Guild Wars 2

Even after Mr. John Peters told us it was fun. It isn’t. Please, for the love of this game, listen to your fans.

It isn’t conducive to skilled play.
It isn’t fun.
Skills with baked in randomness will be less used.

I’d use Elixir U more if I knew what drawback I was getting, and what toss I was getting. Not fun saying ‘DEAR GOD I NEED A WALL’, throw it, and the boss projectiles continue to decimate you while trying to revive an ally. I do admit the randomness is a complete pain. Should make a trait that forces them to be more predictable. I’ll stop there though since there’s a lot they could do about current traits.

Lets talk about solutions. I don’t think eliminating it is possible, as much as I’d like it, its admitting you are wrong and Mr. Peters wouldn’t do that.

Anyway:
Elixir H- Give regen every time, and either prot or swiftness or vigor.
Toss H- Give regen every time, and either prot or swiftness or vigor.

Toss B- Give Fury every time, and either might, swiftness or retaliation.
Toss S- Give stability (would give engineers a solid source of stability. Which they don’t have. Engineers aren’t in a rush for stealth…)
Elixir C- Lower randomness. Make it only potential defensive boons, so 5s regen, 5s prot, 5s vigor and 5s aegis, as opposed to every type of boon.
Toss C- Same principle as above.
Elixir U- Give it a unique engineer debuff, as random debuffs are terrible for planning. Maybe disable toolbelts while under its effects, or something like that.
Toss U- Remove veil of invisibility from possible choices. So that both possible ones have to do with stopping projectiles. Lower cooldown to 45s then.
Elixir X- No transformations. 8s quickness, stability,fury,3 stacks of might and swiftness. 180s cooldown

In most games, I LOVE randomness (wild mage ). GW2 doesn’t balance randomness well though because it doesn’t account for the fact that randomness is a disadvantage. Randomness is something you either react to or gamble on. If you’re reacting to something random in combat it divides your attention and forces you to make a snap decision. If you’re gambling on something specific happening such as stability and it doesn’t you could wind up in deep trouble, sometimes even costing you the fight.

So what’s good about randomness? Compensation.
Budget. Such a large disadvantage is usually offset by making an ability more powerful than it would otherwise be (more damage, lower cooldown, etc).
Flavor. The randomness of a particular ability may be limited to certain effects, making the ability mostly reliable (eg, an attack has a random damage type).
Longevity. Because you don’t know what will happen, whatever the ability does lasts longer that it otherwise would to give you more time to take advantage of it.
Tactical. You don’t know what an ability will do when you start an encounter and so can’t form a strategy around it, but you find out once the fight starts (eg, pressing the button once makes it lock into one of several possible abilities, and pressing it again makes the ability activate).

In higher levels of PvP (where people are familiar with what their opponents can do) randomness can be an advantage as it makes you less predictable, but unless you have some way to turn that unpredictability in your favor it’s not going to do you any good.

As first i thought.. Nice, randomness awesome and refreshing! Now that i have done alo of pvp and especially guild tournaments i dont agree anymore. What gw2 wanted to make is an pvp game which involves teamwork, strategics and timing. Random boons dont fit in this.. No matter how small the difference of a boon might be.. I have experienced that if you dont get the boon you hoped for, it actually kills you. At high skilllevel pvp quite alot depends on small factors. Sadly alchemist Engineers can make tactics or quick moves due to the fact that they dont know how their action will react or what will happen.
I would be happy with a random effet that depends on stuff like targets health, status or any other conditions and i know you Devs really think this makes the class interesting and want to keep his mechanic.
But please, even if you wont change it, do take an objective look at it,

Also.. Start fixing some elixers already.. How hard is it to change the text of Toss Elixer B.. And see what can be done at the trait that is supposed to reduce the cooldown of the toss elixers (those are elixer skills to)

Effusion.4831:

GW2 doesn’t balance randomness well though because it doesn’t account for the fact that randomness is a disadvantage.

This is EXACTLY right.

All skills are trade-offs. The Engineer Rifle #4 is a very powerful interrupt/stun/knockback, but this is offset by the fact that it also stuns the engineer. The Engineer Rifle #3 does a lot of damage, but it is offset by range requirements. This is how the game works, more powerful skills are allowed so long has they also have greater drawbacks.

However, when it comes to the engineer random skills, they get the same effect that other classes gets reliably. There is no benefit to offset the randomness.

Randomness is a very large negative effect, easily on par with self-inflicted damage or disabilities. The offset needs to be equally large, whatever that happens to be (double damage, half the CD, double the duration, whatever).

Anet has billed the randomness as an asset, and they are half right. It would be an asset to have very powerful, but random skills. Instead we get completely average skills, crippled with randomness.

Agree with above.. Randomness would work, if we got any stronger things then other people can get as easily without the randomness

I find Effusion post really constructive.
If we have to make Developers understand something is wrong in our experience,we do better give them details of our bad experience,and after give some advice on how to fix it.
I can’t add nothing at the Effusion post…really nice.

I agree with all here:randomness of elixirs don’t allow us to play with a strategy,you never know what the skill output will give.
If elixir S give me stability,i know i can buff up at the beginning of the fight,when usually everyone tend to CC you .
If i know for sure elixir S will give me hide ability,i would use it ONLY if i need a break of some seconds to heal my self,or to confuse my enemy,or even to run away.
Same for the randomness of elixir X; elixir U, and secondary buff incoming from elixir H and elixir C.

I really really hope Anet team will mind to work on this,because is one of the biggest point that make ppls sick while they play.
It is not providing any fun,it just make harder build a strategy,in a flash-action-game,where an elixir instead of help,make you die.

Regards!

The best example of how randomness is a disadvantage is simply looking at elixir U vs all the other quickness buffs.

First of all: its 4 seconds, the tooltip says 5 but it is wrong.

From that base, we can see:

Haste: 4s Quickness+No endurance and no endurance Regen for 4s
Quickening Zephyr: 4s Quickness+no healing for 4s
Frenzy: 4s Quickness+50% more damage taken for 4s

Elixir U: 4s Quickness+ No endurance and no endurance Regen for 4s/no healing for 4s/50% more damage taken for 4s

As you can see, the engineer has a physical disadvantage in that his debuff is random, so he cannot effectively plan, and instead has to react to it. A warrior can rely on a protection buff from himself or allies, a ranger can use his heal before, a thief can take ‘dodge’ utilities and stealth to substitute for dodging but an engineer? He can’t possibly build for all 3 outcomes, and must react.

I only have a week or so at this game, so my view is purely from an engineering (IRL) standpoint.

Nothing is truely random on computers. I’m sure someone is already sitting in a corner, throwing their elixirs and tabulating the percentages of each possibility.

Though, I don’t understand why those percentages just couldn’t be provided.

Anyway, after you have this data, you just look at it like you would look at crit. You work the elixir into your rotation and it’kitten or miss for the one or two things you want. And you know that this potion has a 15% for regen, how much regen it will do, and if you throw it 3 times a minute, you can calculate how much regen, on average, you will get from such a potion. Or how much time you will spend buffed per minute.

I think this makes elixirs very stable for long hauls because as long as you keep up on your rotation, you know what’s happening. PVP is a whole different animal, though; you’re playing chess now, not a card game. Still, maybe we’ll come to love it. It’ll be like chess mixed with some dice throwing, it could be fun.

Maybe down the line these elixirs will work like crit and you will be able to gear/trait yourself towards a certain disposition. Who knows?

Effusion.4831:

GW2 doesn’t balance randomness well though because it doesn’t account for the fact that _randomness is a disadvantage.

cant state enought how true this is.
while exilir H protection and regen are at least somehwat similar (reduce dmg vs gain health) the Swiftness absolutly does nothing to protect you.
same goes for elixir U. 35power/cond dmg is nothing compared to 20% crit increase.
Im not sure how much damage retaliation actualy reflects but it probably contributes more then Swiftness.
so whoever gets switftness or might on a toss, pretty much gained nothing ^^

edit: ment elixir B instad of elixir U