Guild Wars 2

Hey Guys!

They just announced 3 upcoming balance changes to the engineer on the Ready Up 23 Stream:

-You can now move while using shield 4.
-Slick Shoes CD reduced from 60s to fortyfive seconds (stupid filter..)
-Slick Shoes toolbelt skill CD reduced from fortyfive seconds to 30s

Your thoughts?

imo almost any stand alone utility that has a cd longer than 40 seconds is pretty bad on engineer considering we got many skills on lower cooldown that are multi purpose. I don’t see slick shoes becoming any more viable now. Its still on a long cooldown with a niche effect

Magnetic Shield now being able to used while moving was really not needed. I don’t understand why they felt the need to change this. Seeing some cooldown reduction on the Slick Shoes is good but it’s not enough, it’s still not worth using.

Yes! I love the change to Magnetic Shield. I’m leveling an Engi and just the other day I remember thinking, dagnabit why can’t I move when I use Shield #4? It was a pain in the neck and so annoying.

That settles it, I’m getting a Myst Forged shield.

Wolfar.6508:

Magnetic Shield now being able to used while moving was really not needed. I don’t understand why they felt the need to change this. Seeing some cooldown reduction on the Slick Shoes is good but it’s not enough, it’s still not worth using.

I completely agree on the slickshoes, but the movability on shield #4 is long needed if you ask me, especially in PvP when you face a freecasting ranger. reflecting his attacks might be a nice gap-filler to wait for your other cd’s, but a) melee’s will simply pick you up and b) after the shield runs out you’re still in the same situation as when you felt the need to trigger it: too far away from the projectile source, most likely in a situation where only shield #4 could have saved you, which is now on cd as well…
Ofc shield was already awesome as stomp-prevention, cc and blast-finisher, but its truely intended purpose was to serve as range-protection, be it against actual rangers or dungeon/fractal npc’s. Now that we can move with it being active, we can close in securely to our target and unleash our regular pbaoe’s right after leaving it, or even cc the source of the projectile-spaming.
I really welcome this change.

Being able to move now with shield 4 is a cool buff.
@wolfineer I don’t see how you can complain about this like it’s a bad thing. It’s a free buff that makes it more beneficial. That’s like getting bent out of shape because the auto mechanic gave you a free oil change when you sent the car in for a tune up. Was it needed? Maybe not, but it was beneficial to your car.

The shield change means that you can ignore a ranged attacker whilst you focus a melee enemy and you can also safe stomp with it as well.

Depending on the cast time, it may also still be perfect for deflecting pindown or other projectiles in “clutch time”.

Finally, I can move with shield 4.

I made 3 separate threads in the balancing forum asking for this changes, and repeatedly got shouted down, insulted, and offered hollow justifications to prevent it from changing. Glad the devs ignored all that and came to agree with me.

Wolfar.6508:

Magnetic Shield now being able to used while moving was really not needed. I don’t understand why they felt the need to change this. Seeing some cooldown reduction on the Slick Shoes is good but it’s not enough, it’s still not worth using.

Have had too many situations where I wished I could move with shield #4 in combat to agree with you. One of the most annoying instances I can remember where I wished I could, was when a ranger was spamming me with arrows, I popped shield #4, but since his pet was coming towards me, all the shots were being reflected into his meat shield pet and I couldn’t move to change the trajectory lol. Any added mobility in skills is always a big bonus if you ask me.

Ahh, so we can charge at ranged now. Cool.

I thought the skill was good enough on its own, but we’ll have to see.

i like the magnetic shield change, it addresses a play pattern that ive never liked about it… that you have to root yourself to use the reflect. theres too much action in the game to root yourself for 3 secs… especially while fighting enemies that 99% of the time will not be rooted while pew pewing you.

slick shoes wont be enough. there just isnt anything build defining about gadgets in comparison to kits, and now turrets. i do think the cd is too long on it, so its a well intentioned change… but i dont think reducing the cd is going to make it desirable enough to overcome the opportunity cost slick shoes (and other gadgets) suffer(s) from.

finally, im a bit disappointed that there was no mention of a bugfix pass for rocket boots, since they made it wayyyy worse with 9/9.

I feel like the movement on #4 shield will be… honestly… incredibly strong. You can just run in for pvp, reflecting all projectiles, then knockback an entire point in pvp :P

Magnetic shield change is really cool imo.

I think the slick shoes buff is substantial because engi excell at Pbaoe. Combos with grenade barrage or mine field + jump shot come to mind on a36 sec cool down with speedy gadgets. That’s not bad. You also get a stun breaker at 21 seconds with super speed if you go all in the Tools trait line.

I welcome the change to shield 4 and I wonder how this simple change will affect the meta for stomps, point defense and cc pressure. Will other classes be demanding a nerf on the forums like they do for ranger rapid fire? I wonder… And the slick shoes change makes it a little more interesting. It was my goto on Spirit Watch and it actually handles toolkit engineers pretty well because of the unblockable nature and if you have high, non-cc spike with say grenades or bombs. The combo of super speed and moving shield 4 makes escapes and harassment more plausible, but I don’t want us becoming decap or nike warriors anytime soon. That is kind of irritating to fight on certain maps.

What I think would add really cool counterplay to engineers and reinvigorate the meta for other classes is one simple change: Allow turrets to be knocked back.

Now I’m not trolling, honestly. I’m an engineer main and have been for almost 2 years. I’m dragon rank (not that that’s anything special), have the champion genius title like most of you and under the right circumstances I do pretty well in team q. What I think will happen if turrets can be knocked back is that point defense will require better strategy (i.e. placing them against walls) and you won’t get embedded turret engineers that destroy midlevel players in solo q that just don’t have TeamSpeak and practiced rotation or communication. Crate becomes less of an issue since you could push or pull the most damaging turrets off of a point or away from LoS. Imagine a thief stealthing up and scorpion wiring rocket turret out of line of sight and then approaching the point. Imagine ranger knockback on thumper in a coordinated gank to dislodge a camped engineer on mid in Forest. I say that and I play with thumper. Imagine two turret engineers fighting each other and trying to counter each others’ turrets with all their knockbacks and APT trait. Maybe cooldown could be reduced on pickup of certain turrets (i.e. not healing turret) to compensate, or there could be a turret stability trait that forces engineers to build properly for turret and sacrifice a bit more damage or range. (edit: just came up with the idea of having a turret reposition trait that would allow us to use knockbacks or maybe toolkit to push them back in place. Dunno, I think that would be kind of fun) I don’t know. All I know is the minute I even put out healing turret, I’m called cancer or some other fatal disease and I have to wonder if a simple change like that might get us more respect as a true skill class.

ArchonWing.9480:

Ahh, so we can charge at ranged now. Cool.

I thought the skill was good enough on its own, but we’ll have to see.

With swiftness we’ll be able to move about 279 units per second forward in combat, so about 840 units forward for the skill duration, which puts us right in midrange against a stationary opponent. If a ranger is backpedaling that entire time, the most they can move in 3 seconds is 418 units backwards. We’re still at least 400 more units closer to them in an ideal scenario. If they activate barrage at the sight of magnetic shield like a lot of rangers do, we can at least be halfway out of it before it hits. That’s a really positive change that will help us save our dodges. We can also switch kits while it’s active, just watch out for deactivating auto-attacks. This won’t work on mesmer mirror blade or when warrior activates signet of might so beware, but I’m really happy with the possibilities of more active defense.

johnsonade.9547:

I welcome the change to shield 4 and I wonder how this simple change will affect the meta for stomps, point defense and cc pressure. Will other classes be demanding a nerf on the forums like they do for ranger rapid fire? I wonder… And the slick shoes change makes it a little more interesting. It was my goto on Spirit Watch and it actually handles toolkit engineers pretty well because of the unblockable nature and if you have high, non-cc spike with say grenades or bombs. The combo of super speed and moving shield 4 makes escapes and harassment more plausible, but I don’t want us becoming decap or nike warriors anytime soon. That is kind of irritating to fight on certain maps.

What I think would add really cool counterplay to engineers and reinvigorate the meta for other classes is one simple change: Allow turrets to be knocked back.

Now I’m not trolling, honestly. I’m an engineer main and have been for almost 2 years. I’m dragon rank (not that that’s anything special), have the champion genius title like most of you and under the right circumstances I do pretty well in team q. What I think will happen if turrets can be knocked back is that point defense will require better strategy (i.e. placing them against walls) and you won’t get embedded turret engineers that destroy midlevel players in solo q that just don’t have TeamSpeak and practiced rotation or communication. Crate becomes less of an issue since you could push or pull the most damaging turrets off of a point or away from LoS. Imagine a thief stealthing up and scorpion wiring rocket turret out of line of sight and then approaching the point. Imagine ranger knockback on thumper in a coordinated gank to dislodge a camped engineer on mid in Forest. I say that and I play with thumper. Imagine two turret engineers fighting each other and trying to counter each others’ turrets with all their knockbacks and APT trait. Maybe cooldown could be reduced on pickup of certain turrets (i.e. not healing turret) to compensate, or there could be a turret stability trait that forces engineers to build properly for turret and sacrifice a bit more damage or range. (edit: just came up with the idea of having a turret reposition trait that would allow us to use knockbacks or maybe toolkit to push them back in place. Dunno, I think that would be kind of fun) I don’t know. All I know is the minute I even put out healing turret, I’m called cancer or some other fatal disease and I have to wonder if a simple change like that might get us more respect as a true skill class.

nope
why?
Because turrets are not rendered in gw2’s physics engine. They can’t fall, nor be relocated. if you trigger them they will spawn at a specific coordiante-set (x,y,z) and stay on this position until their script orders self-destruct, they get destroyed or you pick them up. deployable turrets only works because you throw a separate projectile (this crate) to the position where you command a turret to spawn.
Try it out: place a turret on a disappearing tile in skyhammer and watch it hovering. This is also one of the reasons why turrets are a viable option in certain pve-encounters (thaumanova-anomaly f.e.).

Do I like you idea in general?
Kinda. spawning a turret in a area happens because you expect a certain skill to fulfill a certain job in a certain position. Messing with this basic mechanic would be similar to make guardians’ sanctum cc-able. or pushing away necro-marks. or knocking war-banners away.
Turrets are damageable. If a thief wants to clear them, he can focus them. In order to balance your change, many things would need to happen to turrets, including implementing a pick-up mechanic that allows replacement without cd, and the implementation of a new engi-elite skill since supply-crate is not only pretty powerful currently, but actually our only effective elite skill.

For #4 shield,it’s a very useful change/addition.
It may give many problems in PvP letting the engineer(already in a good spot with the right set) look like an unstoppable machine on ranged attacks considering the toolkit#4 too , but it’s a single game mode with too much influence in this game that also includes mass open PvP (WvW) and all the PvE side; so I welcome the change.
I also always dreamed shield #4 with the ability to move.
The shield,even if useful was lacking something for my tastes,and this change will definitely give it the “green light” on use in my condition set,mainly because now I can approach the ranged enemy forcing him to move after interrupting his attack and not just wait at a safe distance without even swapping from his ranged to his melee weapon.
About Slick shoes,I don’t see my self use it,and I never used it outside of a test session.
The skill as it is even after the next change, needs even a shorter CD or better, some other added effect to justify his presence in the utility slots and tool belt slot.

Sorry for my english!

Arantheal.7396:

nope
why?
Because turrets are not rendered in gw2’s physics engine. They can’t fall, nor be relocated. if you trigger them they will spawn at a specific coordiante-set (x,y,z) and stay on this position until their script orders self-destruct, they get destroyed or you pick them up. deployable turrets only works because you throw a separate projectile (this crate) to the position where you command a turret to spawn.
Try it out: place a turret on a disappearing tile in skyhammer and watch it hovering. This is also one of the reasons why turrets are a viable option in certain pve-encounters (thaumanova-anomaly f.e.).

Do I like you idea in general?
Kinda. spawning a turret in a area happens because you expect a certain skill to fulfill a certain job in a certain position. Messing with this basic mechanic would be similar to make guardians’ sanctum cc-able. or pushing away necro-marks. or knocking war-banners away.
Turrets are damageable. If a thief wants to clear them, he can focus them. In order to balance your change, many things would need to happen to turrets, including implementing a pick-up mechanic that allows replacement without cd, and the implementation of a new engi-elite skill since supply-crate is not only pretty powerful currently, but actually our only effective elite skill.

I see why you feel that way, I just don’t know how to add counterplay to turrets without reverting them back to the buggy mess they were before the first feature pack. Maybe reduce armor? Maybe reduce health? Make the passives weaker and the overcharges more frequent or stronger? Make turrets semi-living where they can take conditions but can’t be crit like PvE dragons? Could they “stall out” when hit by a critical or a knockback if untraited? As an engineer, I have come up with niche counters for turret builds (i.e. double knockback from stealth out of turret LoS for quick instagib, deploy thumper turret in front of enemy rocket turret, fortified turret chain, etc), but other classes just don’t have the tools to extract a turret engineer without wasting tons of time (or hp) trying to focus or tank the adds. I feel like a nerf is coming for them, but even I don’t want to take away some of the great things that have been given. In general, no community likes retroactive nerfs. And yes, I’m always going to want another viable elite besides crate haha. If I could get an elite kit, I’d be a happy camper.

Nirvana.8659:

-snip-
Sorry for my english!

Your english is fine and I really get the meaning of what you’re saying. I’m looking way forward to shield 4 as well!

Magnetic shield change wasn’t really needed but it’s a nice freebie if anything. A real change would be to increase the reflect radius even if it meant retaining the root.

Slick shoes are just as useless as venoms no matter how much anet tries to push them. There is simply no place for them on your limited utility bar.

I was honestly expecting some sort of a change to the flamethrower Napalm skill, as it is, trying to blast it with #2 (which was clearly changed into a blast to synergises with it) is just downright impossible in PvP without getting yourself killed and just awkward in PvE because of how low the field is.

Besides that, #2 missing the blast if you target anything because it just goes over the field is clearly not intended. I was expecting one if two things to happen (or both):

1. Make #2 a TAoE that detonates automatically on landing, with an option to detonate it early. This would make it a lot more useful as a blast in PvP.

2. Just make the Napalm field higher.

One of the cool things about flamethrower, IMO, is that it can almost be used effectively without ever targeting an opponent. Almost. Except for Flame Blast. I would really like it if Flame Blast were ground targeted.

Penguin.5197:

I don’t see slick shoes becoming any more viable now. Its still on a long cooldown with a niche effect

Wolfar.6508:

Seeing some cooldown reduction on the Slick Shoes is good but it’s not enough, it’s still not worth using.

Arantheal.7396:

I completely agree on the slickshoes

insanemaniac.2456:

slick shoes wont be enough. there just isnt anything build defining about gadgets in comparison to kits, and now turrets.

Nirvana.8659:

About Slick shoes,I don’t see my self use it,and I never used it outside of a test session.
The skill as it is even after the next change, needs even a shorter CD or better, some other added effect to justify his presence in the utility slots and tool belt slot.

robertul.3679:

Slick shoes are just as useless as venoms no matter how much anet tries to push them. There is simply no place for them on your limited utility bar.

You guys really underestimate the Slicky Shoes. I’m being totally, 100% serious. When chained properly, it’s a 4-6s knockdown, that is uncounterable by a lot of stunbreaks.

Stunbreaks need to have a displacement, stability, or invulnerability to break slick shoes.

Slicky Shoes will definitely be a variant of Cele Rifle that gets some play from me. Swapping Slicky Shoes in for Elixir S definitely makes you a significantly more lethal contender, and the Super Speed disengage is good.

http://www.twitch.tv/chaithh/c/3125426

^This is a super old Clip, but .. you can’t deny the appeal of shreking a pre-nerf hambow Warrior in 4 seconds.

Slick Shoes also comes with a very low cooldown stunbreak. You lose a secure stomp to take it, but it can do serious damage in teamfights with all the knockdowns if timed properly.

Well, I agree with both points….
1) Slick shoes IS really awesome. As Chaith points out, it neutralizes standard (e.g. non-stability) stunbreaks, and you can do silly things in WvW like split an entire enemy zerg in half with it. And super speed is amazing for getting you out of tricky situations.
2) But as others say, you really are giving up a lot to take Slick Shoes over a weapon kit, and much of the time, it probably isn’t worth it.

I previously proposed reducing gadget cooldowns (and their toolbelt skills) so they could function as a sort of second weapon set to allow them to compete with kits. I think this change for Slick Shoes is an excellent example, so we’ll see if it becomes more widely used after the change. I am certainly going to try incorporating it in more of my [WvW] builds.