Guild Wars 2

Here’s are 3 requests I feel are free of the subjective judgment of whether or not a feature is OP or UP, and address my concerns with the class.

Stuff I think are needed for the sake of consistency and acceptable performance before power-issues can even be discussed.

(Mostly to do with Flamethrower)

Make turrets show their health by default to the Engineer who built them

This would make detonating more efficient, and make turrets easier to see by default in badly lit areas.

I love using turrets, especially the Detonate part, but it’s really hard to use it optimally when I have to mouse-over the unit to know when it’s low health. :/

Make Flame Blast (skill-2 on the Flamethrower) AoE targeted

Currently, it is a single-target volley type skill, which makes absolutely no sense to me when the projectile-angle doesn’t adjust for .

The blast-radius is 240, while the distance is explodes at is 600. That means the explosion deals damage to units at 360 to 840 distance. Most mobs and players will be melee or high-range, going below 300 or greater then 900 range.

This makes the blast-damage very difficult to utilize correctly, often demanding the use of Air Blast or only using it during initiation. In general, I find myself not using it at all to save on cast-time. This is a substantial amount of DPS that’s being wasted.

My suggestion would allow for more control, which would also resource the issue of firing the skill whenever you’re fighting uphill and the napalm ball is “obstructed” because it was fired directly forward instead of at your target…

Increase the cone size of Flame Jet – Particularly the height

I initially thought this was graphical lag (I used a reeeally old laptop), but after seeing a thread with complaints and further testing on my friend’s computer, I realized this was an in-game problem.

There are cases where it is very easy to miss your target even when the flames are right on top of them.
Mechanically, it seems like this is due to the slightest differences in positions on a hill, or smallest steps in different directions when a target is moving.

This can be solved by turning off autotargeting, but that means single-target skills like Surprise Shot can’t be used. :/

I would say that all classes with any secondary assistance be it turrets, necro minions, elementals, or the ranger sprite things, all have a health type bar. This bar could even be part of the skill button or positioned above it.

Example, You summon a rifle turret, it’s in slot 7. Slot F2 now shows the explosion icon and a blue bar on the bottom that shows life. It turns red when under 10%.

Flesh Golems and the like should have it too. Even if you can’t explode them, it’s nice to know what’s happening. Look at your bar, know it’s almost dead, and that you have to accommodate for that.

Any summoned creature or assistance should have this. Be them spirits, golems, animals, or inanimate objects, if it has a shelf life, we deserve to know it without looking around mousing over everything.

If your in a large scale event, it’s almost impossible to find your own summoned assistance sometimes.

It would also be good for things like the Supply Kit Elite skill. We obviously can’t detonate it, but if it had a bar that gave us an idea of the time we have left till it disappears, that would be nice. Then I know I need to grab the remaining health packs NOW.

I like all the ideas I’m reading so far. I originally wanted some sort of a party interface display for my turrets so I could tell when to detonate or not. However, I like Zax’s idea even more. Displaying above their respective action bar slots would be a much cleaner/less clunky than my way to implement it.

FT needs assistance all around. The fixes you’ve provided, while good – are just a drop in the bucket compared to how much work the tree needs (same goes for most of the weapon kits).

@zaxziakohl.5243:
Your is nice, except for the fact it would require adjusting the UI to be implemented.

From my experience with the LoL forums (where their design team posts regularly), changing the UI is supposedly a major hassle in terms of resource allocation. Need programmers, engineers, and artists all coordination to mess with the UI. It’s a pain in their butt.

While making the HP bars appear by default would be a matter of adding a line of code somewhere.

Also,

I feel that HP bars on the turrets themselves will allow for better skill differentiation between those who do use Detonate, and those who don’t.

If they were just on the UI, people would forget about watching their turrets and push detonate every time.
If it’s on the turret, picking up the turret for the reduced cooldown will still remain viable because they have to maintain a line-of-sight.

@LoreChief.8391:

My ideas being a “drop in the bucket” is exactly what I was going for.

I’m just looking to fix the simplest playability issues with these ideas. I’m not going to balance-changes. That stuff is entirely controversial, while the things I’m trying to direct attention towards are basic stuff that should be taken care of BEFORE we start discussing the other things.

It’s like the difference between:

“I want triple-inspected airbags in my car.”
vs
“I want a car that reliably turns in the direction I turn my wheel.”

Let’s get the simple stuff taken care of first.