Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why when a community of gamers find a way to tailor their skills and traits to be effective and fun and creative and unique, the devs feel the need to squash it. Isn’t that the point of the game? To create builds. It’s what GW1 was all about and I only assumed this one is too.

I love that this game is not WoW with its 1 accepted build and linear trees, rather a playground to play around in. But whenever we’re having too much fun on the monkey bars, patches come by, say we’ll hurt ourselves (or others), and turn the monkey bars into a railing 2ft off the ground….how fun.

Rather than destroying traits or skills that we find effective and fun, why don’t they focus their efforts on boosting those that are underutilized? Why destroy KR at all when instead you could perhaps give gadgets and turrets some love (they did 1/2 that)? Why mess with Ranger’s shortbow when instead their GS and LB should be improved? Instead of nerfing what we’ve discovered is successful, why not buff the things that aren’t? There are some traits people take not because they’re OP, but because the alternatives just aren’t that great…how bout some attention to those?

Foster the creativity this community has. Boost the desire to experiment with new builds, viable skills, and improved traits. Don’t punish success…reward us with new ways to be successful. Instead of “congratulations you found a unique way to synergize traits and abilities, time to remove that bit of fun,” how about “congratulations, glad you enjoy that, how about this new little gem?”

Now, I understand things need to be nerfed at times…I really do. But it seems that too often a nerf comes along and intentionally & directly impacts popular builds. Scan the forums and you’ll read that certain builds are popular because players feel there are so few viable builds available. So crushing a popular build to increase variety is a poor theory. Instead, give us more viable builds by improving underutilized aspects of each profession.

I’ve repeated myself here and I’m starting to ramble so I’ll stop. I’m not trying to call out the devs or bash them for their actions. I’m trying to understand why they feel the need to approach the game and its community from the “nerf what’s working” angle instead of “buff what’s not.”

I tried to understand them aswell. Why are they doing this? Just.. Why? I can’t find any good reason.

Ergo: I do not know why they do this.

I admit, I was confused when the few builds engineer’s have been pigeon holed into were cut down with the nerf of a single trait. But when a SINGLE trait defines so many of these builds I can see why the devs might have a problem with the profession.

If perhaps turrets took reduced damage from AoE, elixer U had no negative effects, grenade kit #1 skill was auto and not ground targeted and the use of melee weapons was introduced, we would see more diversity in our engineers.

The problem is they’re nerfing first and buffing later the class that everyone considers underpowered. It is currently the least played class. People have been kittening about thieves and mesmers since release and eles since they got buffed. They have yet to touch those classes. Instead they nerf a class where we dont use 6/10 of our skills in most builds. They attempt to buff turrets but dont realize the underlying problem with them (The huge amount of AoE destroys them. Long CDs make them not very useful. Mostly useless toolbelt skills to go with them while they’re on CD). They nerf our kite refinment which gave us our only option to be able to reproduce a burst that barely reaches what other classes can do (mesmer, thief, and eles) with a huge risk factor with it (having to stand inside of a person). I never see anyone complain about engineers yet we get nerfed every patch. I’m being serious. The least played, least complained about class gets nerfed every patch while the most complained about classes go untouched. I dont think any developers play engineer. Im starting to think they play Thief, Mesmer, and Ele. This is why they continue to leave them untouched and nerf the least played classes. They got one year to make this game’s PvP good. With the way the market is right now and games that are going to be released, if they dont do this the game’s pvp community will be gone. So far their attention to PvP and class balance has been very under par. I want this game to do well, but they dont seem to be handling it very well in a pvp regard. They seem to like PvE the most following by WvW. Hopefully these two aspects will keep the game alive.

^This

Sooo many times this, the frustration of respeccing every single patch and listening to other classes mocking my class is almost unbearable.

Seras.5702:

Rather than destroying traits or skills that we find effective and fun, why don’t they focus their efforts on boosting those that are underutilized?

That’s called power creeping and it’s a bad thing.

Firstly, we’re not that bad.

We can still put out decent numbers, our bunker options are decent and there are still burst builds beside 100nades. While we’re not as outstanding as other classes, we’re not Warriors, especially after the quickness nerf. Well, not yet. Hell, warriors aren’t even as bad as some of them would like you to believe.

The game isn’t broken guys. But I do have a problem with the way they adjust our class. It’s being done by people who don’t seem to play it. I’ve said it about the SotG interview too – they have no idea what we do. I predicted they’ll buff turrets in a disappointing manner because they don’t know what’s wrong with turrets in the first place. I think I was right.

I don’t think we need drastic buffs. We need changes that promote build diversity that MAKE SENSE. If they wanted to make turrets viable, they’d make them a lot more survivable or give them a lot lower cooldowns. Also, give them player-assisted targeting.

This just feels like a half-hearted attempt to quell the whining. Somewhat along the lines of “look guys, you can’t say we haven’t given you anything” before they turn their attention to some other class. Probably the warrior.

Until we get a class representative or at least someone on class balance or perhaps a dev with authority to play our kitten class, we’re not going to get jack in terms of useful changes. If you can’t live with that, I suggest you go roll something else or stop playing entirely.

Power Creeping is bad but doesn’t mean skills should be boring.

Banner giving +170 healing. WOOOOW I am sure it might provide SOME tiny bit of increase overall but….is there anything at all interesting about it? No.

Perhaps I should have posted this in the general discussion forum. But I posted it here in response the changes and discussions with regards to Engineers. However, my point holds true for all classes (which is why I mentioned Rangers too). I play a number of professions in this game and so I read the forums for multiple professions and it seems that every patch day there are accepted builds that are nerfed.

My point is that as opposed to nerfing what works, why not improve what doesn’t so that all professions can have a large variety to work with? Builds become popular because there are too few alternatives. Give us more alternatives instead of making builds unattractive.

@Seras.5702

The main problem with engineers is that there’s a huge amount of bugs to be addressed, major ones too, so if they ever buff they’d do it AFTER those bugs are addressed (provided those happen too), else there would be no way to balance, don’t get me wrong, I surely want gadgets improved as much as grandmaster traits, but to make turrets viable, as much as every other AI-controlled unit, they gotta improve their ideas in general.

I did post my suggestion on that matter btw https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Summoned-units-discussion/first#post1304965

You should understand that some build are just too good. Cases where there’s little chance for retaliation or the build just does too much damage. In those cases, things have to be nerfed.

Dirame.8521:

You should understand that some build are just too good. Cases where there’s little chance for retaliation or the build just does too much damage. In those cases, things have to be nerfed.

that’s acceptable.
If they do it for all professions in the same way of course.

What is annoying, is that they hurt builds that were anything but overpowered or bursty.
This patch pushed engineers more towards rather simple elixir builds, HGH and mostly the condition versions.
Many will keep a HGH power build, but still elixirs…

The only build that will get some attention as well, will be static discharge, because of the buff to rifle turret.
But turrets as a whole, didn’t get buffed enough to make a real difference.
Let a mob hit your turret, just test it… Now imagine that is a player with a brain and some ranged aoe.

Multi-kit builds got hit hard. The only non- healing kit with condition removal is now the EG. And that cooldown just got doubled…
Not to mention multi-kit builds are now useless when stunned, completely.

They are moving away from creative and diverse builds.
Saying this is because of some overpowered builds is no a good explanation to do this.

I completely agree, This could also apply to all Professions. And is a very “easier said than done” topic. But the principle is spot on.

(Opinion) I wish nerfs came more In the form of reduced attack range, attack speed, or simply more telegraphed “tells”. Promoting more skill based play, and a more rewarding experience. Instead of just taking away effects completely, reducing damage or applying longer Cool down as a solution. I know this suggestion could not be applied to specific abilities but that’s why this is just my opinion.

Thats until they nerf static discharge… the question is , will this be after or before they nerf HGH and Speedy kits?! then we’re screw!

Watch the video on this thread! its the future of engineers!! and where anet wants us to be!! i’ll asure you all will LOL hard! while thinking that’s true!!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Every-engineer-should-watch-this-lol/first#post1710024