all is vain
Class balance philosophies
The thing that gets me mad is, we have to struggle like hell to get the same results of other classes showing MUCH less effort, on top of it ALL classes switch weapons, they HAVE to in order to be truly useful, just we have lower cooldown on it and waste an utility slot for that I think this balances it, but NO they have to nerf us to kingdom come!
And no it’s not just rifle and turret engis, every engi IS
Plus flamthrower’s still bugged even thought the patch was kinda meant for it, can’t but lol at it with a sad face.
WoW tried to do that “versatility at the cost of damage” thing way back in vanilla. What it resulted in was every “hybrid” class (already pretty underrepresented) being pigeonholed into healing/support roles (and even fewer people playing them). I think we pay for our versatility in the complexity of play. A warrior shouldn’t do more damage than us because he only has one alternate weapon, he should have fewer options available because all he needs to do is stand still and mash buttons to do enormous damage. This is even ignoring the Engineer builds that don’t use more than one kit and have the same (or fewer) number of weapon skills as everyone else (plus toolbelt skills, but you can’t choose those so I don’t think they count as replacement utilities any more than a mesmer’s shatters). It’s like they’re assuming we’re going to be taking at least 2 kits and forgetting our other utilities even exist.
I’m also not sure where they get medium range from. Rifle’s auto is long ranged, but all of its other skills may as well be melee if you’re looking for damage. Neither of those is medium range. Pistol skills are pretty long ranged, and the only skill they have that require close range is the offhand flame burst. As for kits, grenades and EG are long range, bomb and tool are melee range. Flamethrower might be medium range, but a weapon that’s obstructed by empty space isn’t terribly useful. I guess we’re “comfortable in medium range” because our main-hands require us to duck in and out of melee to do any real work.
To add insult to injury they described the elementalist as the king of versatility. Guess the king doesnt get taxed, the peasants get taxed.
The moment a hybrid tax shows up, it screams poor game design. Gw2 does not support being average at everything. It supports being good at one thing. Go bunker, go glass cannon, or go home.
And then i’d argue we dont even have that much versatility. I see Guardians, Necro’s and especially Elementalists with a ton more versatility then we ever had.
(edited by Terrahero.9358)
“Engineer
The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.”
“Elementalist
We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.”
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?
It seems to me that not only the engineer is a bad copy of the ele, but that it’s meant to be like this… :/
The moment a hybrid tax shows up, it screams poor game design. Gw2 does not support being average at everything. It supports being good at one thing. Go bunker, go glass cannon, or go home.
And even bunker is only partially effective outside of straight up PVP.
“Engineer
The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.”“Elementalist
We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.”Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?
It seems to me that not only the engineer is a bad copy of the ele, but that it’s meant to be like this… :/
From a flavor point of view it kinda makes sense, in that the engineer do by chemicals and tools what the elementalist does by incantations. Doing so will inevitably be cumbersome as long as they want to maintain some kind of steampunk flavor, as the alternative is to go out and out Star Trek.
In WoW they called it a “Hybrid Tax”.
They let a class do two roles poorly then said that was a good as being able to do one role well.
It never worked, and eventually they abandoned it.
As every MMO and RPG has done in the last 10 years.