Guild Wars 2

This is a repost from another thread, as I feel the topic got derailed a little.

Here some specific balance suggestions that may make the game more enjoyable without changing builds entirely right before PAX (so yeah, I am not saying these are perfect, but the more in-depth changes could be done and tested thoroughly after the tournament):

- Dhumfire and Incendiary Powder

I believe that burning in general is way too strong in terms of damage, because it does meaningful damage without the ramp up time that conditions should have to deal meaningful pressure. The potential damage, the randomness and unavoidable nature of this source of damage is a critical issue

I suggest that, due to the time constraints we face with PAX, this trait to be changed to only proc from your basic auto attack chain. The reasons for my change would be that burning proccing from an attack that already deals 3 other conditions makes it incredibly hard to cleanse and that you’d now have a reason to counter a specific attack in order to avoid the burning for as long as you can without completely taking away the RNG nature that you apparently want to keep in place.

- Terror

The way condition damage dealers operate is simple (well, the viable ones like engineer and necromancers). You stack on the condis for huge potential damage with as little time commitment as possible and then you spend all your excess time preventing your opponent from cleansing your conditions and evading their meaningful damage. You disrupt their combat flow, while your damage is turned from potential damage into as much actual damage as possible.

Repeat this over and over till they die.

Based on the above, you can see that a CC tool like fear does exactly that. It disrupts your opponent’s flow, so that your condis can tick away. Fear is a very powerful and punishing tool, just like all the knock backs, dazes and stuns of the Engineer.

Since “Terror” makes you double dip on this mechanic, I would like to change Terror without destroying it in the process by making Terror deal damage only when fear is removed. While they are feared, your condis deal sufficient damage already, because you eitehr can’t cleanse them or because you can not pressure your opponent. If they break fear in order to be able to regain control over the condis placed on them and the fight, you are rewarded with some extra damage from fear (this would have to be a single fear tick and could also be expanded to deal damage directly if the target is immune to fear through stability, something that necromancers have complained about)

- S/D Thieves

Everybody likes to complain about S/D Thieves nowadays. I have never seen a weapon set become so hated after it was severely nerfed, but nobody seems to stop and think as to why that is.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, as while I play every profession, I consider thief my main and thus I can not entirely discard bias on my part, but it is incredible how much stronger Thieves feel when the team has a necromancer and an engineer, simply because they can act freely due to these two classes being the bigger threat and the focus of the enemy team’s attention.

The CC and the AoE pressure coupled with the high potential damage of these two classes are the main culprits here in my opinion.

You can take the same S/D thief and put him into a group composition without a necromancer and an engineer and you will see him become substantially weaker.

Regardless, my suggestion is simple. Flanking Strike needed its tracking improved, because it was broken, but this was taken too far, as it is now essentially a gap closer with an evade. Remove the gap closing capability of this attack and make it a channeled evade while you perform the attack.

- Elixir R

It is an insult to my intelligence watching Engineers lose a battle clearly and then turn it around in a matter of seconds, because they managed to stack the conditions on their target and throw their elixir right before going down. All their condis fall off, they stand up, have their heal ready, as they obviously didn’t even try to heal up knowing they have a second and third life, and proceed to win the encounter.

When I watched the TP invitational a particular Engineer rezzed himself over a dozen times in the couple matches and the twitch chat was full of comments like “ridiculous” and “broken” and that it is. I believe that more than one match was decided by this mechanic.

The advantages a rally that you can actively pursue give are just too strong. You may think this is a tactical tool, but as much as this may be true, it’s way too powerful, when your opponents do not have that tactical choice to begin with.

Elixir R practically acts as an invul when the Engineer throws it down (an invul during which the Engineer can act freely), because your opponent can not risk to down you for several seconds, unless he wants to take the huge risk of doing nothing but damaging you kittence you go down, at which point any lingering conditions on him will probably take him down, because he can’t deal with them while damaging you. The Engineer on the other hand is sitting in his elixir and stack as much damage on you as he possibly can, because he knows he’s got a fail safe to fall back on.

My suggestion is to add a stun break to Elixir R and make it a fixed heal over time (I will leave numbers at your discretion, though 1.5-2k heal would probably be the mark I would aim for) when thrown down rather than a 20% rezz per tick like it currently is.

The Elixir R heal is also still buggy and even after the latest patch, where you tried making it heal for the adequate amount regardless of where you stand in it, it’s still sometimes giving double the healing ticks in a single tick, if you sit right in the center of it.

- Poison

As many already may know, poison is not working as intended currently. Some people say it doesn’t work at all, but what’s actually happening is that you never know when it works right now.
I went through around 5 hours of footage (looking for healing amounts under the influence of poison) from the end of june to the 19th of july and what I saw was that poison didn’t work 80% of the time (so yes, it definitely does work at times), but what makes the whole matter worse is that it sometimes reduces your healing after it has already been removed for several seconds (I basically had my healing reduced by exactly 33% without a single condition on myself in more than one instance, just in case anybody was wondering).

this was a nice post Med, and it was impressive that you went and investigated the poison issue.

i am also impressed by how little anet cares to fix things such as this. i don’t want to seem overly critical of anet (i know I often am), but I think it can be objectively said that waiting to release critical bug fixes with the next marketed update is a clear sign of what anet’s priorities are.

i am also impressed with how each patch consistently brings new bugs to previously working mechanics and skills that seemingly have nothing to do with anything. i imagine their codebase is a nightmare of inhuman proportions.

Looks like the other thread is way more interesting than this one.

Regarding incendiary powder, it was already changed to make it so it applies less pressure. Before it was 33% chance on crit to do 2s burning, 3s internal cooldown.
And i don’t see why they should change how on-crit traits work just for two of them, especially when there are other traits that do exactly the same thing (just go read for yourself the list of traits that apply burning…some of them haven’t even got an internal cooldown).
Regarding poison, it should be fixed asap.
Regarding Elixir R, to paraphrase you, “It is an insult to my intelligence watching opponents that let an engineer set himself up in a small area without doing anything instead of using CC skills versus a class that has near to no reliable access to stability”.
So many people whining, and almost no one that counters it properly. It is basically a gamble, one that engineers often win due of the incompetence of the opponents.
You can use CC skills when you see them using it, you can launch them when they are downed, you could – if it worked properly – use poison when they are downed to reduce their healing.
Fixing the bugs – like the one you mentioned in the last paragraph – is fine. Changing how a skill work because the opponents are bad, is not. It is a skill play – you’ve got to time it exactly to outsmart your opponent, else either you risk it depleting before you gets downed or you get downed before using it – counter it with skill and not asking for nerfs.

Manuhell.2759:

Regarding incendiary powder, it was already changed to make it so it applies less pressure. Before it was 33% chance on crit to do 2s burning, 3s internal cooldown.

For me the change was a buff to Incendiary Powder. They may have decreased the potential uptime, but what increased was the potential damage per shot and the amount of time you had to commit to dealing damage to have access to burning.

And i don’t see why they should change how on-crit traits work just for two of them, especially when there are other traits that do exactly the same thing (just go read for yourself the list of traits that apply burning…some of them haven’t even got an internal cooldown).

Exactly my point.

Theoretical uptime on these traits is less important than potential damage per skill activation. I’d rather have a guaranteed 20k damage every minute minute than a 8k hit every 10 seconds. I have a good grasp on balance, as I have been playing games for a long time and have actually worked with designers on class balance for successful games in the past.

If they were to make Dhumfire and Incendiray Powder a 1 second burn on crit with a 1 second ICD, I’d be all for it. Power classes have been phased out of this game, because damage comes with a higher time commitment, as the potential damage per skill activation means you have less excess time to dedicate to survival and preparation.

Regarding Elixir R, to paraphrase you, “It is an insult to my intelligence watching opponents that let an engineer set himself up in a small area without doing anything instead of using CC skills versus a class that has near to no reliable access to stability”.

So many people whining, and almost no one that counters it properly. It is basically a gamble, one that engineers often win due of the incompetence of the opponents.
You can use CC skills when you see them using it, you can launch them when they are downed, you could – if it worked properly – use poison when they are downed to reduce their healing.
Fixing the bugs – like the one you mentioned in the last paragraph – is fine. Changing how a skill work because the opponents are bad, is not. It is a skill play – you’ve got to time it exactly to outsmart your opponent, else either you risk it depleting before you gets downed or you get downed before using it – counter it with skill and not asking for nerfs.

You realize that there are very few classes with access to stability, right? The Engineer is no exception. With the sole difference that they are lucky enough to have huge access to CC, which is used to secure a Elixir R rally against classes with no stability and much less CC.

All you have to do is watch Engineers 1v1 each other at the top of the leaderboards. These guys are supposed to know everything about their class, yet 95% of the time both Engineers manage to get a rally from their Elixir R. Why do they not use their CC? Why can’t they of all classes prevent it most of the time?

Take a look at this friendly 1v1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juMtKq7mh6U

Teldo vs. Super. Super goes down in his Elixir first while Teldo doesn’t go down in his own, because Super’s down state damage doesn’t knock him down. Teldo loses the 1v1, because he now finds himself at a disadvantage by actually not going down (silly right?).

Why didn’t Super use his downstate #2 ability to pull Teldo out of his Elixir R? Luck trumps skills in this case.

Not only are these two considered top notch players (and I think Teldo is just that), but the mechanics of this skill are incredibly counter-intuitive, if the guy going into down state first actually gains an advantage from it.

Med.6150:

For me the change was a buff to Incendiary Powder. They may have decreased the potential uptime, but what increased was the potential damage per shot and the amount of time you had to commit to dealing damage to have access to burning.

Mh, i can’t agree, at least regarding engineers. Due of having multiple skills with multi-hit attacks, the probability of scoring a critical is also higher. Condition builds often use grenades – and grenadier is in that same tree. But even the flamethrower could theoretically be fine, or coated bullets as well (all the trait for the main weapons are in the firearms tree after all – the one that gives both condition damage and precision).
Activating it was never a problem. You were able to activate even 3 times before, thus having a longer uptime. But beside that, the change was made to make it easier to be cleansed – it is a single 4s burning instead of multiple shorter ones.

Med.6150:

Exactly my point.

Theoretical uptime on these traits is less important than potential damage per skill activation. I’d rather have a guaranteed 20k damage every minute minute than a 8k hit every 10 seconds. I have a good grasp on balance, as I have been playing games for a long time and have actually worked with designers on class balance for successful games in the past.

If they were to make Dhumfire and Incendiray Powder a 1 second burn on crit with a 1 second ICD, I’d be all for it. Power classes have been phased out of this game, because damage comes with a higher time commitment, as the potential damage per skill activation means you have less excess time to dedicate to survival and preparation.

It would be too strong for condition damage/precision builds and too bad for any build who didn’t have enough precision – basically a build defining trait on an adept slot. Also, it would make it useless to even try cleansing it in the first case.
I would say it is better how it is now – a single application every 10 seconds, and just that. Well, different point of views.

Med.6150:

You realize that there are very few classes with access to stability, right? The Engineer is no exception. With the sole difference that they are lucky enough to have huge access to CC, which is used to secure a Elixir R rally against classes with no stability and much less CC.

We have quite a lot of possibilities for CC, sure. That doesn’t mean we can take all of them for free. Often we must give up offensive capabilities in order to get those CC skills. And some of them work in strange ways (Big Ol’ Bomb, Throw Mine and Overcharged Shot, for example).

Anyway, if the engineer was able to put the elixir down, is dying via conditions (else he would need to be damaged asap, so he can’t afford to CC you) and uses a CC skill for that exact purpose…i would say he did do a skill shot. Same if the opponent evaded the CC cause he expected it and used a CC skill on the engineer to push him out of the area – the engineer can’t dodge anyway, he would go out of the AoE doing so.

Med.6150:

All you have to do is watch Engineers 1v1 each other at the top of the leaderboards. These guys are supposed to know everything about their class, yet 95% of the time both Engineers manage to get a rally from their Elixir R. Why do they not use their CC? Why can’t they of all classes prevent it most of the time?

Take a look at this friendly 1v1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juMtKq7mh6U

Teldo vs. Super. Super goes down in his Elixir first while Teldo doesn’t go down in his own, because Super’s down state damage doesn’t knock him down. Teldo loses the 1v1, because he now finds himself at a disadvantage by actually not going down (silly right?).

Why didn’t Super use his downstate #2 ability to pull Teldo out of his Elixir R? Luck trumps skills in this case.

Not only are these two considered top notch players (and I think Teldo is just that), but the mechanics of this skill are incredibly counter-intuitive, if the guy going into down state first actually gains an advantage from it.

As i said above, it is a skill shot – putting it too soon comes with the risk of depleting it before you get downed. Both decided to go with the same strategy, but Super did it right.
And, well, the engineer downed state damage is terrible, that is kinda well known. Regarding why Super didn’t pull him, we should ask him about that – it could have been a deliberate choice, especially if he counted on non-dealing enough damage to Teldo.

Imho, a good part of this skill’s success is due to the condition meta. You can time your death better with lasting effects than having to rely on your opponent direct damage to get downed. In the second case it would also be easier to counter the elixir R’s mechanic – cause if the engi needs direct damage to get downed, then he’s in a stalemate if you go toward him to push him out (like in the example above).

And let’s end this wall of text with a note regarding the counter-intuitiveness of elixir R: we are engineers, making simple things complicated is part of our work.

P.S.: i had to write two posts in the end, it was really too long. XD

1. I don’t know about na but in eu pretty much every engi in the top teams runs flamethrower + bombs + self rezz (maybe rocket boots) but there are no grenades/HGH engis anymore so imo the trait change for the burning proc was a buff for sure (even with grenades but so even more).

2. A 6second burning (every engi/necro has at least 50% burning duration) which is not evadable is just too strong. The main damage from cond classes is burning and in GW2 I thought you are skilled if you can evade the most hurting abilities but with this burning proc dealing damage as an engi or necro becomes just skill-less.

3. Now we come to the rezz elixir. If there would be skill which deals 30k damage but has an easy to read animation, would you call it op? With your argumentation it would not be, because you can just “counter” it in form of an evade. But imo such a skill would be over powered because it can’t be that one skill is so game deciding if not countered every kitten time.
And how exactly are you going to counter the rezz? With cc? But the engi can evade the cc while he is still alive and when it comes to cc-ing corpses… there are maybe 4-5 skills in the entire game which could do this, all have a huge CD etc.
When you watch the 1on1 between Super and Teldo it’s just so stupid that the engi who goes down first gets such an advantage. Teldo said himself that the one thing that makes engi op is the rezz elixir. Imo there are a couple more things which make engi op but having 2 – 3 lives is on the very top of that list.