Guild Wars 2

From Dulfy’s RU notes, how they’re dealing with Decap engi -

New Balance Changes
Tune down Automated Response – no longer 100% condition reduction, 50% reduction instead but triggers at 33% HP instead of 25% HP.

Overtuned I think, 75% would have been reasonable.

it’s fine. hopefully they’ll look at berserker stance and diamond skin too. hard counters just make a bad game.

with the right runes 75% reduction at 33% hp, take the trait that reduces cripple chill and immob by 33% and youse got 3 conditions your immune to take a sigil of purity and that sigil that swaps a condition for a boon and your potentially looking at a better tank then the current decap engineer

those 2 sigils and the 15 point alchemy trait will give you 16 passively removed conditions a minute and with immunity to cripple chill and immob you’ll most likely be removing the damaging conditions so even with this nerfed the potential for a solid decap engi build is still very much there

I don’t mind it, but I’m a bit annoyed that they didn’t do more to Warriors.

Id also like to point out how this is a nerf intented for Decap Engineers, a terribly gimmicky build in an equally gimmicky gamemode. A build that has no place in pve or wvw.

Yet the nerf applies everywhere. WvW and PvE. And so, once again, we’re getting another nerf across the board because of spvp. I am starting to hate pvp so kittening much, but not as much as i hate this utterly stuborn and asinine “balancing”.

I´m glad they nerfed AR. It´s just such a passive trait, I really don´t like it.
Though I´m disappointed that they won´t give us any additional condicleanses to make up for the nerf…

They could hava changed it and still made it useful. Instead they nerfed it to oblivion. As usual.

Even warriors can clean their conditions more easily than us. And they should be the “weak to conditions” class. This balance is a joke.

Manuhell.2759:

Even warriors can clean their conditions more easily than us. And they should be the “weak to conditions” class. This balance is a joke.

By now we all should know how off the original balance philosophy is from reality. In terms of cleaning conditions (Or just being immune to them) warriors are close to the top at the moment.

This was long overdue. I don’t get many occasions for this but: thanks ANet.

ellesee.8297:

it’s fine. hopefully they’ll look at berserker stance and diamond skin too. hard counters just make a bad game.

Agreed. Which is why I’m kinda bummed out they also added Stone Heart.

ThiBash.5634:

ellesee.8297:

it’s fine. hopefully they’ll look at berserker stance and diamond skin too. hard counters just make a bad game.

Agreed. Which is why I’m kinda bummed out they also added Stone Heart.

At least stone heart has a caveat, Diamond skin didn’t and we’re still not sure if it’s been changed.

I already left my opinions in the other thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Decap-Engi-HamBow-Warrior-S-P-Thief-nerfed/first#post3829400

I’ll just add, whatever happened to the shaving philosophy or was that meant only for warrs?

Terrahero.9358:

Id also like to point out how this is a nerf intented for Decap Engineers, a terribly gimmicky build in an equally gimmicky gamemode. A build that has no place in pve or wvw.

Yet the nerf applies everywhere. WvW and PvE. And so, once again, we’re getting another nerf across the board because of spvp. I am starting to hate pvp so kittening much, but not as much as i hate this utterly stuborn and asinine “balancing”.

this is what kittens me off specially now that all you see are Dire warriors dire necros dire mesmers dire rangers and even dire thieves at times with perplex runes

the real broken spec of the game is conditions or anet should make power vit toughness crit damage gear to counter this skill less play with skill less play

condi bunkers at the moment get

30-80% duration buffed on traits alone along with up to 500-600 condi damage
40% duration with food as well as 70 condi damage
aditional 250-300 damage from tuning crystals
25-40-50% duration on some runes as well as an aditional 180-200 condi damage

on a side note someone with fully mastered ac mastery try this with a sup ac in wvw its freaking awesome lol

Terrahero.9358:

Id also like to point out how this is a nerf intented for Decap Engineers, a terribly gimmicky build in an equally gimmicky gamemode. A build that has no place in pve or wvw.

Yet the nerf applies everywhere. WvW and PvE. And so, once again, we’re getting another nerf across the board because of spvp. I am starting to hate pvp so kittening much, but not as much as i hate this utterly stuborn and asinine “balancing”.

AR doesnt even see significant use outside of spvp…

Dirame.8521:

At least stone heart has a caveat, Diamond skin didn’t and we’re still not sure if it’s been changed.

True, but it’s still a hard counter against a certain build style (burst thieves and warriors) so it’s not any better.

insanemaniac.2456:

AR doesnt even see significant use outside of spvp…

Yeah, and guess why?
Because it isn’t even a strong trait. It worked in pvp only due to the condi meta, as the explicit weakness of the trait was being extremely weak to direct damage while being at that low threshold.
There were proposal that would have made it useful in other modes as well, while not making it overly strong.
They just preferred to nerf it to oblivion to appease the whining crowd.

there are pvp traits and there are pve traits. backpack regen doesn’t see any use outside pvp and wvwvw. does that mean it’s a weak trait? lol no. automated response was stupid. 100% immunity traits are bad design. they need to go away.

Then the whole class should better be cancelled, if it is a matter of “bad design”.
Fixed penalities on the assumption you will use a subset of utilities, kits balanced on the assumption you will use them fully traited…those are all backbones of the engineer balance philosophies.
There is no coherence between engineer balancing and the other classes’ balancing.

ThiBash.5634:

Dirame.8521:

At least stone heart has a caveat, Diamond skin didn’t and we’re still not sure if it’s been changed.

True, but it’s still a hard counter against a certain build style (burst thieves and warriors) so it’s not any better.

It’s a timed counter that doesn’t entirely neuter the build, yes you won’t do exponential damage but, if he’s on low health and he takes 2k pure damage, that’s still 2k pure damage, there’s no changing that.

Dirame.8521:

ThiBash.5634:

Dirame.8521:

At least stone heart has a caveat, Diamond skin didn’t and we’re still not sure if it’s been changed.

True, but it’s still a hard counter against a certain build style (burst thieves and warriors) so it’s not any better.

It’s a timed counter that doesn’t entirely neuter the build, yes you won’t do exponential damage but, if he’s on low health and he takes 2k pure damage, that’s still 2k pure damage, there’s no changing that.

Just to touch on Stone Heart, because it’s clear that not everyone here knows what the trait is about.

Stone Heart is 100% a counter-Thief and other burst DPS trait. It may have niche applications against tanky DPS, but Stone Heart is significantly weaker against sustained, high direct damage due to the way Elementalists are played.

1. Elementalists are constantly switching through attunements all the time, as no single attunement can carry a build on its own.
2. Elementalists have the lowest base HP and Armour in the game. This lowest EHP in game is tempered by good access to Prot and cleansing (cleansing significantly nerfed recently) to prop up this low EHP.
3. Elementalists will never want to stay in Earth, because Earth has the weakest autoattack damage and is littered with skillshot CC setups. Trait support through Elemental Attunement and the Earth Minor traits emphasise defense.
4. Therefore, Elementalists will switch to Earth to mitigate bursts with Protection uptime or snare/cc opponents. Staying in Earth is suicidal because you have no counterpressure in damage and no way to reproc Protection from Elemental Attunement until you switch away and back.

The immunity to critical hits is 100% a counter-burst DPS trait because it can be combined with Elemental Attunement to turn Big crits into normal hits and normal hits into 67% damage hits. With the nerf to Boon Duration runes, this aspect of Earth Attunement becomes even more important due to lower Protection uptime and tanky sustained DPS builds will be significantly stronger as Elementalists cannot stay in Earth forever.

Indeed, Tanky DPS builds will have the advantage over Elementalists running Stone Heart, as these builds often use skills with big base damage coefficients. Hammer for Warrior comes to mind; as does Scepter Mainhand for Guardian, and so on.

The Power Engi matchup is harder now, Condi engi matchup unchanged (Incendiary Powder not proccing its ICD until crits are triggered means you have all the time in the world to bombard Ele from range and trigger Burning as soon as Earth Attunement is left), Thief matchup in particular is much closer to 50/50 with Stone Heart, and Shatter Mesmer now has to play better and watch for Ele’s attunements rather than just going for Shatters all day. Ranger in particular will laugh over the corpses of Elementalists that run this trait as their best damage is sustained.

Back on topic, I do hope that the nerf reveals flaws in Engineer’s active condi cleanse outside of Elixirs sufficiently that Arenanet will look to reinstate several key cleanses that have been removed over the years; or left in an unviable state due to the presence of AR representing a risk of OP potential arising when combined with cleanses.
In particular:

1. Cleansing Fire for Kit Refinement: Flamethrower. Kit Refinement needs to have individual CD back, or to trigger with more player control, such as only when player uses skill from kit.
2. Replacing double Super Elixir with a single self-cleanse on last tick of Fumigate. Adjust which tick self cleanse triggers to shave skill up and down.
3. Reducing Toss Elixir C’s cooldown now that HGH has been nerfed through nerfs to Elixir S Invuln and Elixir R not stunbreaking.
4. Making Transmute proc on Toolbelt use, GCD 12 seconds instead of a 15 second single conversion
5. Replacing Scope in Tools with Cleanse on Toolbelt skill use – individual toolbelt skill ICD of 15 seconds to bring up Power build condition cleanse into viability
6. Reworking the proposed Gadgeteer Grandmaster into converting Conditions to Boons instead of simply providing Boons as full Gadget builds are supremely vulnerable to Conditions – even Turret builds have up to 8 cleanses a minute, whilst Gadget builds have zero (well, up to 9 per minute if you count Rocket Boots cleansing 3 snares every single activation)

Good, 50% is perfect. Now it would be nice for all 100% immunity skills to see relative nerfs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Back on topic, I do hope that the nerf reveals flaws in Engineer’s active condi cleanse outside of Elixirs sufficiently that Arenanet will look to reinstate several key cleanses that have been removed over the years; or left in an unviable state due to the presence of AR representing a risk of OP potential arising when combined with cleanses.
In particular:

1. Cleansing Fire for Kit Refinement: Flamethrower. Kit Refinement needs to have individual CD back, or to trigger with more player control, such as only when player uses skill from kit.
2. Replacing double Super Elixir with a single self-cleanse on last tick of Fumigate. Adjust which tick self cleanse triggers to shave skill up and down.
3. Reducing Toss Elixir C’s cooldown now that HGH has been nerfed through nerfs to Elixir S Invuln and Elixir R not stunbreaking.
4. Making Transmute proc on Toolbelt use, GCD 12 seconds instead of a 15 second single conversion
5. Replacing Scope in Tools with Cleanse on Toolbelt skill use – individual toolbelt skill ICD of 15 seconds to bring up Power build condition cleanse into viability
6. Reworking the proposed Gadgeteer Grandmaster into converting Conditions to Boons instead of simply providing Boons as full Gadget builds are supremely vulnerable to Conditions – even Turret builds have up to 8 cleanses a minute, whilst Gadget builds have zero (well, up to 9 per minute if you count Rocket Boots cleansing 3 snares every single activation)

Theoretically you would be right.
In practice, we’re screwed. They needed a year just to give us back a reliable source of stability after they removed the old juggernaut. At least 9 months just to try to fix turret issues. What makes you think they’ll be faster with this issue?
Blindingly nerfing is useless if they can’t provide a decent alternative. And incoherent if you do it only with some classes (hello, carefully-shaved healing signet).

Manuhell.2759:

Blindingly nerfing is useless if they can’t provide a decent alternative. And incoherent if you do it only with some classes (hello, carefully-shaved healing signet).

This isn’t a blind nerf.
Players, Engi mains included, have been calling for an AR (and other total immunity to some degree) nerfs for a long time and it has been one of the few legitimate balance calls to appear on these forums.

Terrahero.9358:

Id also like to point out how this is a nerf intented for Decap Engineers, a terribly gimmicky build in an equally gimmicky gamemode. A build that has no place in pve or wvw.

Yet the nerf applies everywhere. WvW and PvE. And so, once again, we’re getting another nerf across the board because of spvp. I am starting to hate pvp so kittening much, but not as much as i hate this utterly stuborn and asinine “balancing”.

It was an overpowered trait no matter how you look at it. It doesn’t mean anything that one specific build utilized it the most.
The nerf is well-deserved, whether it’s PvP, WvW, or PvE.

Brew Pinch.5731:

This isn’t a blind nerf.
Players, Engi mains included, have been calling for an AR (and other total immunity to some degree) nerfs for a long time and it has been one of the few legitimate balance calls to appear on these forums.

That’s your opinion. Considering you also think those other nerfs we’re getting are fine – like poison grenade and net turret, despite actually being nonsensical and completely incoherent compared to how other classes are balanced – i guess i can’t agree.
It is a nerf aimed to the average player. The one who just spams every skill and to whose “timing a condition burst” is an alien concept.

Axelwarrior.9084:

It was an overpowered trait no matter how you look at it. It doesn’t mean anything that one specific build utilized it the most.
The nerf is well-deserved, whether it’s PvP, WvW, or PvE.

Overpowered? By itself the trait is quite bad, instead.
It was used only due to the condition meta. Obviously it ends up seemingly strong if no one exploits its weak point – that is, direct damage burstability due to the low hp treshhold.
The drawback was there – people just didn’t want to make use of it, and instead whined all the time.
And instead of shifting the meta, the devs made the easier choice of nerfing it to oblivion.
Also i would care to repeat – they had other choices, many of them were proposed to change it in various threads. Ones that wouldn’t have made it so useless.

Manuhell.2759:

Brew Pinch.5731:

This isn’t a blind nerf.
Players, Engi mains included, have been calling for an AR (and other total immunity to some degree) nerfs for a long time and it has been one of the few legitimate balance calls to appear on these forums.

That’s your opinion. Considering you also think those other nerfs we’re getting are fine – like poison grenade and net turret, despite actually being nonsensical and completely incoherent compared to how other classes are balanced – i guess i can’t agree.
It is a nerf aimed to the average player. The one who just spams every skill and to whose “timing a condition burst” is an alien concept.

Axelwarrior.9084:

It was an overpowered trait no matter how you look at it. It doesn’t mean anything that one specific build utilized it the most.
The nerf is well-deserved, whether it’s PvP, WvW, or PvE.

Overpowered? By itself the trait is quite bad, instead.
It was used only due to the condition meta. Obviously it ends up seemingly strong if no one exploits its weak point – that is, direct damage burstability due to the low hp treshhold.
The drawback was there – people just didn’t want to make use of it, and instead whined all the time.
And instead of shifting the meta, the devs made the easier choice of nerfing it to oblivion.
Also i would care to repeat – they had other choices, many of them were proposed to change it in various threads. Ones that wouldn’t have made it so useless.

Because they didnt have access to protection high toughness + healing and knockbacks right? You know those kinds of things that make power builds less efective too…

because there just can’t be enough condition meta.
Every second skill in this game inflicts a condition. That is a problem.
AR is only good because there are conditions everywhere, at any given moment.

lol @ condi meta. there is no condi meta. if it was a condi meta then every team would run more condi classes. the top team on eu only runs 1 condi class. the top na teams only run 2. the actual meta is tanky and safe builds. everyone’s running soldiers or rabid or carrion or clerics except thieves and mesmers. also eles but nobody runs an ele.

ar is just a terrible trait as is diamond skin and zerker stance. if you have trouble with conditions without ar then play better. know when to disengage. know what classes not to fight (necro). no high level engi runs ar. if you’re arguing that it was a good trait and shouldn’t be nerfed, well sorry you’re wrong. please leave. traits like ar, diamond skin, and zerker stance are ruining the game.

Ugruk.4069:

Because they didnt have access to protection

Only via reactive traits or runes, thus they’re either random or they are in response to an opponent’s action. The major offender here would be Protection Injection…but if you are really being interrupted every 5 seconds, i doubt you’re actually holding the point, protection or not.
And imho, not giving reliable sources of on-demand protection was done on purpose, seeing the effects of the old juggernaut and AR. Since they both changed, it would make sense for that to change in the future, too.

Ugruk.4069:

high toughness + healing

If geared for it, sure. But since you aren’t mentioning vitality, you’re having quite a reduced health pool to start with, further reduced at the 25% treshhold.

Ugruk.4069:

and knockbacks right? You know those kinds of things that make power builds less efective too…

And enemies can have stability (you mention protection for the engineer, but it isn’t like the enemies can’t have boons as well).
Beside using control skills as well toward the engineer (albeit processing protection injection, it has still a cooldown, thus repeated CC aren’t actually a bad idea). Since those engineers probably won’t have elixir B to process stability.

Obviously a build like the one you mention can’t do anything related to damage and can just try to resist there and knock the opponent away. Thus something only effective in pvp and related to the nature of the mode itself (meaning that the change outside pvp is still unwarranted).

The change is not bad. The need for the change was great.

tbh no need to take that trait, just use melandru runes

I was not referring to conditions as in condition builds. I meant to say no matter what you face, zerker/bunker/whatever – you will still get swarmed with conditions.
Its a game you don’t need to do anything special to inflict a condition – but you must work really hard to get every single on of them off.

Manuhell.2759:

Then the whole class should better be cancelled, if it is a matter of “bad design”.
Fixed penalities on the assumption you will use a subset of utilities, kits balanced on the assumption you will use them fully traited…those are all backbones of the engineer balance philosophies.
There is no coherence between engineer balancing and the other classes’ balancing.

pretty much this its like they played engineer in a completely diferent game when they “Balance” engineer

kit refinement was spammable-lets balance it by not Only giving it a global cooldown wich was reasonable but instead replace all kit refined skills with trash

engi immob stacking? not on anet’s watch lets nerf elite supplies and net turret its not like other classes can stack over 30 seconds immobilize add stuns and knocks rite?

engis gonna have sigils working with kits ? better nerf kits by 30% damage and completely ignore the fact Engies only have 1 weapon set and that even with 2 damage sigils you’d get at most a 15% damage buff AKA still 15% damage nerfed for no reason

engies becomming imune to conditions when they drop to 2.5k- 3k hp in pvp ?
better nerf automated response in All Gamemodes

so are pvt eles undieing gods with diamond skin? cuz theirs works at 90% hp instead of 25%