Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

thats the thing, Hambow doesn’t just have one single thing that makes it good.
it has the huge passive health regen.
it has high sustained damage.
it has massive amounts of CC.
and most hambow clones take stances for stability and godmode.
and lyssa runes combined with a shortish cooldown.
but don’t worry, i’m sure after 6 months, the eight percent reduction to healing signet will fix all of that!

for decap engi the single and obvious strength is their sheer amount of knockbacks.
in a game with only a single pvp mode (being point capture) the ability to continuously knock 2-3 people from a point is incredibly powerful.

though i can’t see how you could remove the knockbacks without effecting PVE,
unless you split the skills for pve and pvp

They always say they don’t want to do whack-a-mole balancing. Instead they ‘shave’. Sorry, but shaving once in every few months isn’t pretty.

You changed the company to be able to push biweekly updates. You can restructure it so we can have balance ‘shaving’ every month. We’re treated as testers anyway, so I don’t see why you can’t throw us some balance changes every month.

MarkPhilips.5169:

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

Basically the problem with decap engi are two:

1) combos Flamethrower (Air Blast) + Rifle (Net Shot or Overcharged Shot)
2) AR

Starting with 2)

We wrote about 10000 times in this forum how AR is a bad designed trait. In general complete immunity without any CD or length are the evil for this game and not need to exist.

To fix 1) because Air Blast / Overcharged Shot and Net Turret are all instant spell with LOW CD, so it’s almost impossibile to predict when an engi use them (yeah spam dodge ftw! ). You need to balance this combo avoiding to nerf other builds like condi builds and power build (adding a little cast time with a clear animation).

Another way to solve this problem is to block flamthrower and rifle at the sime time: you can equip rifle or flamthrower but not both of them at the same time. For sure this solve decap engi problem. Power build don’t use FT and Rifle at the same time, same condi builds. A little drastic but it works for sure.

Or another old suggestion: make the node bigger

Don’t bother. They aren’t going to nerf it as they all main engi. Same with warrior. Why do you think engi gets cool and in depth GM traits and guardiand gets “+300 vitality”.

Regardless. They don’t listen to us at all with respect to balance changes. They think they know best. So if you want to have fun in this game you have to accept it will be balanced by average (at best) players. That is never going to end well. The game will continue to get worse.

There is nothing wrong with the devs not being amazing players. In fact it would be worrying if they were. What is concerning is their lack of understanding of the game and lack of realisation that they should listen to players who play at a higher level. Maybe if they solo queued in the top 50 eu for months they would realise what decap engi has done to the game. That won’t happen so we are left with a game where unskilled specs will be all that is pushed. Because those are what help unskilled players to compete. Which maybe are popular with pve players that the devs want to seem to make this game for.

To clarify this is not to criticise the devs too much. But I just think they should be way quicker addressing the specs which ruin the game. And I think they should have more humility to listen to what we are saying is OP/lame/not fun. I also don’t really understand why they dont understand their game. Because it seems like karl, roy and jon sharp and all the others do actually know way more about the game than we give them credit for. They are smart guys doing a lot of good stuff. But that never seems to filter through to nerfing lame/unfun specs. Which displays a lack of understanding which otherwise doesn’t make sense.

Problems with Decap Engi:
1. 2 knockbacks with 15 (12 traited) sec cd with no cast time don’t allow for counterplay , its mere stability rotation, or prediction to dodge it, impossible to dodge on purpose.
2. Tankiness against both physical and condition damage through armor/heal stacking and automated response.

Possible solution (I honestly think one of those would be enough, preferably the second one, nerfing automated response , its simple, doesnt require much work and was requested anyway):
1. Add casttime to flamethrower and rifle knockback, stuns/knockbacks should be avoidable imo and not instant. 1/2 sec is enough, you might need to change the animations accordingly.
2. Remove the ability of one of those. Easiest and best way would be to nerf automated response (which was requested for other reasons anyway), so that necros and spirit rangers can counter decap engi.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

Here a few things i noticed lately.

• Problem builds number 1 : hambow warrior / decap engy / PW thief / “old” necro fear condition builds /….

All these builds had in common that they had to many ways to apply a stun/knockback/launch/ fear / ……
Some had it tru to short cooldowns(spammable skills) or tru to many skills that had access to hard CC.

• Problem builds number 2 : spirit ranger / phant mesmer / minion necro /….

Dont think i have to say what all these builds had in common .

tho i havent really got a problem with AI builds myself , might be good to max out pets to max of 3 ( same as the number of illusions), so max 3 minions or max 3 spirits.
( more then 3 makes it to chaotic of a fight )

• Problem builds number 3 : anything else thats not included in 1&2 and has passive immunities/ and to many passive heals

Traits that make you immune to something should have a duration attached to it like invulnerability. ( as example : once it triggers => 8 sec immune with cooldown of 30 secs or so )
That way the immune traits will be easier to out play.

Thats my guess at whats making the gameplay experience in spvp kinda un-fun
Hope my view of things will have brought you some ideas on how to better the balance.

cheerz Tripp

Lordrosicky.5813:

There is nothing wrong with the devs not being amazing players. In fact it would be worrying if they were. What is concerning is their lack of understanding of the game and lack of realisation that they should listen to players who play at a higher level. Maybe if they solo queued in the top 50 eu for months they would realise what decap engi has done to the game. That won’t happen so we are left with a game where unskilled specs will be all that is pushed. Because those are what help unskilled players to compete. Which maybe are popular with pve players that the devs want to seem to make this game for.

To clarify this is not to criticise the devs too much. But I just think they should be way quicker addressing the specs which ruin the game. And I think they should have more humility to listen to what we are saying is OP/lame/not fun. I also don’t really understand why they dont understand their game. Because it seems like karl, roy and jon sharp and all the others do actually know way more about the game than we give them credit for. They are smart guys doing a lot of good stuff. But that never seems to filter through to nerfing lame/unfun specs. Which displays a lack of understanding which otherwise doesn’t make sense.

Amen,

I’ve played a number of MMOs and I am used to developers displaying an in-depth understanding of the game and mechanics when they talk. When Ghostcrawler had something to say about WoW mechanics, regardless of whether your agreed or not, you listed.

When Dustin Browder had something to say about Starcraft 2 balance, you listened.

When Marc Jacobs talked about balance in DAoC, you listened.

Because more often than not what these people had to say proved insightful and, given a birds-eye view of the product, made perfect sense. You might not have agreed with every point they made or with every fix they employed but it showed they understood the game-dynamics.

Guild Wars 2 is the first MMO I have played where I literally face-palm whenever the Devs have something to say about balance. Sometimes I feel like they are playing a completely different game for their experiences to be so vastly different from mine.

I play all aspects of the game on a regular basis and I for the life of me cannot fathom how the developers reach the conclusions they reach. Almost all class and balance changes over the past year strike me as completely arbitrary.

And then stuff that NEEDS to be changed, stuff that literally ruins the game (decap Engis), is completely ignored for months on end.

Depending on how the feature patch plays out, this will be the first MMO I give up on solely because of the game-play developers themselves and not for content or technical reasons.

so void is basically listing all classes except for guards as problems?

come on guys, maybe it’s not as bad as you guys present it.
For example, if decap engineering is so powerful, why isn’t everybody playing it?

If Pisolwhip is so overpowered, how comes Illusion Mesmers don’t need much skill to get me into big trouble, just because of their illusions and their constant porting and stealthing around.

In my view, sPvP is balanced quite nice at the moment.
In fact it is a bit similar to GW1, a specific build is good against certain classes and sucks against others.

What you guys want, is one build which can kill every other class, no matter how they are speced. That just can’t work.

By the way, this is the first time, I don’t attack the devs lol.

And by the way, if Anet nerfs Pistolwhip, thieves can’t keep any point anymore, because then we need to play D/P and have to stealth all the time.

Only the evades of Pistolwhip can keep us alive.
So I suggest, if you nerf pistolwhip, please nerf Stealth as well and give thieves a 50% chance to block and the ability to dodge 5 times in a row, because otherwise we are just rallybots for the enemy.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

this is very disingenuous and part of the reason i have such issue with the devs direction, pace and overall knowledge/acknowledgement of the current issues being faced in the game. it is 3 weeks out from the feature patch and you are asking to crowd source issues NOW?!!! you said you guys read the forums daily and know what issues players have with tPvP and yet you are asking these questions now? you guys have also said that you don’t like to hot-fix so nothing we say now would even make the feature patch and we would have to wait for the next major patch for any meaningful changes to be made. /sigh

you say you cannot point to a specific “strength” to the hambow build (and as such decap-engies have the same issue). what you do not see is that it is because the issue is systemic, isn’t that obvious? when you give a profession near-perma stability, 8 seconds of condi-immunity (without a penalty), high physical damage, condi pressure, area denial, short cd aoe CC, a passive heal that has such a limited disadvantage it might as well not even be factored in, traits that actually make the warrior really tanky and allow for condi removal on burst skill use, reduction in received cc duration, health regen based on adrenaline level, high base health and armor it is VERY easy to see why hambow is so strong.

immunities without sacrifice are part of what is killing the fun in this game and you devs just keep adding them. they wreak of lazy design and it’s so disheartening to see devs talk about “we want more counterplay” yet add immunities that have no consequence (Diamond Skin, AR, Berserker Stance). immunities done right are Renewed Focus and Shield Block as when you use them you cannot support, control or damage so you are making a sacrifice for the benefit of the immunity.

another issue, that persists from beta is the effects spam, with so many effects going off and with the prevalence of Asura players it is hard to see tells to know when to avoid skills, but that has been there since beta so i highly doubt this will be fixed any time soon.

Yay… Remove Automated Response and decap engis gonna be gone in a week.

HAHAHAAHAHAH SIMS is game for you scrubs!

style.6173:

I disagree with anyone who says AR is the problem. That will not fix the decap engi (decap engis are hard to fights for anyone, not just condi spec attackers).

For me, the issue is all of their heals. Basically an engineer can use the cleansing burst (which gives a water field), and then immediately use 2 or 3 blast finishers. The heals are too much on too short of a cooldown.

So, my “easy” fix. Remove the water field on cleansing breeze and instead give it a dark field (area blindness) or ice field (frost armor).

The alternate would be to double the cooldown on the healing turret.

Either option works.

You confirmed in plenty other threads that you have literally no clue about engineers.

Do you even know the cooldown of the blastfinishers? You have 30sec on your shield 4, 27 1/4 sec on your big ol bomb (which is actually a pretty² bad blast finisher in combat), 20 sec on your turret-explode (you should pick it up in most situations anyways) and 180sec on your supply crate.

If you nerf the general healing of engineers you’ll pretty much delete them from this game.

Engineer isn’t rly viable atm anyway and there is no need to hurt any engineer build out there just because you obv can’t handle them.

Are you even playing engineer yourself? I bet you’re a thief. If not it’s even more funny, because every profession besides a thief should be able to stomp a engineer (some of them with ease).

Also remember this topic is about decap engineers, not engineers in general (we actually need a buff or rather a nerf of multiple meta setups). If i’m running a usual engineer build i don’t have any problems with decap ones besides AR.

The one and only problem with decap engineers is their invincibility in a 1vs1 in combination with their knockbacks (if you nerf the durability the cc isn’t going to be that much of a problem because you’re just going to kill them). The enemy team is forced to send at least 2ppl to their close-point to actually defend it, which leads to a disadvantage in any other fight going on at this time.

So basically you have to nerf the durability of decap engineers. You could nerf all kind of stuff like vigor, regen, cc etc and hurt other (not broken) engineer builds as well, or you could go and nerf Atomated Response. In this case engineers lack condition-removal and can be stomped by any condition profession in 1vs1.

Atomated Response is for sure the key for nerfing decap engineers and passive gameplay in general. If you’re going to nerf multiple things it’ll just hurt engineers in general (we are already in a tough spot due to the current meta).

Mouby.7096:

style.6173:

I disagree with anyone who says AR is the problem. That will not fix the decap engi (decap engis are hard to fights for anyone, not just condi spec attackers).

For me, the issue is all of their heals. Basically an engineer can use the cleansing burst (which gives a water field), and then immediately use 2 or 3 blast finishers. The heals are too much on too short of a cooldown.

So, my “easy” fix. Remove the water field on cleansing breeze and instead give it a dark field (area blindness) or ice field (frost armor).

The alternate would be to double the cooldown on the healing turret.

Either option works.

You confirmed in plenty other threads that you have literally no clue about engineers.

Do you even know the cooldown of the blastfinishers? You have 30sec on your shield 4, 27 1/4 sec on your big ol bomb (which is actually a pretty² bad blast finisher in combat), 20 sec on your turret-explode (you should pick it up in most situations anyways) and 180sec on your supply crate.

If you nerf the general healing of engineers you’ll pretty much delete them from this game.

Engineer isn’t rly viable atm anyway and there is no need to hurt any engineer build out there just because you obv can’t handle them.

Are you even playing engineer yourself? I bet you’re a thief. If not it’s even more funny, because every profession besides a thief should be able to stomp a engineer (some of them with ease).

Also remember this topic is about decap engineers, not engineers in general (we actually need a buff or rather a nerf of multiple meta setups). If i’m running a usual engineer build i don’t have any problems with decap ones besides AR.

The one and only problem with decap engineers is their invincibility in a 1vs1 in combination with their knockbacks (if you nerf the durability the cc isn’t going to be that much of a problem because you’re just going to kill them). The enemy team is forced to send at least 2ppl to their close-point to actually defend it, which leads to a disadvantage in any other fight going on at this time.

So basically you have to nerf the durability of decap engineers. You could nerf all kind of stuff like vigor, regen, cc etc and hurt other (not broken) engineer builds as well, or you could go and nerf Atomated Response. In this case engineers lack condition-removal and can be stomped by any condition profession in 1vs1.

Atomated Response is for sure the key for nerfing decap engineers and passive gameplay in general. If you’re going to nerf multiple things it’ll just hurt engineers in general (we are already in a tough spot due to the current meta).

Yeh all they need to do is nerf ar.

It is funny that AR is MOST effective vs other engineers. Kind of ironic.

It won’t happen though so who cares.

Josh Davis.6015:

…where would we start?..

Diminishing Returns on every control effect.
Knockback/pull could lose some of range every cast up to complete immunity.
Same goes with stuns, slows, snares. Been saying this for over year now.. DR is what is needed.

Surferboy.1649:

so void is basically listing all classes except for guards as problems?

come on guys, maybe it’s not as bad as you guys present it.
For example, if decap engineering is so powerful, why isn’t everybody playing it?

If Pisolwhip is so overpowered, how comes Illusion Mesmers don’t need much skill to get me into big trouble, just because of their illusions and their constant porting and stealthing around.

In my view, sPvP is balanced quite nice at the moment.
In fact it is a bit similar to GW1, a specific build is good against certain classes and sucks against others.

What you guys want, is one build which can kill every other class, no matter how they are speced. That just can’t work.

By the way, this is the first time, I don’t attack the devs lol.

And by the way, if Anet nerfs Pistolwhip, thieves can’t keep any point anymore, because then we need to play D/P and have to stealth all the time.

Only the evades of Pistolwhip can keep us alive.
So I suggest, if you nerf pistolwhip, please nerf Stealth as well and give thieves a 50% chance to block and the ability to dodge 5 times in a row, because otherwise we are just rallybots for the enemy.

I only listed the things that most "raged against builds " have in common .
and by " raged against builds " i mean the builds that people complain about on the forums.

Half of the time, i myself dont consider the "OP builds " to be that troublesome.

Tho, I noticed that to much access to Hard CC is 1 of the major complains of “no-fun” gameplay on the forums at this time. ( not considering more gamemodes and all , but pure balance issues )

cheerz

Engis are a strong area denial/control class. That’s what they’re designed as. And that control over your enemies’ positions is key to capping/decapping a point is logical.
A Guardian bunker has good support. Hambow war bruiser can actually turn out to be pretty dangerous. Engi bunker, well, engi bunker has less support and is less effective in a team fight, it’s “additional ability” is position control.
Imo a bunker is meant to survive (at least for quite some time) against a single player. That’s just fair as he’s speccing to last long. The whole “bunker-problem” in sPvP is that it’s not about who wins a fight on a point (=who kills his foe) but about who stands there for a longer time. Not being able to kill someone isn’t a proper drawback like anywhere else.
With decap engi there’s a bunker who “out-CCs” anyone else while staying alive. The result: incredible effective in a certain situation but quite useless in all others. With conquest there’s a game mode that is too much about too little points (imo), making this certain situation present and deciding.

So the best solution imo would be to fix/rethink conquest mode mechanics. Point sizes(!), decap/cap mechanisms and speed, point gain distribution between capping and holding points and killing enemies.

Concerning direct nerfs (which are more likely to happen because lesser work), I’d personally prefer the so often mentionend AR nerf/rework. Number 2 being lowering KB distances (maybe sPvP only?), that would leave KBs as tools to intercept skills/rotations and to setup damage, while lowering their viability as position control tools (which is the problematic part in sPvP). From my perspective, these changes should be able to bring down decap enough while not hurting other builds too much. (see mouby’s post).

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

You had 4+ months to do this.

You had 4+ months to fix decap engi, pw thieves and hambow war.

You had houndreds of posts and threads and people asking it.

In 4+ months you didn’t anything except 40 new gm trait that are 75% garbage and 25% ridicolous op.

And now, after 4+ months you done nothing, you are asking people to tell you AGAIN same stuff they told you for months.

I’m a bit suprised some ppl still keep their position at this stage…

I don’t want to be polemic and i’d really like to believe you, but after you didnt listen us for 4 months… how can we expect you to listen us now?

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start?

Start with what counters them.

I don’t play at the highest level, however, this necro terror build I’ve had good luck with killing decap engi’s. The trick I’ve found is that you need to time your condi bomb and fears when the engi is around ~35% health before AR activates and then finish them with life transfer.

In my opinion everything stems from when dhuumfire and torment were added.

Making the points bigger is the absolute perfect solution. It affects nothing else that i can think off, i does not nerf engis in any way, and it will actually improve the game.

Flumek.9043:

Josh Davis.6015:

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

The best “economical” solution i heard was:

• Make a small fence at each point, preventing pushback

Other strong fixes:

• removal of Immunity Its the only thing keeping it alive for the too long periods time, no 1v1 and too long 1v2 survival, complete no fun counter to even the almighty condimeta, which forces everyone to adjust builds, but not this one. ok enough about AR, your reading same stuff 100x over. Just keep in mind that you can fix 1 trait and dont have to redesign anything else

Other “bandage” fixes

• knockDOWN instead of push on flame, maybe rifle too
• smaller distance knockback
• cast time to rifle & flamethrower = 1s like guardian hammer#4 banish , no more instant smallcat
• 20s CD to rifle and/or flame , engie got lots of low CDs

Good suggestions, especially KD instead of push.

And Of course, rework AR.

MithranArkanere.8957:

How do you prevent some cases without affecting others?

You address CC themselves. A single creature continuously CCed should progressively become resistant to CCs the more it takes within a short time, until it gets a free stun break and becomes immune to CCs for a short time.

Ding. Continuous CC spam no longer works, and CCs go back to being what they should: Strategic tools to turn the pace of the game.

+1 to this.

The frustration only sets in for me when I can’t fight back for an extended period of time.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap?

Add diminishing returns to complete knockbacks in PvP? Knockdown is fine, but the strenght of decap engy is that they can blast you back really far repeatedly. If each subsequent knockback within say 5 seconds pushed one less far, this would probably solve decap engy altogether.

Pistol whip is a pain, I don’t know how to fix that, more initiative cost?

OK end /thread

Elephantitas here easily the best (if you can call decap skilled) decap engi on NA.

Since devs want more on how broken it is I can easily say I’ve held 1st and 4th place on solo q on 2 accounts at same time for 2 weeks with decap engi. Its not hard.
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AR is the main issue. ANY engi can decap a point with cc. Any warrior, ele (staff), and multiple other builds can decap as well. The problem with decap engi is there is only 1 counter to it out of 8 professions.

In 150+ hours of decap engi except against thieves I have lost 5 1v1’s. Out of… thousands? They were mostly attributed to my mistakes but that ratio is beyond stupid.
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AR is only reason build is viable. ANY condi warrior necro or engi would destroy them, 1v1. Engi may still get decap but would still die very very quickly. Hell even hambow warriors would do alot better.

Another point is I cannot tell you how many 1v3’s I’ve had that lasted 6+ minutes. I had a 1v4 for 7 minutes (game ended at 500-0).
That was obviously a dumb team but against bunkers, condi builds decap engi can infinity 1vx and win.
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There is 4 points to decap engi.
1: AR- without it would be completely un-viable.
2: med kit- scales perfectly with AR I can sustain at low hp easily.
3: immob+ cc combo. Not required but easily the most effective part.
4:boon removal- without which 4-5 stab warriors or lich/plague/elix x/rampage/tornado is a counter.

DO NOT REMOVE boon removal. It makes throw mine a useful skill. You could tone it down but won’t remove decap engis. They can still get decap, it will just take longer.
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Larger capture points won’t do anything. I have had little trouble decapping even foefire mid point. Took alot longer against stability guards/warriors. Anything else was still 5-10s decap.
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No engis want AR. No ele wants diamon skin. Half the game hates zerker stance.

Change the immunities to something else. This isn’t the thread for that but it’ll remove the decap build. It literally has 1 condi (or 2 if heal turret) every 15s. Thats the worst in game currently for any meta build. They have a weakness that with AR is completely ignorable but there is 0 counter play to it.
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Also…. This has been brought up in multiple threads including the original decap thread (which had more views/replies than any thread the past 2 months) Idk how you HAVEN’T seen the feedback for it.

Srsly. no AR = no decap engi. Its that simple.
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Btw inb4 if we change AR.

Yes if you make AR a large condi removal it may allow them to stay alive, but not forever. But Ask any ranger, guardian, similar in condi removal. You cannot cannot cannot live forever with 3 condis removed on 10s. Only warriors can and thats only from cleansing ire.
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edit:
Nerfing rifle or FT cc… won’t change anything. Throw mine/turrets/Ft/TK/BK/rifle/shield offhand/elixir x/battering ram/slick shoes. ANY OF THESE can be used for decap engi. you want to tone down ENTIRE CLASS?

warrior
How about nerf fear me, (unblockable AOE 3s fear with 0 animation)
stomp (aoe knockback combined with pin down or bolas)
rampage.

ele
staff (air) 3 then 5? ez decap.
staff 5 is immob is I remember correct.
tornado.

necro:
Dont get me started on the stupid fear chain. EZ decap.

ranger:
shortbow no animation knockback arrow. Spider immob? possible decap.

etc.

Any class can decap. The issue is the unable to die 1v1. This guarantees them the technical win in 1v1 scenario.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

For decap engie, it’s easy:

1. access to too many knockbacks
2. Automated Response is too strong

This results in it being trivial to decap a point and low-hp engie’s being impossible to stop.

You need to be able to counterplay a decap engie, without having to need 100% uptime on stability and lots of burst damage and mobility. This means you need to give players a chance to execute counterplay.

You want a fix for decap? Do 3 things:

1. Change a couple of the knockbacks to knockdowns so they can’t keep punting players off the point.
2. Change Automated response to not be 100% immunity to all conditions all the time. You have a few options: give AR a time limit (i.e. lasts for 10 seconds, 25 second cooldown), change it from 100% to 75%, restrict it to a subset of conditions (e.g. immune to burning, cripple, stun and bleeds and chill). Any of those options would work. This will give opponents an opportunity to counter the decap engie
3. Increase the cast time of healing turret by 0.25 seconds (from 0.5 to 0.75 second cast time). Combined with #2, this will give players a chance to counter an engie’s heal.

EDIT: The OP is right. Decap is killing your game faster than you understand.

Nerfing rifle or FT cc… won’t change anything. Throw mine/turrets/Ft/TK/BK/rifle/shield offhand/elixir x/battering ram/slick shoes. ANY OF THESE can be used for decap engi. you want to tone down ENTIRE CLASS?
All instant CC skills should be nerfed to have cast times.

warrior
How about nerf fear me, (unblockable AOE 3s fear with 0 animation)
stomp (aoe knockback combined with pin down or bolas)
rampage.
Fear Me should be nerfed but since its a shout I don’t know how they could balance it. Possibly make it a 200 range leash like Guardians Binding Blade. Stomp has an obvious animation so it can be dodged. Rampage is a long cooldown and nothing is instant with only two low range knockbacks.

ele
staff (air) 3 then 5? ez decap.
staff 5 is immob is I remember correct.
tornado.
Staff is countered by stability and it still has a 1/4 cast time if anything. Tornado is countered by stability easily too.

necro:
Dont get me started on the stupid fear chain. EZ decap.
Fear needs a nerf naturally

ranger:
shortbow no animation knockback arrow. Spider immob? possible decap.
Longbow knockback has a 1/2 second cast time and doesn’t leave you on the floor for 3 seconds afterwards.

JinDaVikk.7291:

warrior
How about nerf fear me, (unblockable AOE 3s fear with 0 animation)
stomp (aoe knockback combined with pin down or bolas)
rampage.

ele
staff (air) 3 then 5? ez decap.
staff 5 is immob is I remember correct.
tornado.

necro:
Dont get me started on the stupid fear chain. EZ decap.

ranger:
shortbow no animation knockback arrow. Spider immob? possible decap.

Are you kidding? All whose abilities have MUCH longer cooldowns than engi lolspam with rifle+FT alone, and alot of them have cast times and visible animation.

War – Fear 1 min, stomp 45 sec, rampage 150s
Ele – gust 30s+ static field 40s
Necro – doom 20s, staff 40s, wall 45 sec.
Ranger – shortbow lolwat? Ranger knockback is longbow 4, 15s cd (YAY WE HAVE ONE CLASS WITH SAME CD AS ENGI! 0.5s cast time, though) and GS block. Also 2s fear from wolf on 45 sec cd.

If decap build need to be balanced, instant CC have to go or get much longer CD.

Black Teagan.9215:

At first, you should stop adding these “100% immunity” Skills/Traits!
Its not good for the game, if only one trait or skill, can neutralize a whole build or in the case of Warriors and Engineers, to survive alone against a group of 5 or more players and this for several minutes.

GW1 have a cap at 75% and this is good, because it’s dont allow classes to dominate others, but keep helpful.

I hope you will do the same in GW2 and add a cap at 75%, for a better, more balanced game and fairer game.

“Warriors and Engineers, to survive alone against a group of 5 or more players and this for several minutes.”
Why are you including Warriors in there? LOL What a joke.

So massive whomping cc builds are pretty nasty to play against, I haven’t played a match in forever without this gank… So I’m just going to throw out a few suggestions for possible solutions.

Hambow penalties:
-Missing or having cc skills blocked causes weakness and/or vulnerabilty… also removes the active stance (similar to wild blow in gw1)
- the adrenaline skill area of effect should be smaller… then you might actually need to aim with some finesse in order to be effective.

Decap engis:
- In a similar fashion to the penalty for missing attacks for warrior, messing up should have a penalty for engis as well.
-missing with flame thrower blow back should cause knockback on the caster and set the kit on a cooldown… 15 seconds or so (just a rough guesstimate)
- if the opponent has stability when using the rifle or shield knockbacks, weakness and/or vulnerability should be inflicted on the caster as well as self knockdown (perhaps excluding the shield for the knockdown since it makes sense for a misfiring rifle/flamethrower to have that effect, while a shield not so much).

Pisol whip:
-i do confess this hasn’t been so much of a problem in my own experience since thieves are pretty squishy, and you will find about 15 hambows to each pistol whipper in a day of pvp.
-having said this i do think that landing the stun from pistol whip should inflict a cooldown of some sort on the ability, spamming one ability over and over should not win you a fight.

And i’m done. I know some of these suggestions would be hard to implement but this kind of cc heavy build is smothering what fun there once was in pvp.

Engineer´s healing and healing coefficient was buffed in almost every big balance patch I can think of, whereas its power builds and burst abilities were repeatedly severely damaged.
By the design of our capture-the-point-pvp it was a bad idea to give a knockback-heavy profession that was repeatedly mentioned to be (intentionally) good at area denial more survivbility.
The gamemode we have needs (in my opinion) a meta with as less as possible bunker classes so fights keep moving from point to point and thereby tend to be more interesting.

Anet should less try to make more bunker builds happen in this gamemode and instead keep to their philosophy in the beginning.

Damage – Support – CC

This said I think that Engineers AR defnitely needs a change. I guess we can all agree to that. But I also think it´s necessary to cut the profession´s passive heal mainly by undoing the coefficient buffs on Bombheal, backpack regenerator and partially super elixir. With these nerfs its powerbuilds need to be brought up again. Also engineer is a good, if not even the best, candidate for a power/condi damage hybride profession. There are many possibilities to go for at the moment, really.

Instead of a bunkerish class that waits for people to come to their point that is highly prepared with knockbacks, turrets, heals and mines…
why not try to make a high damage roaming class out of the engineer that can support its allies with boons and needs its CC to setup bursts and to defend itself (and cant waste the precious cc cooldowns only to knock someone randomly off point).

Though the engineer is in a good place to achieve that position sometime… well, I guess I can stop dreaming now, it won´t happen :P

tldr; Basically, to lower the decap engis effectiveness, without changing the whole class back to the original game philosophy and without hurting other builds too much… is to remove AR and partially cut its passive healing.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

The super low hanging fruit, as stated many times, is Automated Response. This is pretty much the one and only low hanging fruit that won’t affect existing builds unrelated to decap. You can’t mess with Engineer’s defensive options without dropping it to B Tier in conquest. You certainly can’t nerf Flamethrower or Rifle knockbacks, because the weapons channel the entire weapon budget into those knockbacks, and are terrible otherwise.

As you say, Automated Response, is grossly overpowered in Situations where communication and rotations are not good. But it is also grossly overpowered in other situations, too.

• The Engineer artificially manipulates his HP to stay condition immune indefinitely, as opposed to using Automated Response as a short respite from getting continually barraged by conditions. I feel this is a disgusting, dishonourable strategy, and is not the original vision of the trait’s usage.

So, my suggestion #1:

• Automated Response: Drink an Elixir C when struck below the health threshold. Threshold: 50%, Recharge: 40s. (Same as Elixir C)

Suggestion #2:

• Automated Response: Activated Automated Response when struck below the health threshold. Threshold: 50%, Duration: 5s, Recharge, 60s.

Where is this desire for feedback when it comes to pve fixes for engineer? Lack of condition removal, condition cap, lack of stability, kits not scaling with ascended. Sigil changes will give all classes bar engineer and ele access to 4 on swap weapon sigils.

AR is the only thing that needs to be nerfed. Anything else is just a knee jerk response in frustration to the decap engi. I mean, are non decap engineers problematic in any meta? No, it’s just decap. AR with it’s 25% health limitation obviously scales far better for decap engis that have higher health/toughness than glassier builds. Nerfing AR is the smartest option to go to nerfing decap without hurting the profession in general.

Surferboy.1649:

If Pisolwhip is so overpowered, how comes Illusion Mesmers don’t need much skill to get me into big trouble,

You know, you might dislike the answer to that particular question.
If, as a trickery s/p thief, you lose to a mesmer, any mesmer, you should definitely improve your gameplay before talking about balance.

You know balance in this game is screwed when a dev asks you to give them a solution with the least development time requirements.

Clearly balance is not a priority for allocation of resources. More important things like RNG skin tickets from black lion chests need to be made.

Balancing the game is not something that can be monetized, so as a F2P it’s down the list of priorities.

Chaith.8256:

So, my suggestion #1:

• Automated Response: Drink an Elixir C when struck below the health threshold. Threshold: 50%, Recharge: 40s. (Same as Elixir C)

Suggestion #2:

• Automated Response: Activated Automated Response when struck below the health threshold. Threshold: 50%, Duration: 5s, Recharge, 60s.

As usual, Chaith coming in with logical solutions. I feel like these suggestions fit your criteria the best grouch. Low hanging fruit as well as relatively simple changes fit for fast, easy implementation.

I also admit when using pistol whip i feel so cheap easy to play and effortless burst #2+pw or precast pw+steal or pre cast pw+infiltrator’s signet so im forcing myself to play d/ p trickery or s/d acro

Decap Engineer

Let’s try to identify what needs to be changed by actually looking at what makes the build so problematic:

1. It decaps nodes too quickly and thus gets around the whole concept of having to kill players who are actually controlling the map and defending their nodes in an adequate manner

2. It survives long enough to make it worthwhile in terms of net point gain

Now, as problematic as Automated Response is in itself, being able to survive for an extended amount of time is certainly nothing unique to the engineer class (other classes and builds can achieve similar levels of resilience against attackers), which is why you don’t see other classes circumvent the whole conquest mechanic and flip point generation in their favor almost at a whim.

The obvious answer to balancing the decap engineer build is to prevent it from decapping the node so much quicker than everyone else and as quickly as only they currently can.

How anyone would not see that as the first measure to be applied in order to rein in the build is beyond me.

Now guildwars 2 has opted for a system where CC has no diminishing returns. If I had a say in it, this would change immediately, because in my opinion there’s no room for prolonged CCs in a game as fast paced as guildwars 2. Especially since back to back CCs can very well hit you right as you used your stun break to break free out of the first, thus nullifying your stun break completely.

Since diminishing returns are probably not going to be considered, though, the next best option to address the issue at hand specifically would be to change the knockback and blowout skills, as node control is such an integral part of conquest.

The least intrusive suggestion I can come up with is to alter how knockbacks and blowouts work mechanically. These abilities are meant to push back foes, instead they act as a push back on top of a knockdown, making them clearly superior to knockdowns (a mechanic that is already present in this game) for no apparent reason.

TLDR: Blowouts and knockbacks should be changed to only push foes back without actually knocking them down as well, which is what allows this build to use abilities that keep the opponent off the node for an extended amount of time, because they are incapacitated.

Maybe you could swap the Push from flamethrower with a pull.
If I remember right, one of the 1. versions of the flamethrower even had a pull.
Changing it to pull wouldn’t reduce the amount of CC the flamethrower has, however for pulling an enemy from the node, the engi itself would have to leave the node.