Guild Wars 2

One thing I’ve noticed for the last five months is that the engineering community gets nerfed, alot. Well, this patch is a little different. We aren’t getting too great of nerfs, and as usual we get one change that doesn’t really make sense yet.

What I’ve observed in the engineer forum is that we are getting “nerfed” because other classes are becoming hard counters to HgH, one of our few strong builds left after the march nerfs. There’s a lot of talk about boon stealing thiefs and boon hate warriors curb stomping HgH or any engi with 5 point in alchemy.

I wanted to share some things that have made me feel better about the situation, and realize that things are not hopeless.

From the thief forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/New-Flanking-Strike/first#post1908730

Volrath.1473:

hi,
From what I could understand it is now split into 2 abilities, the first one “Flanking Strike” that strikes the opponent and evades behind it costing 3 initiative and the second called “Larcenous Strike” that will cost 1 initiative and will steal a random stack of boons from the opponent.

my question is, will it work like auto attack automatic rotation or will we have to hit it twice to connect Larcenous Strike?

if we have to hit it twice, it can be very dangerous for thieves to use it. if by any chance you are blinded/blocked or simply miss it you will be losing 6 initiative with zero results or 7 init for 1 Larcenous Strike, and that is the death of a thief! if you miss it once you need to get out of there asap and come back when you have more initiative.
Also if it takes the 2 key hits for the full effect. ppl will ALWAYS press it twice in a row, no one will hit it once and wait to see it it actually hits to press it again so if it misses the first one we will ALWAYS lose the 6 initiative…

With the amount of passive blocks and invulnerabilities in game atm we will be wasting initiative on thin air…

as it is atm if we miss it for some reason, we lose 4 init and would not spam it since the animation is long and the risk of doing 2 Flanking strikes back to back is very low, but like this, will surely be a initiative drain… high risk of losing a lot of initiative for very little benefit.

Please clarify this, do we need to press the key twice for the full effect of the ability or will it do both hits (Flanking + Larcenous) on one key press?

From the warrior forums: (This one’s a lot harder to read, I suggest ignoring the entitlement/QQing if you value your sanity)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Ok-I-m-confused/first#post1908940

PistolWhip.2697:

Ok. I know this is going to sound extremely simplistic but I’m honestly confused here.

So, largely most people I encounter claim the largest weakness warrior has is staying power. Sustained healing, condi removal and such.

They give us Dotted March (One minor buff-as far as I can tell right now-to sustain, that’s extremely situational and more an anti CC than anything.)

And the rest is more DPS buffs?

DPS was never the issue with Warriors, boon hate or not, you could easily overpower bunkers with the extreme damage, it was just hard to stay while doing so without getting downed. Even blocks didn’t matter, because when they didn’t block, their HP melted.

Warriors need sustain, Anet gives them DPS? Don’t get me wrong, its great they finally acknowledge it needs improvement, and we haven’t got it bad this patch at all… I just…I’m confused.

I haven’t posted this because I wan’t engineers to swarm these threads with complaints. I just want us to have some context to understand the changes thiefs and warriors will undergo.

Thiefs and warriors won’t have an automatic “destroy engi” button on their f-keys. These skills and traits have their own drawbacks, and those drawbacks are kitten -ing off their respective communities.

I’m actually glad boon-hate is on the rise because having a hard counter means that my opponents have a way to win. And with a means of winning, there is no excuse for losing other than not being good enough. I’m really glad ANet’s going this route rather than the supposed “nerf might stacks”. The current solution might not be optimal for the opponents for now, but I can rest easy since it seems they are promoting success through active play rather than shooting me at the knee caps. Watch your might stacks, brothers. The game is changing.

Thieves already have an auto destroy Engi button in WvW, Confusion is what countered Thieves from nuking and spamming you to death.

Now they will more than likely be able to down you while absorbing the Confusion Dmg.

A GC Warrior with a Rifle can now wait till tht 75% Elixir B pops before Killshotting you to death with a single hit.

These are also 2 professions that have a much longer list of Top builds than Engineers do so their crying doesn’t interest me in the slightest. The Thief is even complaing that if they miss or are blinded their attack will be wasted!?? YEAH YOU AND EVERY OTHER kittenING SKILL FROM EVERY OTHER kittenING CLASS.

If I use my Elixir S and the camera seizures out on me I will waste my single Stunbreaker/Disengagement Utility and it will mean instant death because I wont move anywhere and will no longer even have the option to try and heal.

TY for bringing to lite the complaints from other professions but considering how long Thieves got to play with permastealthing without any sort of counter and warriors continuing to have bursts that were taken away from Engineers I have to say I hope they receive nothing but nerfs 4ever.

Mate, you didn’t read the threads at all. This thread is trying to get people to think rationatelly and not overreact, you are doing the opposite of what it asks…

In any case. Warrior burst doen’t matter if they can’t touch you, and they melt with conditions. That is why they are worried about survivability. In WvW a lot of warriors get melted without landing a blow, the boon-hate won’t change this.

In fact, the boon hate will be a very niche build meant for fighting boon spiking builds only (maybe it’ll help against guardians). The trait will be a GM for a glass cannon tree which means even less survivability against conditions, and it doesn’t help their mobility and attack range problems. I don’t think engineers will have trouble with warriors, even with this trait.

What I’m not so sure about is the thief boon stealing. Lets hope that this build will also be very niche due to the high initiative cost to steal a boon (3 initiative to start the chain then 1 to get the skill off, if the chain is interrupted then the first 3 initiative is lost). Something I am very happy about is the fact that mug will no longer crit, further weakening the backstab-mug kill chain.

Why do people keep talking about Mug being a nerf. Ow wow, it cannot crit anymore. It still deals damage, and what is this? It now heals for 2k baseline while scaling from healing power. Is your problem honestly GC thieves?

Ow and while they were add it, they also buffed Stealth by lowering Revealed from 4sec to 3sec and they are giving them a very powerful new mechanic to steal your boons. Not just remove them, no take them and use them against you. They are going to be getting buffed base-damage rates.
And, just a future thing, they want to make Steal a direction shadowstep if you dont have a target. Because obviously Thieves also need more mobility.

And what do Engineers get? Well they are going to nerf HGH, which will then magically make other builds not suck. And to offset this, here is another useless Turret buff.

Sorry, no. No excuses. The devs are completely disconnected from their own game and it seems to be getting worst every passing month.

@John
I realize I went I little off and thats wasn’t the intention of your topic.
However Thieves and somewhat Warriors have and have had a good amount of stong and useful builds. Both have high bursting gimmick builds that individually seem like they are more popular than all the Engie builds put together.

Engineers have had the popular builds systematically removed without any kind of counter measure to help balance it out. Its just been “This is too strong so its gone.”

HGH has been around since release and has recieved few direct changes, it has only gotten stronger with the various fixes to Sigils and things like Giver’s weapons, 2 months ago there wasn’t anyone talking about HGH it was all about 100nades.
The last SoTG the Devs didnt say much at all about HGH being too powerful and having too much Condition pressure, it was all about how KR wasn’t working as intended and that they didn’t want the Engineer professions specifically to be able to to do burst damage that you could potentially put out.

So the entire build and playstyle was Deleted not changed or nerfed or altered but completely removed. So kitten all you players that spent the time and effort to try and gear and build for High Crit Dmg.
Afterwards since every other KR type builds was also removed alot of Engies tried and failed to make a good Turret build and eventually fell back on the HGH type builds that have always been there. Once again putting all the time and effort in to speccing for Cond. Dmg and/or Duration

Now SoTG comes up again and we are told that not only do they not want Engineers to be able to provide high direct dmg bursts but that they also don’t want us to be able to provide such high condition pressure.
So looking back at the history of how Anet solves these problems with Engineers being to powerful I think any freak out from the Engie community is very justified.
We are not supposed to do bursts, We are not supposed to do good conditions, and We are not supposed to do any kind of high damage with Grenades at all it seems.
Not to mention they are throwing in a nerf to our best Stunbreaker with no better reason than “it should be like other professions not better at all”

So Thieves and Warriors can cry upset too that the changes aren’t to their liking but both those professions have a plethora of other options to choose from and the changes they are getting are actually good changes that can diversify their builds rather than just a bunch of new effects with a ridiculous GCD.

Notice how they didn’t remove damage from Mug at all just stopped it from critting while giving it kittening healing.
Yet they completely removed Barrage from KR and replaced it with a mine on a 20sec GCD.
Why couldnt we just get a simple change like KR barrage can no longer crit.!?

Nothing will change the fact that the Devs don’t know how to balance the professions and don’t seem to really give a flying kitten about it in the first place.

We will get a smaller Turret buff that makes no sense and then a huge round of nerfs from specific Engineer ones like Elixir S to blanket ones 50% Confusion Dmg reduction and possible limit to Might Stacking.

In the end HGH will still be one of the better builds because in the effort to diversify us they just keep deleting w/e is most popular without returning anything new or better and we have finally started coming to the point where there just isn’t much else we can turn to.

So next week there will still be just as many HGH Engineers as now (which isnt many) its just they will weaker to the point where nobody will care about them anymore just like 2 months ago.

um, just fact checking here, but since KR is still a trait in the game which can be used, then the KR build was not deleted, it was, in fact, “changed and nerfed and altered”.

you may now continue your forecast of witches, ruby shoes, and tornadoes.

edit: also, if you take the time to look, you will find several threads of successful turret builds since the patch, most botany Fairtex’s tpvp turret thread

I guess I could have worded this in the Op but I’m fairly certain its too late now. What I’m trying to say is this: It doesn’t seem like the way engineers deal with warriors and thieves will be greatly changed in this patch. There has been no word of an HgH nerf and the buffs to thieves and warriors are very niche and hard to pull off, as in nothing engineers need to worry about.

While I say this, I do absolutely agree with you CrisPeH. I don’t consider the devs to be handling engineer balance adequately. Just from reading your post I came up with two questions grouch could ask in the next state of the game. I just don’t consider this the thread to bring this up.

I do think you should use your valid points to write up some questions for that thread however.

CriSPeH.8512:

Thieves already have an auto destroy Engi button in WvW, Confusion is what countered Thieves from nuking and spamming you to death.

Now they will more than likely be able to down you while absorbing the Confusion Dmg.

A GC Warrior with a Rifle can now wait till tht 75% Elixir B pops before Killshotting you to death with a single hit.

These are also 2 professions that have a much longer list of Top builds than Engineers do so their crying doesn’t interest me in the slightest. The Thief is even complaing that if they miss or are blinded their attack will be wasted!?? YEAH YOU AND EVERY OTHER kittenING SKILL FROM EVERY OTHER kittenING CLASS.

If I use my Elixir S and the camera seizures out on me I will waste my single Stunbreaker/Disengagement Utility and it will mean instant death because I wont move anywhere and will no longer even have the option to try and heal.

TY for bringing to lite the complaints from other professions but considering how long Thieves got to play with permastealthing without any sort of counter and warriors continuing to have bursts that were taken away from Engineers I have to say I hope they receive nothing but nerfs 4ever.

Why would you ever get hit by killshot?

I imagine if you were getting up to make a sandwich or something mid-fight, Killshot could be a problem. Odds are you’ll still be back in time to avoid it though.

i have 2520 armor and 26613 hp in spvp, no warrior is one shotting me with anything.

i could not only make a sandwich, but fresh press some OJ to recharge those vitamins after the fight.

new elixir: Elixir OJ; tooltip reads “mmm good”

What is this sPvP you speak of?
Me only knows the grandness of WvW.
Ane me no sees no Turret builds working in there!

ya, but what about the OJ!?

imma wait for the patch to see what changes, but i have a new FT/elixir build that may pique some interest for wvw’ers.

i don’t speak english,so if you are going to read that wall,i apologize for it.

It’s not only the HGH nerf,or the thief and warrior ability to roflstomp and the new boon hate.

The brainless nerf that the engeneer experienced and is experiencing,it’s simply….brainless.

If you have to touch the granade spam,work on what in that build is overpowered without penalize other engineers that actualy don’t play it in the OP way.
Same go for kit refiniment(it was my main source of “versatility” as 3 kit engineer) , they nerfed it cause it was too ovrpowered for the position in the tree , and instead of move it in the tree , they just make it completely useless,just to penalize who was roflstomping with an easy mode 100nade build without take in count who was using KR in other ways , that were far from be OP.
Now it’s the turn of HGH , again for ppls who play the easy mode with condition build,there should be some engineer using it to scale “power” (with just a little impact compared to cond dmg output).
Even with flamethrower boost,engineer still have low dmg output with a rifle.
Elixier gun it’s just a joke.
Granade are still usefull , but…the last devs words let you understand they will touch it again.
Tool kit…meh…apart the confusion skill it’s not a realiable source of dmg.
Bomb kit , i don’t even mention it cause use it in WvW it’s a waste of time if you try to hit someone.
Also,that confusion nerf , should have been done in a different way.Ofc who uses pistol+tool kit + bomb kit do impressive dmg,but what about ppls using just pistols??!!
Nerf the way confusion stack using different skills,don’t go nerf the mechanism as a whole.
And so on…there would be really much to argue about their balance work.

I play a thief too,i play sword/dagger from ages,never had trouble killing anything.
For who claim that the 1 skill of the thief (sword) deal no dmg….well….come tell it to my thief when i do 1,5k-1,5k-3k crit with the chain.Or may be they just should try to play an engineer to see what “lack of dmg” means.
I can’t speak for warriors i don’t have one.

The thing that make me rage more than all,is the way they work around this kind of nerf : “make others build viable”.
Man….if the rest of engineer utility suck , nerf the source of our dmg optimization without take count of who don’t use “easy way” builds , wont help make the rest of your useless utility more viable.

Also ppls play for fun , FOR ME that means be able to kill not putting in 10 times the effort another class uses.
Month after month they are making me suffer a disage that potentially lead me to play another class and slowly provide me a sort of nausea playing GW2 in that state.
The game was a lot more fun at the beginning without any “balance” update for each class.

Regarding the theif, stealing 1 boon won’t do crap as its more than likely the might stacksaare protected by a few other boons.

The problem is this.. Alot of sd thief’s trait into trickery and pick up bountiful thief.. Now this means the thief will steal 3 or 4 boons.. If they take 20 stacks of might, it is basically goodnight Irene.
Note if they trait this way, they will also get vigor, swiftness, fury from their steal so hgh engis will be seriously supercharging sd thief’s..

I’m a hgh engi and a sd theif so I have mixed emotions

On the plus side, if there’s less dp and dd thief’s it means less burst and backstabs so at least we’ll have time to react
I have no idea about warr

Why would they waste time stomping us? We are practically out of the game if they down us.

Joke aside.

O.P. is somewhat on the right track. Anet didn’t make the current build better. They created “new builds” to counter the “boon meta.” Just ask anyone who’s played the thief or warriors to an extent.

Guild Wars 2’s entire build system is a give and trade system. You always have to give something up to gain something in return. Some builds won’t change (a lot) and new builds will emerge (hopefully).

(Besides the hardest hitting class by this will be guardians, according to Anet.)

Sil.4560:

I imagine if you were getting up to make a sandwich or something mid-fight, Killshot could be a problem. Odds are you’ll still be back in time to avoid it though.

honestly, in wvw killshot can be a problem. especially when it’s zergvzerg.

Terrahero.9358:

Why do people keep talking about Mug being a nerf. Ow wow, it cannot crit anymore. It still deals damage, and what is this? It now heals for 2k baseline while scaling from healing power. Is your problem honestly GC thieves?

Ow and while they were add it, they also buffed Stealth by lowering Revealed from 4sec to 3sec and they are giving them a very powerful new mechanic to steal your boons. Not just remove them, no take them and use them against you. They are going to be getting buffed base-damage rates.
And, just a future thing, they want to make Steal a direction shadowstep if you dont have a target. Because obviously Thieves also need more mobility.

And what do Engineers get? Well they are going to nerf HGH, which will then magically make other builds not suck. And to offset this, here is another useless Turret buff.

Sorry, no. No excuses. The devs are completely disconnected from their own game and it seems to be getting worst every passing month.

“Revealed” decrease is only in PVE. I believe it’s still 4 secs in pvp.