Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

zaragoz.6351:

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Shrapnel only affects explosions, so you will only see Bomb and Grenade engineers use it.

Empowering Adrenaline encourages pointless dodging to gain a negligible damage bonus.

If you think Adept traits should be junk or filler to reach desirable traits like IP, then yes—they are worthy Adept traits.

Again—you haven’t addressed the fact that this isn’t a zero-sum change. It’s a negative because no other traits were brought up to IP’s potency. Additionally, the reason it doesn’t promote build diversity has been stated time and again in this thread.

Just because you make good traits harder to reach doesn’t mean players will desire to use the bad or sub-par ones. They will always chase the best traits, so why not make them all good. Zero-sum means equalizing. Reduce IPs potency and bring other traits up to meet it. Then you will see players making hard choices—not playing mine sweeper avoiding the bad/useless traits.

You guys do keep stating shrapnel only effects bombs and grenades. This is not purely true. It effects mines too and if it doesn’t, it really should effect FT #2 as well.

Just wanted to put that out there for the sake of clarification.

JonPeters.5630:

zaragoz.6351:

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Shrapnel is only really useful for grenade engineers, who have to put 30 points in explosives anyway. Bomb users are much better off with forceful explosives.

And this really shows how moving IP to master tier reduces build diversity:

Incendiary Powder – works with and adds damage to any and every build, even very low crit chance builds

Acidic Elixirs – only for HGH and even there not worth it
Shrapnel – only for grenades
Forceful Explosives – only for bombs
Empowering Adrenaline – very mediocre trait for power based builds, which will take bombs or grenades anyway, thus Shrapnel / Explosives making it redundant
Exploit Weakness – limited use in sPvP, very limited use in WvWvW, completely useless in PvE
Accelerant-Packed Turrets – only useful for a hypothetical turret build, which due to the immensely long and everlasting list of turret bugs and handicaps does not exist

This sums up to: for any build other than a bomb bunker spending only 10 points in Explosives is not desirable.

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

zaragoz.6351:

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Ok well about those adept tier traits… I would say that when I pick my traits they change aspects of my character in impactful ways (especially ones that you can clearly see when you play). For example if I get Speedy Kits, I’m always running a lot faster, if I get Protection Injection I can clearly see I’m not being demolished by that Stun Warrior, Invigorating Speed, I regen my endurance twice as fast. These are adept traits.

Empowering Adrenaline – 5% damage, its arguable if thats a significant damage increase. You probably wouldn’t feel the impact in battle, in fact some may not even notice this at all. Now add to the fact that my endurance needs to be not full. So if I using this trait I’m basically saying: “Let’s dodge so I can increase my damage by an amount that I’ll barely even notice”

Exploit Weakness – You could say this has a more impactful effect compared to the previous trait but honestly I find this useless because you can usually use other engineer skills most of the time to accomplish that same thing.

Pheroth, good post, well stated.

I agree with you overall.

Exploit Weakness will be a bit better, and I suppose might be used in some very niche builds.

But Empowering Adrenaline is a joke as it stands now. I can’t imagine anyone ever using this as the adept trait to “splash” their last 10 points in. No way.

Eliminate the, “when endurance is not full” part, and then, yes, then you will have a trait people might use as a nice adept tier neutral trait to splash their last 10 points in. It would not be a “sexy” change, or make for an interesting trait to talk about, but it would work – and would see some (not a lot) of use. But as it stands now, once IP is moved to master tier, unless it’s tweaked a little bit, EA will remain what it is now, a trait that’s never used.

coglin.1867:

You guys do keep stating shrapnel only effects bombs and grenades. This is not purely true. It effects mines too and if it doesn’t, it really should effect FT #2 as well.

Just wanted to put that out there for the sake of clarification.

It works, but if you are using mines, Forceful Explosives beats Shrapnel with both hands tied behind its back

Mork vom Ork.2598:

coglin.1867:

You guys do keep stating shrapnel only effects bombs and grenades. This is not purely true. It effects mines too and if it doesn’t, it really should effect FT #2 as well.

Just wanted to put that out there for the sake of clarification.

It works, but if you are using mines, Forceful Explosives beats Shrapnel with both hands tied behind its back

Eh, you make a good point.

Shrapnel is really only useful for grenades, and even for grenades, it is basically only useful when you get in the 15+ seconds on target range, which doesn’t happen very often, or mass-AoE situations.

Mork’s post above does a pretty good job of showing how the traits are tied so specifically to a certain skill combinations that most of the choices are virtually made for you.

@jon

we all know IP was strong, but you didn’t word it that way, you said it was a change to promote build diversity which is simply not true. With the avoided power creep I can agree.

the problem with shrapnel is that it only works with bombs and grenades. not all condition builds go bomb+nades, but after this changes it might be the only way to go.
furthermore, not all of us play tpvp where the fact that you only have a small area control point to hit with the mentioned kits empowers them greatly.

a related issue that many of us stated is that our mainhand pistol skills are subpar. thats why we take stuff like IP.

I know it’s not really fair to make cross class comparisons, but take a moment to look at necro scepter auto attack. 1 skill chain does the same as our pistol 1+2. Not only that.. it kinda does it better at stacking bleeds.

I know you guys are working towards making autoattacks not as significant and I know that from a class design point of view our equiped weapons are supposed to be weaker but something needs to be done about it. the 3 mainhand pistol skills could use a buff and since you’d want to avoid having way too much condi pressure from a nade/bombs condi build buffing coated bullets slightly would be a decent way to go about it.

cheers

Maskaganda is confirming a good point. Fixing up the main hand pistol would require less traits to supplement it’s unnecessary weak damage, allowing for more build diversity in itself. If it did enough damage it would better compliment a full gadget or full elixir utility set. It would still allow for players to have the option to use they traits they do now to maximize the damage out of pistols in the manner they do now as well.

In my experienced opinion, this route opens more diversity then several of the trait changes would.

Having said that, I do like where some of the trait changes are going for the most part. It is great to see such communication, and how you guys are using the feedback in changes such as what was mentioned about power shoes.

I see a ton of talk about buffing the pistol auto, and I tend to agree. However how do you guys feel about the rifle autoattack? It also seems a bit sub-par to me to be personally honest.

Maskaganda.2043:

@jon

a related issue that many of us stated is that our mainhand pistol skills are subpar. thats why we take stuff like IP.

I know you guys are working towards making autoattacks not as significant and I know that from a class design point of view our equiped weapons are supposed to be weaker but something needs to be done about it. the 3 mainhand pistol skills could use a buff and since you’d want to avoid having way too much condi pressure from a nade/bombs condi build buffing coated bullets slightly would be a decent way to go about it.

Having autoattack not as signifiant as other class is a faillure from the very start, due to a false starting statement.

They though engineer would have theorically more weapons due to kits, but they overdo it when nerfing all weapons and kits to the ground. Engineer will rarely carry more than 1 kit because he need utilitaries like every other class.
Moreover, not having decent weapons dmg have deprived engineer from flexibility, forcing him to use more vital utility slot, and finally only building strong mono kit efficiency, leading to this lack of diversity, since only nade and bombs are decent.

Again, we should claim more decent auto-attack dmg on our pistols and rifles.

zaragoz.6351:

I see a ton of talk about buffing the pistol auto, and I tend to agree. However how do you guys feel about the rifle autoattack? It also seems a bit sub-par to me to be personally honest.

The only thing I feel needs tweaking about it is that it needs to complement the other abilities more efficiently. I’m thinking something along the lines of the opposite of the Mesmer Greatsword auto – more damage the closer you are.

Kamahl.3621:

zaragoz.6351:

I see a ton of talk about buffing the pistol auto, and I tend to agree. However how do you guys feel about the rifle autoattack? It also seems a bit sub-par to me to be personally honest.

The only thing I feel needs tweaking about it is that it needs to complement the other abilities more efficiently. I’m thinking something along the lines of the opposite of the Mesmer Greatsword auto – more damage the closer you are.

For the Pistol? Oh heck NO. The last thing we need is blunderbuss on the pistol.

-rolls up a newspaper and glares- “Bad Kamahl., Bad, Bad, Bad”

zaragoz.6351:

I see a ton of talk about buffing the pistol auto, and I tend to agree. However how do you guys feel about the rifle autoattack? It also seems a bit sub-par to me to be personally honest.

For the most part, I think Rifle #1 is in a good place. It’s provides a nice consistent amount of DPS over time.

But Pistol #1 is in a very bad place. This skill desperately needs either 1 more second of bleed, or a good 5% to 7% increase to its direct damage.

IP move is totally fine. We do not have any choice actually for the first 10 points. IP or go home. Balance is also about decision: similar strong traits in each category to choose.

I think he was referring to the rifle auto-attack coglin.

Well pistol is mainly condition weapon whit low power dmg, adding 5-7% more dmg wont change much, it need more condition duration. The pre-nerf #1 skill was realy strong so it was nerfed but cuting condition duration by half and removeing bleed from aoe so that only main target gets bleed was a too much, removeing/reducing one of them would be enough.

oh, and yea i use condition build that only go whit Elixir Gun and Pistol so Shrapnel is rather usless for me…

Most people have said, quite well, the issues facing Engis (their scaling with Asc and Leg weaps, trait confusion, gadget and turret issues, etc…), so I won’t rehash these arguments. I would say, that addressing and shoring up some of these things first might have a more effective result than just rearranging deck chairs in the trait trees. If a class or it’s abilities performance are fundamentally bugged or crippled by inconsistent design then changes in this one area really hold little or no potential effect.

While I am encouraged that there is more direct communication from the devs, I am at the same time discouraged when I see language like “We wanted to maintain the engineer’s core roles while still increasing build diversity” and see some of these changes. Reminds me of a line by a Mr. Montoya. I would actually be genuinely curious to see what the devs feel the “core role” of the Engi is because when you consider the sum of its parts, not even many Engi’s have a clear idea of what that is.

That said, I did want to throw out there that the Reserve Mines trait is pretty useless with the current state of mines. Much like the Mine utility skill that sees enemies walk right over top of them and they never detonate. Increasing the “sensitivity” and radius on mines would be a welcome change not only to the utility skill, but this minor trait. This speaks to my original point of fixing the buggy or erratic performance of existing skill/trait implementation before trying to “fix” something else.

zaragoz.6351:

I think he was referring to the rifle auto-attack coglin.

This, it’s the same thing I suggested in my fat post.

JonPeters.5630:

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

On paper this makes sense. But when applied in game I don’t think it works out the way you want it to.

Shrapnel is only good for the most popular build, grenades. In which case you already were taking shrapnel most likely. Empowering Adrenaline is a very weak trait, it doesn’t even give it’s bonus all the time. Aside from that, it’s just a very boring flat damage increase trait. I’ve seen a myriad of suggestions in this thread that make the trait both more exciting and worth taking in nearly any build.

About IP. First of all, I honestly don’t understand why it had to move from Adept tier in the first place. I’m not arguing that it come back, I get that ship has sailed, but I want to understand more of this design process. It was already nerfed awhile back. It can only proc one time on one enemy every 10 seconds. Most of this game is AOE. IP was barely even noticeable in AOE, you could only apply it to one of the enemies. It wasn’t really that amazing trait that everyone had to take no matter what your build was like it was when the game first launched. I feel it is currently Adept level, but like I said that ship has sailed and I understand that. I know you think it is deserving of a Master level, I just don’t understand why.

Most people who still want to get IP now have to go 20 points into Explosives just for that. If you go 20 points into Explosives you’re likely to just go 30 points into Explosives. Then you have the same, most popular build out there with grenades. This is why a lot of us are saying the change to IP is doing the opposite of promoting build diversity. It’s pushing people deeper into the Explosives line when that’s really the last place we should be pushing people.

I think you did a good job of making Firearms more desirable, and Alchemy has always been good. Inventions is really more of a niche tree than anything and Tools is just all over the place (some damage traits, some kit traits, some defensive traits) but has it’s uses for dipping leftover points into.

Lastly, I think a lot of great points have been made in this thread so thanks for checking in with us and discussing them. Some of the main ones were hit right on the head by Kamahl a page back. If we could just make our main hand weapons better that would truly diversify our builds because we wouldn’t feel forced to take at least 1 kit. I like to see the pistol/shield/backpiece skins that I worked so hard to get, so once in awhile I try to go to a no kit build but it just doesn’t keep up.

Kamahl.3621:

zaragoz.6351:

I think he was referring to the rifle auto-attack coglin.

This, it’s the same thing I suggested in my fat post.

Oh, thank goodness. In that case. I agree.

Back on the IP subject though. When you think about it, does it strike anyone else as completely backwards that our power line has a purely condition damage trait in it?

coglin.1867:

Kamahl.3621:

zaragoz.6351:

I think he was referring to the rifle auto-attack coglin.

This, it’s the same thing I suggested in my fat post.

Oh, thank goodness. In that case. I agree.

Back on the IP subject though. When you think about it, does it strike anyone else as completely backwards that our power line has a purely condition damage trait in it?

A lot of our trait lines are weird like that. Tools has many defensive traits (both Grandmasters even) when it gives crit damage. Inventions being our toughness line has more traits for turrets than anything. I get it, turrets are inventions, but the traits should match what the line actually gives you not the arbitrary name of it. We could do a lot of shuffling with where our traits currently sit and I think it would make a lot more sense.

JonPeters.5630:

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative.

And this does exactly what for P/P and P/S condition builds that don’t use grenades/bombs/mines? With shrapnel’s current functionality it only triggers off grenade, bomb, and mine explosions. Sure they can benefit from Empowering Adrenaline but it won’t really be adding anything even remotely negligible. IP Filled that void.

Now if the pistol AOE component of a shot could proc shrapnel that would be different.

Please improve:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Packaged_Stimulants
making adept tier or incease the conditon removement

please merge:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Short_Fusev and
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Explosive_Powder
Or one of those with
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forceful_Explosives

please merge:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Potent_Elixirs which is a horrible never used trait with
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fast-Acting_Elixirs

merge:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fireforged_Trigger
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Mixture

Please unnerf
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kit_Refinement

If you really want to improve diversity.
Some of this changes look a bit strong in first place and i would agree if it would be 1 year earlier but since release engineers got weakend in almost every single patch while the powerlevel increase on most other chars went through the roofs (warrior and necros for example)

JonPeters.5630:

zaragoz.6351:

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

yep ant it’s a good thing haveing a chance to get CD using grenade, but i think that the problem is change something to help build based on gadgets, turrets or kit different from the almost used grenade. the point is that shrpnel is strong using grenade that hit 3 times per attack, the same for the vulnerability from explosion, that make grenade more powerful than bombs for example…

rifle: i like it and i think that can be a better weapon with a mechanic similar to the long bow, or simply dealing more damage

pistol need to inflict more bleeding, so increase the bleeding duration due to tha poor base damage

coglin.1867:

You guys do keep stating shrapnel only effects bombs and grenades. This is not purely true. It effects mines too and if it doesn’t, it really should effect FT #2 as well.

Just wanted to put that out there for the sake of clarification.

yes but it’s a trait based on %, and you can use a over 50 greandes in the time you throw a single mine. same problem but with ratio 1:3 for bombs

Dear Jon,

Could we please see rifle get a damage buff of some sort similar to the way ranger longbow works (but backwards).

The whole weapon is in this spot where further away you deal less damage, closer up you deal more damage, which is great. I love that. But what I am suggesting is this:

0 – 300: High Damage
300 – 600: Medium Damage (Its current damage now).
600 – 1000: Low Damage

And change scope to something else… lets face it… scope doesn’t make sense anyway given how close we need to be for all of our gun attacks to be effective. (You could change the name of scope to “Stronger nade throwin arm”)

Ision.3207:

But Pistol #1 is in a very bad place. This skill desperately needs either 1 more second of bleed, or a good 5% to 7% increase to its direct damage.

both are bad options in my opinion.
plainly buffing autoattacks and increasing the power of skills overall is a bad move when the general consensus is that some toning down is necessary.
besides, by giving just a flat increase like this you’d be buffing already strong builds like bomb/nades along with it.

like I said before, I think a solution would be to buff or remake coated bullets. make it work better over all pistol skills, add another effect.. something.

an alternative would be to add a skill chain to p1. bomb/nade kit users wouldnt be affected much coz they dont have to rely on autoattacks and condi builds using toolkit or eg could get some use out of p1 when everything else is on cooldown.

Powerbruce.6710:

coglin.1867:

You guys do keep stating shrapnel only effects bombs and grenades. This is not purely true. It effects mines too and if it doesn’t, it really should effect FT #2 as well.

Just wanted to put that out there for the sake of clarification.

yes but it’s a trait based on %, and you can use a over 50 greandes in the time you throw a single mine. same problem but with ratio 1:3 for bombs

Ya shrapnel was only good for nades period. Even with bombs you can go through several people/mobs and never see it even trigger.

Not only that there is a lot of folks out there using P/P & P/S condition elixir builds without nades , bombs, or mines which means there is literally nothing of value in adept for them. IP Filled that void.

JonPeters.5630:

zaragoz.6351:

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

They are probably adept tier worthy but… they aren’t all that exciting to be honest.

I personally would just like something that inspires me to take a look at making a new build or a different way of playing. I’ve already said I’d like to see Shrapnel change into a trait that lets you stack 3 bleeds per successful blast finisher (with a short cooldown of course) so, you probably already know my opinion on that front.

Disastro.4086:

Now if the pistol AOE component of a shot could proc shrapnel that would be different.

I honestly hope they don’t do this, it would be a terrible bandaid fix. Pistol shot is already a very short bleed, this would give a 1 in 15 chance to apply 1 more bleed. 1 in 15. Sure it’s better than nothing (kind of) but the reason why I say I hope it doesn’t happen because it would be the kind of thing that they do and think it’s a fix then leave it alone. I would rather them not do this at all and continue looking at it. If it’s a short term thing and they still look to improve the pistol, great, but just shrapnel alone I doubt any Engineer will even notice.

JonPeters.5630:

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Shrapnel is a VERY weak trait. 15% chance for one stack of bleed that only procts in bombs or nades so it doesn’t even help the paltry pistol auto attack or any other non explosive kit. So, best case scenario is nade engineer (which is already pigeonholed 30 in explosives) spamming nades and every 3 attacks you get 1.35 extra bleed stack on average. Additionally, what condi nade engis lose if they want to keep IP is either Short Fuse or Enhance Performance. Trading either of these for Shrapnel is a HUGE nerf. As Ostricheggs said, this pushes condi engis further into bomb+nades apex build because it will probably be better to get your burning from the bomb kit and simply skipping IP altogether.

I know you cant bring this trait up to IP levels but at least make it worthwhile by increasing the proct rate, letting other weapons proct it and increasing the number of bleed stacks.

p.s. Thank you for the communication and your time actually reading and acknowledging us proles

p.p.s The only time I hear about engi being OP it involves rune sets like Perplexity and Noble. Please fix those before nerfing engi further.

Adamantium.3682:

Disastro.4086:

Now if the pistol AOE component of a shot could proc shrapnel that would be different.

I honestly hope they don’t do this, it would be a terrible bandaid fix. Pistol shot is already a very short bleed, this would give a 1 in 15 chance to apply 1 more bleed. 1 in 15. Sure it’s better than nothing (kind of) but the reason why I say I hope it doesn’t happen because it would be the kind of thing that they do and think it’s a fix then leave it alone. I would rather them not do this at all and continue looking at it. If it’s a short term thing and they still look to improve the pistol, great, but just shrapnel alone I doubt any Engineer will even notice.

I think they would need to bump up the proc rate if they did this but I think it’s in line with the power level of what they think adepts should be at.

The pistol auto needs to be reevaluated anyway with that short bleed and garbage direct dmg.

Disastro.4086:

Adamantium.3682:

Disastro.4086:

Now if the pistol AOE component of a shot could proc shrapnel that would be different.

I honestly hope they don’t do this, it would be a terrible bandaid fix. Pistol shot is already a very short bleed, this would give a 1 in 15 chance to apply 1 more bleed. 1 in 15. Sure it’s better than nothing (kind of) but the reason why I say I hope it doesn’t happen because it would be the kind of thing that they do and think it’s a fix then leave it alone. I would rather them not do this at all and continue looking at it. If it’s a short term thing and they still look to improve the pistol, great, but just shrapnel alone I doubt any Engineer will even notice.

I think they would need to bump up the proc rate to 25% if they did this but I think it’s in line with the power level of what they think adepts should be at.

I have to disagree. Adept traits should not be build defining but they should at the very least be noticeable. If the pistol #1 could proc Shrapnel I would challenge anyone to actually notice it happening. Also, LOL it’s not 1 in 15. What a noob thing for me to say. Still, every 6-7 shots you get an extra bleed. That’s not good.

For goodness sakes look at the 5 points Firearms trait. 1 in 3 crits you’re getting a bleed. 25% proc chance for a single bleed stack is certainly in line with what Adept should be.

EDIT:

Disastro.4086:

The pistol auto needs to be reevaluated anyway with that short bleed and garbage direct dmg.

This part I certainly agree with, and I always run pistol.

I have a question regarding the “Grenadier”-Trait.
With the recent increase of the untraited bomb radius I feel that every kit is viable untraited except the grenade kit. Personally I’d prefer if the third grenade would go to base, and the “Grenadier”-Trait gets changed by merging it with CD reduction and the range increase.
Who do you feel about it?

Teutos.8620:

I have a question regarding the “Grenadier”-Trait.
With the recent increase of the untraited bomb radius I feel that every kit is viable untraited except the grenade kit. Personally I’d prefer if the third grenade would go to base, and the “Grenadier”-Trait gets changed by merging it with CD reduction and the range increase.
Who do you feel about it?

I certainly agree. Someone else mentioned it in this rapidly growing thread, but I very much think we should move away from traits only affecting 1 skill. Most traits in this game affect a group of skills, like banners, gadgets, signets, etc. To my knowledge we are the only profession that has traits (and quite a few at that) that effect just 1 skill at a time.

That, along with the inferiority of our main hand weapons, I think contributes most to the lack of build diversity. I mean how diverse can your build really be if just using the Flamethrower pretty much requires 40 points? Or the Grenade Kit requiring 30? The fact that we more or less need kits is one problem, but the traits that they suck up is another entirely.

Lowest Animal.8014:

JonPeters.5630:

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Shrapnel is a VERY weak trait. 15% chance for one stack of bleed that only procts in bombs or nades so it doesn’t even help the paltry pistol auto attack or any other non explosive kit. So, best case scenario is nade engineer (which is already pigeonholed 30 in explosives) spamming nades and every 3 attacks you get 1.35 extra bleed stack on average. Additionally, what condi nade engis lose if they want to keep IP is either Short Fuse or Enhance Performance. Trading either of these for Shrapnel is a HUGE nerf. As Ostricheggs said, this pushes condi engis further into bomb+nades apex build because it will probably be better to get your burning from the bomb kit and simply skipping IP altogether.

Um… Shrapnel is actually really strong for grenades. The bleed base length is 12 seconds, and often I run koi cakes with my engineer so I get 20 second bleeds whenever shrapnel procs. On normal might stacks, thats roughly 2k total damage per shrapnel proc which happens on average at least 1 every 2 throws. Thats a lot of damage for a 10 point trait.

Plyte.8130:

Lowest Animal.8014:

JonPeters.5630:

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Shrapnel is a VERY weak trait. 15% chance for one stack of bleed that only procts in bombs or nades so it doesn’t even help the paltry pistol auto attack or any other non explosive kit. So, best case scenario is nade engineer (which is already pigeonholed 30 in explosives) spamming nades and every 3 attacks you get 1.35 extra bleed stack on average. Additionally, what condi nade engis lose if they want to keep IP is either Short Fuse or Enhance Performance. Trading either of these for Shrapnel is a HUGE nerf. As Ostricheggs said, this pushes condi engis further into bomb+nades apex build because it will probably be better to get your burning from the bomb kit and simply skipping IP altogether.

Um… Shrapnel is actually really strong for grenades. The bleed base length is 12 seconds, and often I run koi cakes with my engineer so I get 20 second bleeds whenever shrapnel procs. On normal might stacks, thats roughly 2k total damage per shrapnel proc which happens on average at least 1 every 2 throws. Thats a lot of damage for a 10 point trait.

Yes it’s good with grenades, and ONLY grenades.

If this IP to master move happens I’ll either keep IP (I run nades/toolkit/rocket boots right now) and lose short fuse for shrap, which kinda stinks, or switch to bombs+nades and lose toolkit and dump IP.

Plyte.8130:

Lowest Animal.8014:

JonPeters.5630:

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Shrapnel is a VERY weak trait. 15% chance for one stack of bleed that only procts in bombs or nades so it doesn’t even help the paltry pistol auto attack or any other non explosive kit. So, best case scenario is nade engineer (which is already pigeonholed 30 in explosives) spamming nades and every 3 attacks you get 1.35 extra bleed stack on average. Additionally, what condi nade engis lose if they want to keep IP is either Short Fuse or Enhance Performance. Trading either of these for Shrapnel is a HUGE nerf. As Ostricheggs said, this pushes condi engis further into bomb+nades apex build because it will probably be better to get your burning from the bomb kit and simply skipping IP altogether.

Um… Shrapnel is actually really strong for grenades. The bleed base length is 12 seconds, and often I run koi cakes with my engineer so I get 20 second bleeds whenever shrapnel procs. On normal might stacks, thats roughly 2k total damage per shrapnel proc which happens on average at least 1 every 2 throws. Thats a lot of damage for a 10 point trait.

It’s good with grenades, yes, but that’s about it. The point is that Jon suggested this trait is valuable for anyone looking for condition damage, and that’s just not true.

Adamantium.3682:

Teutos.8620:

I have a question regarding the “Grenadier”-Trait.
With the recent increase of the untraited bomb radius I feel that every kit is viable untraited except the grenade kit. Personally I’d prefer if the third grenade would go to base, and the “Grenadier”-Trait gets changed by merging it with CD reduction and the range increase.
Who do you feel about it?

I certainly agree. Someone else mentioned it in this rapidly growing thread, but I very much think we should move away from traits only affecting 1 skill. Most traits in this game affect a group of skills, like banners, gadgets, signets, etc. To my knowledge we are the only profession that has traits (and quite a few at that) that effect just 1 skill at a time.

That, along with the inferiority of our main hand weapons, I think contributes most to the lack of build diversity. I mean how diverse can your build really be if just using the Flamethrower pretty much requires 40 points? Or the Grenade Kit requiring 30? The fact that we more or less need kits is one problem, but the traits that they suck up is another entirely.

This. But please don’t “fix” it by making more traits “work” like Kit Refinement where you get punished for using more than one of the skills it’s supposed to buff.

shrapnel procs on the exploding part of pistol auto attack, i have tested it on the golems in pvp just an hour ago.
and i can understand IP nerf, it was the same as dhuumfire for necro and it is a grandmaster trait for them

TriskaiX.7014:

shrapnel procs on the exploding part of pistol auto attack, i have tested it on the golems in pvp just an hour ago.
and i can understand IP nerf, it was the same as dhuumfire for necro and it is a grandmaster trait for them

I just did the same and never got it to proc when I posted to double check. You sure you don’t have sigils/pistol piercing or something else triggering it?

ah yes, could be i had earth sigil, forgot to check if i had that…
and how could anyone misread those things on a golem standing still?

TriskaiX.7014:

ah yes, could be i had earth sigil, forgot to check if i had that…
and how could anyone misread those things on a golem standing still?

I bet it was sharpshooter(5pt firearms) triggering the bleed you saw. Bleed on crit trait from the AoE of the shot. As you’ll notice the duration on the bleed is short and the one provided by shrapnel is 13 seconds.

Berengar.6951:

Plyte.8130:

Um… Shrapnel is actually really strong for grenades. The bleed base length is 12 seconds, and often I run koi cakes with my engineer so I get 20 second bleeds whenever shrapnel procs. On normal might stacks, thats roughly 2k total damage per shrapnel proc which happens on average at least 1 every 2 throws. Thats a lot of damage for a 10 point trait.

Yes it’s good with grenades, and ONLY grenades.

If this IP to master move happens I’ll either keep IP (I run nades/toolkit/rocket boots right now) and lose short fuse for shrap, which kinda stinks, or switch to bombs+nades and lose toolkit and dump IP.

Im in the same place, Berengar.

I disagree on Shrapnel being strong even using grenades. Yes, the condition length is very good but the average is actually just over 1 in 2 throws or 90% chance of proct in two throws with the granade kit (0.15*6=0.9) assuming they all hit. The challenge of conditions has always been balancing damage versus duration. Damage per tick always wins out because it ends fights faster and in the case of intelligent opponents or even mobs that can actually heal or cleanse it creates more pressure and less time to act. 2K dmg over 20 seconds breaks down to 100 dmg/sec, assuming the opponent doesn’t interact with it with things like condi removal or condi reduction. Sure, you can argue that it adds to the bleed stacks that you get from other sources but I would respond that those other sources of bleeds work just fine without that one extra stack every 2.22.. grenade attacks. My analysis is that one stack of bleed every 2+ attacks is largely negligible outside of an sufficiently long fight where the opponent does not interact with it.

Teutos.8620:

I have a question regarding the “Grenadier”-Trait.
With the recent increase of the untraited bomb radius I feel that every kit is viable untraited except the grenade kit. Personally I’d prefer if the third grenade would go to base, and the “Grenadier”-Trait gets changed by merging it with CD reduction and the range increase.
Who do you feel about it?

This, the point investment is too high just to make one specific kit our main damage one. Grenadier is a must have if you want to use grenade, A flamethrower build has to invest heavily in Firearms.
We are the elementalists of science, we use every kit/attunement we have at our disposal to keep our damage and support running so why doesn’t our trait line look like that of an elementalist? They can build around Fire/Earth/Water/Air but end up taking a bit of each for all the sweet damage increases and they don’t have to invest heavily into one line to make a specific attunement worth using.

Right now as engineer, I can’t play grenade without grenadier so I’m stuck with grenades and two unbuffed kits that I use only for one of two skills because I can’t invest points in them. I’m not investing much points in damage increases like the Ele but instead in must-have traits for one specific kit.

My suggestion is give the untraited grenade kit 3 grenades and change grenadier to just 25% more range then move it to Master, that way Grenade kit becomes viable in any build and you can actually build for something else without worrying about having no ranged option, then make Flamethrower or Bombs our main damage kits so there’s more risk/reward playing these than grenades.

And rework that kitten kit refinement trait, it’s completely useless as it is now when it should be the Elemental Attunement of the Engineer.

About the nerf on Vigor, I wouldn’t care as long as you also nerf permanent Vigor on the other classes because Vigor on Crit is a lot easier to achieve than Vigor on kit swap (which already requires to invest 20 points), I actually have to swap my kits when I want Vigor unlike the no-brainer constant Vigor on Crit.

I’d also like to see the Healing turret Toolbelt skill Regenerating Mist reworked because it’s redundant, we already get regeneration and a better water field from the turret itself but no self healing skill. Dropping the healing turret in a party is like pressing F2 as a guardian, the only difference is that the guardian also has a selfheal.
I use my turret to cleanse conditions on allies, to heal them, to blast my fire fields, sometimes it even dies before I can detonate it, the turret itself is awesome but your always lagging behind the rest of your group in term of life because they receive your heals then can use their own heals after that.
My suggestion is remove the self heal from the Healing turret drop, keep the regeneration, overcharge and regeneration for party healing and rework the toolbelt skill so that it becomes your selfheal like the medkit one.

TriskaiX.7014:

shrapnel procs on the exploding part of pistol auto attack, i have tested it on the golems in pvp just an hour ago.
and i can understand IP nerf, it was the same as dhuumfire for necro and it is a grandmaster trait for them

i agree with the example of dhuumfire, but it’s an example with a powerful CD class, that can easily spam bleeding and poison and add torment. we can spam with granade bleeding and posion only… but if we want to inflict burning we can take IP, or use other kit, like FT and Bombs.

Shrapnel in my opinion is bit tricky… a good goal can be make it viable for more kit and build… here some ideas:

- on explosion 1 stack of bleeding 100% cooldown of 0.5 sec or a cooldown of 1 sec with more duration. (in this way is always an explosive tool, but it can be used with same results with bombs, grenades and pistols – if allowed ) it’s the best and traditional idea..

another idea, but with big changes… switch this trait and renamed it, and insert it in the tool traits. it can become a very versatile and powerful upgrade during the use of all kits: it can follow the same idea behind some of the elementalist traits, for example the trait can have a different effect for every kit:
same as shrapnel for grenade.
for bombs, same as shrapnel but with 45% (and we still have a difference caused by 3 stack of vulnerability instead of 1)
torment for FT (% and duration have to be calculated)
weakness for Wrench (or torment depending on the goal of the weapon)
for elixir gun is a bit tricky, i can spam regeneration or might with bonuncing effect, or deal condition damage, so bleed or torment, or another option every hit can heal like the water staff of eles)

p.s. the idea of create traits that can work in a specific way for every kit and place them in the last line can be a great idea, and also few spots of other lines now can be free for new good traits based on other builds not concerning kits… for example gadgets and basic weapon (turrets have ye a lot of traits to support them, so the problem i think it’s something else, probably about the game mechanism and the cooldown and rough damage)

what do you think guys?

What exactly are we supposed to burn to get Infused Precision again? Juggernaut, Fireforged trigger, or modified ammunition?

Can’t do. I suppose of those three, juggernaut is the most optional.. but the flamethrower build including modified ammunition is more trait-locked than ever right now.

Forget powered shoes. I feel like I’m in an old-school wow talent tree here. 69/70 talent points spoken for, with an intriguing choice between +2 hit and +1% hp left over.

Maskaganda.2043:

Ision.3207:

But Pistol #1 is in a very bad place. This skill desperately needs either 1 more second of bleed, or a good 5% to 7% increase to its direct damage.

both are bad options in my opinion.
plainly buffing autoattacks and increasing the power of skills overall is a bad move when the general consensus is that some toning down is necessary.
besides, by giving just a flat increase like this you’d be buffing already strong builds like bomb/nades along with it.

like I said before, I think a solution would be to buff or remake coated bullets. make it work better over all pistol skills, add another effect.. something.

Something is weird in your logic, I disagree strongly.

Buffing pistol and rifle will not be buffing already strong nade/bombs builds. Theses builds are strong because they are using grenades/bombs, and then when you are using it, your are not using your gun. kits are like are weapons swap.

As an exemple, if we follow this logic, pick the warrior and just say than since his longsword is OP, then made his longbow subpar because he can swap.

This is an exemple, I dont feel GS especialy OP, but that mean if nades/bombs are OP, they should be balanced, but not by nerfing to ground pistol/rifles, which end to be here we already are today, limiting other builds who dont uses nade/bombs.

Traits manipulation will not improve our weapons, unless a complete rework, and even then, it will put more mess into engi traits. Buffing pistol/rifle is more natural and open onto more builds.

We should have an answer from JonPeters to know if they have considered it.

I’ve thrown this idea in another thread, but I’ll copy/paste it here to keep the ideas, feedback, and suggestions rolling.
::Re-working some moves to better fit and define the roles and usefulness of all kits::

Grenades for long distance condition spam and support:
Freeze grenade creates a 5 second ice field. (reduce to 1 grenade, 2 when traited)
Flash bomb a stun move and blast finisher (reduce to 1 grenade and increase CD)

Tool Belt Skill Grenade Barrage:
Throw ONE of Every type grenade to cause bleed, blind, chill, and poison. (launch 200)
Balanced by spreading the field placement the farther its thrown, and remove one “regular” grenade unless traited.

Flamethrower to be a mix of channeling condition pressure damage and CC:
Flame jet: cause burning on first and last tick.
Smoke Vent: stun move?
Toolbelt skill: Duration reduced to 6 seconds.. All attacks cause burning and blind

Elixir Gun could be improved by adding more effects to…
-fumigate: Also cause torment …. or chance to grant allies 1 stack of might and protection on condition cleanse.
-Elixir F: Also grant quickness besides swiftness

Toolkit:
Thwack: chance to cause knockdown on opponent with conditions (5% per condition).
Pry bar: chance to launch opponent with conditions (5% per condition)
Throw Wench: Cause knockdown

……Can’t be that crazy to think this aggressively?