Guild Wars 2

CriSPeH.8512:

Yeah glad to see all the optimism.
Its unfortunate to see what the Devs thought process is, they clearly do not know or care about the actually flaws of the Engineer and are more interested in the most popular QQ about a single aspect of the profession.

Really? Barrage+Barrage is TOO powerfull? A burst that requires you to be ontop of the target and FULL GC to pull of the numbers they spit out. 24k give me a break. A Thief can do that with a macro key, then stealth speed stomp you and wait to do it again. Its AoE sure but to its own detriment, that just means if there are other mobs/pets/enemies around that your damage will be diluted between all of them.

I don’t want to complain too much since this is a sub free game and I already feel like I have got my moneys worth out of it. Nerfing KR will do nothing more than kitten ppl off for a week or 2 then they will find another backasswards way to combine our mess of skills and traits into some new combo for ppl to complain about instead of figure out how to counter.

Devs I don’t think you are giving equal and just attention to all aspects of your game, you spend much more time and effort on the key classes that every MMO has and fail to fully refine the class you decided to rush in at the last minute.You mention for a 10 point Trait KR is too powerful but neglect the fact that you would need 30 points in explosion to get such high damage with barragex2. You seem to be more worried about addressing the weekly QQs than you are about finally bringing all your games professions up to release ready.

I agree completely. If they’re worried its too strong for a 10pt trait, move it. Switch it with something useless like….I dont know…..our 30pt trait that gives us +50% endurance regen. It’ll be interesting to see how much utillity we get out of the new KR, but I personally think this is a huge knee jerk reaction to a spec thats not as widely used as they think.

Poor Engineers!
A Dev finally responds to a post in the Engineer forums and we quickly dilute the thread with pages of paragraph arguments in such high hopes that they are still reading and taking into account what is being said.

The Dev only responded to try and cover-up his mispoken advice about using the Thumper TB skill to defend yourself when you turret is down. (The one skill that would equal the patheticness of the Medkit KR proc if it was not for the blast finisher)
He apparantly meant that using the overcharge skill to knockdown all enemies around once is what makes up for the loss of everything you lose for taking a turret.

Such high hopes for change when all that happened was a Dev politician was trying to cover for giving a bs answer to a question he didnt really know.

I am glad to see my turrets buffed (i love using them in PvP) and this overall felt like it was going in the right direction.

Then I listened to the Mesmer talks…

It was like someone brought in their big steak dinner, all of their faces lit up as they sat up straighter ready to dig in. As they talked it was like everything before was boring kiddie stuff that none of them really cared about. I would feel bad for the guardians but they are already a pretty solid profession (I know they lack in places but in comparison to the engineers)

You know why all of that is? A single line told me why.

“…You both play Mesmers…” said the developer to the two bottom interviewers.

From then on all I heard was how they were planning on adding a new awesome ability to this fun class and how it was going to work with it’s current skills and how it sounds overpowered but “oh well, we’ll just wait and see”. They all were excited and awake and really into their discussion.

But when I looked back at the engineer it felt like they just didn’t care. There was only one question asked, and although it seemed fairly critical, it was asked with so little knowledge of the class that even after the developer brushed it off no one knew that they had been brushed off.

TLDR: sigh I starting to feel like the engineer is that red-haired unwanted stepchild (no offense meant to any red-haired stepchildren, I’m just using an analogy my grandpa uses). But not just us, the ranger has it really bad too from what I have heard, heck even the guardian (who lucky has been pretty solid since I started playing) feels like a profession that they just aren’t inspired to work on.

Honestly I think that’s as much an issue on the side of the interviewers, because the people doing it (and I don’t know how people are chosen/volunteer for these) looked to be from one particular side of things—and I guess the main interviewer had questions people sent in but it’s so different reading from a prompt and from actually understanding the issue and being able to better flesh out your inquiry. The Mesmer section saw the other two start speaking up and grilling about very specific things, while I didn’t really see much follow-up from them in the Engineer section (presumably, none of them play one and are intimately aware of common concerns).

I wouldn’t say they’re not inspired, since they’ve got a long list of things they’re working on (contrast the Guardian has… nothing. And they are in a better place but so are Mesmers). But before they look at unique tweaks for us like GS piercing for Mesmers (which hits other classes but I think we have the most common beams) or improving a niche trait they really need to plow through our issues.

I didn’t watch the whole video. Glad to see my speculation confirmed about the blank faces when engineer was discussed. Anet, do not ask non-engineer players for their feedback on the engineer!

State of the __ usually aren’t for the sake for feedback, and the interview wasn’t structured for them to give Anet balancing ideas—but ultimately the quality of an interview is largely on the interviewer, and if they ask shallow questions with no follow up we unfortunately don’t get any real information out of it. It seems like the best interview reps would be people who’ve done a variety of classes each enough to be deeply aware of their strengths, weaknesses, and playstyles.

Feedback was asked for, whether the format was for the sake of it or not.

Hep.1347:

The problem I have with the idea of nerfing anything on the Engineer right now is that the class is underpopulated and on the lower end in terms of what they give to a group. Nerfing the best build insinuates all builds will be considered balanced when they meet this post-nerf level, so you’re essentially taking an already unpopular class and taking away the most powerful thing about it.

Targeting the viable engineer builds that came anywhere close to thief warrior guardian mesmer standard operation and ineptly over-nerfing those engineer builds into extinction has been modus operandi since BWE1.

Engineer population speaks for itself.

Engineer needs the attentions of a brilliant heart transplant surgeon, instead we keep getting operated on by some random joe who once watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

The only hope for engineer is to get 8 class specialists added to the current balance team, this would also help with many other classes unique concerns.

Satisfying classes make every part of an MMO much better. Shirking a full sized balance team with individual class specialists as well a the generalists is the killer mistake most MMO’s can never recover from.

You cannot hide unfinished classes under more new content, players have to use the classes to do the content.

Mesmers already have a lot going for them, so i really wonder why they get all the fun new stuff.
how come some of those ideas weren’t used or the engineer, who still needs some defining abilitiesin groups since launch.

Kimbald.2697:

Mesmers already have a lot going for them, so i really wonder why they get all the fun new stuff.
how come some of those ideas weren’t used or the engineer, who still needs some defining abilitiesin groups since launch.

It appeared from this interview that they actually give a kitten about the mesmer because they play it, that’s why mesmer gets yet more new cool stuff. Engineer gets balanced based on the complaints non-engineers make about engineer (like please remove 100nades I don’t think engineer should have a burst spec). Because A-net has no knowledge & investment in the class themselves, they have nothing to weigh up the PM’s from friends against, so engineer only gets nerfs and tooltip fixes and blatantly obvious should have been in since pre-aplha kitten like, making sigils and weapons stats actually work (after 5 months).

I’ll say it again for the 1000th time since BWE1. Each and every class needs 1 specialist dev in addition to all the generalists on the balance team, so every class is guaranteed at least one voice that actually gives a kitten how each class evolves.

Let’s be honest about what the next patch is most likely to bring:

1. The complete nerfing of one of our only viable specs (100 nades).
2. A plethora of minor buffs to a bunch of lousy skills and utilities. No one will use them anyway.
3. A minor buff to some other weak kits that will still make them generally nonviable, but will cause certain engineer defenders to rush to boards and theorycraft how awesome these changes are going to be for the Engineer. None of these folks will post a video of these builds in action.

Conditions in general are getting buffed though, so I suspect Masks build will stay as viable as ever, tankcat also won’t get nerfed because it does such pitiful damage no one really cares about it.

Can we get the guy who designed CM dungeon. The bandits there are mostly engg’s and they are freaky strong (talking about your and your imba KD shotgun Sureshot).

Fingers crossed for Givers & runes condition duration to be fixed. If that was the only thing they fixed.

The do this I’m playing my Engineer again.

Give engineer the utility of a mesmer and we’re good to go.

Kimbald.2697:

Mesmers already have a lot going for them, so i really wonder why they get all the fun new stuff.
how come some of those ideas weren’t used or the engineer, who still needs some defining abilitiesin groups since launch.

The Mesmer already had a clear cut role from GW1, all Anet had to do was continue to build upon that role. Engineers are a new profession and Anet doesn’t have a clue what they want to do with us. They keep throwing this word versatility at the Engineer, but when they have already declared the Elementist the king of versatility; I can’t hep but wonder if Anet is being ignorant or stupid. We need a new role. Until the devs realize this, we will continue to not be able to fulfill our role or any roles; since any roles we could assign to ourselves are being overshadowed by other professions, that can just fulfill those roles better than we can.

I haven’t seen the statistics on Engi usage. Is it still an underplayed class? If so, why is ANet continuing to hold it down?

Jahiliyya.7095:

I haven’t seen the statistics on Engi usage. Is it still an underplayed class? If so, why is ANet continuing to hold it down?

We are the, self proclaimed, most underplayed class. I don’t think the overlords are holding us down intentionally, they are just in ignorance. They are so detached from their own game that they are going off of what the community says and right now the community is saying 100nades needs to go away. Which is fine, but their methods of “balancing” said builds brings all of us to question their methods. They get tunnel vision and are not seeing the big picture. Yes they may end up balancing that one build, but in the process they will bull doze many other builds to achieve their goals.

The consistent truth of all the engineer changes since BWE1 so far is that, the ‘cures’ applied by A-net are far more deadly than the diseases they were attempting to target.

Build diversity and roles for engineers were much better at BWE1 than they are now. Of course some changes have needed to happen, but not these changes. Instead far better thought out changes that actually had a consistent vision of what they want the class to be for.

The recent Kit Refinement failure is a classic example, it deeply hurt many of the builds that most needed help, while attempting to target but basically missing the build the devs were aiming at. What’s so frustrating is that there might be 30 better suggestions on our forums that would have worked instead.

Of course bug-fixes are a separate issue that need to happen also, but that list is still about the same size as at release with the notable exception of recently finally getting sigils and weapons stats to work for engineers.

Regarding balance change decisions I have no idea where the devs are soucing their engineer info, it’s pretty clear from the reluctant & desultory response during the interview that it’s certainly not from playing an engineer for themselves. What ever their source for engineer info actually is, it’s a horribly flawed, short-sighted and inaccurate source that is leading to terrible decisions.

The engineer we have is nothing like the mission statements for the engineer at all, and it gets less and less similar with each patch.

I am glad that the turrets are finally getting some love. Which means when this patch rolls out we all will need to try the changes to see if the turrets are finally effective.

It seems the problem is that in the upcomin patch 100 nades will be nerfed while turrets buffed, but turrets have sucked for so long that its near impossible to imagine them as viable and/or competitive. We have to wait until patch to see how much is changed before judging.

Penguin.5197:

It seems the problem is that in the upcomin patch 100 nades will be nerfed while turrets buffed, but turrets have sucked for so long that its near impossible to imagine them as viable and/or competitive. We have to wait until patch to see how much is changed before judging.

Right. Turrets will probably not be viable after this patch, or the next. My guess is they’ll probably buff them slowly over the next year or so.

Kalan.9705:

Regarding balance change decisions I have no idea where the devs are soucing their engineer info, it’s pretty clear from the reluctant & desultory response during the interview that it’s certainly not from playing an engineer for themselves. What ever their source for engineer info actually is, it’s a horribly flawed, short-sighted and inaccurate source that is leading to terrible decisions.

I think the “desultory” attitude ArenaNet had was more toward the interview process than the Engineer itself.

The interviewers didn’t press very hard on specifics. I don’t know how you can be told they have 2 pages of notes in front of them and then sit there in silence while one of the other devs nudges the guy to start reading some of them off. Yeah, one of the guys asked about limiting RNGs with elixirs and questioned the need for turrets, but there was a lot left on the table before they decided to move on. They really just need to have one person for each class involved in these things, at last on one side of the table or the other.

I was left wanting more. 10 days is a lot of time for speculation.

Wait, when is the march update again?

March 26th is the supposed patch day.

Don’t other classes have things like 1000 blades and such? Whats wrong with 100 nades?
In any case, I won’t believe they care about balance, or know how to count until they fix staff elementalists having 1600 range by default. And if they don’t know what I’m referring to, they can’t read either.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I don’t know how you can be told they have 2 pages of notes in front of them and then sit there in silence while one of the other devs nudges the guy to start reading some of them off.

Easy. Ask the devs about a class you don’t play or care about and voila! Instant blank face!

XerxesBlack.5892:

I am glad to see my turrets buffed (i love using them in PvP) and this overall felt like it was going in the right direction.

Then I listened to the Mesmer talks…

It was like someone brought in their big steak dinner, all of their faces lit up as they sat up straighter ready to dig in. As they talked it was like everything before was boring kiddie stuff that none of them really cared about. I would feel bad for the guardians but they are already a pretty solid profession (I know they lack in places but in comparison to the engineers)

You know why all of that is? A single line told me why.

“…You both play Mesmers…” said the developer to the two bottom interviewers.

From then on all I heard was how they were planning on adding a new awesome ability to this fun class and how it was going to work with it’s current skills and how it sounds overpowered but “oh well, we’ll just wait and see”. They all were excited and awake and really into their discussion.

But when I looked back at the engineer it felt like they just didn’t care. There was only one question asked, and although it seemed fairly critical, it was asked with so little knowledge of the class that even after the developer brushed it off no one knew that they had been brushed off.

TLDR: sigh I starting to feel like the engineer is that red-haired unwanted stepchild (no offense meant to any red-haired stepchildren, I’m just using an analogy my grandpa uses). But not just us, the ranger has it really bad too from what I have heard, heck even the guardian (who lucky has been pretty solid since I started playing) feels like a profession that they just aren’t inspired to work on.

It would have been great to have an interviewer whose main is an Engineer.

it would have been great to have interviewers with actual experience hosting interviews.

Sounds good on paper…

I would be concerned with a targeted nerf to double barrage. Seems to be many classes have similar combos, and they are easier to pull off, and I don’t see them getting targeted nerfs.

It would be great to have interviewers who prepare proper searching questions, with follow ups, for all topics.

yea… the balance guy really had no idea nor looked like he cared, he’s eyes only lid when talking about ele and mesmer.

btw how can you compare ride of the lighting to have 4 dodges in spirit of the watch ?

Not to mention we have to blow a utility just for that 4 evade. Anyways, Im pretty sure everyone here has established most of what Karl said was scripted and a waste of time, heavily biased etc… . I cant really think of anything else worth stating, but those of you who care more than I, get in touch with grouch n give him feedback that he would appreciate, not just flaming please. As it is, Sotg isnt even worth watching, its just hearing crap we already know.

A much better comparison would have been Jump Shot. It doesn’t go quite as far, but it also deals far more damage. No class has anything quite like RTL (I suppose double shadow shot is a much closer comparison, but again – no damage).

ok, actually watched the vid, and not just read the notes, in the op.
wow. give up on engineer ever getting fixed.

They don’t even seem aware of what the problems in engineer design even are.

…And listening to the rest. That buff to confusing images, and spatial surge. rofl. as if I didnt have more then enough reasons to give up on the engineer. When the interviewer flat out calls you out for making something OP. rofl.

Karl McLain.5604:

Cero.5132:

I also listened to it but…
But I cringed in pain, when Karl said that, when you place your thumber turret you could still defend yourself with your toolbelt skill. I think he got some stuff confused there.

Sorry if I misspoke, I was more referring to the overcharge ability that blows enemies back, the next time the turret fires.

I really like the discussion moving forward on improving Engineers. I love mine, been playing it since BWE1, and haven’t even had interest in an alt past level 10 yet, but I can’t deny that some improvements would put us on the same level as other professions in a lot of the ways listed.

If I could add one suggestion for turrets while we’re talking about the overcharge skill. Could we please make it so when you use the overcharge it works immediately? Yes this would make a possibility for 2 turret attacks in a very short time but so what? It would take a lot of micro managing, and even when you can pull it off it’s not something I would ever classify as overpowered, as the basic turret attacks don’t affect the battle much. I think this would be a fantastic quality of life improvement to turrets, letting us use the AOE heal + condition removal from Healing Turret the instant we need it, knocking someone down right when we need it with Thumper/Rocket, and instant blind and smoke field with Flame Turret, or even instant daze with Net Turret.

The over charges are nice and all, but the fact that we can’t really predict when they will happen with any amount of consistency really limit the effectiveness (unless we’re staring at the turrets and using a stopwatch… which I hope we can all agree should not be an acceptable option).

^^^ Yes.

I’m really not going to bother keeping track of how many seconds it’s been since a turret last fired. I’ve got too much else going on during a battle.

“Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?

As an engi that uses turrets for everything (PvP, PvE, WvW) the only thing I want is for their health pool+toughness increased. They don’t need more damage, and we DON’T need a turret kit, the sound of one embarrasses me.

I want taking out an enji’s turrets to be a conscious decision in PvP, as they are now people just ignore them and they still die to AOE. Boss AOE in PvE is enough to bring turrets down as fast as you can put them up.

Other than keeping them alive longer they only other thing I believe needs improvement is their responsiveness, as in their over-charged abilities. Say you are using healing turret and you need condition cleansing ASAP, a good 3 seconds pass by most of the time before you get the much needed help.

Just some simple suggestions for ANet. Wow devs realize that a simple AoE will wipe out all 4 totems, therefore they made them to be unAoEable. Players need to target the totem manually to kill it with 1 hit. And of course my main was a shaman and GW2 made me quit WoW.

I’m quite excited to see what kind of changes they can do to the turrets. To be honest, turrets and gadgets really need some love.

Zaviel.1245:

As an engi that uses turrets for everything (PvP, PvE, WvW) the only thing I want is for their health pool+toughness increased. They don’t need more damage, and we DON’T need a turret kit, the sound of one embarrasses me.

I want taking out an enji’s turrets to be a conscious decision in PvP, as they are now people just ignore them and they still die to AOE. Boss AOE in PvE is enough to bring turrets down as fast as you can put them up.

Other than keeping them alive longer they only other thing I believe needs improvement is their responsiveness, as in their over-charged abilities. Say you are using healing turret and you need condition cleansing ASAP, a good 3 seconds pass by most of the time before you get the much needed help.

Don’t you feel that your mobility is hindered by your turrets and their incredibly long cooldowns?

I would like to see a few things:

- Turrets benefit from the Engineer’s stats. (Power/toughness/vitality/etc)
- Turret placement cooldown reduced to 5 seconds when picked up.
- Turret cooldown remain high when detonated/destroyed.
- Turrets should not be affected by AoE
- Adrenal Implant replaced with “Empowered Turrets” which gives a turret specific boon when healed (varied internal cooldown for each)

For instance, using Smack or Throw Wrench on Rifle Turret would give Might for 10 seconds to nearby allies – 10 second cooldown.

I also played a Shaman in WoW and GW2 also tore me from WoW… so I am right there with Steven Chow.

Turrets shouldn’t be only for bunkering (as some claim they are), but open to build diversity. We have six skills using turrets and each brings something different to the table. If we are to be mid-range skirmishers with a knack for controlling distance, turrets should help us with that, not lock us into a set perimeter once placed.

But that’s just my opinion.

http://youtu.be/9Zy3Sci_JPo my hastily made video detailing my suggestions for improving turrets. I’m only just starting out on Youtube, so be gentle. :P

I think a lot of the problem falls under arenanet as a company.

Companys like riot games allow their employees to interface with their community at all times of the day (or night) you can find developers of various parts of the game even the company president occasionally chiming in or disussing or even DEBATING balance changes or future plans of the game. The company has its entire team knee deep in its community to build a stronger community relationship.

This works to accomplish a few things.
The players feel like they’ve been listened to.
they get answers faster.
Devs get a broader understanding of what their community wants and needs, instead of simply going off of what “QA’s” tell them (quality assurance).
Devs are able to explain the changes they made and why they made them in great detail, often calming an otherwise over-reactive angry mob of players at why X was nerfed.

One of the things i found interesting in this interview, i cant remember the actually dialogue but it went something along the lines of “i catch him wanting to talk on the forums all the time, we read em…but if we are reading them and responding that means we’re not working on the game getting stuff out to you faster”. Well…i see riot devs make time and are on LONG after their work hours are over…sometimes all the way untill 4 am Pacific. They take their work home with them, its what they’re truley passionate about. I dont know if arenanet doesnt support this, doesnt allow this, or doesnt hire people with the same dedication for their game. I cant really say, i can only go off of what i see.

But, i’m sure the devs have seen me quote SOE head John Smedly, where he said he wished he set it up so his devs had a closer relationship with its community and listened to what it wanted instead of assuming things. I just hope the heads of arenanet change their policys, as they are out dated…and other game companys are evolving to be more involved with their community. Arenanet says they are, but so far they’re all talk…other companys are actually doing this.

Behmen.4360:

Don’t you feel that your mobility is hindered by your turrets and their incredibly long cooldowns?

I would like to see a few things:

- Turrets benefit from the Engineer’s stats. (Power/toughness/vitality/etc)
- Turret placement cooldown reduced to 5 seconds when picked up.
- Turret cooldown remain high when detonated/destroyed.
- Turrets should not be affected by AoE
- Adrenal Implant replaced with “Empowered Turrets” which gives a turret specific boon when healed (varied internal cooldown for each)

For instance, using Smack or Throw Wrench on Rifle Turret would give Might for 10 seconds to nearby allies – 10 second cooldown.

I also played a Shaman in WoW and GW2 also tore me from WoW… so I am right there with Steven Chow.

Turrets shouldn’t be only for bunkering (as some claim they are), but open to build diversity. We have six skills using turrets and each brings something different to the table. If we are to be mid-range skirmishers with a knack for controlling distance, turrets should help us with that, not lock us into a set perimeter once placed.

But that’s just my opinion.

I’m fine with this.

Not very optimistic myself. But this is one of the later stages of what happens when a class becomes woefully underplayed. The voice of criticism and feedback fades because there are flat out to few people left to vent it. And this leads to a vicious cycle.

Issues around class -> less people play -> less attention from the devs because its a minority -> even less people play -> etc

And you end up with interviews like this where out of 6 people present, no one really had a clue about this profession. And 3 of these people were devs. I’ve seen plenty of game devs get questioned without preps, on the spot, and they respond much better.

I’m sorry but this interview, the response on Engineer in particular (there was much better dialogue and enthuesiasm with f.e. Mesmer) felt like people were tapdancing so hard around the issue. Either covering up not really knowing what to say, or covering up that they dont have anything to say. Such as shame because the first response when they started on Engineer sounded more confident.

Behmen.4360:

Zaviel.1245:

As an engi that uses turrets for everything (PvP, PvE, WvW) the only thing I want is for their health pool+toughness increased. They don’t need more damage, and we DON’T need a turret kit, the sound of one embarrasses me.

I want taking out an enji’s turrets to be a conscious decision in PvP, as they are now people just ignore them and they still die to AOE. Boss AOE in PvE is enough to bring turrets down as fast as you can put them up.

Other than keeping them alive longer they only other thing I believe needs improvement is their responsiveness, as in their over-charged abilities. Say you are using healing turret and you need condition cleansing ASAP, a good 3 seconds pass by most of the time before you get the much needed help.

Don’t you feel that your mobility is hindered by your turrets and their incredibly long cooldowns?

I would like to see a few things:

- Turrets benefit from the Engineer’s stats. (Power/toughness/vitality/etc)
- Turret placement cooldown reduced to 5 seconds when picked up.
- Turret cooldown remain high when detonated/destroyed.
- Turrets should not be affected by AoE
- Adrenal Implant replaced with “Empowered Turrets” which gives a turret specific boon when healed (varied internal cooldown for each)

For instance, using Smack or Throw Wrench on Rifle Turret would give Might for 10 seconds to nearby allies – 10 second cooldown.

I also played a Shaman in WoW and GW2 also tore me from WoW… so I am right there with Steven Chow.

Turrets shouldn’t be only for bunkering (as some claim they are), but open to build diversity. We have six skills using turrets and each brings something different to the table. If we are to be mid-range skirmishers with a knack for controlling distance, turrets should help us with that, not lock us into a set perimeter once placed.

But that’s just my opinion.

http://youtu.be/9Zy3Sci_JPo my hastily made video detailing my suggestions for improving turrets. I’m only just starting out on Youtube, so be gentle. :P

On the contrary I don’t have any issue with turret mobility. I use turrets to keep pressure on a place while I am freed up to go elsewhere. My glass cannon turret enji rocks face in tPvP by bunkering down home point for example.

Mobility is for gadgets (though they need more love than turrets,) point pressure is for turrets.

Now the problem is that developers are spending too much time listening to top players and we get this elististic design philosophy and more and more “learn 2 play” comments. Everybody should understand that comments like “it is a learn to play issue” are not going to lure more new players to pvp. We need to do everything in order to keep existing players still motivated and interested about pvp and bring in new players.

I see that this possible with:
1. Much better rewards:
- aka “pvp legendaries” = special pvp armor and skins, apparel based on pvp tokens or your rank
- getting Black Lion Keys and/or similar items from pvp success
2. Better game balance
- This is difficult. These forums are full of both good and bad ideas. Some posts here have been very well-thought and balanced, yet ignored by the developers months after months. We need some big changes as well, tiny changes, like we have seen in the past won’t be enough. Some forum posts are obvious “more goodies for me” posts, bad suggestions which would lead to more balance problems
- SotG interview had two top mesmer players. Xeph had some very good comments about the game balance and I think Anet developers should listen to him, but not just him. Mesmers are in top 3, both in pvp and WvWvW and do very well in pve as well, basically mandatory in all parts of the game. Yet for some reason the developers were thinking mesmers needed buffing!?
- The developers could easily contact some well-balanced players from the GW2 community e.g. using these forums.
3. More Game Modes
- guild-vs-guild should make a comeback. I would imagine this as a small scale WvWvW, where the objective is to defeat the enemy guild lord NPC, who resides in a tower/keep: no problems with culling nor horrible lag. Max 10-20 players per side + NPCs.
- as long as there is so excessive burst and the cooldown of the defensive skills are so long and many game mechanisms lack direct counter, 3vs3, 4vs4 or 5vs5 etc team death match wouldn’t work well. 2-5 players syncing their fire at one target would lead to exceptionally fast deaths. The game would be more or less a reaction test. This could be fixed by capping the single skill damage to around 3k (or 6k to slow telegraphed attacks like warrior’s killshot) or giving diminishing returns if multiple enemies fire at same target at same time. Any better ideas how to make team death match viable?
4. There must be separate game queue for random and pre-made teams
- maybe implement it the Random Arenas (RA) and Team Arenas (TA) were in GW1: after consecutive 10 wins the RA team progressed to TA, facing premade groups
5. Leaderboards (coming)
6. Observer mode (coming)

But back to topic. Pvp should not be top priority. The player base is very small compared to WvWvW or pve. Engineers are still rare in the game. And almost everybody agrees that they would need more love. Some engineer traits are underpowered and should be reworked, but the biggest problem for new comers to engineer profession is the lack easy of direct damage. This could be most easily fixed by a flat 20% damage increase to all engineer weapon and kit attacks #1. Yes, add the direct damage to pistol #1, rifle #1, , tool kit #1, elixir gun #1, flamethower #1, bomb kit #1 and grenade #1 (bringing it close to what it was). And no damage chances to other skills. This would not make engineer overpowerful as attack #1 is just a form of sustained damage, not burst. 100blades warriors and elementalists could still dish more damage, so I don’t see the possible problem. If Anet does this at the same time when they nerf kit refinement, the engineer population would not be that angry.

Even after some buffing the turrets probably won’t still make big impact on WvWvW nor pvp, so I am kinda meh myself about this idea. Stationary automatically attacking game elements are very difficult to balance. You either make them too weak (current situation) or too powerful. Many engineer utility skills should have their cooldown reduced (60 s is too long), but I would be very careful to pack more utility to already semi-decent skills, because they could easily become too powerful. Engineer is already strong when it comes to Crowd Control (CC).

Chaba.5410:

Phineas Poe.3018:

I don’t know how you can be told they have 2 pages of notes in front of them and then sit there in silence while one of the other devs nudges the guy to start reading some of them off.

Easy. Ask the devs about a class you don’t play or care about and voila! Instant blank face!

Well that was kind of my point. Get people who care involved in the process. The players they chose to do this thing really only cared about minor peripheral issues with the Engineer (turrets, elixir RNG) yet completely grilled the developers on other class issues.

I think what was even worse was when they started talking about the Guardian, where none of the three players really seemed to care at all and were ready to move on the second the class was mentioned.

A little bird told me next patch will change game for many builds (this might be a bad thing though).
Theres good things to come and bad things, but the majority of things got me excited if they get implemented as rumoured.
I’d estimate about 30-40 bullet points (and thats not only tooltip or bug fixes!).

We need to stay flexible though and it won’t solve all of our problems, but some labour is being done behind the curtains.
Of course not everybody will be happy and never will.

Pannonica.5378:

A little bird told me next patch will change game for many builds (this might be a bad thing though).
Theres good things to come and bad things, but the majority of things got me excited if they get implemented as rumoured.
I’d estimate about 30-40 bullet points (and thats not only tooltip or bug fixes!).

We need to stay flexible though and it won’t solve all of our problems, but some labour is being done behind the curtains.
Of course not everybody will be happy and never will.

Where do you buy those little birds?

Those nest on you when you’re Sylvari naturally.
Not for sale!

Behmen.4360:

- Turret placement cooldown reduced to 5 seconds when picked up.

This is too short and would result in (forgive me for borrowing slang from WoW) turret twisting. People would pick up and drop turrets to force attacks. Net Turret attack every 5 seconds? Yes please.