ex Machina"and Bulwark Gyro, we do have great barrier. s little more "burst" barrier with the gyro, a little more constant barrier with shortbow.
SB also enables us to get allies out of bad situations if they got seperated from teh squad due to its long range (and a single shortbow 3 --> shortbow 2 works WONDERS in those situations). Since we don´t need to maintain 100% uptime on any boons in WvW (especially considering we cannot grant quickness in the first place) we are a lot more flexible in our ability-usage.
for the shortbow specifically, we would usually use SB4 --> SB5 before an engage (this provides us with aegis, protection and superspeed for the engage), and SB3-->SB2 reactive for barrier, healing and cleansing. It allows us to save up cooldowns from elixir gun and medkit without sacrificing any healing or cleansing (the until before biggest aspects). The barrier-output should not be underestimated, and just bulwark gyro and ex machina already keep people up so we rarely even need healing (and if we do, we have LOTS with medkit 5-->medkit3-->Shortbow2, as well as medkit 2 and 4 independently)
Unfortunately, commanders (at least on my server) are slow to adapt, but i see a lot of guilds already moving away from druid, vindi and tempest (especially due to the nerfs). Scrapper still gets WAY too much hate and still gets underestimated, but it feels like that is currently changing in favor of heal-scrapper
Thumbnail game is on point!
I wish the trait giving you an extra function gyro charge wasn't in the same line as your quickness trait, having that extra charge you can hold for emergencies makes a HUGE difference but sadly because of the meta requirements that's relegated to wvw.
I still stand by what I mentioned in another post. Just change shortbow skills so that they can trigger their lingering effects off of the auto attack. In other words, if you use shortbow 1 (which just so happens to be called Arc DETONATOR), it will cause the secondary effect of your shortbow skills 2-5 to trigger.
So an example of this would be that you could place down SB4 for that aegis and prot. And now you can shoot through the field, and that will trigger prot to pulse out to your allies. This would allow you to save the next use of SB4 for a actual emergency, or if you need to reposition.
hello muk, engineer main here (over 3000 hours). I play a lot of healscrapper and i have a few things for you:
1- I don't know which patch you played this on but march 19th fixed an infusion bomb duration bug, now swiftness + vigor + regen are all over 100% uptime (with alacrity) and exactly 100% without, thanks to infusion bomb alone. you should *not* save it for blast gyro, but any other combo field that you happen to have for quickness.
2 - You CAN have CC on demand on shortbow unlike shield, because while you burn shield skills for protection you don't have to press sb 5 for anything *other* than CC, which you can chain for even MORE cc, doing more the bigger the hitbox (incorrect, I tested it and i was wrong. Hitbox size makes no difference.). you can replace sb 5 for quickness with elixir gun 4 (if you press elixir gun 4 then immediately click the weapon swap/drop bundle button it will immediately stop you on track and you can swap back to your weapon, you don't shoot backwards AT ALL if you time it properly.) You can also use function gyro for quickness occasionally, if you know the encounter well and know it's very unlikely for someone to get downed during x phase if you find that your quickness is lacking (though mine never is to be honest, I only use function at the very beginning to give people initial quickness and make my quick rotation smoother).
3 - Scrapper comes with some of the best cleansing in the entire game, and if you swap utilities around you also bring an incredible amount of other utilities. Such as :
- Elixir B toolbelt for stability
- Personal Battering Ram for incredible amounts of CC's (I ended a samarog fight before with 84k breakbar damage as hscrapper)
- MORE cleansing with purge gyro if that much is ever necessary
- Rocket boots (Twisted castle skip, niche but fun)
- Tool Kit 5 for a 1200 range pull (useful for the doll things that you need to pull around in W6)
- Stealth Gyro (Multitudes of fractal/dungeon cheese)
All of these (Except stealth gyro) can very easily take the place of elixir gun, as the healing and little bit of cleansing you get from it is very easy to make up with the rest of the kit that you have.
4 - The first trait line for scrapper is extremely versatile, best out of any spec imo, letting you choose between superspeed, more barrier or more stability.
There's more I can talk about, but i don't want to intimidate anyone with an even bigger wall of text. But i promise you even though it may not look good, it's extremely powerful and versatile in capable hands, it just happens to be the hardest healer to play and master really.
this tbh. I think it's an awesome build that people somehow don't like!
I think Muk used to play a lot of heal scrapper in the past, so he knows the class well. I also believe he was using shortbow 5 off cooldown to chain the other skills, not for the combo. That said, I believe he was mistaken in thinking he needed to use all 4 skills for the boon uptime. The chain doesn't reset, it "chains" with each arrow boosting the previous one as long as it's within 4 seconds of each other. Sb 4 into sb 2 extends the prot, and if you follow with sb 3, it extends the might from sb 2. In other words, 4 -> 2 -> 3 extends both prot and might while saving sb 5 for CC.
Now, this is of course a matter of opinion, and as such it doesn't really matter. But I would contend that heal scrapper is the hardest healer to play in the game and master. Though I think this is up there.
Can you address the issues he has with prot uptime? 4:05
@@didoma73 Shortbow actually has better prot uptime than shield. With 100% BD and alac, shortbow 4 (when chained) can give 16 seconds every 16 seconds. Shield gives 12 seconds every 19ish seconds
I run Mine over Elixir Gun, decent CC, and the ability to AoE Blast Heal makes it a lot easier to heal people that aren't clumped up. You have 2 water fields and 3 easy to use blasts (4 if you go Medkit 3 then 5)
Thx again for you great work. I had to laugh so much about the description on the SB skill 3. I'm a great fan o heal scourge, and the F5 is also very funny to use in some situations. Hope to see some other off meta healers aswell in this video marathon!
Waiting for the tier list video, where you give your personal thoughts about all healing classes :D
"got popped by that one person" you say, when you very clearly the one to walk into them on the footage, you sir were the one doing the popping XD
Burining a heal to provide a boon is also not a problem with the sheer number of heals, also 90% of the time you need cc, with experience, you know when that will be so rotation can easily be adjusted to have bow 5 ready when its needed.
Agree with this, once you play contents long enough, delaying rotation while providing boons become second in nature, especially if player gone over recommend boon durations. You get soooo much buffer between boon application that you don't need to press boons on cd as much.
Not just Bow 5, Your Function Gyro is a CC and also a lightning field, your Blast Gyro is also a lighntning field. That turns most of your teams finishers into CCs. (I mean I also run mine over Elixir Gun most of the time, as that gives you a CC and a blast finisher for AoE heal and Quickness)
It's never a good sign when a weapon doesn't feel great on a spec that doesn't feel great because they decided to make you jump through hoops to do your job as a heal scrapper. I shelved my engie because of the scrapper changes because having to do multiple things just to be able to provide quick again did not feel good or fun, and people saying mace returned scrapper to normal again was just... no. Shortbow does little to alleviate this problem either, and it just doesn't ever feel good to use.
I shelved my heal scrapper for months, the only help mace has provided is that it is possible to keep 100% quickness now on a gyro build, before the mace it wasnt. It still is definitely a lot less good and fun compared to the past, however I now can use the build in endgame content enough to not feel like im letting people down.
I definitely end up complaining a lot still though when I see other builds apply boons with ease, or see mechanist and revenant with their moving bubbles while mine is stuck being stationary -.-, if it wasn't for scrappers superspeed I wouldnt play it.
As a side note to I dont even bother trying to touch it if I'm alone or in moving open world content, cuzz I can only keep quickness up reliably using other peoples combo fields because Im not good enough at it to keep it up on my own.
But yeh I can say mace did 100% help, but its no where near back to normal and still significantly less fun than the past :c
the cat doing its business while Muk was prattling about the trepidations of using a shortbow as heal scrapper made my day. he was like: 'dad, you are playing a mouse! did you expect any different?'
As an Engi Shortbow enjoyer: Shortbow feels like a support weapon for non-support roles. You'll basically never see it in instanced play, but in larger open world or WvW play, it's got some solid niche uses over the Mace-Shield.
1. Every attack (except auto) is AoE, you've got lots of cleave for pesky ads or just for general tagging.
2. The ability to choose your extra ability based on attack order is pretty nice for specific encounters.
3. Since the shortbow is a ranged weapon, it doesn't have to adhere to the stack meta as strictly as a mace and can give boons and such from a better vantage.
I personally run it on my condi mech to keep the mech alive to pull all my aggro. It makes for VERY chill play.
11:15 it's lack of cc on demand is kinda negated via bulwark gyro's lightning field if people combo it. :3
I said the same.. And Function Gyro. It puts out a tonne of CC if you know what you are doing... I also run mine over Elixir, so I have a blast finisher at command to proc Light or Water fields or just for the CC.
Best thumbnail of them all
I generally agree with what you said about having to waste in order to get some boon output. 5:04 On the other hand, I CAN'T AGREE that every heal support should be like the AFK herald or mech. Those AFK builds should be for people who want easy access to their role and the rest of us can play builds that require game play, which is what makes the game engaging and fun
Itd be nice to have a ranged option for Engi healing; if the game hadnt devolved into everyone just stacking for 90% of fights.
Do I want to learn a whole new rotation for something that trades blows with another build that I already know?
Imma go with no.
Hearing you describe how you act in combat makes me realise just why it is I am useless at group content! Half the time I can't even see where the target is, so the notion that I can see what is going on in such detail that I know when I need to do some specific combo effect is ludicrous. I don't mean that you are ludicrous, Muk, just the idea that I have a prayer of being effective with the current game UI and visuals is ludicrous. How do you fellows do it?!
Totally looking forward to that "Here's more healing!" merch.
Please don’t put subtitles in the bottom - that’s the place auto subtitles often are and we can’t change its position.
you can. press and hold them and throw them around your screen
@@RbDaP how about a tv?
of all of these, i've been running heal chrono for Converges and it's super fun. full cele gear i have no problems keeping everyone up, plus doing 4-6k dps . seems like Mes is the most fun of all these reviews.
I played it a lot and I quite like it, but it's not like I am awed by it. If I were to pick the superior set then mace +shield ofc. I really lack the cc mace provides, and yes the prot application needs improving, and yes I often find myself burning the sb5 just to get that chain reaction goin' but you can't say that it is hard to keep quick up. It just gets splashed onto your teem with everything you do. You really don't need to even think about it (spare making sure you are in a combo field at all times). Sb2 every 5sec, med kit 5, acid bomb, blast gyro, and if you still struggle function gyro as well. Plus you forgot that you can trait function gyro to have another source of stab in exchange for superspeed. Last thing - regarding the arenanet's choice to set SB as a support weapon I think they looked at scrapper pre-soto and saw poor little Timmy with useless pistol in main hand and they thought it needs fixing, and they totally forgot that with the expac you will get mace available to fix that already.
The only positive I have with short bow 5 is it is three separate blasts so if you can put the field between two of the three it’s ok. But that is a very short with for it
I can see your wanting to have all the boons, do we think that ANet would rather the boon gen was handled by multiple chars? In which case some of the limitations of these last few supports is less of an issue? i.e. a party needs healers and offensive supports more than pure dps's.
It's odd, for some reason I thought the expanded weapon proficiencies were for everyone, and not just SotO. That would make it so that things like Shortbow would be an option for classes like Scrappers that didn't have SotO's expanded weapon proficiency from Masteries unlocked. But (to my understanding) the new "base" weapons are ONLY for people who have SotO unlocked, meaning that that competition is in-built. I'm not sure what Anet were going for with these design choices.
I see aegis on the same skill that provides protection. How much damage does protection reduce from a blocked attack, Arenenet?
They need to be smarter where they put aegis on skills.
Chaining should just buff the next arrow regardless of area you shoot it at (just have a effect on boon bar, most of people would know by intuition without looking at it what the last arrow was). For it to trigger only based on position just doesn't work against moving opponents. Also it provides no self utility other than boons (block leap dodge reflect). Would also be cool if the last arrow you shot changed your autoattack in small ways. Autoattack right now i see no point of existing as it is as it doesn't interact or bring anything. And the autoattack doesn't contribute in meaningful way. The damage doesn't have to be bigger, but it has to bring something else for a support weapon that makes it viable to autoattack with (like passive boon generation). This is supposed to be a support weapon but brings no utility for a support and class which has high utility options. Also btw you have to be in range of the fields to receive the effect from them, so it's more like a melee weapon than you think. The only thing about this is you can activate these buffs remotely and send them to your team, but then you are losing them yourself.
Thx for reading through :)
Sounds like it's a perfectly viable spec that simply won't be played because there's a competing, better option.
But I don't see a reason why this specific choice wouldn't be able to easiiiiily fill its role in a party. Definitely stronger than a lot of the options we had 10 years ago. So play it if you enjoy it I suppose and no reason to cockblock anyone from using it in your party.
Im gonna definately gear this up just for the sake of having it.
you dont need mace for permament regeneration, mortar kit can give 1 minute of regeneration on its own (just use mortar 5 and then use mortar1 for the regeneration projectile finisher) so regeneration is a non factor and very easy to apply, im not sure why permament protection is such a big deal, even in harder strikes like htcm you focus on applying protection when the group is about to be hit by an attack, shortbow has netted me much more consistent healing across all group content and the opener of all my dps players is stronger because of the faster might application thanks to shortbow 2 (meaning their opener is stronger since they got 25 stacks of might faster, instead of the slow build up it usually is) nothing personal, but i just had to disagree with some points and add my own perspective
tbh, i didnt know this was gonna even exist, so thank you for sharing. But in your words I "Dont" do this. Seems waaay too hard for me
Every time they try to 'Fix' Scrapper, it just gets worse.
I liked the Blast/Leap Finisher changes, felt great for making it more interactive and thinking more about what fields you bring, but it's gone downhill from there.
Omg I've been using short bow as a power weapon in pvp lmao😂
with all the fine-tuning abilities of graphics now, they've still missed the most important one - turn off all the unnecessary fx and bling. I'd really like a switch to hide fx when a player puts up a big dome, or a pink tin can lid, or a load of green slime, or a blue screen over enemy tells, esp if its a player buff, the rest of us only see it if it hasn't already been allocated to someone, say in the party, or nearby. I rem when I was a new player thinking my heals were for everyone, only to be disappointed to find that they would at most go to 10 (now only 5) others, but the pixel spam is still piled on. Every effect needs a 'super low/hidden' ability. Otherwise this isn't a game, its a multi-participant dynamic painting application.
What annoys me is some things can't be seen which would be great to see, for example a Mech Barrier so I know when to time my Barrier to give us projectile coverage, whereas other things that don't matter are shown all the time.
Sounds like sbow continues the tradition of engi being one of the more finicky classes. I don't mind that at all, engi has almost always been a very key-heavy class and that's a good thing, but if I'm having to juggle kits, toolbelt skills, and now think about what order I'm chaining arrows it'd be nice if I was getting something substantially better than other classes for pulling it off correctly. Or at least something substantially better than other builds on the same class. I'll have to play around and see if all the healing is worth the effort...
I tried shortbow scrapper last night in WvW for a few hours, i personally like it more then M/S. I like having more range to my abilities and having a longer ranged cc, it makes me feel more comfortable not having to be so close and M2 throwing me all over the place. I agree that it doesn't feel so good with everyone moving so much especially in the tight space keeps but ibjust mostly rely on the initial pulses. Ill never play this in pve its just bad there.
I really hope shortbow finds its place because its a cool idea for engineer but its just not an enjoyable kit for me
I really like it on Open World Quickness Scrapper. Though it's DPS multiplier isn't great, with Quickness and 25 stacks of might it's actually quite punchy and will take down most mobs.
yeah the bow is neat and all but the amount of sstuff it gives is so small, it feels like its power budget was spread super thin and suffers from not giving enough of any one thing because it give lots of stuff instead
if anything it needs the cooldowns on all its abilities to be much shorter while not chnaging anything else, the entier point of the weapon is to combo the shots but you cant because of the long cooldowns and short buff durations
i feel that anet sometimes trying to make the game harder i mean if i sacrifice important Res Skill to Provide a boon that is looks weird For me
why u dont use reworked trait "Automated Medical Response" for bonus regen? Its special changes for shortbow build
As it says in the video, that patch was after this recording.
@@MuklukCZcams and i dind see wut u use acid bomb from elixir gun for blast
I kind of wish anet would just trial a weapon swap on engineer, but I don't know how broken that would become since I only play heal scrapper and at one point heal mechanist. It would make a useful secondary weapon if we could use it that way.
Shouldn't it be just 4-2-3 and save 5 for CC?
I mean, there's 2 extra blasts on kits anyway, so quickness shouldn't be an issue.
After six months of rejigging Mace/Shield to work on every build, 2H Support Shortbow feels like retreading old ground without anything to set it apart except for range. Like Ranger mace effectively supplanting staff, but staff still has projectile hate, immobilize, and a crazy positioning tool; shortbow just, juggles the various gotchas that the team have made alac and quickness rely on, not enough to matter, just enough to top you up if you're already doing that. And like with Renegade spirits, ANet seems newly obsessed with situational/chain-skills: not a bad idea, but tying TWO skill uses instead of one absolutely guts the "purity of purpose" they love going on about when the mood takes them.
Yeah I honestly hated heal scrap when trying it out coming from qdps scrap, like my rotation to keep quick up feels so much better on dps and I just moved to healing on other classes
SB is an amazing weapon, for a class that can use two weapon sets in combat, Engi is not one of those classes.
Seems like Noxxi still did not cut that part out. :D
Scrapper itself just needs to have the "blast or leap" aspect changed to "perform a finisher". It's been a bad change since they did that to stop the "spam all your gyro's to give quick" and it will remain that way until they take it out of the tiny box they put it in. Shortbow isn't fixing that core issue, and it honestly just feels worse to play than M/SH.
Green number guy keep the party high.
Engi Shortbow needs MAJOR love. I was so excited for this weapon, and it just feels full blown meh.
Man, if only there was a way to not force everyone to have to stack for boons and healing so tightly. If only we could just push a button and make the radius much much bigger for just healing and boons. Imagine a world....... of warcraft, where players are free to move where they want (within reason) and not be punished for leaving the boon jail cell to possibly do a mechanic. Prolly in GW3. kek.
From what i have seen, Shortbow works best on Holosmith in PvP.
The existence of engineer shortbow in the state its in is proof that they dont actually know what they are trying to do. They are just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.
I was an engi main for a long time and it seems like Anet is hellbent on pushing people out of the class. Nerfing Mech, the quickness changes for scrapper, and this mess of a new weapon that nobody wanted except maybe some pvp people which I think shows that the balance team cares and designs more for the competitive modes than for pve.
It's already the least played class.
All healers in gw2 are way too strong now , giving all basic boons is pretty standart now , so it's a unique mechanic or access to a very specific boon who's gonna determine what the best healer is and scrapper isn't one of it , he gives base boons but what else ? no rez like hscg , no strong access to stab and aegis like chrono or hfb and plus healers who give quickness are left a bit on the side cause all the meta healers are way more oriented to alacrity and alacdps have fairly less good option than quickdps, you have herald dps as quickness who make it unbalanced
Oh, Scrapper is my baby, and I'll have a lot to say about this one. Be back with a proper keyboard.
Okay! I'm finally free! SO!
Scrapper is like, the only class that doesn't provide fury innately. Running funny fury relic helps, but overall, I feel like it's just not really needed. Most classes will either provide fury for themselves, or lead way to some fury spillover some way or another. That being said, I still think Anet should probably put fury on core engi somewhere than Elixir B (thrown). Instead, I run Karakosa (Funny blast relic), because you'll do so maaaany blast finishers. More than any other class.
By default, I actually run Flamethrower instead of bulwark gyro. Flamethrower offers you a few benefits, like a _very_ short cooldown blast finisher on 2, a solid push on 3 (which can combo with System Shocker), a flame field that's pretty handy for even more might (that you don't really need), and a blind that you basically get to cast for free, since it has no cast time. Also incendiary ammo. I ain't Condi, but free burn damage is free burn damage.
Alternatively, I save Bulwark Gyro for fights where stability matters a lot more. The barrier is neat, but I'm all about the projectile blocking shield, and the stability that comes with it. If we're running a stability strat, then I bring this baby along.
The third and final option I bring is Throw mine. Boonstrip is useful sometimes. 'Nuff said! (Oh, also it's a stun so more System Shocker)
Regarding gearing, Scrapper is in the, "I get concentration from another stat", club. Minstrels and Harriers? Don't need 'em. Instead, I run Zealot's (Pwr++, Prc+ Heal+), Cleric's (Heal++, Pwr+ Tgh+), or even sometimes Marshall's (Heal++ Pwr++, Prc+ cnd+ ) if I'm using mace/shield. Keeping good prot times is pretty doable on either weapon with just power upping your concentration (you still need the boon sigil), though it's keeping bandage self on cooldown most of the time.
Speaking of, I rarely run Expert Examination. With alacrity, I find that protection lasts long enough without it. I instead run Rapid Regeneration, which offers more self heal, and by extension, party heal. I'll try running it again later, though, just to make sure. Likewise, on scrapper, even if I'm running shortbow, I always run Overshield. The regeneration from automated medical response is superfluous, and Overshield does still technically give you a personal protection upgrade (bringing the damage reduc to about 40% instead of 33). Not much, but still nice.
Looking at your traits, I don't feel Comeback Cure is needed, either, since it's just more regeneration that you can just press the Elixir Gun toolbelt skill for, so I run Backpack Regenerator, since I use a lot of kits anyway. Again, any heal to self is a heal for the whole party.
I also use HGH over purity of purpose in situations that don't require condi cleanse. The might is funny, but really what I'm after is the extended field time for Elixir Gun 5, it's related toolbelt skill and Mortar Kit 5. For the actual kit skills, it adds something like another tick or two for their fields, and for healing mists, it boosts the base regen time from 10 to 12 seconds.
And I have yet even more to spiel! Get ready for yet another read more down below.
For the first line of scrapper, it's good to keep in mind that while System Shocker is a great default to have, the other two traits are good to keep in mind as well. Gyroscopic Acceleration is especially good in fights where movement is restricted. Cairne, especially, has one of its main mechanics completely shut off when your team has superspeed, and that's just an example. Abundant superspeed is not a resource to be underestimated. Mass momentum, though, provides yet another form of stability in your function gyro. This one is pretty self explanatory.
Also keep in mind that mortar kit 3 has a frost field, and blasting that gives frost aura to 5 people, which is another 10% damage reduction, as well as putting out chill sometimes.
Anticorrosion plating flips a lot of this on its head. It's incredibly handy for condi-heavy fights, but it has a bit of an opportunity cost in some traits, because you lose the selfheal share.
Rapid regeneration definitely gets traded out for Expert Examination, especially since protection is now a form of condi cleanse, and you can't heal your team by merit of having swiftness/superspeed. Backpack regenerator also has to go, going to either comeback cure, or possibly even emergency elixir if you're tanking, though that's not nearly as reliable. Oh, and of course, purity of purpose is back on the menu here.
So! Back to the meat and potatoes of the matter, the Shortbow its rival, the Mace/Shield combo.
Firstly, I should put out that my preferred opening for shortbow is,
4 -> 5 -> 3 -> 2. This ensures that all chain reactions come out, barring the might one. We have so much might going out all the time it hurts.
Another thing to note, is that 5 is not one stun, but two. This is relevant to traits like System Shocker, where it will provide its barrier twice.
Shortbow has more than a few tricks up its sleeve to make it a solid option. The weapon has two blast finishers, which synchronizes with Karakosa, and Essence of borrowed time is yet another source of Superspeed, whose merits I've noted earlier. In addition, it offers Aegis, a boon that's pretty handy to have, and despite the fact that it's tied to the protection button, that's workaroundable, as the duration of the aegis is pretty long. On top of that, Aegis is not even _that_ important, as it's a very volatile boon, something to concern yourself with against maybe just Deimos. The last thing to note, and probably the biggest one, is that unlike its predecessor, it comes with condi cleanse built into the weapon. As a bonus note, one could also point out it's a ranged weapon, and while that's handy, rarely every should you be far from the same thing you'll be shooting.
So Mace/Shield has some stiff competition, but it's got a few things it has over shortbow. Firstly, the block on shield is very reliable, and even sometimes the reflect on it can come in clutch against Matt Gabby (big bloodstone hulk guy, I never remember his name), or other situations. Instead of offering aegis, it provides a weapon-oriented source of regen. This isn't terribly relevant for scrapper, but it's something to note. These two weapons come together to form three sources of stuns, at the least. Under certain circumstances, instead of using the second half of shield 5, you can just wait for the enemy to absolutely crush their own defiance bar by merit of you standing in an AoE. Mace also offers some condi damage, which isn't always relevant, but can be relevant under certain circumstances. Lastly, shield offers a push skill. Pushes are getting rarer and rarer lately. This can be a double edged sword sometimes, as you'll want to use the blast finisher, but might want to be careful not to accidentally push the funny soccer ball out of bounds on keep construct when trying to give healing quickness and maybe frost aura.
In the end, they fill two different niches, so keep in mind the pros and cons of each.
Shortbow:
+Aegis
+1 more blast finisher
+Offers more Condi Cleanse
+Group Superspeed!
+Ranged, healing or damage
~Doesn't have a push
~Sometimes the shortbow is glammed as Dreamer
-Doesn't provide as much regeneration
-Only two stuns, one of which is a little brainbending to use at times due to it being tied to a chain reaction.
-Damage is anemic
Mace and Shield:
+More Regeneration
+Loooots of stun
+Reliable Block
+Some condi damage
~A push skill
-Melee only, in fact you're lassoed to the boss with mace 2.
-No aegis
Engineer is a class that takes a lot of tools and pulls them together to form a new identity. As a result, sometimes it's overwhelming, but for people who enjoy it, they have practically infinite possibilities.
You could have titled this video:
I tried shortbow heal scrapper so you don't have to. x)
Poor Engi
It's to much of an elementalist type weapon without some type of overload ability. Lol -- Maybe they can bring back the Retaliation boon just for the short bow in PvE. I swear I have seen it in game on one of the enemy NPC's in core personal story.
The best thing the devs can do to heal scrap is to revert back the quickness application, so people will use it again and also put back the barrier application to mace auto attack. But of course this is not gonna happen.
Unpopular opinion (and maybe Anets fault mostly): but it feels weird to have this 100% uptime on every available boon mentality, like i understand it maybe from fury/might/alac/quickness/ (personally i dont like alac and quickness) but from defensive boons kinda defeats the purpose of proactive play if you just spam mindlessly resistance, aegis, superspeed and stab are what most boons should be
I legit think shortbow 4 is good design, but it just doesnt fit with the current state of the game cuz boons have design issues as a whole, they need to go full reverse and gut most supports in the game to de-powercreep lmao, but most communities dont react well to that so, shame that pve feels mind-numbing most of the time
People will run boondps classes to counter boon duration nerfs. It will extend fights and that is it.
It's almost like the homogenization of boons was a TERRIBLE idea and there will always be 2 or 3 things that do X-role at S-Tier while the others struggle to get by at C-Tier or just feel awful to play because they weren't designed for it. And ANet's "release cadence" of 3 meaningful balance patches every year still hasn't afforded them the ability to catch everyone up. Even with the new jacked weapons. 🙃 But, if I could pick one thing for this game's future it'd be that ANet hires another balance dev. Preferably one who gives a shoot about Engi, Warrior, And Thief. These classes require such huge investment to be able to barely do what loads of others can do with their brain off.
just dont play this healer for your own sake LUL
I hope anet changes the visuals of untamed and engi shortbow skills that litterly blinds everyone.
My squad keeps dying to untameds that blind us all 🥲