Guild Wars 2

Hi,

The ANet philosophy with profession changes is to iterate in small steps, rather than big sweeping changes. Several patches ago we saw some Engineer skills loose some of the RNG (ex. Toss Elixir U). I think it’s time for more!

Toss Elixir S
Can this just grant Stability?

Elixir H
Protection or Regeneration only, not Swiftness. In fact, I don’t know why this could be like Elixir B and grant both Protection and Regeneration.

Toss Elixir H
I’m not sure about the Vigor, it is a defensive boon, but different from Protection and Regeneration. I would just have it grant Protection or Regeneration.

Clumsiness
Now that Rocket Boots don’t have a self knockdown, maybe some other skills don’t have to be so clumsy. Perhaps Engineers have honed in on their gadgets since release!

Overcharged Shot
This should continue to launch you backwards, but without the knockdown.

Poison Dart Volley
Not sure about this one, I would like to see it change to shot the 5 shots straight ahead. But perhaps it is better as a cone effect. What do other people think?

Any feedback would be great. Would like to hear what other people would suggest too.

-Cowboy

This has been brought up many times before.
Now i know this is not what you (and i) want to hear but they have said that RNG is part of our class mechanics.

And they stubbornly cling to that silly idea.
They think it makes the class more “dynamic” and that forcing you to react to the random results of your own skills is “fun”.

They simply don’t seem to understand that ‘fighting’ your own skills isn’t fun and that randomness can not be influenced by skill.

So no, i don’t think we’re gonna see less RNG any time soon if ever and it’s making me sad.

The rng needs to just, go. Its stupid and makes it hard to use an ability to react to a situation. Altough id personally much rather have Elixir S give Stealth, a more powerful mechanic everywhere except spvp.

PDV as i see it is a broken skill. The cone is pointless because in most situations these darts will simply miss and do nothing. Only if you fire into a pack of enemy will these darts hit. But thats just spreading out the damage, you arent dealing more damage for using it on multiple enemies.
Its so bad that even at mid-range its not uncommon for 2 or even 3 darts to miss. At longer ranges it can be as many as 4.

Randomly losing upto 80% of your abilities power is not fun, its frustrating. And this shouldve been fixed a long time ago, and not kept on as a “feature”.

As far as elixer S goes… it seems to be a stomp/escape elixer. Shrink/stability/stealth will all work for these functions… usually.

That being said… having reliable stability somewhere would be really really nice… doesn’t need to be on this utility… just… somewhere…

The RNG aspect to the class is the worst part of it.

Elixir H (random buff and toss buff)
Elixir S ( random toss buff)
Elixir B (random toss buff)
Elixir U (random buff, random toss buff)
Elixir X (random buff) – my pet peeve is that Elixir X is nothing more than a rehash of rampage/tornado, which aren’t that useful. Supply Drop > Elixir X > Mortar. Pretty much no reason to use Elixir X or Mortar, when Supply Drop is simply that much more useful.

I don’t mind so much the randomness of the toss elixir.
But I think the actual use should be RNG free.
Also I think when we use our Elixir skill and we throw the bottle it should do a small aoe version of it with 25% of the duration we have for other players.

Instead of RNG maybe we could get the choice of which buffs we throw.

Our clumsiness and rng used to be worse but have been toned down significantly, for me its not as bad as it used to be. We just have to accept the fact that our elixirs are rng but sometimes its still too much rng. Still there are some skills that can use some improvement, namely removing swiftness from H and vigor from the toss one. I would love to see our elixirs have a 50/50 chance for one of two buffs instead of a 33% for one of three.

Also poison dart volley could be a little tighter.

Call me crazy, but I like the RNG factor.

Direksone.3867:

Call me crazy, but I like the RNG factor.

Call me crazy, but I hate RNG factor. I really do

what rng? ^^

elixir H will give you a defensive boon
toss B will give you an offensive boon
toss S will give you a chance at stomp or flee
toss H will give you a defensive boon
toss U will give you projectile blocking

when traited they will also give you might and cleanse conditions. in most fights longer than 1 minute the good will outweight the bad.

I can understand the frustration over toss S, sometimes it decides the outcome of a battle and it shouldnt be so but its very hard for me to decide if I’d prefer always stealth or always stability or a kittenized nerfed version where you got both but for 2.5 seconds or something weak like that.

as for X, it’s just bad and lazy design.

poison dart volley is decent enough. at close range you won’t miss any hit and you’ll get permanent poison on a target. just don’t shoot it from 900 range expecting miracles, it’s obviously not the intent of the skill. there’s a risk vs reward thing to it that works fine, just like blowtorch.

a change I’d support would be making it a projectile finisher tho, I get very jealous of warriors longbow or thieves shortbow when I notice the lack of projectile finishers in our pistols.

also, be careful what you wish for, elixirs are still in a very good place atm any change will most likely result in a nerf, even if they removed the rng.

The rng is primarily why I refuse to play a hgh nade build, that and my fingers cramp thinking about 1 spamming heh.

Aberrant.6749:

As far as elixer S goes… it seems to be a stomp/escape elixer. Shrink/stability/stealth will all work for these functions… usually.

That being said… having reliable stability somewhere would be really really nice… doesn’t need to be on this utility… just… somewhere…

This, so much.

I’m pretty sure I’m not mistaken if I say we have the absolute worst access to stability. Hell even thieves can get it every 36-45seconds for 5+seconds with their super short CD ult and Lyssa runes.

No Elixir X doesn’t count because it puts me in some useless form where I can’t use any useful abilities.

Elixir S doesn’t count bc it is entirely luck if you get it.

Rumble gives…1s?

Perhaps this is one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying my Warrior more in sPVP lately even though its way harder to be super successful on it. At least when someone goes CC crazy on me I have the ability to activate stability. Which, especially with the amount of Necro spam going on currently, is very nice.

The RNG on elixirs is not going away, because the toolbelt skills on elixirs are primarily used in HGH builds, which are already very powerful, simple to execute and popular. At least not without some serious nerfs to HGH/might stacking.

Not going away? Probably not. Lessened? I think there’s a good chance, especially when they already addressed Toss Elixir U. Before it use to give a chance of 3 spells effects, now it’s only 2 both of which protect you from projectiles.

Regarding Elixir H + Toss , I don’t regard Swiftness/Vigor the same way as Protection/Regeneration. The former allows you more movement to actively avoid damage, while the latter actually impacts your health passively.

Same goes for Toss Elixir B and Swiftness, I don’t see Swiftness as an offensive boon. It should consolidated to be Might or Fury. To be honest I’m not even sure Retaliation fits as it requires getting hit to increase your damage output.

And wow… I forgot about Elixir X. Yah, that needs a complete redesign.

I understand that you think there’s a good chance that they’ll further limit it because they already did so in the past.
Personally i think that’s exactly why they won’t remove more.
If they had wanted to make them even less random then they would’ve done so back then, in my opinion.

Of course, i would be more than happy to be proven wrong

With all of that said , i would like to join the hatetrain on Elixir X.
It’s the most sloppy, cheap and boring thing they could come up with.
That alone wouldn’t be so bad if they forms it provided were actually worth something – but they are not.

It would be nice if they were a lot less random. I’d get an Elixir that sometimes doesn’t produced the desired results, but a 1/3 chance of getting what you want/need is just annoying.

Maybe an 66% chance to get the primary. Or even a guaranteed primary and a chance at a secondary.

Toss Elixir H
I’m not sure about the Vigor, it is a defensive boon, but different from Protection and Regeneration. I would just have it grant Protection or Regeneration.

I say make it a straight up heal. Something like 1k would be nice.

Fiontar.4695:

It would be nice if they were a lot less random. I’d get an Elixir that sometimes doesn’t produced the desired results, but a 1/3 chance of getting what you want/need is just annoying.

Maybe an 66% chance to get the primary. Or even a guaranteed primary and a chance at a secondary.

That… would be awesome. A lessened primary effect with a lessened 2ndary so we could be sure of at least part of it on a tossed elixer.