Guild Wars 2

Well, looks like another six weeks of winter imbalance.

I think having something like the end-stats page from PvP matches would be cool, except set up so you can view the pages from the other players in your sub-group (or full squad). Shows direct damage done/taken, condi damage done/taken, healing (self), healing (others), boons given (self), boons given (others), conditions removed (self), conditions removed (others).

What is the grace period set to right now? Still 60s?

38 out of 40 players in NA’s matches running elite specs, seems balanced.

Doing dungeons with friends/good players was where the fun was at for me. Now, friends & guildies no longer want to run them because there’s other content to do and the rewards are kitten, so there’s not really any reason for me to run them anymore either.

+10000000. This game needs a multi-item stat system for real build diversity. So many builds are dead in the water right now because there’s no way for them to get the 200-400 vitality or toughness they need to survive in the current meta without completely destroying their offensive capabilities.

Posting in this year’s ‘all is vain’ thread. Anyone got any popcorn?

I believe the enrage timer on Vale Guardian was 8 minutes during the last BWE. It’s probably been changed since then though, lots of people were complaining about it.

Honestly at this point I feel I’ve got a lot less motivation to play long-term than I did before HoT launched. Nobody in my guild/friends list runs dungeons anymore because of the rewards nerf, and fractals just feel boring to me now. I hope all the raid bosses stay as (or more) fun than Vale Guardian was, or I don’t think I’ll be playing very much after I finish the last of the HoT adventures and masteries. Even PvP feels worse with all the power creep from elite specs.

I’d rather just put in a 3-item stat system so lower-health and lower-armour professions can mix in enough vit or tough to survive without completely ruining their build.

I had a zojja’s weapon chest drop from 21-50 daily the first day, haven’t seen anything since.

3-item or 4-item stat system would be perfect for build diversity without breaking balance. No need to keep adding new stat combinations that invalidate or are invalidated by previous stat combinations, just add the ability to use mixes of the ones we already have.

Honestly I don’t think the problem with HGH was so much the might that it gave, but rather the ridiculous number of skills it reduced cooldowns for, a lot of which stacked with the toolbelt cooldown reductions the Tools line brought. I would have liked to see a lot of those CD reductions moved into other traits, like all the elixir gun reductions, and maybe something done to stop HGH+Tools from reducing elixir toss CDs by so kitten much, instead of the flat might nerf.

The Adaptive Armor nerf was definitely justified though.

I wish I was half this good at necro. 11/10 thread, 13/10 with popcorn.

A 3 or 4 item stat system would be perfect. Significantly increases build diversity without completely breaking balance, because the extremes are already defined in the current system. A multi-item system would even make it easier to add/test additional stat combinations, by locking new combos to specific slot(s) before introducing them fully. The current system just isn’t healthy for build diversity, and PvP as well as build creation are a lot less fun because of it.

bazul.4506:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Sneak Gyro needed a cooldown that was longer since it would otherwise have potential 100% uptime, so it now has a cooldown of kitten , up from 30s (its 30s duration remains).

Well wishes,
~ Irenio

just interest how long is a kitten in seconds?

Probably 45.

Also, I’m curious about the rocket charge leap thing. I don’t think the issue was when the finisher effect was triggered, but rather that the effects were only triggered when your leap ended with you within a field, rather than triggering when leaping through a field like other leap finishers (IE, triggers when leaping from inside to outside of a field as well as outside to inside and inside to inside).

All is vain :(

Even less incentive to log in after this goes through, ugh.

The trait for it also needs to be changed to apply the protection after the skill finishes rather than at the start of the channel, as a good half of its duration is wasted right now.

3item 50/25/25 or around there would be my ideal. The nice thing about that sort of multi-item stat system is that you can test new stat combinations by allowing them in only 1 or 2 slots to determine whether they’d be healthy for PvP or not without completely breaking balance. Plus the whole build diversity thing.

Jerus.4350:

Prisoner.2419:

Going by our drops spreadsheet, the combined ascended chest rate for 50s is ~16.43%. So unless my math is wrong, the chances of not getting an ascended chest in a week of 50s is (1 – .1643)^7, or ~28.5%.

It’s been so long since I did statistics, I was just thinking if its’ ~1/7 chance, then you should expect one every 7 days or so. Is it really only 28.5% chance of getting one in 7 days? just doesn’t seem intuitive, but that’s statistics!

28.5% chance to not get one in a week of 50s. Would be ~71.5% chance of getting at least one asc chest per full week, unless I’m remembering this math stuff wrong. That’s just doing 50s though, doing 30s/40s as well would lead to higher numbers.

Going by our drops spreadsheet, the combined ascended chest rate for 50s is ~16.43%. So unless my math is wrong, the chances of not getting an ascended chest in a week of 50s is (1 – .1643)^7, or ~28.5%.

Recent matches on main account (Sins.4782) have been absolutely terrible. Like, people trying to solo beast and dying terrible.

Recovery Matrix has no internal cooldown and triggers on both Healing Turret and Cleansing burst, allowing very high protection uptime from the normal HT+overcharge+pickup routine.

Would be nice if the blue teleport AoEs could be made more visible when the spawn inside the AoE that you have to stand in. Very frustrating to have everyone wipe because 2-3 people got teleported out by AoEs they couldn’t see.

Hammer #3 needs to be changed to better stick to enemies (1st and sometimes 2nd leaps can throw you away from your target instead of towards them). The zigzag thing when used untargeted also makes it feel slow compared to other leaps/rushes, and it could use either speeding up or have the zigzag part removed or straightened up a good bit.

Function gyro’s AI needs a lot of fixing. It needs to not loiter around randomly, and the stomp needs to be sped up to be the same speed as a normal player stomp. This thing almost never finishes stomping in high tier teamfights even with proper corpse cleave. Could also use an hp or armor increase.

I’m still not sure I agree with having stability for function gyro as a major trait. It’s pretty much necessary to make the function gyro useful in PvP. The grandmaster tier also has a trait which seems to be a mandatory pick (for PvP). Some balancing probably needs to be done here.

Also, the block on hammer #4 didn’t seem to activate immediately. This made it more of a pain to use than either of our other blocks. Might have just been my latency though.

Great job! Some of those prybars were beautiful. Also, 10/10 thread, would read again.

Should be yeah. You’re going to need to bank some inscriptions/insignias though because beta chars start with crafting disciplines at 0.

All they need to do is revert it to the ‘toolbelt skills grant 10 endurance on use’ (20% of a dodge) that it was pre core specs. That and give us back something for the 2nd minor already.

I for one welcome our new dank raid meme overlords. Can’t wait for the next half a year of daily ‘raids too hard pls nerf’ and ‘raids aren’t hard pls buff’ and ‘raid rewards suck’ threads.

Pretty much every ‘on heal’ effect in the game has at least an internal cooldown of 10 seconds, and I’d say it’s pretty safe to say this trait will too. Also, it may function off of the toolbelt skill for Med Kit instead of the kit swap, as Heal Resonator and Cleansing Synergy in the Inventions line currently do.

The best guess we have is 15% to make up for the 15% FT/EGun dmg trait that got deleted with core specs changes. No official word though.

Would be nice to be able to access some of these stats on recent games through the API as well.

Drop Elixir U for Elixir S. You’ve got 2 reflects already and the quickness isn’t helping you nearly as much as another utility could.

Use your supply crate more often. It’s not helping you much if you only use it once a match. If you’re losing a fight and using it could change that, go ahead and use it.

Don’t just drop napalm randomly. You’re not even comboing projectiles through it. Save it for cleaving enemies that are downed, ressing, or being immob’d/cc’d by your team.

Remember that your shield 5 is a block that stuns melee attackers. You don’t have to cut it short every time for the throw. At one point you were getting chased and mauled by a gs ranger while it was up and didn’t use it at all. Similarly, you don’t always have to cut short your shield 4 for the knockback. If you’re under significant ranged pressure from projectiles, you’ll want to reflect as many of those as you can.

Don’t try to stomp mesmers normally unless you know their #2 is on cooldown. If you want you can begin a stomp, wait around a second and a half, cancel it and quickly begin a new stomp. This is a gamble though, as they may end up out of the range of your stomp, or be expecting you to cancel stomp. The safer option is usually just to cleave them out. Napalm is great for this. If you don’t have the health to go through with either you can temporarily break line of sight and heal up a little.

Don’t double cap points. The only time you should be on an uncontested node with a teammate capping is when you expect a stealth gank. If you’ve got a second point already and don’t plan on pushing for a third, you can either position yourself between the two points and watch both, then move to assist whichever one comes under attack first, or you can move to a point where you can watch the enemy respawn point to make reacting to their movements easier.

There was one point at the midfight where your team had an enemy downed and was struggling/unable to finish him, but you kept on attack a tanky necro to little effect instead of cleaving/stomping the downed, who got ressed. Don’t do that. Securing a kill is of the highest importance in a teamfight-- if you see an enemy downed and you don’t think you’re able to take another target down in the next couple seconds, you need to switch focus to the enemy that is downed and do everything in your power to make sure he fully dies.

Also quit interrupting your kitten heal.

Agreed.

Take a moment to consider the number of high-tier viable builds that rely on burning for damage.

Now take another moment to consider the number of high-tier viable builds that rely on bleeds/poison/confusion/torment for damage.

It should be clear that some balancing needs to be done.

It only removes one stack of stealth right now. I think the general consensus is that it’s a bug as we haven’t heard anything from the devs about that being intended.

For power builds:

[Traited] Mortar

• Good ranged downed cleave, poison to slow resses
• Orbital Strike can be used to force dodges from multiple enemies
• Blind field for easing pressure and helping secure stomps
• Good burst healing
• High chill application (great against eles)
• High poison application for combating sustain
• Generally better suited for smaller fights on small points/secondary objectives

Elixir X

• Very good against necromancers and rampage warriors
• Good at taking down tankier targets with coordinated burst
• Great damage, cleave, secure stomps and resses… when the six grant you a rampage roll
• Turns you into a giant target the other half of the time, but at least your team can blast swiftness off of you
• Shines when combined with a team and voice comms (everyone needs to be prepared to burst a target when you moa them)

It comes down to personal preference most of the time. Elixir X does get better the more dps warriors and necromancers you’re facing, though. Mortar requires good knowledge of the combo system for maximum effect.

For condi builds, both lose a lot of damage, but mortar also loses a lot of its healing/chill because you probably won’t be traiting for it. Elixir X on the other hand pulls ahead because the toss gives you a good amount of free damage while your condis tick as they can’t cleanse in moa form.

Tooltip damage and cast time numbers are not really accurate. You need power coefficients and accurate cast & aftercast numbers to correctly compare auto chains.

Grenth, Scrapper sounds so terrible. I thought their naming couldn’t get any worse than Dragonhunter, but kitten was I wrong. Forge was soo much better. I’d much rather be the embodiment of fire and physical power than just someone who collects scrap -_-

Glue Bomb, Big ol’ Bomb, and Magnet Bomb (the Kit Refinement proc) are all missing the +60 radius from Forceful Explosives still.

They actually managed to make it more obnoxious than before. Pretty ridiculous.

You know they nerfed the stability road thing, right?

So now that we’re having sales, do you guys think there’s any chance we’ll see these come back?

The wiki article on damage may help to clear up a few of the misconceptions you have. I would suggest reading it.

Damage got nerfed from both the Incendiary Powder move and the stats from traits into amulets thing. Defenses got nerfed with the Backpack Regenerator fix, vigor nerf, and the removal of Inertial Converter. You’d need 4 full traitlines to get the same effect as the old build, so it’s pretty much dead.

Skills don’t actually have base damage. To put it simply, it’s weapon damage * power * scaling coefficient / target armor. Conditions do have base damage though, the portion that scales with your level. I don’t think anyone has ever complained about the 22 damage per bleed stack they’re taking from a build with 0 condition damage, though.

Rather than adding more amulets I just wish they’d just implement a multi item stat system…

Saw red in the engineer forum and got excited for a minute.

Stuff I’d like to see fixed ASAP:

• Bomb radius 180 → 240 (kit is unusable in PvP because of this bug)
• Skill queuing fix for Static Discharge [and Bunker Down]

QoL-ish stuff I’d really like to see:

• Range increases applied to Elixir Gun #1, Pistol #1,3,5 (we got the rifle range from Rifled Barrels made baseline, but not the pistol and egun components of the trait)
• Icon showing when Kinetic Battery is off recharge (icon can be same as the active’s icon but with a color change or contrasting outline)
• Protection from Over Shield applied when shield skill finishes rather than when it starts (currently ~half the protection duration is wasted on you because you’re spending that time blocking or reflecting with your shield anyway)

Balance-y things I’d like to see:

• ICD removed or drastically reduced from Evasive Powder Keg and Thermobaric Detonation
• Soothing Detonation healing increased from 340 (.2) to 450 (.3)
• Medical Dispersion Field reworked to check initial heal value and only work for incoming healing over a certain value
• Kinetic Battery changed to reduce next toolbelt skill cooldown by 30s or so, cooldown reduced to ~20s
• Automated Medical Response ICD reduced to kitten , fixed to recharge Cleansing Burst and Gadgeteer-overcharged A.E.D.

…and a bunch of other stuff I don’t have the time to type out right now. Think I’m going to make a big post about how the core specs changes affected us in PvP in a few days when I finish watching HxH.

The visuals are of the old 240 radius version, but the effect is still 180 radius. You can check this easily using AED’s toolbelt skill’s range indicator to put just over 180 range between you and a target, and then using any of bomb’s 1-4 skills. As soon as you walk forward to 180 (red bar underneath Static Shock disappears), the bomb skills will hit. You’ll notice on bomb 2 and 4 that the field appears to be clearly on top of the target, but no damage/burns/blinds will be applied, because the effect radius is still 180.

Edit: Screenshot for reference (taken 3 minutes ago)

If you’re dying in a low duration moa like that, they probably landed both Incendiary Ammo and Blowtorch on you before the Toss Elixir X. Without Incendiary Ammo, a normally 50s cd skill, you should definitely be able to survive the duration unless you were already really low. If you see the Incendiary Ammo icon on their status bar, expect a burst and have a condi clear or transfer ready immediately, and a cover CC if necessary to ensure that a transfer hits.

They’ll either run in close or use Magnet or Glue Shot before hitting you with Blowtorch, so you should have a good idea when they’ll use it and can react accordingly. Dodge magnet, dodge if they suddenly run up to your face, and CC them or be ready to use a condi clear or transfer if they use glue shot (as you can’t dodge while immobilized). If they burst from stealth, dodge as soon as you get hit, pop into ds, fear them, then transfer the condis back. Condi engi has pretty low condi clear most of the time, so with a 3x condi transfer and a cover condi or two from you they will usually melt.

If you get moa’d first, use your dodges and skill #5 to avoid any further condi application. If you properly avoided or transferred Blowtorch/Incendiary Ammo before getting moa’d you should have no problem surviving the duration.

Or just roll the cele signet build, and watch them kill themselves from your passive transfer every 24s. Cele signet hardcounters engi condi builds.

10-12 man non-linear raids please.