Non-Engineering Sapper Alternative

[Ugoboom]

One of the main reasons people roll engineering for PVE, are the Goblin Sapper Charges. This is a free, otherwise unused cooldown, to deal significant aoe damage.

This is huge on many raid encounters, including ZG spiders, MC fire imps and garr adds, BWL suppresion, techies, and phase 3 nef, aq40's visc, adds before and during suppresion room and oruo adds, and finally naxx's spider wing.

The difference in a raid that has 0 engineers, 10 engineers, and 20 engineers, and 40 engineers is insanely staggering. 0 engineer raid teams like back in the day would struggle hard hard hard on bosses like nef and visc, while 40 engineer raid teams are able to pull off insane stunts like naxx faerlina one-pulls.

One profession on every single player, shouldn't be the difference between being able to do certain strategies or not... on clearing a boss or not. Plenty of people have moneymaking and/or RP reasons for their professions, and people shouldn't feel bad about holding their raid team back because of their personal choices.

I propose instead that either Crystal Charge be buffed into sapper stats and function, or another consumable obtained some way else is added to the game. Either way, with a resulting consumable that doesn't demand you go engineering.

Now, in order to not screw over people who invested in engineering, you can keep the current price of sappers cheap as they are usually 1-2g a pop, and make the new alternative maybe 5g or so to obtain, or just tedious in time spent like the ungoro crystals are. This would be a fair way so that non-engineers can compete and pull their full weight in raids, and engineering as a profession becomes a moneymaker in the fact that it saves money compared to the alternatives.

[Apimius]

+1

[Massie2]

Suggestion: Add the next tier of "Ez-Thro Dynamite" which is more expensive to craft than a normal Goblin Sapper Charge, but useable by non-engineers.


Also for more casually oriented guilds where raiders rely on the guild to supply consumes for a raid:


Obviously the conjured Crate would have to be expensive enough not to invalidate the permanent version of the item (and Goblin Sappers) and should rather serve the role of being an easy QoL way for a guild to provide casual raiders that don't prepare consumes themselves, a Sapper Charge for an important fight (i.e. Nef/Visc). Permanent versions of the item would still have the advantage of being used more freely on trash etc.

[Gantulga]

Suggestion: Add the next tier of "Ez-Thro Dynamite" which is more expensive to craft than a normal Goblin Sapper Charge, but useable by non-engineers.


Also for more casually oriented guilds where raiders rely on the guild to supply consumes for a raid:


Obviously the conjured Crate would have to be expensive enough not to invalidate the permanent version of the item (and Goblin Sappers) and should rather serve the role of being an easy QoL way for a guild to provide casual raiders that don't prepare consumes themselves, a Sapper Charge for an important fight (i.e. Nef/Visc). Permanent versions of the item would still have the advantage of being used more freely on trash etc.

I really like this idea but to be fair it doesn't need to be just like a sapper charge. Just having a third rank of dynamite which does like 40% less damage (270-450) than a charge but doesn't nuke yourself would work nicely since it'd be easier to use for most people too. This way there would still be incentive to make crystal charges as they do more damage.
I would definitely be dropping those crates.

[Shamma]

-1 Instead make other professions provide more BoP/require profession to use items. Make professions and classes more different, not more the same.

[Ugoboom]

-1 Instead make other professions provide more BoP/require profession to use items. Make professions and classes more different, not more the same.

You could indeed make an alchemy-required toxic gas pouch or something that would also function the same as a sapper. Indeed that would be cool ontop of my suggestion.

It's a fools' errand to try and make each alternative much different. This is what tbc wotlk tried to do and you end up with the same dumb "you guys need X profession or you're trolling your group".

It's far easier to tune other flavorful profession tools in their cost and farming routine, while keeping function the same.

[Shamma]

"you guys need X profession or you're trolling your group"

this is true, but at least it is not always engineering. Have other professions become mandatory for minmaxing too. Adds some variety at least (at the expense of free profession choice).

[Gladeshadow]

+1

I’ve toyed with the idea of more BoP recipes for other professions as Shamma suggested. And it can be fun, as seen in some early expansions. However, it also directly leads to more min-maxing, just as we see with engineering in vanilla. With that in mind, reducing min-maxing ultimately allowing for more open gameplay and allowing people to do professions they enjoy rather than “trolling their group” by having the “wrong” profession. So I favor letting non-engineers get a version of sapper charge or anything else of the like.

[Xudo]

-1 Instead make other professions provide more BoP/require profession to use items. Make professions and classes more different, not more the same.

I agree with this.

I also think that mandatory engineering is ok. Because you can learn 2 professions at a time. Feel free to choose any second profession. When I did a lot of raiding, I actually didn't had a time to gather things. So I had 2 crafting professions.

I saw people complaining that raiding get tedious and time consuming. You need to do a lot of preparations for it.
And I think that you should REDUCE amount of possible consumables, so people didn't have to spend 20 hours farming for 5 hours raiding.

[Kairion]

Shouldnt rather sappers be toned down to fit in with the more tame consumables that are available otherwise?

Having a AoE 1000+ firedamage at yout disposal at any time trivializes any encounter that uses adds as a mechanic or needlessly mandates people to farm consumables if its balanced around their existence.

[Ugoboom]

Shouldnt rather sappers be toned down to fit in with the more tame consumables that are available otherwise?

Having a AoE 1000+ firedamage at yout disposal at any time trivializes any encounter that uses adds as a mechanic or needlessly mandates people to farm consumables if its balanced around their existence.

Sappers are 600 damage average, not above 1000.

You could nerf sappers to crystal charge numbers, but many game designers far more experienced than us, have found that buffing alternatives rather than nerfing the meta is the way to go, unless the offending thing would introduce too much power creep.

And on second thought, indeed sappers are very strong in that they allow new strategies and for nef and visc to be easier fights. They also incentivize more tryhard players to burn them in blood ring to help confirm a kill. Maybe that's not a good thing. I'd leave it up to the devs to decide on if sappers need nerfing, but either way, sappers could use more alternatives at whatever powerlevel they are at.

Keep in mind that crystal charge is a thrown bomb, while sapper is instant aoe around yourself upon button press. This distinction is HUGE for making it as strong as it is.

[Raukodor]

+1 this would make eng not so mandatory

[Gantulga]

Shouldnt rather sappers be toned down to fit in with the more tame consumables that are available otherwise?

Having a AoE 1000+ firedamage at yout disposal at any time trivializes any encounter that uses adds as a mechanic or needlessly mandates people to farm consumables if its balanced around their existence.

Sappers are 600 damage average, not above 1000.

You could nerf sappers to crystal charge numbers, but many game designers far more experienced than us, have found that buffing alternatives rather than nerfing the meta is the way to go, unless the offending thing would introduce too much power creep.

And on second thought, indeed sappers are very strong in that they allow new strategies and for nef and visc to be easier fights. They also incentivize more tryhard players to burn them in blood ring to help confirm a kill. Maybe that's not a good thing. I'd leave it up to the devs to decide on if sappers need nerfing, but either way, sappers could use more alternatives at whatever powerlevel they are at.

Keep in mind that crystal charge is a thrown bomb, while sapper is instant aoe around yourself upon button press. This distinction is HUGE for making it as strong as it is.

Sappers are also fairly costly and very annoying to craft as it takes ages and a lot of bag space.

[Ugoboom]

Sappers are also fairly costly and very annoying to craft as it takes ages and a lot of bag space.

Eh the logistical side of crafting is really solved by emptying out your bags, and crafting 100-500 of the thing. Doing things in bulk makes it way less of a hastle in the end, lots of "Craft All"s and it gets done. I did this recently with the MCP batteries, spent an hour and got 200 crafted, mail them to an alt.

But yeah, the non-engi version of things can be even more annoying to craft. The more annoying somethign is to craft, the more likely people are just to buy it from someone else. This opens up moneymaking market opportunities for players, and more goldfarming methods is always a good thing.

[Gantulga]

What do we do about the gnomish battle chicken though? Now that's real meta.

[Ugoboom]

What do we do about the gnomish battle chicken though? Now that's real meta.

that's a hard one. bchicken isn't straight dope like on tbc classic because the buff doesnt stack and getting a proc is unreliable. but when it does proc, its 5% haste for 5 mins.

I could see a LW-craftable boe (NOT bop like tbc) drums, with a 30min cooldown 5 min duration, prepopable, that is reliable but only 3% haste instead of chicken's 5% haste (and these two wont stack ofc, the chicken if it procs will override drums). You would also need to add a tinnitus debuff to these drums so that the meta doesnt become dumb like 2008 tbc where you rotate in drummers into the pumper group