Guild Wars 2

I hate to say it, but as much fun as the Saboteur was to play as, their entire role was burst damage. While there may be some debate as to the specific role of the engineer is, burst damage is definitively not it.

I don’t disagree with the notion that our explosives need some love, grenades and mines especially, but I can’t get behind making all explosives deal massive burst damage when some of them can provide a significant amount of healing or can be used to great effect in certain niche situations. Instead of simply making explosives deal massive spike damage, I’d much rather see them improve the viability of where the niches where they are supposed to shine.

Never underestimate the power of hammerspace.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

For the record, I’m not trying to start an argument with you, and I’m not arguing against my own self interest. I ask why you’re trying to start something with someone else because this seems like a pointless thing tho argue about.

Exactly. Nothing was said to you but you attempt to moderate it and make an inflammatory and accusatory comment. If you dislike my post, feel free to report it. But do not make a backhanded snide remark, then cry fowl if I call you on it.

I wouldn’t call asking why you were trying to start a fight moderating your post. Nor have I made any backhanded or snide remarks. I just don’t think you should try to start fights is all. It’s not nice.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Why are you trying to start a fight?

Because when they give us the two biggest fixes we ask for and someone complains and portrays it as if it wasn’t a good fix because they didn’t tell us when they planned to do it, is foolish

As a matter of fact, you should be ashamed of someone complaining about our two best buffs we got, instead of arguing against your own best self interest purely because you dislike me.

He isn’t complaining about the fixes, he’s complaining about Anet not being more vocal about what they’re doing for the engineer. Personally, I wish Anet would be more vocal in general, but they’re leagues better than a few other mmo companies I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with in the past, so I don’t see much reason to complain.

For the record, I’m not trying to start an argument with you, and I’m not arguing against my own self interest. I ask why you’re trying to start something with someone else because this seems like a pointless thing tho argue about.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

coglin.1496:

Pannonica.5378:

What other professions goes large target mode when they pop stability?

Warrior, Ranger, Necro.

Ehh, not really. I can’t speak for the ranger, but the warrior and necro skills that make them large with stability are transforms. The going large has much more to do with the transformation than the stability.

So is Elixir S. States it in the tool tip. So what makes it any different?

So it is. My confusion stems from the fact that literally every other transform changes your moveset. Toss Elixir S doesn’t do this.

You should learn to be less abrasive though, you’ll attract more flies with sugar than vinegar, coglin.

coglin.1496:

Kyon.9735:

Yes they mentioned it, they never actually said when. Then after a major nerf, no form of communication was made and everybody was raging and disappointed and the forums was filled with rants. If they just let us know that they are working on it, I doubt the engineer forums would have been filled with rants like that. But past is past, at least now we’re sure they’re working in the shadows.

Weird, I just searched Code of Conduct, Terms of Service, User agreement, and Terms of Use, yet I couldn’t find anywhere that stated they were required to tell us when they were making a specific change and how far ahead of time they are required to do so.

Why are you trying to start a fight?

coglin.1496:

Pannonica.5378:

What other professions goes large target mode when they pop stability?

Warrior, Ranger, Necro.

Ehh, not really. I can’t speak for the ranger, but the warrior and necro skills that make them large with stability are transforms. The going large has much more to do with the transformation than the stability.

nakoda.4213:

why would you trait one kit and use another?

a 100b warrior sure as kitten cant use banners, vice versa.

you get bombs AND nades in ine spec

FT AND elixers in one spec

pistols AND rifles in one spec, if you dont like kits

also; re biased comparisons, that was the point. which is why i labelled then anecdotal.

as far as i know, ele is the ONLY profession whose traits allow for hybrid specialization.

my points still stand.

Not sure why no one else has responded to this, but there are quite a few flaws here.

Grenades get a whopping 50% extra damage from one 30 point trait in explosives. Without that trait, they are pretty lackluster, but with it they are good. For bombs to really shine though, they need 30 points in inventions and then another 20 or so in explosives. So engineers don’t get bombs and grenades in one spec.

Elixirs need 30 points in alchemy to really shine due to the HGH trait, a trait that spells the difference between many using or not using elixirs as their heal and/or utilities. Flamethrower needs 20 points in alchemy for deadly mixture and 30 in firearms for juggernaut. Using any (not bomb) kits at all almost demands 10 to 20 points in Tools for kit refinement, speedy kits, or both. So while you can get a flamethrower or elixir gun build that makes good use of elixirs, the points are very tight and don’t allow any wiggle room.

While pistols and rifles both benefit from the same trait line, engineers have no weapon swap, so we can’t switch from a rifle to a pistol without dropping combat.

All of that said, the biggest problem is that it really feels like the engineer skills were all balanced around having max relevant traits. Which means that if you aren’t speced specifically for something, you might as well not take it. Now that doesn’t mean there aren’t any viable builds for engineers, just that not having any wiggle room left in a build is a bigger deal for engineers than it is other classes.

nakoda.4213:

that still means that those 5 skilled, competitive, privileged players are better at playing a class than the majority of forum posters.

like it or not, forum chatter about anything is the vocal MINORITY not a majority. of the entire subscriber base, how many actually post on the forums? how many of those actually post regularly? how many post frequently (like ourselves)?

until videos stop appearing of engineers kittening face, and until the entire consensus is that the profession is no longer fun, there is no leg for naysaying to stand on other than “other classes out perform us”.

here are some anecdotal stats for you:

flamethrower > warrior longbow
elixers > warrior warhorn
T3 nades > EVERYONE’s range (but it costs .. SO WHAT .. ITS BETTER THAN EVERYONE!)
kits > faster swapping and more options than even a warrior
(notice the trend yet….)

I should go to the warrior forum and cry about how engies are better than us. By default that makes rogues and DD ele better than us too … oh wait, warriors already kitten about how they only get to do one thing.

the point to that is if warriors are good as Anet claims, then the forums wouldn’t be full of kittens, but they are, because this is where kittens go to mewl. Warrior’s rock, but you’ll still wade through QQ posts before getting to the good stuff. Just like the engie forum, the players who have no problem are busy playing, and they outnumber you.

forums are nothing more than an AoE of QQ, with a few nukes of truth scattered about.

you dont have to like it.

(P.S. those warriors who solo dungeons are people just like the engies who kittenyarn all over others in videos .. they are SKILLED players. You think everyone with a warrior could solo lupercus? kittenOLOL …..)

The difference between a skilled engineer being able to take on 5 other people in PvP or WvW and a skilled warrior being able to solo a dungeon is that there is no way to measure the difficulty of taking on 5 people, they could all be complete scrubs that play by slamming their heads against the keyboard, while the dungeon has a very specific set difficulty that is monitored and tweaked by Anet.

The engineer that can take on 5 and win today may lose a 1v1 tomorrow. The warrior that can solo a dungeon can solo a dungeon.

Also, your weapon comparisons are a touch biased.
What factors are you comparing to say that the flamethrower is better than the longbow? Amount of burning applied? Total damage dealt? Ability to deal with multiple people? Amount of skill required to use? Number of bugged skills? Without some defined metrics, claiming that one weapon is superior or inferior to another is a very subjective matter.

Elixirs and warhorn aren’t comparable. One is a weapon that gives two support skills, balanced around being a weapon; while the other are utilities and are balanced around being utilities. To compare them is like trying to compare apples and oranges. What you should do is compare the warhorn to the engineer offhand support weapon, or perhaps the AoE support kit….oh, wait…

Grenades having longer ranger than everything is outright false. Not only are there various abilities from various classes that match the 1500 range of the grenade kit (one of them being the warrior’s kill shot), a longbow ranger can trait to have 1500 range at with a trait at master tier.

Engineers may be able to switch between kits faster than anyone else, but we are limited to 3 main weapon combinations, have no weapon swap, give up one utility skill per kit, and until recently had to deal with kits doing outright less damage than main weapons from other classes. Even after a very nice buff to our kit damage we are still lacking in areas that kits don’t cover. For instance, we have no way to deal consistent, reliable long range damage. Don’t get me wrong, I love kits, but the warrior weapon selection can deal with more situations more efficiently than an engineer’s kit selection can. The difference is that the warrior has to choose 2 situations to be able to deal with for free, but can choose no more; while the engineer chooses to give up one utility per situation to deal with, but only starts with one.

I’ve always wondered why turrets didn’t behave like this since the beginning. This could be a good way to make turrets move viable without increasing their health pools and more mobile without changing their mechanics.

coglin.1496:

Only an engineer can die, then kill 4 people 3 seconds later with Big Ol’ Bomb

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlKz4WbW1hg

Actually, for a period of time anyone with a spare 18 copper could do that.

Only an engineer would destroy a device that was healing him and his allies, however.

I think that this is a pretty bad idea to be bluntly honest. This change would effectively make engineers the go to class for both sPvP and siege defense in WvW, while making turrets completely useless in all but a handful of boss fights in PvE, where they would once again be literal gods of the fight.

This suggestion lacks any semblance of balance and would be a terrible change.

Don’t get me wrong, area denial is a great role for turrets to be specialized in, but even a 10 second cast would be prohibitive in almost all open world PvE and dungeon settings. Not to mention that increasing the power to a level that anyone who tried to enter the area was significantly injured or killed without the engineer even needing to be present is a terrible change for sPvP, where the entire point is to control an area.

Condition damage on turrets only effects conditions that turrets apply. That means burns on the rocket turret and bleeds on the rifle turret. Healing power now effects the regeneration from the healing turret. If I’m not mistaken, condition and boon duration also affects the conditions and boons applied by turrets. Power, precision, crit damage, vitality, and toughness have no effect on turrets whatsoever.

The biggest problem I have with turrets is how fragile they are. One AoE from a champion or boss and all your turrets are down for the count. Turrets cannot dodge, and the ultimate metagame in PvE is all about clever positioning and timed dodges to avoid damage. If turrets are going to stand there and take it, they should at least be able to actually take it.

I also feel that actually using turrets is too passive since you do give up your utilities to equip them, but that may be more a matter of personal taste than anything else.

Knighthonor.4061:

Is there a way to reset the turrets in situations like this without going to long cooldown?

Nope. If you left the turret behind you have to either go back and manually pick up for the reduced cooldown or blow it up for the longer one. There are no ways to move turrets.

Knighthonor.4061:

Also another issue I have is that the F key has Pick Up turret as a main over Search Bag. So if items drop near turret it will pick the turret up first, basically wasting the skill all together.

Using the mouse to loot can help with this. Kinda.

Knighthonor.4061:

What can I do about all these things I am having trouble with?

Not very much, unfortunately. Turrets are in a bad place right now between the immobility and fragility of the things. Hopefully the last patch is an omen of things to come.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Can you provide an attack stat with and without a kit equipped from before the patch as proof? I’m curious where you’re getting this from.

Sure. I can train a monkey to figure it out.

That won’t be necessary, I’ll accept what you provide, no monkeys involved.

YourOwnFear.2743:

In my post I was just trying to make the point that there was no damage changes on any kits and was more so pointing out bombs since someone said their bomb damage had increased. It didn’t change at all.

At gurt, like I said before, If you had power on your weapon then the damage would go up since you now retain that 100 or so power from your weapon. If you have no power on your weapon then the damage is exactly the same.

I’m seeing an increase in bomb damage without power. I know that my bombs used to hit for 600 – 700 without crits. They now hit for about 750 – 900 without crits. I don’t know what to tell you. What I am experiencing directly contradicts what you’re saying.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

YourOwnFear.2743:

There was no kit damage increase. The only increase in damage you will see is from the 100 or so extra power your getting from your weapon now. The exotic lvl weapon damage for kits never happened. My bombs do the exact same damage now as they did pre patch. The only noticeable difference would be that you dont have to swap out of kits to get the full effect of your heal if you have weapons with healing power on it.

I’m seeing an increase of about 100 to 150 damage on my bomb kit in PvE. I know that the power on my weapon can’t account for that much of an increase. Do you primarily play PvP?

They never changed kits “attack damage” and the notes never suggested they did.

YourOwnFear is claiming that damage hasn’t increased at all. My damage has increased notably. Regardless of what Anet changed, damage has gone up.

coglin.1496:

It does not state that any individual players will have their attack damage scale to that of the highest weapon damage the player has in his arsenal.

I’m not claiming it does. I am seeing a very nice, very welcome damage increase.

coglin.1496:

It states that we have damage consistent with what is available to us as a whole. To do that, they did not change kit attack damage, they simply adjusted skill coefficients on several kits skills to give the damage equivalent of the highest rarity weapons available at the level of the player.

Can you provide an attack stat with and without a kit equipped from before the patch as proof? I’m curious where you’re getting this from. I don’t know what the coefficients or the old attack stat damages were before the patch, and am curious to know how they did actually increase the damages. Increasing the coefficients would be a good way to do it, but increasing the internal weapon damage stat would be a good method too.

coglin.1496:

base damage that is consistent with the highest rarity weapons available at the level of the player does not translate in any way to suggest that you get the attack power of your equipped weapon, while using the kit.

I know. I never said or implied otherwise.

YourOwnFear.2743:

There was no kit damage increase. The only increase in damage you will see is from the 100 or so extra power your getting from your weapon now. The exotic lvl weapon damage for kits never happened. My bombs do the exact same damage now as they did pre patch. The only noticeable difference would be that you dont have to swap out of kits to get the full effect of your heal if you have weapons with healing power on it.

I’m seeing an increase of about 100 to 150 damage on my bomb kit in PvE. I know that the power on my weapon can’t account for that much of an increase. Do you primarily play PvP?

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

The path notes said there was supposed to be a change to the weapon damage

Yes, and as I posted before, this did not happen. It was easily compared by looking at your stats page while swapping between weapon and kits, while watching your stats.

I don’t follow. To determine if the weapon damage stat on kits was changed or not we’d need to see the stats from before the patch.

Merely changing between weapon kit and weapon doesn’t show that they didn’t change the stats in and of itself, especially if the weapon kit’s weapon damage stat is lower than your rifle’s or your pistol’s. As it stands, switching between a weapon kit and a rifle should reduce your attack stat by about 236. If before the patch it reduced the attack damage by say, 400, then the weapon damage was still increased. I don’t know what the difference was before the patch.

coglin.1496:

Unless the kits (weapon damage) have changed recently, the weapons damage of each kit has basically been common knowledge since release. Plenty of threads on it.

Although it is good to see many risen died in your studies my friend.

The path notes said there was supposed to be a change to the weapon damage, iirc, the kits before the patch used masterwork weapon damage. Although, I may have heard wrong or remembered incorrectly.

I don’t think this is quite enough, but I’m at a loss for what to do. Increasing the weapon damage to be comparable with a two handed weapon would allow p/p and p/s builds to get that weapon and two sigils, but leaving it like it is now means we need to use p/p or p/s to get the same level of benefits.

That said, my bombs are kicking kitten harder than ever now.

As many of you should already know, the patch yesterday changed a few things about how kits work.

1) Weapon stats now apply to kits
2) All bundles created by skills now do equivalent damage to a weapon of highest rarity that the player can use.

While point 1 is easily verified, there has been some debate over what exactly point 2 has done, if anything at all. In an effort to understand this change, I’ve spent the past few hours gathering data on kit damage. What I’ve found is that kits have their own weapon damage statistic that is hidden from the player and that this weapon damage stat is comparable to an exotic’s weapon damage stat. Furthermore, I’ve found that all kits have the same damage range.

By using the attack statistic I was able to find the bomb kit’s maximum damage, 969. This value can be easily seen by using any kit and simply subtracting the power, thus all kits have the same top-end damage. The damage coefficient for the auto attack skill was estimated by using the highest observed damage numbers on attacks against foes that had high armor values around 2600 (tested earlier by determining rifle damage against several different targets). Next, I used the observed minimums and the approximated damage coefficient to determine the low-end weapon damage statistic, this value was found to be about 876. Having determined a weapon damage statistic of 876-969, I verified my findings by computing both the average damage of this range and the observed average damages dealt, and comparing these numbers to both each other and the damage tooltip by using the approximate damage coefficient.

This process was repeated for both the grenade kit and the elixir gun, with almost identical results. The flamethrower and tool kit were not tested due to difficulties in determining a valid data pool of observed damages. Further testing will need to be done to verify that these kits do indeed have the same low-end damage values.

Weapon kit weapon damage has therefore been found to be approximately 876 – 969. While out and out lower than most level 80 exotic weapons, these numbers are in fact higher than those found on exotic torches, warhorns, and foci.

Many risen died to bring you this information.

I think I’m going to start collecting damage numbers to see if I can’t divine approximations to the actual weapon damage values on kits. It’d be a simple matter given enough time and effort.

I really like your ideas about the combo fields, but I’m not so sure about your reasoning for people not bothering with the combos. It seems to me that the good, smaller groups will make regular use of combo fields (I know that the couple I usually run with and myself do), while in larger engagements nobody cares because someone’s using a finisher anyway. I will agree that most combo finishers are underpowered, however.

I completely agree with your bit about engineers focusing in CQC.

Sporadicus.1028:

I’m hearing that people are saying that alchemy doesn’t make someone feel like an engineer.

Alchemist = Chemical Engineer

’Nuff said.

I hope that’s not the case and Anet adds a new alchemy themed class later on down the road. One of my favorite things to do in a different MMO was to play it’s alchemist class. You made potions by spending mana and using ingredients you’d gathered and then once you had a surplus you’d go hunting. Using different ingredients gave potions different effects, some good, some bad. It’s so satisfying to custom make an attack potion and lob it at something.

But I digress. I, too, last felt like an engineer when I unlocked my elixir gun and flamethrower. It really felt like I was taking the next logical step from throwing elixirs at people – build a device to do that part!

Entropy.4732:

I’m pretty sure kits are not affected by sigils. Are you certain about that? Where’s your source?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/December_2012

December 14 Update under General:
“Weapon sigils now continue to function while holding a bundle (such as engineer kits).”

Whether or not all the bugs have been worked out is another matter entirely, but I know that sigil of might gains stacks with my flamethrower out.

I would say that the engineer is “ehhhh” in WvW right now. There’s a lot of fun to be had, but any time spent with other classes will illustrate that the engineer is noticeably weaker. While a few tweaks and bug fixes would go a long way to helping the class, many believe that there are some serious underlying issues that will need to be solved before the engineer begins to resemble something that’s considered good.

Chaba.5410:

I still don’t get the QQ about RNG, especially after holding up random mesmer boons as a great thing.

There’s a fundamental difference between the RNG on elixirs and the other two major sources of RNG (mesmer boons and conditions in chaos spec and thief Steal skill). The difference is in how the abilities are used. The mesmer boons and conditions are chosen from a list of a few, like the engineer’s, but are applied very frequently. The Staff attack is the auto attack, and as such is constantly giving allies short duration boons pulled from a list of two. It’s not uncommon for a couple of the allies of a staff mesmer to end a fight with both boons with above average duration due to how boons stack. The other major ability mesmers use for random boons is Chaos Storm. Chaos Storm not only applies boons and conditions to enemies, but it’s also an Ethereal field (which are quite powerful) and does damage in a fixed area. Both of these are reason enough to cast it, and the boons come from a list of 3 while the storm lasts for 6 ticks. The storm may not give everyone all three of the boons, but all of the boons it gives are powerful defensive boons used in both melee and ranged combat.

The thief RNG is completely different. The thief steals an item randomly from a foe and then chooses when to use that item. The thief has time to determine what the effect will be and has ~45 seconds to use the item before it could hinder him by blocking use of steal. All of the stolen items have their own unique icon too, so an experienced thief can determine what he has in an instant and wait for the optimal time to use it.

Engineer elixirs give a boon or effect once and then go on fairly long cooldowns, often without doing anything else. Toss Elixir H, for instance can give either 10 seconds of vigor or regeneration, or 5 seconds of protection. The target will only get one, unlike the mesmer boons where odds are they’ll eventually get all two or three, and the skill has a 30 second cooldown. Chaos Storm, for comparison has a 35 second cooldown, is a combo field, and deals damage in addition to either giving 18 seconds of one boon or giving multiple boons. Elixir H is about as good as it gets for the engineer in the RNG department too. Toss Elixir S has a 60 second cooldown for either 4 seconds of stealth or 4 seconds of stability. The duration of the ability isn’t too far for the cooldown of the skill imo, but stealth and stability are conflicting boons.

Metaphysicist.9427:

So badly do I want to play an Engineer.

I think I may do that anyway.. but it seems like there is just an inane amount of problems and bugs.

I wish turrets worked correctly and were meaningful, because according to the GW2 site that is your main staple of holding an area and supporting that with hand grenades, mines, bombs, and gunfire.

Do you guys feel that if they fixed the turrets to actually be valuable and helpful (on my Guardian I just laughably walk past them), that Engineers would see significant boost in their success in both PvE and PvP (all forms)?

My idea for an Engineer is to literally make a Juggernaut Flamethrower build for WvW just to confuse people (I have yet to see an Engineer use a Flamethrower) and light things on fire, but it would be great if I didn’t need to be stuck with 100nades or p/p kite builds to be ‘effective’.

Not quite, no. There is so much wrong with this class that just fixing one of the problems wouldn’t fix the entire class.

Turrets can be used to decent effect when leveling and when going back to do low level zones for map completion, but in dungeons often die in one or two damage ticks on AoEs when traited for, and do little damage on their own. Having several turrets out at once can be moderately effective at killing stuff, but this requires use of the elite skill.

Other problems include but are not limited to many of our utilities not scaling with stats properly (turrets for instance only scale with level), kits don’t use any stats gained from weapons, the toolbelt is in many cases intentionally balanced by pairing weak belt skills with strong slot skills and vice versa, several bugs that have existed since launch are still around and seriously hamper our effectiveness (the ones that helped us have been removed), we get little to no developer attention, RNG plagues several of our skills intended for support, and our best elite skill is an assortment of our utility skills on a separate cooldown, but weaker.

Only an engineer would save a cloaking device for when he can’t move.

coglin.1496:

I do not consider 2/7 of trait point investment as “mere”. I fail to how it is unreasonable for a weapon to be better for another profession after investing 20 trait points. Your argument here is illogical to me.

Otherwise, I am unclear how I am being biased by not including profession specific F key abilities. In a static comparison of weapons skills. That poses no more logic then other profession claiming the devs need to look at our utility skills because comparable skills from their class to those of engineers are imbalanced because of tool belt skills.

I say “mere” because the trait is ridiculously powerful and in my opinion should be a 30 point trait. For a similar point investment the engineer can choose to increase our damage by 10% or have a 50% chance to inflict blindness on crit, both of which are fairly lacking. These of course are only the traits that apply specifically to rifles. The full list of traits that an engineer has access to at 20 firearms are as follows:

Adept Knee Shot Cripple targets for 5 seconds whenever you immobilize them. (Cooldown: 5 seconds)

Adept Sitting Duck Immobilizing a foe also applies 5 stacks of vulnerability (8 seconds) to them.

Adept Infused Precision 50% chance to gain swiftness for 5 seconds on critical hits. This effect cannot trigger more than once every 5 seconds.

Adept Rifled Barrels Improves rifle, pistol, harpoon gun, and elixir gun range.

Adept Precise Sights 50% chance to cause vulnerability on critical hits

Adept Hair Trigger Rifle, pistol, and harpoon gun skills recharge 20% faster.

Master Napalm Specialist Burns you apply last 20% longer.

Master Fireforged Trigger Flamethrower and elixir gun skills recharge 20% faster.

Master Rifle Mod Improves damage for the rifle and harpoon gun by 10%.

Master Go for the Eyes Critical hits with the rifle have a 50% chance to inflict blindness for 5 seconds. This effect cannot trigger more than once every 10 seconds.

These of course are in addition to the minor traits Sharpshooter and Target the Weak, which give a 30% chance to cause bleeding on critical and a 10% increased crit chance against opponents not moving respectively.

I feel it is necessary to include Kill Shot because the warrior mechanic is effectively an extra weapon skill. The warrior has kill shot by virtue of being a warrior with a rifle and has it whether or not he brings anything else to the fight. To compare weapons between classes it is only fair to consider everything the weapon gives to each class.

NevirSayDie.6235:

However, the fact is that it’s very easy to see all those bad skills and think, “aw, this profession is garbage.” It can also be frustrating to not be allowed to take all of our strong skills at the same time—so many of our skills come in strong/weak pairs when it comes to utility/toolbelt.

Personally, I think this is a big deal. Balancing taking strong skills by forcing weak skills is bad design. All skills should ideally be of about the same strength so that no few builds completely outshine others, unless simply put together poorly. Now, I fully realize that perfect balance is impossible, but it should always be striven for.

coglin.1496:

MrSilver.5269:

I’ve been leveling up a warrior, and couldn’t help but notice the disparity between the warrior’s rifle skills, and the engineer’s rifle skills, finding that the warrior’s rifle base skills have baked-in elements that an engineer is required to trait for.

For example the warrior rifle #1 Skill has a base 1200 range, has a 100% chance to cause bleeding for 6 seconds, and has a 20% chance to be a projectile finisher. The engineer’s #3 skill has a 100% bleeding component, but it is most effective at 100 range.

That #3 skill is also AoE for Engineer. It is clear that you re trying to proclaim warrior rifle skills superior to the engineers. That is no excuse to “conveniently” leave facts out in an honest comparison. Your entire post is riddle with fallacies, inaccuracies, and misleading misinformation. You for example, also neglect that our rifle hip shots innately pierce. Just hitting 2 enemies with our number one skill more the dominates the bleed effect warriors have from theirs. You leave so many facts out about both warrior and engineer rifle skills, it is as if you have never really experienced either.

These are the kind of inaccuracies that would appear suspiciously over bias to me if I was a dev reading this thread. Making it hard to take seriously. Other then the entirely trollish title of the thread and the ridiculously troll original post that is.

You neglect that for a mere 20 points the warrior gets a trait that not only adds piercing to all warrior rifle skills, but decreases rifle skill cooldowns by 20%.

coglin.1496:

tigirius.9014:

Only tried rifle warrior on low levels in pve, was immediately disgusted at the immediate differences and enormous survivability advantages.

You mean how the warriors rifle #1 skills, skill-specific coefficient is almost 40% less then the engineer? I have all profession to 80, and have played sPvP, WvE and played a good deal of dungeons and DE’s in PvE with all of them. One thing I can tell you is, your just wrong if you try to claim to be able to judge a profesion at low levels and compare it to your 80 in exotics.

Warriors volley skill-specific coefficient is 232 per shot, while blunderbuss is 386-618 depending on range with a 4s bleed.

Warriors #4, brutal shots skill-specific coefficient is 193 while engineers overcharge is 386.

Warriors #5 rifle butt (melee range) skill-specific coefficient is 386 compared to engineers jump shot of 348 on launch and and 696 on landing.

If you really want to compare the two, take them to the mist in matching gear and compare the damage. Our rifle dwarfs the warriors.

I suggest against using assumption, unequal comparisons, and presumptions as you have so far and use more testing, mathematical comparison and facts. That leads to much more informed discussions.

This seems to be a fairly biased comparison. You’re intentionally leaving out the facts that warriors have kill shot (which hits like a truck towing a boat loaded with trucks), that warrior rifle 3 shoots 5 shots, that warrior rifle 4 is guaranteed projectile finisher and increases all further damage on the target by an additional 5%, and that the warrior rifle 2 does damage.

I wouldn’t exactly say that our rifle dwarfs theirs.

Dunnar.8420:

Chickenshoes.6250:

Dragon-themed legendary flamethrower would be epic though, no mistake.

This was actually the driving force behind my suggestion. I feel like the ultimate accomplishment in this game, a lengendary weapon, just doesn’t apply to the Engineer class. How was that overlooked?!?!

I was taking a break from the game when legendaries were added, so I don’t know what the situation was at the time, but I personally feel this is something we should be outraged about. An entire class passed over for what amounts to the reward for the entire current endgame? This should be unacceptable. Maybe my time in other games has left me jaded.

coglin.1496:

@gurt
You do not think our rifle skills are uniquely different then the other rile skills in the game?

I do think they are unique otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested simply rearranging them. All classes should have unique skills, and we do have some very unique skills.

coglin.1496:

You do not feel that pistols reward specializing in condition damage while rifles reward in specializing in direct damage?

I completely feel that pistols reward condition damage, if you read my post you would know this.

I don’t feel that rifles reward power enough to warrant the specialization. The skill rearrangement, however, is to tackle the issue of “what is it.” The rifle lacks the specialization in it’s range. It’s neither close range nor long. Classic design confusion, and I see it in several places through the engineer kit, but no where as bad as the rifle.

coglin.1496:

Now I will do as far as pointing out that you literally have no concept of memo balance if you believe allowing a player to pick what skills go on the tool belt while having all together seperate skills in the related utility slot.

And I would venture to say that you have no concept of balance if you believe that any issues that did arise couldn’t be easily balanced.

coglin.1496:

If the profession is so bad that you feel you needed to make your own thread on an already overdone topic, instead of participating in the already on going discussions, and that you prefer to change perfectly functional and useful skills to suit your personal wants, while ignoring the more important broken skills, skills that do not function as intended, or skills with identical functions to others but significantly out matched recast or effects, then perhaps the class is not for you, and you should move on and play one that is. That is much more preferable to trying to redesign the professions core mechanics to tailor to you while leaving the rest of the community blowing in the wind.

Stop. Putting. Words. In. My. Mouth. I am NOT trying to tailor the class to my personal playstyle. If you suggest that this is what I’m doing any more I will be forced to believe that you are nothing more than a common forum troll and I’ll think myself rather foolish for indulging you all this time.

I don’t think anyone who makes a thread like this, myself included, thinks the class is bad. I look at the engineer and a diamond in the rough. It would be a shame to let something so close to gaming brilliance amount to nothing more than wasted potential.

I know that engineer is the class for me, I’ve tried to leave; believe me, I’ve tried. But I can’t, I always come back. Don’t assume that anyone who sees an issue you don’t see would be better suited playing a different class. And just because I don’t immediately go to issues that you go to assume that I don’t also have grievances there.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Did you even read my suggested change? I don’t suggest anything so drastic as a core concept change.

Right. Because suggesting that we toss the whole tool belt idea out the window in an effort to change it so you pick what you want at random isn’t a core change.

Ad hominem.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

You’re probably the one person who still thinks the engineer is completely fine as is and you’re more vocal about not changing anything than any suggested change I’ve ever seen.

No need to try to put words in my mouth and attempt to speak for me, your struggling enough to do for yourself.

Insult.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Nobody wants a new class or to see the engineer concept fundamentally altered. You irrationally defend your position with so much zeal and fervor that you come off as blind to the real issues. We want changes, yes, but it’s not a bad thing to want to push the class to mechanics that better fit it’s defined role and the role that the game expects of the classes.

I disagree. You literally broke down your desire to completely change our weapons skills.

Moving a few of the existing skills on weapon around is not “desire to completely change our weapon skills.”

coglin.1496:

You proposed completely rebuilding our profession specific tool belt skills.

I suggested a new method for selection and the swap of kits and their belt skills. This is not “completely rebuilding.”

“And you misrepresent facts about certain weapon skills and abilities. Do not confuse the desire to use facts instead of accepting your misrepresented opinion as zeal and fervor.”

What facts about weapon skills have I misrepresented?

You have made several false assertions about skills and abilities in this thread. This does not illustrate a desire to use facts.

coglin.1496:

We do not need to fix things that work fine. We need to fix actual problems like weapons stats effecting kits. FT misses. Ridiculously long CD such as PBR on a 45s cool down which does the exact same thing as warriors kick, on a 20s cool down.

I completely agree with this notion.

coglin.1496:

We do not need to change the rifle. If you want solid ranged damage use grenades.

Grenades aren’t viable outside of PvE (with the exception of 100 ’nades), and even then they only really shine if you spec for them.

coglin.1496:

SO seriously, stop trying to claim I do not want changes just because I want real fixes and not just to tailor the profession to my personal wants as you are.

Don’t put words in my mouth. I don’t want the profession tailored to my desires, I want changes that better reflect the playstyle Anet tells us we’re being designed around.

edit: Don’t know why but something broke in one of the quotes.

coglin.1496:

There is more to this game then wvw.

And there is more than PvE too.

You want real issues?

We need a class mechanic that works as advertised and allows us the versatility that we already pay for in damage.

We need reliable single target sources of both ranged and melee damage.

We need utility skills that aren’t completely useless in literally every build and every spec.

We need elites better than a random assortment of bad utility skills on a separate cooldown.

I am not trying to tailor the class to my play style. If I were to do that I’d suggest they remove the toolbelt entirely and give us something like what the elementalist uses. But I don’t make that suggestion, because it’s not good for the class or the players that play the class. I’m making suggestions for changes that address issues I see with the class.

And for the record, you strike me as the one having trouble forming arguments and not using facts.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

Allow me to elaborate my thoughts on weapons. To me, in a perfect game, all weapons across all classes should have a unique or fairly unique specialization. Playing to a weapon’s strengths should be rewarded and allowing others to use their weapons should be punished.

I doubt anyone would argue that. The problem is that a weapons “uniqueness” and “specilization” are extremely subjective, and open to interpretation.

You are free to disagree with my opinions, but these statements are downright untrue.

Uniqueness – having the quality of being unique
Unique – being the only one of it’s kind; unlike anything else
Subjective – based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions

Something either is unique or it isn’t unique, it is not open to interpretation, and therefore not subjective.

Specializations aren’t subjective either. If you don’t believe me then, go grab a rifle and try to use a pure condition damage build. It won’t work well because a rifle has no skills in support of condition damage (aside from traits and blunderbuss). The rifle is not specialized for condition damage, the pistol is.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

The way I see them, toolbelt skills are already nothing more than extra utility skills that we can’t really choose.

Just plain NO

But that’s exactly what they are. If you choose your belt skills, you didn’t choose the slot skills, and vice versa.

The follow paragraph is a rambling mess of text with little to no structure, so I’m breaking it up to respond to it.

coglin.1496:

We are the only class that does not have a static set of F key skills. In many cases professions have only one.

Only three classes have just one F button: warrior, thief, necromancer. The thief’s F1 changes every time he uses it, and the necromancer’s gives him four new abilities to use for a short time. So really, only one class has one profession ability. One is not many.

coglin.1496:

We very literally are the only profession that can chose what they are. This is a core mechanic to the profession.

Very true, and my proposed change does nothing to alter this.

coglin.1496:

If you think you wish to change it now, go play another profession and see if you get tired of the 1 skill some of them have.

I do play other classes; thief, guardian, and warrior. While I do think the warrior’s mechanic should get a little something, something to make it more interesting, I don’t get tired of the mechanic itself. And the thief’s I love, steal is one of my favorite class mechanics. Same goes for not only the guardian, but all the classes I’ve played

coglin.1496:

I see this same argument in the warrior forums every day too. Because their F key skill various from weapon to weapon.

Has nothing to do with the argument

coglin.1496:

Anyone with any foe sight has enough sense to know it would result in a huge nerf if we got to pick an chose our F keys separate from utilities. Some combinations would logically be OP and subject to nerfs.

This not entirely true. The developers already have to balance against many of combinations because most combinations are currently possible. What this change would do is allow for a few combinations that can’t happen right now, i.e. Elixir H + Medkit, as well as some multiple skills combinations that would require many of the slots. This is not inherently op. While it is true that some skills would need to be nerfed, I would gladly take that nerf for the added versatility, and I know many others would too.

coglin.1496:

I mean if we are going to allow picking and choosing on that level, why stop there? Why not just allow players to pull there favorite skills from each weapon and combine them too?

Because as you’ve said several times, the core mechanic of the belt skills is that you’re supposed to be able to choose them, but the restrictions in the choices we can actually make are stifling.

coglin.1496:

Your F key suggestion throw all logic and balance out the window, and it is just to chaotic to be a positive idea in the least.

Actually, separating the skills out would make them easier to balance for because when you tweak a skill up or down you won’t need to worry about adjusting the power of a skill that it’s tied to.

I don’t see how this is chaotic or illogical in the least. Please elaborate.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Please, enlighten me. What is the rifle supposed to be? It has enough damage to be a bruiser weapon, but the ranges are unintuitive. The #1 skill tells us that we should want to be at range, but then we don’t get the benefit of the pierce. The #3 suggests we should be in melee range or close to it. By moving the #3 skill into the #1 position we see the rifle fully as a melee weapon.

kind of answered that yourself in your previous presumption didn’t you?

So the rifle is suppose to be a bruiser weapon that’s bad at bruising because of unintuitive ranges and lack of skill synergy outside of one skill rotation, got it.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Responses from and conversations with developers. They’ve said time and time again that we are intended to focus in control and support, not damage.

From Jonathon Sharp’s blog:

Engineer

The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.

We are being balanced around the philosophy that we lose our on damage because of the versatility of our control and support

coglin.1496:

If you guys do not like all of these abilities, clearly you do not like the profession. If you dislike the profession, do not play it. Stop trying to change the care concept and mechanics of the profession.

Did you even read my suggested change? I don’t suggest anything so drastic as a core concept change.

coglin.1496:

Gets old reading threads in which every posters is attempting to convince the community how we we need to make changes to the profession so that it taylors to them, and there play style specifically. We have 100 other threads on this topic. Everyone thinks they need to make a new one just for thier opinion, because they feel what they have to say is too important to be part of the ongoing discussion already going on.

Then don’t read them. You’re probably the one person who still thinks the engineer is completely fine as is and you’re more vocal about not changing anything than any suggested change I’ve ever seen. Nobody wants a new class or to see the engineer concept fundamentally altered. You irrationally defend your position with so much zeal and fervor that you come off as blind to the real issues. We want changes, yes, but it’s not a bad thing to want to push the class to mechanics that better fit it’s defined role and the role that the game expects of the classes.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

Allow me to elaborate my thoughts on weapons. To me, in a perfect game, all weapons across all classes should have a unique or fairly unique specialization. Playing to a weapon’s strengths should be rewarded and allowing others to use their weapons should be punished. Making the changes to the rifle I suggested, especially making Blunderbuss the #1 (and adding an extra 100 to 150 range at all levels) and adding an evade to #4 instead of self cc removes all doubt about where the weapon should be used: just outside of melee range. It would have a gap closer, an extra dodge, the bulk of damage would come from close range, an immobilize to keep people at our range, and #2 (which would be Hip Shot with another name) would be used to keep up damage aver dodging away from a melee attack. Currently we can do some nice stuff with the rifle, I’m not saying we can’t. But in my mind we should always have weapons that are more specialized, and blunderbuss by itself isn’t reason enough for people to not want to be in melee with us.

As for the pistol, the removal of the AoE is something I’d like to see if and only if we got more damage out of it, but I think that traiting for the pistol should add some way to get the AoE back. Perhaps only one trait gives it back the explosion and pierce.

The way I see them, toolbelt skills are already nothing more than extra utility skills that we can’t really choose. I’d rather lose power on the whole lot of them if I got to chose them myself. I disagree with the notion that it would be inherently unbalanced to have them this way, and personally I feel that kits should have always been belt choices because we have the belt for the kits. Would having real utility and versatility in our class mechanic make us op? Would it be any stronger than 3 pets that distract others in combat and can deal massive damage; the ability to grant aegis, the ability to inflict burning, and heal everyone around you; or the ability to have 4 sets of weapons, a heal, 3 utilities, and an elite?

Only an engineer would use a rifle as a pole vault.

Schixeno.8596:

I think a good solution is to make the kits scale better. Do they scale at all currently? I’m not sure.

Kits currently scale with stats on armor but not on weapons. This includes weapon damage. All kits do weapon damage equivalent to having a green (iirc) weapon equipped.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

First of all, I want to start by bringing a concern of mine to light: the engineer is designed to excel at control and support (and to some degree, does) while sacrificing damage.

My first thought is what do you base this on?

Responses from and conversations with developers. They’ve said time and time again that we are intended to focus in control and support, not damage.

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Toolbelt
It has long been my opinion that the toolbelt as a mechanic is holding the engineer back.

I love the tool belt. I find it to be an inventive feature, and very good for the profession. I completely disagree with you here.

Yes, you’ve said as much before in other threads. Tell me though, why would you turn down what is only an improvement to the current mechanic? Do you feel that all belt and slot skills are balanced with each other? Do you disagree with the notion that tying two skills together makes them harder to balance?

coglin.1496:

Gurt.9368:

Rifle
The rifle is a good weapon except that there is no focus in what it is supposed to be.

I am starting to have trouble taking you seriously. It is had not to laugh at someone who believe they have such a magic insight as to presume to repeatedly claim to know what something is intended to do or supposed to be.

Please, enlighten me. What is the rifle supposed to be? It has enough damage to be a bruiser weapon, but the ranges are unintuitive. The #1 skill tells us that we should want to be at range, but then we don’t get the benefit of the pierce. The #3 suggests we should be in melee range or close to it. By moving the #3 skill into the #1 position we see the rifle fully as a melee weapon.

Elixirs
It’s been said hundreds of times in the past, and I’m gonna say it again: RNG is wrong, bad design for clutch play. Elixirs were designed with the intent of promoting clutch plays with well timed uses and effects. This is impossible with RNG. Throwing an elixir to give yourself 1 or 2 seconds stability so you won’t be sent flying by the attack you see coming is a great example of clutch play done right. When it has a 50% chance of being useless in that situation it’s just called luck. Elixirs should either have RNG in a way where we can determine what the effect will be before use (like thief steal) or it should be removed entirely. RNG should never ever come into the actual play itself.

Turrets
Turrets, as they are, are completely useless in high level play. Even when fully traited they do low damage, are extremely fragile, have terrible AI, gain no scaling from any gear, have relatively long CDs that don’t start until destroyed, are immobile, when they aren’t out are a wasted utility slot, and when they are out remove a belt slot. Completely useless.

My changes:
Make turrets like a cross between warrior banners and elementalist conjures. Summoning the turret places a device that automatically attacks enemies in range and can be detonated by using the ability again (like in beta). The difference now is that each turret is a bundle that can be picked up and moved to gain a weapon with relevant skills. Picking up the Rifle Turret would give something like a chain gun that had a fast attack, picking up the Rocket Turret would give a makeshift rocket launcher. Turrets could then be placed in a new location to revert to auto attacking.

That about sums it up. I feel that these changes would go a long way to making the engineer a fun and effective class.

Now for the meat of my post: the changes I would make.

Toolbelt
It has long been my opinion that the toolbelt as a mechanic is holding the engineer back. It makes skills needlessly hard to balance and in practice one often ends up picking a skill simply for the toolbelt skill or simply for the slot skill, seeing the other as something on the side. In this way it feels like a good skill may be balanced by a intentionally bad belt skill or vice versa. Not only is this not bad design, it’s unfun (not “not fun” but “unfun” it removes fun that would exist). Additionally, we were given this mechanic so we could have kits and utility skills at the same time, so why couldn’t kits have just been in the toolbelt?

My changes:
The mechanic changes so that toolbelt skills and slot skills are not longer linked. Kits all become toolbelt skills (the current kit toolbelt skills become slot skills). Purchasing a slot skill with skill points unlocks the equivalent belt skill, but they are chosen independently. One belt skill is reserved for a healing belt skill. Under this setup, I could run Med Kit on my belt and Elixir H as my healing skill. Of course all utilities and belt skills would need to be balanced around having access to all combinations, but in my opinion most are weak enough for that currently.

Weapons
The only weapon I would really change is the rifle. Pistols do their job pretty well and a single minor tweak (like removing the AoE on #1 and increasing damage to compensate) would go a long way to fixing the weapon. Shields function fine as is.

Rifle
The rifle is a good weapon except that there is no focus in what it is supposed to be. #1 is a decent damage far range shot, #2 keeps them where we want them, #3 is a high damage cone with low CD that requires us to be in melee range to get full effect, #4 is a retreat/keep away that puts a low duration self cc on ourselves and #5 is a high damage gap closer/retreat. This doesn’t work well. I can do the bulk of my damage from range, but to maximize damage need to be in melee range, but to stay in melee range means losing out on the range that #1 has.

My changes:
1. Blunderbuss – Bleed lowered or removed for no CD (let the pistols cover conditions), range increased by 100 on all ranks
2. Slug Shot – Functions identical to Hip Shot, increased damage, 2 to 5 second cooldown
3. Net Shot – Functions as is
4. Overcharged Shot – Lowered range, cone AoE, no self cc, use should knock back enemy and roll engineer backward, CD potentially increased and/or damage lowered to compensate
5. Jump Shot – Functions as is

These changes would increase the damage and usability of the weapon. As things stand, the engineer doesn’t have a weapon with a good kick to it. These changes give the engineer a close ranged weapon that has a long range pull/hit, an immobilize, a retreat, and a gap closer. By simply moving #3 into #1 we move the focus of the weapon from undefined to close range, the other changes are made for no other reason than to support using the weapon in close range. A weapon kit for long range single target damage/control should also be added to fill the gap left by lowering the rifle’s long range capabilities.

I’ve been meaning to post a topic like this for some time now and with the next patch only 4 days away, now seemed like a good time. I realize that not everyone will like my ideas, but I ask that you read through and think about them before dismissing them. As always constructive criticism is both welcome and encouraged.

First of all, I want to start by bringing a concern of mine to light: the engineer is designed to excel at control and support (and to some degree, does) while sacrificing damage. This can’t quite work as intended in PvE because the game measures contribution in damage. Focusing on control and/or support (like keeping enemies away from glass cannons) in events, while very helpful in completing the event, hurts our own reward levels because we dealt less damage than others in the event. In PvP this is also an issue because the ultimate goal is to kill your opponent. No amount of control or support alone will do that. Every second that you don’t kill your opponent is one less second he needs to wait for an important cooldown. It seems to me that no matter what the focus of the class is, the engineer needs to do more damage so as to guarantee that we are rewarded equivalently to other classes in all areas of play. As such, I believe that the bulk of fixes to the engineer should involve either increasing damage or making abilities easier to balance (which would lead to increased damage).

Secondly, I’d like to take a bit of time to mention the state of the engineer in comparison to other classes. Now, I recognize that this can be a very slippery slope, but I feel that class comparisons are important to make, one just has to be careful to not get carried away. The “holy trinity” in GW2 has been stated to be Damage – Control – Support. The engineer, as we all know, is supposed to be focused in control and support and therefore should lose out on damage. But what of other classes, how do they stack up? The mesmer is supposed to fall into a control and damage role, and they can do both of these things quite well. But by speccing into Chaos Magic the mesmer can do some very interesting support through the application of random boons. This is before considering that the mesmer has access to both an AoE invisibility, and an AoE haste (although not at the same time). Both of these are extremely powerful support tools and many would argue that they make the mesmer better at support than the engineer. The implication is that the mesmer, a class that isn’t focused in an area that the engineer is is better at it. Looking at the guardian we see a similar situation, the class is focused in support yet does more damage and has about the same amount of control. The engineer on paper does have more options for support than mesmer, and more options for control than guardian, but some are simply better than others, don’t work without traits, or both and the number of real choices we can make is extremely limited. This leaves the class feeling lacking in the role it is supposed to excel at, in addition to problems with the game rewarding damage more than control or support mentioned above.

Also worth mentioning is that the vast majority of the engineer attacks are AoE in some form or fashion. Reading the forums, I get the impression that many people don’t realize this. On the pistol: #1 explodes in a small area, #3 bounces around, #4 is a cone and #5 is ground targeted. For the shield both #4 and #5 can be activated to have a burst and line AoE respectively. Rifle #1 pierces and hits in a line, #3 is a cone, #5 is ground targeted. The only non kit, single target ability we have for dealing damage is pistol #2. The situation remains the same when kits are taken into consideration. Every damage dealing kit, with the exception of the Elixir Gun and the Tool Kit, are literally 100% AoE. What’s more, the Elixir Gun #1 is the only not AoE skill on the kit and the Tool Kit has multiple AoE attacks. Personally I think this is a huge problem. Not only do our skills do less damage because damage isn’t our focus, but all of our damage is reduced further by virtue of it being AoE. We need either single target options or for what good damage abilities we have to be changed so that they can be used more.

My engineer is so bad that he’s more effective using a racial elite over a class one.

Obsidian.1328:

Oh I haven’t trolled here in awhile. ^^

I’m with you on this Gurt, I’ve tried several times to reiterate your/our point but the inertia that is GW2 is too great. It’s probably moot now anyway, seeing as ANet writer’s have been working on this since EotN. I’ve just given up trying to like GW2 story, mostly because of everything you’ve stated…and then some. GW2 Tyria just isn’t the same world as the original. And I don’t mean it just has a bunch of new races and places…the heart and soul of it is no where near the same as it was.

I said it once and I’ll say it again:

The modern lore writers, dating back to EotN, have purposefully chosen this new narrative for gameplay purposes. It’s a common MMO theme, everyone likes different races to role-play right? It’s actually kind of amazing Guild Wars was so popular with only humans as a playable race if you think about it. For the modern authors, GW1 was a perfect backstory with which to weave a new, elaborate storyline that can “reinvent” Tyria so to speak. It makes perfect sense from a mass-appeal standpoint…as well as from a creativity standpoint(lore issues aside, I actually think the Citadel, the Grove, Rata, etc, are wondrous places). It’s just unfortunate(but necessary given the current Tyrian political landscape if you think about it) that humans have had to take a nose dive off the proverbial pedestal to make this happen.

I just wish they named the game something different.

Edit: I use the word “just” waaaay to much :P

I disagree with the notion that the new material can’t be liked. One of the reasons I dislike the current charr-human lore so much is because it could have been so much better with a few minor tweaks.

Gwen would have been the perfect candidate to start peace talks with the charr, she helped liberate them and Pyre and her are comrades in arms, whether they like to admit it or not. Sure, Adlebern would have never gone for it, but had he died a war hero then Duke Baradin would have ascended to the throne and he could have easily been written to have had an open enough mind to start peace talks.

Make the peace talks take hundreds of years, move the black citadel to where Ebonhawk is, Ascalonians are holding out against renegade charr raids in Rin, Surmia, and/or Ascalon. Uneasy peace finally settled when Jenna promises charr more Ascalonian territory so the charr own continuous land from their homelands to Black Citadel. Done.

May not be that good but it’s better than trivializing everything the GW1 playerbase cared about anyway.

Anyhow, the current lore could be salvaged, but we’d need to learn something about the foefire that doesn’t condemn Adelbern, it being an accident or him not being the one who triggered it after all. We’d also need to scale back on all the terrible references to beloved GW1 characters “Gwen the Goremonger” hits me like a dagger to the heart every time I hear it, and seeing Rurik called a tyrant sent me into very long rant about how untrue that statement was.

Seriously though, how could Rurik be a tyrant if he never ruled? The man died leading his people across a dangerous mountain pass in an attempt to give them a better life!

CETheLucid.3964:

Gurt.9368:

Most of what you said is pretty right on the money except this. GW1 lore states in many places and in no uncertain terms that the human gods lead man to Ascalon. It also states that men could speak with the gods and the descriptions of the monk class describe them as not using holy magic, but actually speaking with and asking favors of the gods. So if men in GW1 say that “the gods told us too,” I’m inclined to believe.

I’m sorry but unless Melandru or one of the other ones undoubtedly said to the humans “Guys, go take the land from the charr” somewhere in the lore I missed, any Joe Schmoe can say “for teh gods” or “god said so” to justify themselves in their own eyes or in the eyes of others.

That’s not an argument anymore then someone who says a god told them to go kill someone. You have to prove the authority under which you act.

If a god can get you to kill someone, if they’re any kind of ‘god’, then they can rescue you from the lesser authority of mortals.

You can imagine how often that happens. Did the human gods rescue Ascalon from the charr invasion if it was their will that humans should have Ascalon?

That more or less proves as the lore goes that humans pretty much ran off and conquered the known world of their own doing and were the dominant species for the longest time.

Times certainly have changed. It doesn’t have to be bad though.

The unique place we find ourselves in history at this time could have us all be united as friends with a purpose instead of everyone hating us for being the conqueror.

Time will tell. I hope for the first option myself and things seem to be going great in that regard.

But regardless, you better believe humans will persist even against impossible odds. Even if things go south.

Humans will always have a place in Tyria, or else they will carve themselves one… or curb stomp someone else’s spot…

Vicious cycle is vicious.

The lore mentions that the six led the human conquest in the same breath that it tells us that humans aren’t native to Tyria and were placed here by the gods from somewhere else, and that the charr began looking for gods of their own because they witnessed the strength, fury, and might of the human gods. Why some of these are readily taken as truths and others are dismissed as legends I’ll never know.

Just because the gods choose not to save Ascalon does not mean that they didn’t tell the humans to take it. In GW1 the gods are active and alive, and while them doing things is rare, they do stuff. In GW1 I would say that Ascalon was never in any real danger of being lost to the charr, Prophecies ends on a note that implies that Adelbern will eventually succeed in driving the charr out. Ascalon in GW1 doesn’t need divine intervention. Even if it did, the gods are not nice. Balthazar killed a man for beating him at a board game.

ButterOfDeath.2873:

I’ve heard that…however in that discussion the suggestion was to put the kits in the toolbelt,while i’m suggesting to remove the #1 ability of all kits,and put all the other abilities to the toolbelt when the kit is equipped,so 1 kit would give us 8 toolbelt abilities.
What changes is that while using a kit we could still use the equipped weapon! wouldn’t that be awesome?

Well, the thing is that that can already be done if you have a sharp wit, quick fingers, and good keybindings. Because the kits don’t have lengthy cooldowns on swap, it’s entirely possible to open with a few Hip Shots, wait a moment, Net Shot, swap to flamethrower, unload a flame jet, air blast, swap to rifle, knockback shot, swap to flamethrower, use 2, lay down a napalm, etc. etc.

Using more kits is doable too, and all this without losing any abilities. While true that we could save a small amount of time in these rotations by placing the kit skills over the toolbelt skills, we lose immediate access to our extra utilities, which could be much more important than a rotation skill.