Guild Wars 2

Nope, it does not increase your viewing figures.
Nope, it does not add a reason for new players to buy these episodes.
Nope, no one enjoys being cut off in the middle of a chapter.

This is a game, that tries to tell a story in chapters, so stop resolving your last cliff-hanger, only to open up a new one.
It serves no other purpose than to annoy your user base.
And in this patch you’ve not even solved your previous cliff-hanger, have not developed your story further since the last patch, and just added another cliff-hanger on top of the already existing one.

This is plain and simple bad story-telling.
I don’t question this stories’ content.
I question its method of presentation.

Thumps up on the new jumping puzzle tho, it was truly epic.
I wish you’d have put equal effort into pushing the story to another climax.

question, do you run full zerker gear?

Reasons:
[Add self-approving text about how awesome this idea is here]

Concept:
- No Servers
- No Que’s
- No Scores
- Worthwile rewards.

How it Works:
- A player chooses a Faction when he first logs into WvW. Their names are of minor importance and up for discussion. Essentially, it’s green, blue, and red. Factions can not be switched, unless a reasonable gem-price got paid.
- The factions shuffle their color once per week (traditional Friday reset).
- All maps (EOTM, Desert / Alpine Border, EB) are reworked to be featured as accessible maps from the WvW interface. A player can choose to enter either of these maps to all times.
- All maps are instanced and create multiple copies depending on the current player-numbers wanting to play on them. The soft-player-cap per map / per faction is 50 players, that can only be excelled by 2 ways: A ) All other factions in this map reached the threshold / B ) People from other instances use the join map option to join this instance. Join map is only available for guild-members and party-members. The hardcap is 100 players.
- Once the softcap is reached, the que algorithm stops to allow people to join this map-instance from the WvW interface. If the softcap for all 3 factions is reached, the algorithm continues to fill the map to the hardcap. if the hardcap is reached, the join map-function and the algorithm are both deactivated.
- Unlike PvE, map-instances that loose too many players will not be closed. They continue to exist until the weekly reset or their current player-number reaches zero. The map-instances are ordered by the current player-numbers, and those with the highest numbers get filled first.

Rewards:
- Objectives don’t tick Score every 15min, they tick WxP. SM: 700 WxP / Keeps: 500 WxP / Towers: 350 WxP / Camps: 250 WXP. The tick is handed to all players that are currently assigned to this map-instance in a 15 min period. A player that switches the map-instance will not get rewarded for the next 2 ticks. Switching the map itself will not get punished.
- Reward tracks are introduced, exactly like the PvP ones. WxP also counts as progress in the reward-tracks. (How much progress you get for WxP is up for balancing).
- WvW gear becomes salvageable. Unlike other gear it does not give ectos or other materials back, but has a 100% chance to give runes and sigils back. Potentially it could reward a small amount of badges as well for compensation.

GvG love:
- Obsidian Sanctum is free for all. Players are able to swap their factions on will in this instance. Once they leave Obsidian Sanctum, they return to their original factions. The map-chat is available cross-factions in OS. The team-chat is only available for their current faction.

Loot-changes:
- Instead of blue and green gear, players loot stack-able containers that can be opened later to drop blue and green gear.
- Instead of rare gear, players loot stack-able containers that can be opened later to drop rare gear.
- Instead of exotic gear, players loot stack-able containers that can be opened later to drop exotic gear. Spoons are not included in these containers’ loot-table. Spoons do not compete for a spot with other exotics in the loot-table. Spoons can only be dropped by the SM lord and have a pretty high chance to do so.
- Rank up chests provide you with a small chance to loot exotic containers, a medium chance for rare containers and a high chance for green/blue containers. Rank-up chests also will provide you with a small amount of WvW tickets.

This is the 5th week in total we got matched up to the same two Servers, and the percentages to face these 2 Servers are on a all-time high, getting higher each week consistently.
Even tho we are on a equal footing coverage-wise, the amount of siege-trolling, intentional supply-burning via spies and the overall feeling of stale WvW play is more intense than it was ever before between us.
It’s not like “hey, lets try this this out and see if we can pull it off” anymore, it’s just “Oh, they do A again, so lets do B again, but beware of the inevitable happening of C.” It is not fun anymore and I guess I speak for the sake of the other two Servers as well when I demand a manual re-roll of the matchup-percentages for the next weeks’ reset, so we don’t face the same match-up for at least the next two weeks again.

So you finally learned how to kill upscaled’s…

Yes, the diminished drop-rates for ascended gear is definitively something that needs to be looked into.

But lets not forget that A-net spoke about a perspective shift from dungeons towards fractals as their endgame 5-man instanced content, and they directly stated that they want to reduce the rewards from dungeons, only to increase those of fractals to make this paradigm shift clear as water for the playerbase.

They completely failed to live up to this design plan since the current fractal encryption box system either yields very low rewards (5s per chest if sold directly to a NPC), or actually lets you loose money for the chance of less-than-valuable RNG drops.

Running fractals currently is not only unrewarding in terms of ascended drops, it also doesn’t give you anything worth noting to make up for the time you’ve invested there.

If it weren’t for the journal entries & the prospect of receiving a legendary backpiece at some day, there would be zero incentive to enter them currently, and even with this long-term goal in front of you, the amount of gold (and other currencies) you need to invest in ascended gear for running high-level fractals will get never compensated by said fractals under the current reward system.

I want to complete a path, receive my XP-boost at the end, open my loot chest, and collect direct cash in silver or even gold, so I get a smile on my face & humbly que up for the next fractal level.
This is a game. I paid for being entertained. Smashing into a brick-wall of (generally unrewarding) grind whenever I want to enjoy one part of this games’ endgame is not what I call entertainment.

I mean, I’m not asking to receive 100g & a red carpet under my feet wherever I walk, but I’m very certain that receiving visible progress on my currencies for playing the game is not too much to be asked for.

There seems to be a breach in the containment perimeter…

Cite me correctly, cause this kind of responses let you appear to learn a lot slower than you might think.
So, I gonna repeat to you – slowly – why your point is mute:

You compare the direct dps of 2 builds, one being a genereric zerk necro you came up with & the other being the warri meta p/s build.
But while 1 of these builds is fabricated to achieve the highest personal dps possible, while making little to none scrifices to utility, the 2nd build makes big sacrifices to personal dps in order to come with a maximum of group buffes.
You then – correctly – find out that your necro does higher dps than the meta warri build.

But then – and read carefully now – you jump to a false conclusion.
This false conclusion is that only the personal dps justifies a class being in the meta or not. You fail to realize that it is these huge sacrifices in personal dps, towards maximized group buff-capability make p/s warri a meta-build. He increases the overalls parties dps so heavily that he outshines the personal dps of your build by miles.

As soon as you grow familiar enough with the combat mechancs of gw2 to understand this, we can close this thread.

Until that I enjoy my popcorn & happily point out every single flaw in every single of your “rebutals” to the meta.
The reality is that you are not even remotely as smart as you try to appear in your videos. You are just delusioned & arrogant if you think you understand the game better than every single one of us combined, and your hurt feelings are what thrives you to these troll-threads, both today & a year ago…
Enjoy your day

And then there is taunt, the ultimate tank-tool…
And the new break-bars, making cc-spammers viable options in boss-fights…

Smells like raids.
C’mon a-net, it this point we all know that we’re getting instanced content for 10 players or more. Just announce it already.

/thread

(Man, I’ve always wanted to post this, the torture is over )

Would just be awesome if the scrappers class-mechanic were this:
- Gain access to weaponswaps as long as you don’t use any utility-kits.

Still can equip the mortar & healing kit, but would reward us for trying out stuff aside from nades, EG and TK

Irenio, traditionally WvW shared the same rule set as PvE, and zerging is also where minions suffer the most. Can you please at least consider a test-weekend or the likes to see how 95% reduced dmg on minions by indirect attacks influences WvW?

Trayzer.7268:

with such a hostile attitude.

Said the one calling everyboy on the forums super mario fanboys while engineering a artificial scenario where a-net was not totally open about the fact that they switched their design philosophy intentionally, LONG BEFORE they even opened the gates for pre-purchase…
You knew what you were ordering, and now you’re mad that you’ve wasted your money on something that you personally don’t like afterall. Tell me, is the lack of proper knowledge about your own preferences your issue, or a-nets issue?

There was no point in arguing with you in the beginning, we just come here for our daily ration of popcorn. Keep posting, m8.

These are not christian crosses, these are gothic archer flowers.
These flowers were common “decoration” of fortress walls, so archers had a rather wide FoV while still being protected by walls. Before that a similar looking rune got used to depict the 4 seasons by germanic tribes. During the Renaissance this motive got picked up for decoration purposes as well, as reference to the old & famous castles / fortresses.

And beyond that, even if they were including christian crosses, jewish stars, far-east symbolism or any other religious symbols, the only offending thing about it were your intolerance.
Religion is part of our history & played many important roles in events that lead to the society you’re currently living in. Not all of them were positive, but with your not only negative, but hostile position towards it, you’re part of the problem rather than the solution. There is no mayor religion out there that does not tolerate atheism & that includes Islam. It is fanatics, such as yourself, that wage wars & cause intolerance on both sides. In fact, your ignorance, born out of a lack of education is offending me.

this is not Gw1
class-synergy got replaced with player-synergy.
one puts down combo fields, the other finishes it.
One cc’s a target, the others focus their burst.

The combat system is way faster, but less complex, something that many people actually enjoy, so what you consider as problem, is a strength of this title for others.

And beyond that you have class-unique buffs or builds that excel in a particular supportive way.

warrior-banners: class-unique, and buff everyone.
ranger-spotter: class-unique and bolster everyone
elementalist cleansing myst: additional heal, stackable with regen and other passive class-heals (like backpack regenerator from engis)

And runes / sigils also add a new layer of class-synergy and support.
Defender runes f.e.: If a whole group runs them, one guardian F3 is enough to heal everyone for 4k, regardless if they have access to aegis in their builds or not.
This combo will get even more powerful with the upcomming changes to engi, where they get a minor trait in the inventions-line that aoe-cleanses 1 condi if using a healing skill (which defender runes bonus 6 counts as), and also gets regen when cleansing condis from the second minor.

so if you have 1 guardian and 4 engis, the guardian just has to press F3 while under aoe-fire, so the whole group gets healed for 4k, looses 4 condis, stacks up regen like crazy and gets granted a second aegis right after, which ten will stack up even more regen.

There is complexity in this game, for those who want to min-max everything, while the combat system in itself is fast paced and easy to pick up.

Your problem is that you loved Gw1 and can’t accept that there will never be a true sequel to it. Yes, this is a shame, but moving on and trying out new ways has served Gw2 rather good so far, even tho we still have issues in the game… they are just not there where you imply them.

Long bug-lists and skippable /stackable dungeons, this is what really hurts the PvE part of the game, along with a general class-balancing, focused solely on PvP…

Don’t get me wrong, I love PvP and WvW, but balancing 3 game-modes around a single one sounds already like a bad idea, even if you don’t have any clue about Gw2 or MMO’s in general.

…Tidally locked to our character, exactly like the idle-animation from our function-gyro.

So, since that would mean that they always are on our characters position, a few things would need to change in general:

- while off cd, gyros are immune to dmg.
- while off cd, gyros have passive, weaker effects.
- while off cd, gyros orbit our character closly, like function gyro does.
- if activated, gyros move away from our character a bit, become damagable, targetable, but are still tidally locked on this “further away” position, ensuring that they will always strictly follow our movement.
- if they survive their uptime, they move back to their initial position & continue their passive effects while being invulnerable, but go on a 20sec cd (soft-cd)
- if they get killed, they go on 20sec cd’s without performing their passive effects (hard-cd)
- activatting a gyro a second time causes it to blow up with the usual skill & trigger all on death effects preemptively. It then goes on a 20sec cd without performing the passive effects (hard-cd)

Medic gyro:
passive: heals 150 per second for the engi
active: heals 5k initially for the engi & then pulses 300 aoe-heal per second for 10 seconds
TB: stays as as

Bulwark:
passive: reduces incoming direct & condi-dmg for the engineer by 10%
active: aoe absorbs 50% incoming direct & condi-dmg for 10sec
TB: reflecting dome is now also a light-field

Purge:
passive: clears 1 condition for the engineer every 5 seconds
active: aoe-clears 2 conditions every 2 seconds for 10 seconds
TB: The poison field is mobile and play-centric. It applies poison, torment & blind per tick. Renamed into exhaust fumes.

Shredder:
passive: gives all hits from the engineer a 33% chance to apply 5sec of vulnerability
active: whirl-finishes all fields the engineer is moving trough / hits as often as it whirl-finishes for around 100 dmg / each hit causes vulnerability / buffs 2 seconds of fury every 2 seconds / lasts 10 seconds
TB: stays as is

Blast (renamed into Speed Gyro):
passive: grants 5 seconds of swiftness for the engineer every 5 seconds (intentional synergy with vigorous speed (not that heavy armor exploit wouldn’t perma-trigger it already, or adrenal implant being perma-vigor effectively as well…))
active: aoe-buffs 2 seconds of quickness every 2 seconds for 10sec
TB: stays as is

Sneak:
passive: [see below]
active: aoe-buff stealth for 3 seconds every 2 seconds for 10 seconds (yes, a nerf to the current version, but if you ask me, 45sec stealth on a 50sec overall cd is too good)
TB: stays as is

[Passive on sneak-gyro]:
Since it’s a elite skill, I’d like it to have some more powerful effect than the others, so I’d give it 1 second of evading all attacks every 5 seconds. Would fit the theme of phase-shifting to become partly invisible. Or just give it aegis for 5seconds every 5seconds.

Alternatively I’d like to give it the following effect:
1st effect: apply reveal for 1 sec every second to the engineer
Yes, you heard right, as long as the passive is up, we can’t stealth, which also means that for us, the sneak-gyro will never buff more than 10sec stealth & if we pick it, it’s active phase is the only time where we can get stealth from any source. Ofc we can still stealth our allies with elixir S & smokefield blasts & if we go down, the passive ends anyways, so we can still get saved by allies. Also, the gyro itself will still stealth our allies for up to 15sec
2nd effect: apply insight for 1 seconds every seconds.
What is insight? An Idea the thief subforum came up with some time ago. Insight allows us to see all targets around us, regardless if stealth’d or not, but they still have the stealth effect on themselves & are invisible for the rest of our allies. So, where is the difference in just giving it permanently pulsing reveal? Well, first off having stealth on you is very important for many traits in the thief’s shadow arts line, and even tho engineers are the thiefs natural hardcounter, balance should never go so far as to letting a class automatically loose if it gets targeted by 1 skill of their hard-counter. If we reveal them, it doesn’t even matter if we engage into combat with them or not. Regardless who their opponent is, he will kill the revealed thief since the thief looses access to his main dmg-option & main-defense mechanic at the same time, effectively stripping him naked, mechanic-wise.
This means, as long as we have insight, we can see & target stealthed targets on any range, so they loose the option to juke us, reposition unpunished or ambush us unnoticed. Still they enjoy all the advantages of being stealthed, in the case of thief this means consi-clears, healing, access to their backstabs, a.s.o.
Still we have the option to reveal them to every time, if our TB skill is off cd, but since a) sneak gyro permanently reveals us during its passive phase and b) the insight buff appears on our buff-bar, thiefs & mesmers are warned that we know where they are and have the possibility of baiting & dodging our reveals.
Ofc, for WvW & PvP this option means that a scrapper can call out stealth’d targets to the group via TS, without revealing them ingame. But since both teams & zergs would have the same option, this levels the field for both parties & makes proper teamwork/communication even more important.

On the other hand, a scrapper can still choose to kill the gyro on the last second of its uptime to let it go on a hard-cd & therefore keep the stealth uptime & option to apply even more stealth to himself from other sources. He just trades the insight uptime for this…

Discuss.

they said “one lucky class is getting hammer”
Only we & druid are not revealed
Druid gets staff.

END_OF_THE_LINE

I’ve desperately tried to make a shiro / jalis combo work in PvP, With devastation, invocation & retribution traitlines being picked. I tried with several rune/sigil combos, paired with maraude, berserker, knight & even soldier stats. I tried with s/s + hammer & s/a + hammer. Here’s what I’ve encountered so far with it:

- Even tho malyx allows for reasonable resistance uptime and awesome condi-control, all other legends lack condi-clears, making any encounter with condition-specs extremely frustrating. In my setup, I only had 1 condi-clear on legend swap & 3 condis cleared every 30sec with the jalis heal.

- While engaging into melee combat is rather easy due to axe #4 & shiros teleport, disengaging is almost impossible, especially because of high energy-costs on shiros evade & impossible oods, hammer #3 placing you back on the beginning of your leap, and hammer #5+ static road having high energy-costs as well. Once you are in melee you stay there until you or your opponent is in downstate.

- sword #3 kills you way faster than your opponents, since you have no direct control into what melee-aoe it will port you, eats up all melee-cleave dmg, and has no mechanic to compensate you for that. To make this skill work it should be an evade, or instantly blind every target you strike for a brief time.

- shiros heals is bugged. It appears to have an internal cd, only proccing its charges every 1 or 2 seconds, therefore killing you pretty fast, especially since it forces you to attack in order to heal.

- since jalis’ heal is your only condi-clear option (unless you pick the trait on legend-swap), 30sec is way to long for it. In general heals on revenant are on way too long cd’s. Options to fix that would be to reduce the cd’s drastically (90%) and give them appropriate energy-costs (35 or higher), just as the rest of the class is designed to work. Yes, I know ventari is your intended legend for healing output, but keep in mind that other legends must be at least self-sustaining as well.

- Axe #5 can be side-stepped easily on any range, a clear indicator that its field is too narrow for PvP. Either hasten the animation to trigger faster, or widen the impact area.

Last but not least, a comment its raw dmg output:
While it’s kinda okayish for PvP, in PvE it will always be laughed on since it doesn’t brings “valuable” group support, other than the 150 ferocity, and lacks a great deal of dmg-modification-traits & cd-reduction-traits. Currently the revenant could get 300 ferocity (+20% crit-dmg) and another 20% crit-dmg on targets below 50% (roughly 10% overall for boss-encounters), and 2×7% from minor traits leaving him with effectively 44% more dmg, given that he maxes out his crit-chance to 100% like other classes do. And since the auto-attack chain is partly a piercing projectile, loosing a great deal of dps against walls & obstructions, not even their vulnerability-stacking will make them remotely viable in dungeon-runs. The biggest issue is simply their lack of frequent high hitting attacks.
Even Hammer has viable dmg (compared with other classes’ ranged options) on max range on skill #2 & 3, but while double-sword attacks very fast, its hits are very weak. Skill number 3 was hitting 7 times with 1.2k each, leaving it with roughly 8.4k, on a 15sec cd, and that already is the highest dps skill on this weapon-set…

Currently the shiro “dps-spec” for dungeons is a dead horse, and needs a big dmg buff. Yes, we heard often enough that the coming CGC will make support classes more viable, but appart from jalis (projectile block & dmg-reduction) & ventari (projectile block & healing), there is not much support going on either, especially not if you consider what other classes bring to the table in terms of direct, dmg-preventing / negating support, while still bringing high dps-specs.

Since data shows now that the loot from fractal encryptions is abysmal and actually a gold-sink (or at least a huge waste of time, compared to SW farming), it is time to fix dungeon rewards:

Additional to all current fractal loot-systems (encryption-boxes, a.s.o.), each fractal-level rewards you with 30s+((fractal.lvl*1s)/2)
that means:
fractal.lvl 1: 30.5s
fractal.lvl 100: 80s
Also, each fractal-level rewards you with a XP chest, worth 100kXP+(fractal.lvl*1kXP)

That means, you get your daily chest by completing 3 fractals from a tier (f.e. t1), like you do currently, but if you run all levels from 1 to 20 inside that tier, you can get up to 7g05s00c extra from doing so, per day. And you’d also farm 2,21 million XP on that way…

Oh look mom, I fixed fractals.

Err, you were saying that deployable turrets does allow odd turret placement ON surfaces, which a dev testified to be intentionally. Thank you for pointing out the obvious.
That has -almost- nothing to do with hanging turrets midair. Last time i checked players are not able to hover, so I guess even tho the dev commented on a thread, discussing oddly placed turrets, he was more focusing on the DT trait, than on mid-air floating turrets that players physically DON’T can place themselves on…
Please link the the thread in question so I get a look on the actual post from the dev, because “Ages ago some guys discussed this with a dev, and they were totally agreeing on this one being allowed” is not a phrase I’d like to risk a ban over.
Meanwhile: watch your language.

Angry Joe:
A wannabe game-journalist who’s known for emotional fits, spanning over several videos, reviews consisting of overhyping or overexaggerating single features/bugs & usually doing nothing but screaming at his camera to deliver some kind of point.
Does he get my clicks? Sure, since he’s comedy gold, especially since he regularly starts his “Angry-Army” guilds & communities for various games, inviting his followers to join him in these games, only to run off soon after & leave a headless community, doomed to get laughed at whenever they stick up their head in mapchat or game-forums, or die off eventually.
The best part is where he pretends that him giving up a reasonable job for “doing this” is some kind of achievement he has to be honored over, while struggling to keep above the economic surface with t-shirt & other merchandise sells.
I like how many fanboys he has, even tho he kittened them over again & again.

I mean, even the industry regards him as complete failure & joke, resulting in him usually never getting a interview or getting screwed over with very little questions allowed. I guess A-net were the nicest in treating him for a long time with the last HoT interview they allowed him in.

So yea, I know him. I actually like his comedic performance from time to time, but more-so I like how hard he usually fails.

Silhouette.5631:

I want to not get kicked out of parties if Im in clerics gear.

Instead of having to play one of three classes (tank healer dps). you have to play 1 (dps).

Introducing the holy trinity would not solve your issue then.
Lets imagine for a sec that we need 1 healer per party, 3 dps, and 1 support

The meta will quickly find the classes that are most efficient in these open roles, distribute the builds on meta-battle, and then continue kicking everyone who doesn’t follow suit.

Your issue starts all by yourself.
People that want a specific role from you will tell you so in their LFG.
F.e: "Full run Meta zerk +10k AP, ele / thief "
If you join on something else than a ele or thief, you get kicked if you don’t relog.
If you join with less than 10k AP, you get insta-kicked.
If you join with the right class, but non-meta build, you get insta-kicked as soon as they find out.

Will overhauling the dungeon mechanics change anything of the above? Ofc not. If you don’t want to get kicked you should read the LFG text properly and check first if you meet the requirements, or open your own with FFA (free for all) in the title. Believe it or not, there are many experienced dungeon runners out there who don’t like the meta and rather take increased run-times for a more relaxed run. You are not alone. Unless you force yourself into a party that did not ask for you.

With that said, yes I’d love more variety to the boss mechanics as well, but solely for the reason to get more fun out of it. It will not magically fix anything for anyone who currently gets kicked continuously. That Fix for that must come from yourself.

Healix.5819:

Abusing the contribution system has been going on since launch. Simply hit the boss once and AFK – no point in participating since you’ll get the full rewards regardless. If they made your contribution actually matter, people not running DPS specs would complain and class balancing would become an even bigger issue. If they implemented contribution scoreboards, people would be called out after failed events.

And here comes the solution:
implement a passive system that keeps track of your actions.
Last dmg you’ve applied is more than 30sec ago? you failed the event personally.
You were operating (not afking) a turret at tequatl?
You get the event.

Don’t let the contribution scale on the dmg you dealt, but on the actions per minute.
If they drop below – lets say – 10 seconds (one attack every 6 seconds… c’mon even a scrub manages that), you get notified that you did not contributed enough for the event, which means that you get bronze event reward, but no chest (in case of a worldboss / farmfest event).

No more AFK’ers or speed-tagger.

You know that a system sucks, if a random, over-tired guy can barf out a better one in 10 min…

the reason we still have the weapon-swap button is the following:
pressing weapon-swap cancels your cast, so you can forcefully stop EG #4 to leap away after dropping acid bomb, and also allows for dodge-baiting by canceling magnet-pull before it finishes, allowing for saving the cooldown in case the target dodges too early.
on the other hand, if you do use the assigned button for the utility-swap, you cast continues, allowing for chaining skills like this:
magnet-pull > prybar > swap to rifle while you swing the pry-bar > get overcharged shot off before the target can dodge away.
The ability to decide between continue or break our animations freely on will, while swapping the active weapon-set is one of the reasons why the engineers handles his combos so effectively, so a great loss to the class, if it were to be changed.

Veteran here.
I don’t agree with OP.
Stop speaking on my behalf.
Ty.

daily reminder that turret engis are easy to kill by focusing them down.
they have zero escapes, just 2 condi-clears every 20(15) seconds and one automatic transmute every 15sec.
that’s it. the rest is just a healthbar and 1 single-target cc.

If you see multiple turret engis, zerg up in the first stage of the fight, clear the notes together by focusing them down and then spawn-camp and/or intercept their team since they have no option to fight back between the nodes, whatsoever.

A-net will not balance this, just because you suffer from such big l2p issues.

It’s pretty simple:
We were never in the PvE meta but always did fine in all its aspects. actually were are in such a comfortable spot that playing engi is more fun for many than playing the classes that are actually in the meta.

So, our fellow PvE-only players are simply upset that it doesn’t look like this specialization will bring us to the top, while trying to argue the unpleasant fact away that we are indeed in a solid position in all PvE content-aspects.

What we were severely lacking in is the needed survivability to keep up with the heavy AoE/CC-spam that awaits you in Zerging. And this is actually a real issue, since our class is designed to become more & more effective the closer our target are. Best examples are Flamethrower & Bombkit.
So in WvW we were actually suffering from playstyle-breaking incapabilities, which are now addressed & fixed with this specialization. Even if gyros turn out to melt in AoE dmg & therefore are completely useless, we still get a decent load of survivability-focused traits & utility that is not dependend on the lifespan of gyros.
This specialization fixed something we were lacking: frontline survivability. And for a class that is designed to be more effective the closer the enemy is, this is great news.

So yea, PvE got kinda left out by this specialization, but then again, we already had a pretty solid spot there.
So quit the whining & enjoy your class becoming more complete. Maybe the next specialization will come with uber-DPS for you.

Until 3 guys with a brain split off from the attackers, take one shrine and the pirate-ship sinks in a glorious combustion before it can reach land again…

Why not take it to the next level directly.
First of all, lets set up the basic mechanics for golems.

- Alpha Golems are not obtainable via blueprints anymore
- Omega Golems are not obtainable via blueprints anymore
- Players receive a new tab in their Hero’s-window, dedicated to show golem-stats and golem-gear, as well as the appearance of their golem suit.
- Golems are able to wear their own, unique trinkets, allowing them to customize their stats. They can choose up to 6 trinkets (energy-core, engine, armor-plating, sensor-array, joints, unique backback)
- Golems do not change their appearance based on their gear. The only choice a player could take (as of now) would be equally sized Alpha or Omega-golem skins. Would be nice if new skins could be added in the future, tho
- Golem gear is added as craftable items to the various Crafting professions. Ascended versions of golem gear are not available
- Golems do only 10% of their former dmg to gates & walls (that should still be roughly double player AA-dmg).

- While in WvW, players have the option to spawn their golem suit for the cost of 10 supplies to any given time.
- Golems remain active until their HP reaches zero, or the player uses skill #7 to leave them.
- Golems don’t have access to the default Alpha or Omega skills-set, but can choose their skills #2,#3,#4&#5 freely from the following pool:
CHARGE! – the golem rushes forward and knocks down every enemy on the way. does minor dmg. grants superspeed for 3 seconds upon finishing the charge. Leap finisher / low cd
STOMP! – the golem jumps in the air on spot and lauches foes away upon landing. does minor dmg. roots the golem, blast finisher / low cd
PULL! – the golem uses his first as rocket to pull a player towards him. does medium dmg. / high cd
CRUSH! – the golem raises his firsts and smashes them on the ground, knocking down foes in front of him. does heavy dmg blast finisher / high cd

Firenado – the golem starts to spin and releases flames from his firsts, causing burning and medium dmg per tick. roots the golem / medium cd
Rocket Barrage – the golem releases a barrage of rockets that lock on up to 10 targets around him and do heavy dmg on impact, as well as causing blindness & confusion. / high cd
Jetpack – the golem starts his jetpack and flies towards the target (aoe-placement). Ticks medium dmg, blinds and burns all foes below him on his way. / high cd
Beam cannon – the golem charges up his main-gun and aims at the current target. All targets caught by the beam get confusion and daze, as well as tick high dmg. roots the golem / medium cd

Shield bubble – Destroys Projectiles while it lasts. Lightfield. reveals stealthed targets inside it / medium cd
Antidote dispenser – releases a waterfield for 4 seconds that ticks healing and clears 2 conditions upon summoning. does not heal golems / low cd
Stabilized Ground – Releases a magnetic charge that magnetizes the ground, granting allies stability and acting as lightning field. / medium cd
Autodoc installation – Generates a rezz-field that lasts for 8 seconds and ticks 17% health for people in downstate. also heals alive allies & removes one condition per pulse from them. / very high cd

Golems can choose from one of the following auto-attacks:
- Alpha AA
- Omega AA (changed to have direct fire-arcs. no easy wall-bombing anymore)
- Acid dispenser: Releases acid in a front-cone. Poisons & cripples foes. Hits 5 times. Deals overall medium dmg, medium range (600)

- skill #6 is called auto-tool installation. it clears all conditions on the golem and heals him for exactly 50% of his current max healthpool. 40sec cd.

- Golems can not be affected by transforms
- Golems can not be cc’d (only exception is siege-disabler)
- Golems now can profit from buffs (including swiftness)
- Golems can not fight underwater. however, players still can decide to leave them and/or use their healing skill, and additionally receive a skill on #1 that grants them 5 seconds superspeed.

Thoughts?

Pretty much everything you said is either completely false, over-exaggerated or plain QQ about your favored build being gone.

Do we care?
Nope.

But because you’ll continue ranting about people disregarding you right away without even responding, I gonna debunk / explain your points to you.

1. Speedy kits is still there, with a nerfed uptime of 50%. Is that a nerf to engineers mobility? Nope, we still have heavy armor exploit for frequent perma-swiftness & vulnerability in-combat + mecha legs as 25% movement speed / 33%reduced duration on chill/cripple/immob
Is that a nerf to our vigor uptime?
Nope. currently you just get 50% uptime anyways, and by choosing heavy armor exploit you get 100% uptime.

2. Protection Injection & invigorating speed were always in the same tier, they just compete with each other now, so are exclusive. is that a huge issue? Looking into tools, we get a automated stunbreak and over-shield in inventions (the “garbage-line” that looks better than current alchemy) will give you decent protection uptime anyways. And just in case you didn’t heard the news, elixir R has a even shorter cd now, so you may as well pick that if you need the dodges & immob clear and bring some free rezzing as well. In regards to the “garbage” grandmasters, have you even looked up what stimulant does for you? fury and condi-clear, on a 10sec cd, along with the fury on crit from firearms, also on a 10sec cd. Speak after me: P-E-R-M-A—F-U-R-Y.

3. one does not replace the other, they can be picked together, and appart from the range-nerf, nades got buffed beyond awesomeness since it now delivers its full potential without even the need to trait it anymore. and IF you trait it, you’ll land your nades so easy now that you seriously can’t have a reason to complain.
Even for WvW wall-bombing, only nades #4 was viable since it could reach every siege, regardless how far placed behind. This is now possible with orbital strike, which can hit double-times, and still can be picked on the SAME time as nades. Get your kitten together. Nades were always bad on range, and while you were throwing poison nades on nodes in PvP previously, you’ll now do that with mortar #2. No utility is lost, and both come with gread synergy, be it on condi or power-builds.

4. You live under a rock, or never have played engi if you don’t see the synergy in inventions for us. That section of your post right there is hilarious comedy-material. What the kitten is even the point? you still can pick both leg-mods and power-wrench, if you so desire

5. Because they are not core anymore. Grenadier? core-trait before, now baseline and free’d up its slot for double orbital strickes, blast-finishers on dodge or even more bleed/cripple-spam. Bunker down, far better than backpack-regenerator and elixir infused bombs together. ICP? placed neatly in our condi-line, along with traits that buff pistols, our crits, our bleeds and even give us more crits. And its former place got overtaaken by a seeker-missile, that works exactly like ICP but does power-dmg instead.

6. For months people were complaining about the map-control of thieves in WvW and PvP. At this point I’m certain you’ve lived under a rock, or try to make your points more valid by false claims. Lock on looks awesome. Do I personally have asked for it? Nope. Do I welcome the change? Hell yes.

tl;dr: I know casuals who suck meta-battles balls and can’t come up with reasonable builds themselves. That is fine. No one is expecting you to learn the class you play. I mean, that would be hilarious. I’d recommend you to sit back, shut up and wait for the next meta-battle build to pop up, so you can run around and tell people how awesome the meta is, while face-rolling over your keyboard. Your recent posts in pre-announcement threads made clear that you don’t do much else…

Engi / Guardian / Warri here, and I refuse to give a ranking.
why?
because it would be unfair to rank classes just by judging the individuals who happen to play these classes.
You can spend 20min in lfg to set up your perfect class-comp, just to end up with a bunch of rally bots that have more gold than their IQ is high, therefore locking you in your “meta” group for another 40min to slowly crawl from one boss to another while failing every single encounter, or you simply put “p1 / p2 /p3” in your lfg, take the first people to show up and post a honest “gg” after clearing the path in 10-20min tops.
Both happened to me and when guildys ask me what they should bring to some dungeon runs, I’ll always tell them the same: whatever you want.

If I see randoms in my group with low AP (like below 1.5k, kinda my persona magical border of being a newby or not), I always ask them if it’s their first time / if they need a short explanation for encounters. Having patience with people who did not searched the wiki for the path they want to run costs me maybe 2min more than a speedrun would take, but provides the same satisfaction (and possible new recruits for the guild).

Seriously, this thread is the core of not understanding how the game works and unless you try to break speed-run world-records there is nothing to consider a kick for but “is this person rude or not?”.

Do I have prejudices towards classes?
Hell yes, especially when it comes to Warris. Often enough these rally-bots are trying to kick random people and dare to insult others for themself ending up in downstate. Still I’ve met so many nice people who happen to play a decent warri that I give a chance to everybody.
Yes, necros dps is the lowest in PvE, but considering how kittening easy dungeons in gw2 are, I don’t care about that fact and just hope to have a decent player that knows the dungeon behind this necro, so we have a nice and relatively (compared to queue for ages in lfg (yes, that IS included in the time it takes for your group to clear the dungeon)) fast run.

DOWN WITH THE HOBOSACKS!!!
just kidding, they don’t even read this…
bumpedy bump anyways.

how about you trait for trickery and focus on the 3rd thing thiefs are good in after stealth and teleports:
evades.

shortcuts were a bug to begin with, and given the options this class still has (except heavy bug-using), there is nothing to complain about for you.
Portal bombs are still a thing, they are just harder to pull off now.
Teleports still work like intended (keep in mind that “open field” does not include paths with a high elevation difference).
Thief/mesmer still have all their defensive options, just the exploiting part of their movement got fixed.

Projectiles are always a bad idea, since gyros move quite randomly around you and are simply too stupid to take LoS into consideration when moving. I mean, they “improved” the AI for the HoT mobs, but even tho these mobs are quite a challenge now, the ranged mordrem feel like they were all cloned from the same sylvari… the one that fell on its head right after leaving its blossom. They charge their longshots even when I’m standing already behind terrain obstructions and keep shooting at me for minutes, before making up their mind and finally running around the corner.
Don’t trust A-net when it comes to AI design. I vouched for signets as scrapper utility, but now that we have this junk, we definitively want as little function as possible left to AI decision. And since their positioning is the big bane that makes them so horrible, people want them tidally locked to us.
A small anecdote: Turrets were worthless trash, before a-net decided to ditch the targeting AI of turrets and let them strictly attack the last target we dealt dmg on. Just because of this change, a buggy mess of scrap transformed into the bane of pug-queuing for over a year, filling countless buckets with scrub-tears, and plastered the PvP subforum with daily respawning threads of QQ how stupidly broken OP turrets are. Not a single stat got changed on them, nor a single bug being fixed. By just dumbing down the AI, and making it less independent, they turned pure turret-builds into borderline competitive.

Anyways, lets continue with your suggestions. Letting gyros teleport on you with each tick would definitively solve all mechanical issues, but be a rather ugly, and – more important – prone-to-bugging-out solution. You can be sure that they completely bug out and do nothing if they attempt to port to you, while your position is invalid (i.e. mid-air(gliding, jump-dodge)) or no valid path can be found (ehmagherd, he jumped over the fence, can’t find a way over this 20cm high obstruction).
Also, it would nullify the nice confusion we get from sneak-gyro in PvP.

Dramatically increasing their range also comes with big balance issues, especially with the sneak-gyro. I mean, confusing our enemies with its wonky movement is one thing, but usually they are able to at least cleave on us with their rather big aoe’s. If the sneak gyro applies stealth in a too big area, it just can stealth itself as well, since its visible presence will not even allow a rough guesstimation of our position anymore…

So IF A-net has some valid technical or balancing reasons against tidally locking sneak, bulwark, purge & medic to our character, my alternative suggestion would be this:

Create lines like the chak-pioneers do to the chak-vets. You can use the mechanics of spear of justice for that. If one of the above 4 gyros spawns, let them project thin beams towards us, that ensure that the gyros apply their effect to us, regardless of LoS or range. Additionally they still perform their effect for allies around their actual position. Just make sure that these lines are invisible for enemies as well, IF we have stealth, else you can tidally lock sneak gyro to us right away.

Nemesis.8593:

Thaddeus.4891:

nacario.9417:

-snip-

-snip-

-snip-

at least read the posts above, before posting…
your personal dps doesn’t really matter, when comparing your pure dps build to a supporter/dps build…

Welcome to Bug Wars 2, where we test how YOU can handle the stress.

Please explain me how it appears as viable decision to you to split up a zerg in order to move faster or be more effective.
Last time i checked, small groups were just as fast as zergs, measured in swiftness-uptime. The only difference is that small groups have less of a tail, and single players even tend to be slower than both, unless their class offers perma-swiftness.
What will happen is that the zerg gets active on your border around the oasis event, roflstomps the few defenders there, and then rushes the next keep. And on their way out they swoop the towers as well. If you want to defend, you better bring a blobb of your own, because they’ll just drop omegas / rams and chew trough these shiny new (and now damaged) T3 gates.
It really doesn’t matter how long travel-times are, since running supplies from camps still takes way longer than the zerg would need to re-approach it, so you’ll eat up your keep supplies, until it’s empty, which is where the gates go down, along with your lord, regardless how “engaging” his mechanics might be.

Every mechanic introduced on these borderlands hurts small groups even more than zergs. So if anything, these maps promote zerging rather than making it less viable.

Congratulation on eating up a stress-test-spot so you could enjoy the landscape, and thank you for the positive press. But please don’t pretend to understand the mechanics on the map, when you clearly don’t.

no legendary effects on kits.
not a single one.
not even footsteps.

edit, here is what our legendary effects for kits should be:
- equiping a kit lets you keep your legendary aura / footsteps

predator:
grenade / mortar shots become orange energy-projectiles, still leaving the associated trail of their skill (so white particle effects for the cryo nades/shells. They also use the sound of the old grenade barrage effect.
FT #2 becomes a giant energy-projectile
EG #2 as well
Static discharge & guided missile become energy-projectiles

Quip:
same as the above, but turns projectiles into confetti with honk&pop-noises

Flameseeker prophecy:
Gearshield uses flameseeker prophecy as skin
shield #5 displays flameseeker prophecy when thrown
[no idea what else to do with it]

Juggernaut:
FT #1 & EG #3 spill quicksilver
EG #4 leaves a puddle of quicksilver
Gearshield becomes shiny & reflective
Box of nails releases shiny nails
Toolkit AA spills quicksilver like the hammer does

Î disagree.

While explosives still bring awesome synergy to condi and hybrid-builds, they’re meant to be taken for powerbuilds anyways.

the minors speak for themselves. dodge-bomb, vuln and more dmg / cc
when it comes to adept-tier, yes it’s lackluster for power-pvp builds that decide against nades, but you have to keep in mind the synergy with inventions when it comes to blast-heals (and you get a ton of them from explosions), so glass-cannon is a valid pick for PvP.

moving on to master-tier, we have the incredible useful short fuse. at least you did recognize it as the valuable trait it is. What you’ve failed to realize is the seeker-missle for what it brings: a free attack without cast-animation, judging from its parent-skill with decent dps as well. yes, it’s quite rng, but since it procs on hit it will be useful for all kinds of builds, especially when you spam #1 in downstate and suddenly the guy that tries to stomp you gets hit like a truck. since the oil-puddle on always prepared was so small, this trait has much more potential to prevent a stomp (via bringing your opponent into downstane) than always prepared could have ever achieved.

shaped charge: 5% more dmg (on top of the 10% of the minor) for free, since we spam so much explosives that your targets most of the time will have vulnerability. so by picking this trait, you theoretically have 15 stacks of vulnerability permanently on a target, and still can go up 25 more. 15% to 40% more dmg from picking this line with shaped charge. up to 45% if you also pick glass-cannon. this is huge.
Keep in mind that vulnerability will also increase condi-dmg now, while pistol AA is counted as “explosion”…

and then we have the grandmasters.
I mean, that’s the point where you make yourself ridiculous. EPK becoming a blast-finisher? while we also have a trait in inventions that allows us to directly heal with blasts? While we have a tools-grandmaster that gives us perma-vigor (since vigor got nerfed)? Wat?
Add on top of this sigil of energy or elixir R (that coincidentally clears immob) and we look on one hell of a build-defining trait.

Then the mortar grandmaster.
2 blasts in a row, every 40 seconds, increased duration on aoe – chill, -poison and -blind fields, all valuable soft-cc’s. this alone is huge for power-builds, but add on top of that kinetic charge. 4 blasts + 4x BoB-like dmg in a row. or 2 blasts + 2x BoB every 20 seconds, while being able to drop a (enhanced duration) waterfield with the same kit…
take juggernaut in firearms, give yourself stab with flamethrower and then OS + netshot to set people up for this burst. Or cleave downed people with this dmg. Or simply hammer the kitten out of svanir or chieftain / contested points, or out of rezzing / stomping people…

You seem to not have understood what synergy and “build-defining” means if you can’t recognize this huge frekkin moose in the hallway…

- Implementing ingame-voicechat that you can activate and deactivate on will, so pug commanders at least have a chance to commune with their pugs (who decided to activate it), especially the casual ones who don’t join the Server community’s TS. Also it would help pug-groups in PvP.

- Higher / more interesting / unique rewards for playing WvW, because nothing else will make Pugs stick to it. Also, Veteran players are being drained from their gold anyways, since siege is expensive, and the rewards for WvW are minuscule. The removal of the upgrade-costs is a step in the right direction, but definitively not enough. Give us reward tracks and access to some shine WvW skins that we can unlock, beyond the mistforged weapons (which are inaccessible atm, since A-net apparently decided to not hold WvW tournamnets anymore, hence tickets are not available anymore).

- Make scouting easier. Pugs have a tendency to run around like headless chicken, without any idea what to do. And if they – by accident – stumble over a zerg they usually don’t even report it and let it take objectives close to a teams spawn or other WP’s. To take away their responsibility to press enter and type “zerg at []”, enemy players should be visible for all players on the map if they run into a 1.2k range threshold of team-members and don’t have stealth.
You know the little green dots that indicate team-members nearby? Give us little red ones that show up if enemies are really close, and make them visible to the whole team. A player who has joined the map then can press m, look out for red dots and run to help those who are currently besieged or engaged in combat.
Ofc someone should tell them that places like south of sm, the swamp next to golanta and the windmill in homeborder most likely will be friendly duels, but beyond that, this would improve the life of all players by a great margin and turn pugs automatically into useful scouts, if they decide to not follow the bagel.

Sazukikrah.5036:

THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN TELL ME THATS NOT OVER POWERED.

Then any attempt to debate & educate you is pointless.

For the interested reader:
Opposing to what the previous poster propagated,
- the gyro is quite squishy and can be taken out easily, both from condi and power-builds.
- it has huge pathing issues, making its use quite annoying for the engineer himself. More often than not it stops for no reason whatsoever & forces us to manually run back for the stealth ticks, or leave it alone, resulting in very short stealth uptimes.
- it is a elite-skill, preventing us from either running moa+rampage, mortar+Orbital strike or supplycrate. The absence of moa alone reduces our advantage above necros / rampage warris quite heavily.
- Picking stealth gyro also makes us weaker against other engineers, since they can reveal us (and we them), so we kinda counter each other. Also dragonhunters are a surprisingly good counter against this gyro, if they pick their aoe reveal trap.

And yes, picking this skill obviously has advantages for us, else we’d not pick them:
- we can aoe-stealth to any time, allowing us to rezz downed team-members & execute stomps more safely.
- even if it gets destroyed in cleave right instantly, the few seconds stealth we get from activating it are good gap-closers, waiting time for cooldowns, or windows for repositioning.
- in combat it can become very effective IF our opponent is dumb enough to allow us to keep it up. Ofc attacking reveals us, but the gyro tick is on longer intervals than the reveal lasts, causing us to blink in and out of stealth every 3 seconds, which does a good job in messing with opponents targeting.
- prestacking stealth on a node while waiting for incoming enemies give us the advantage of the unexpected first strike, and thunderclap is a exceptionally good one at that. In some rare scenarios (that include the gyro not to kitten up, follow properly & stack up stealth on us) we actually can sneak past defenders by destroying the gyro before they can see it & cap the node while they already moved out to another one.
- The wonky pathing-AI of the gyro can work in our favor, causing it to run off in complete wrong directions, leading chasing opponents into utter confusion. Small tipp, if you see it flying away, don’t follow. chnces are that it got confused by the terrain and we actually wait (on the node or not) for you to run off / give up on your (maybe good) positioning. Just dps it ranged, wait & keep your fingers above your stunbreaker.

regardless what situation of the above you’re facing, destroying the gyro once it’s up, is your best bet. Even in the worst case (traited for final salvo) it will blow up in a lighting field, giving the engi superspeed to run away / close the gap.

So, you got killed by turrets recently?
Ok.
Here is what you did wrong:
a) you have fought 1v1 against a turret engi.
b) you have fought on point against a turret engi.
c) you have focused the engi first, instead of his turrets.
d) you have not used proper LOS to mess with the turrets’ targeting.

Some facts that you should be aware when fighting against turrets:

rocket turret:
will buff 3sec of retaliation in 600 range for up to 5 allies every 10sec if traited for it (easily to spot if the turreteer has a huge load of buffs to all times or not)
turret stats (increased range by 50% if traited / also clear indicator that the direct dmg is increased by 15% as well):
Cooldown: 50sec after destruction (36 if picked up)
Damage Damage: 1,429
Attack Range: 1,000
Number of Targets: 5
Rate of Fire: 4 s
Radius: 240
_
rocket turrets overcharge:
Cooldown: 20sec after activation (may triggers with a delay (read below))
Damage Damage: 1,588
Attack Range: 1,000
Knockdown: 2 s
Number of Targets: 1
Rate of Fire: 4 s
Duration: 4 s
Radius: 360
_
how to deal with the rocket-turret:
- use LOS to avoid its auto, or use high endurance regen (sigil of energy / high vigor uptime f.e.) to dodge it regularly.
- it is rather fragile, so focus and burst it down. after that you have 50 sec of free time to burst the engi.
- it is easy to avoid the overcharge skill of the turret since it will:
a) not fire immediately, but be queued up to be shot as the next firing-interval (regular dodging automatically solves that issue)
b) make the rocket-turret show a distinctive orange glow and make a tingling noise as soon as the engi triggers (and queues up) the overcharge.
- note that the overcharge produces an arcing, fast traveling, homing projectile. LOS may be ineffective behind too low cover.
__________
rifle turret:
will buff 5sec of fury every 10sec in 600 range for up to 5 allies if traited for it.
turret stats (increased range by 50% if traited / also clear indicator that the direct dmg is increased by 15% as well):
Cooldown: 20sec upon destruction (15 if picked up)
Damage: 476
Attack Range: 1,000
Rate of Fire: 2 s
_
rifle turret overcharge:
Cooldown: 30sec after activation.
Damage Damage: 476
Rate of Fire Increase: 50%
Attack Range: 1,000
Vulnerability: 8 s
Duration: 10 s
_
how to deal with the rifle turret:
- its direct damage is minuscule so you can ignore it, unless it is traited for buffing fury, in which case it should be taken out right after killing the rocket turret and right before engaging the engi directly.
- its overcharge doubles the dps, which can be a potential problem. but – like the rocket-turrets’ overcharge – it is clearly announced by the orange glow and tingling noise. Use wall of reflection to let the turret kill itself or LOS to avoid it for 10sec.
__________

The issues with underwater combat are the following:

- no exotic headpiece for underwater combat.
- a vast amount of skills behaves different underwater, has different cast-times and animations (how they look is unimportant, but they have altered after-casts, which makes using them iffy and usually destroys any combos you may have in your muscle-memory)
- skills tend to have different effects underwater
- a good load of skills is not even possible to be slotted for underwater combat, messing with a mayor load of builds, which brings us to the last, and most important point:
- due to skills not behaving exactly as their land version and the requirement to wield other weapons, most of your traits will be sub-par, badly-optimized or simply ineffective when jumping into underwater combat, therefore you will always end up in situations where your build suddenly is not behaving as intended anymore.

However, one of the 6 dragons is the deep sea dragon, so once his expansion hits you can be sure that we get many underwater biomes and maybe even underwater WvW borders…

I hate it already.

Hm…
Leveling got a overhaul which lets you rush the first 10 levels in 2h or less, but then goes back to the normal xp-gain.
Acended Armor / weapons / trinkets are introduced to the game, giving you roughly 5% better stats compared to exotic gear, but also allow for infusion-slots which further increase your stats a bit. Mainly infusions are used for agony-resistance in fractals tho.

Furthermore, all PvE content now is covered by a mega-server system, ensuring that all PvE maps are decently populated, regardless how small your Server is. And yea, Servers also still exist, but they are basically just WvW-teams and don’t matter for PvE or PvP anymore.

The engi received quite a few buffs and also a few nerfs, but for details I’d recommend the patchnotes. Balance patches are released roughly in a 6-month period.

Licving World Season 2 just got finished and we currently wait for Gw2’s first expansion-pack, Heart of Thorns.

- No new Dungeons (just a reworked path in Twilight-Arbor) since release.
- 3 new Fractal maps and 2 new Fractal Boss maps.
- A plethora of new skins
- No new Legendaries (but new ones are announced for the expansion)
- 1 new grandmaster-trait (#13) for all traitlines for all classes.
- 2 new healing-skills (one of which is a living World relic and totally useless)
- Still pretty long bug-lists for most classes (especially thief, mesmer and engi)
- Zerker/Assassin is still the meta for PvE. Engi is not part of it, but overall perceived as very useful
- Celestial is the current meta for PvP. Engi has a solid spot in it.
- GWEN is still the meta for WvW (but got a huge impact by the recent stability-changes, so is expacted to shift over time, surprisingly in favor of the engi since Slick-shoes is currently OP for stab-ripping)
- Server-sided Lags are still a big issue for most parts of the game, many people still suffer from frequent disconnects, especially in event that many people participate in to the same time.
- The Trading-post is somewhat stable, the feared inflation/devaluation never happened, but gems steadily keep getting more expensive every week, with peak-prizes to special gem-store releases. Still, farming and crafting is rewarding.
- Dungeons are still the best gold-farm (apart from some RNG gambling with the mystical toilet)
- edge of the mist is a new WvW overflow map that is currently the fastest way to level up toons.
- WvW (EoTM) is still the fastest Karma-Farm
- PvP now features reward-tracks than one can unlock dungeon-rewards, crafting mats and exotic items with
- PvP skins are not a thing anymore, your PvE gear is exactly how you look in PvP as well
- Colors are now acc-wide available
- Commander badges are now Acc-wide available (but cost 300g to aquire now)
- Transmutation stones and crystals are taken out of the game, instead you have a acc-wide wardorbe that saves all your unlocked skins (by making the associated item acc or soul-bound), that you then can transmute with transmutation-charges over all itmes you posses as often as you want (or as long as you have charges. new charges are available for map-completion, PvP reward-tracks and ofc in the gem-store)

And a bunch of more stuff.
Oh yea, Lions Arch is now a crater.

running this now in WvW:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalcThatY1Vw+KQ+FLsFV4SdRvG4HWiBgYHVFPBA-TFiAABJcCAgZ/Bo1DAwDA4ZzfSrEsa1fsW5HpAgZOA-w

Stealth → IA + Blowtorch → Static shot → Poison-dart
You really don’t need more than these cd’s to kill a target quite instantly dmg-wise.
If anyone tries to clear condis: moa
If eles cast meteor shower / pop FGS to run away or yolo into Tornado: moa
If warriors go rampage or switch to nike-GS: moa
If mesmers cast mass-invis: moa
And the best part is how easy this makes to destroy our natural hardcounter, especially on condi-builds: necros.
Lich? Moa.
Plague-from? Moa.
Deathshroud? Moa.

Regardless what stunts your opponent tries, we have a hardcounter for them.
And even if you don’t land the moa, your burns usually tick for 4k-7k, elixir S offers stealth & safe-stomps, flamethrower comes with even more burns, a safe-stomp & cc, and elixir B even offers stability.
This build might look like balls to the walls, but transmute, backpack regenerator, Cleansing Synergy, Alchemical tinctures and bunker down offer so much regeneration and condi-cleanse, that this build is conveniently tanky, while offering all the offense you’ll ever need, along with more than enough safe-stomps / stealth to deal with 1vx situations.

And for those interested, here some in-depth notes:
Currently the duration of burning excels 100% by far, meaning that this build specs condi-duration beyond the hardcap, therefore wasting stats. But since condi-duration reduction is a thing, and the engine directly substracts this from the overall condi-duration we run, we maybe end up below +100% condi-duration, but still with way higher durations than we should do.
Melandru runes + Poultry soup on your target f.e. is not really resulting in a significant duration loss for your blowtorch, so this allows this build to even deal with full-on tanky raid-builds, and I actually had quite some success running it in focus parties for our raids.

no

/15schars

bump.
could maybe a moderator or dev tell us if this issue is at least getting looked at?
My whole guild and a good chunk of our servers’ wvw-community is getting more and more frustrated by this situation, and a flawed mechanic, impacting as many players as this, definitively deserves some attention.

Hey, just wanted to drop by and send greetings from my flamethrower.

Not enough QQ in this thread…
I guess I pack out my old turreteer build and hang-glide in khylo for a bit…
Or I could go to sleep…
Hard decissions.