Guild Wars 2

I have to agree. Things aren’t that unbalanced right now; every class has a place except for war. Ever since the June patch however, the general game design of pvp has gone down the toilet, and this arguably got worse with HoT.

Skill floors on most classes were massively lowered; engineer is probably the best example of this. For 99% of 1v1s you know how they will play out before they even start, and most of the time they are stale mates if they involve druids, scrappers, tempests, or revs. What this means is that rotations and team fights are pretty much the deciding factors of every match. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in its own right, but complexity was removed from the game for really no reason by making the roaming job a snooze fest (either you have a guaranteed win, it’s a stale mate, or you get out when you are +1’d because you have plenty of escape and defense).

On the topic of team fights, I feel like these really took a dive with HoT. The amount of aoe cc and buffs in the game right now is crazy. AoE dazes from druids, for instance, don’t really scale properly in team fights. Interrupting people unintentionally with short cooldown dazes probably isn’t good for the game. I feel like the cc should be more focused on single targets. Scrappers scale with other classes that give super super speed in a silly way. Tempests are an even spam-heavy version of ele when it comes to team fights with little counter play to their large aoes. Either you stand on point hoping to get a bit lucky with the rng or you yield the point to them.

So what are we left with in terms of well designed spvp game play? Pretty much rotations, that’s it.

TWC in NC. Same thing happened just 20 min ago, for some strange reason I am able to reconnect after restarting my computer. Once I got back in game though areas were taking forever to load and any UI windows were also very slow to start. Once an area loaded though the game was smooth and I had good ping + fps.

A static discharge build using the gyros seemed like it would be pretty fun, but I found out quickly it wasn’t going to happen. Like any other non-targeted ability the bolts just go straight into the ground unless you aim with your camera. There is also no tracking. Is this really working as intended? Or just too lazy to fix the bug because you think people are all content playing HGH?

Other than that, as other people have said hammer 3 is pretty clunky. Why not just program this like 3 heart seekers after one another? It would prevent the issue of the engi charging in bad directions. It’s supposed to be a gap closer but a large amount of the time it just makes chasing a person harder.

“You use the term AoE spam as if it were a bad thing.”

I’ll take it you agree that it would add to aoe spam to make this change. So why do engis need more of this? As I described, the skill is already far from useless. It is very effective at punishing roles on nearby enemies, and with all the cc engis have you can setup hits regularly.

Increasing close-range aoe spam is really just pointless. Grenades and bombs already fill this purpose. You are giving a purpose to a skill that is already fulfilled by a skill taken on 99% of non-turret-engi utility bars in spvp.

Next time somebody dodges the tk3 you just throw out there, you should think of it in a different light. Forcing a role is very useful, as it means another role immediately after is either impossible or unlikely. You can punish with other big damage options (which engis almost never run out of), or you can be more assured your cc will land without being screwed by a random roll.

And that is all about design. What about balance? Kits are tricky to balance; some skills are going to be better than others on a kit, and you have to take that into consideration. Unless you make some other change to balance this boost to tk3, then this would just further imbalance a kit that is already part of the meta.

I’d argue gear shield isn’t 100% necessary. Sure it’s the easier route; if you have poor positioning you can just gear shield and be OK most of the time. But running without toolkit is more than doable, you just have to be more aware of your positioning. E-gun helps a lot with this, as acid bomb is great for getting back after dropping some bomb pressure on a point.

Not a fan of it, I think if you are going to use bombs then you need to use grenades as well on engi. The two cover each other’s respective weaknesses perfectly. With this current build you are pretty useless if you are unable to stand on a point, which is pretty often; cele engis aren’t all that tanky and are pretty easily focused. So what do you drop for grenades?

Personally I’d drop toolkit so you still have a stun break. You could also replace slick shoes with egun, but both are good options. E-gun gives you better mobility and a very short cd blast finisher to combo with bombs.

Bombs are more or less a replacement for toolkit on an engi skill bar. They don’t really fill the same role, but the fact that grenades are so good and you need a stunbreak generally means tk and bombs are the only contenders left for that last slot.

Is this a joke? Toolkit’s main purpose is utility, not damage. The skill is there as very strong option to punish roles and combo from cc. If you give it a lower cast time and cleave, it just becomes another pat of engi’s aoe spam. Toolkit doesn’t need this, in fact I’d argue the damage should be reduced on this skill. You can’t just compare it to what other professions have, as the fact it’s part of toolkit gives the skill use a different context.

Two bad/mediocre/good players: engi will probably win

Two great/near-perfect players: mesmer should win.

If the mesmer is running condi clear mantra then they really should be winning even if both players are sloppy. It’s really all on the mesmer to screw up; if all their defensive cooldowns are used properly then the engi should be dead before the mesmer is. Of course this is very hard to do properly, which I think is why you see so many mes crying about op condi spam from engi.

It’s best not to hold onto crate for too long or you get fewer uses out of it in a game. Using it to secure a 1v1 is probably one of the better ways of using it. Against good eles the fight may never end if you don’t make good use of crate. Against other engineers it gives you a huge advantage, although if they manage to get out of the initial cc they can play far back and just grenade it. Against wars if you make them pop stances and then crate it’s basically gg.

Crates also speed up 1v1s and make it easier to hold out 1v2. Both of these are huge when the other team is rotating another one in.

There really aren’t too many bad uses for this skill. If it’s off cool down and you find yourself needing a bit more of an advantage in a fight you may as well use it.

IMO most broken thing about engi is the short CD instant launch. If they didn’t have such easy setups for damage they wouldn’t be quite as broken. Also pulling in stealth should probably reveal.

The classes buffed the most by cele amulet were ele and engi. I tend to agree the buff was too much for classes that make good use of all the stats it gives.

The problem with SD is that fresh air does its job much better. I wouldn’t really call it that viable in spvp.

I feel the build is very limited. It is worse than a triple kit build 1v1, it has no mobility to get out of an outnumbered fights, it dies very quickly in said outnumbered fights, it is worse in team fights, and it is terrible if forced to fight in between nodes.

Really its just a buil that requires little ability to pick up and punishes bad players heavily.

Obviously there are problems with how MMR works.

Having said that, if this guy actually continues to play he will go down pretty fast.

I think the main advantage of the old gw1’s pvx wiki was that there was a pretty rigorous system for rating builds based on their significance in the meta. Just listing builds is a start, but I think it is important to give people a means to sort through what builds are used most often and for what reasons. It is also a bit confusing when there is a different entry for each minor variation on a build (looks like some of that is going on in the Engineer PvP section).

Swagg.9236:

Moobs.8231:

surprised i found you in the top 1000 leaderboards tbh

I’m still in the top 1000? That’s a 10/10 joke because I haven’t played this game in forever. This game’s competitive scene is about as dead as TF2 or Super Smash Brothers: Melee, but at least those games have a concrete sense of skill variance.

But honestly, to even think that you doubted by skills in “Rotation Whack-a-Mole Wars 2: Rock-Paper-Scissors Online Edition.” For shame.

Yo dawg u stupid cus SSBM is more alive now than it was 10 years ago.

World is digital now bro LANs are for RL nerds.

This thread is hilarious. Be good enough people will take you anyway or chill bro. Typing doesn’t work as well hand down. ESports ain’t got room for checked privilege.

Honestly though calling numbers at points constantly is important. This would be insanely difficult with typing. Minimap only gets you so far.

From the perspective of another engi, the key is to stop playimg defensive builds in solo queue. You don’t need both elixir s and toolkit, nobody is on ts screaming to focus the engi. Bombs are so good against ai builds. Bomb when their reflects are up, nades inbetween
It is so straight forward and easy to deal with this build.

-spoon

People underestimate ft builds. You can run ft/nades/eg with cele rifle and make the build work pretty well. I ran this build in solo and team queue for a while and did pretty well. Its very strong in both team fights and 1v1’s, although more prone to getting bursted down than running tk/eg/nades or tk/s/nades. Note that traveler runes are really key here, as they allow you to avoid putting 10 in tools:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWrlYxdLseNCbBByJcBR2xh85IEgkC-TJhIwAAeAAk3f47FAQYZAA

Somebody else has brought this up, but why take ft over bombs? Well, ft has a number of advantages:

1. Low cd knock back
2. Safer (longer range) non-projectile damage, very useful for cleaving
3. Instant 200 toughness whenever you need it
4. Might stacking (although I admit its not too much) that doesn’t consume blast finishers
5. Incendiary ammo is very strong

Obviously bombs have their own strengths, I’m not going to say this is better in every situation. My point is just that ft can be very strong in a balanced build (although this leans more towards offense).

-Spoon

Have you ever actually tried sync queueing? You end up against your friend just as often as you end up with your friend.

From a pvp perspective, that light field is primarily useful for condition removal. I wouldn’t waste your blast finishers on retal, they are better used for heals, might stacking, or stealth.

Condi necros are probably the easiest way to deal with an engi 1v1. Although, mesmers are by no means unable to fight engis. Certain builds do very well. Confusion is more affective against engis than any other class.

Wouldn’t be the first time they made a trait like this. AR was pretty much the same thing before it was nerfed.

Hello all, Kang Dankey master thief here to help u nubs.

I think thief is too strong so need redesign because its ez game ez lyfe wen i wreck kids. IF u do the math initiative is 2x damage from other classes and can do so much damage at once cus no cooldown. How anet lets this idk but i like it.

It’s annoying, that’s for sure. Just another reason I think the celestial buff is what’s going to change Engi the most this patch.

Any necros been messing with celestial?

uberkingkong.8041:

I don’t think spirit rangers are necessarily op, they probably just have the best 1 attack skill.

I mean if you cry the spirits do all the damage, than kill the spirits, is the ranger still that op of spamming 1 then?

BTW best spirit ranger build is this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpDAlBmaJrI

Butt Mustache spams 1, his problem was he wasn’t spirit ranger. If he was, all his spirits died and that’s why he wasn’t that op spamming 1.

All you guys cry its all AE now, so it should be easy to take out the spirits.

All you guys have is mindset of ignoring pets and going for person right away, Anet developers countered this by spirits, because of your lack of abilities to go for pets first that’s why you fail against spirit ranger.

You guys need mindset of necromancer minions, IGNORE.
Rock dogs…. IGNORE
Ranger pets…. IGNORE
Ranger spirit pets. KILL ON SITE. but because you have them on IGNORE, you fail… Spirit ranger is as strong as the spirits, if they remain INGORED that’s your fault of not weakening the rangers full trait line. Traited fully for spirits yet you ignore them and yet the ranger use his complete traitline on your kitten rather than killing the spirits and crippling the ranger because he has hardly any traits that are in effect without spirits.

You can’t exactly ignore dog pets. Get KD’d, feared, or immobilized and you are going to be taking a lot more condition damage than you want to.

Anyways, the key to playing against spirit rangers is to keep your health above 50%; don’t wait too long to use your heal skill or you will be put at too much of a disadvantage.

From a bomb/nade engi’s perspective: an effective way to deal with these guys is to stack a bit of stealth before picking the 1v1. This way you can begin the fight by landing a freeze + shrapnel on the ranger+pet+spirits, which gives you a very large advantage outright.

One thing Heroes of Newerth does that I like is make it so if you aren’t able to gain much MMR by winning, you also don’t lose much MMR if you happen to lose. This encourages people to keep playing and helps solve the problem of people not wanting to play because they can only go down in ranking. And of course with more people playing the chances of being up against people that are at your ranking is greater.

I played 14 solo-Q games and I’m currently rank 6. My first 4 games were against people that were absolutely terrible, but this was to be expected. I believe performance in a game does matter. I probably got near 300 points in those games. After that I started playing players that were top 50 in rank. A couple of games were definitely upsets in my favor in terms of people’s current leader board positions, so that likely boosted me a lot.

Your opponent’s MMR should probably be taken into account, but there are some problems with this system. There isn’t enough decay to encourage people to continue playing, so if I were to play right now chances are I would have nowhere to go but down in rank, as I would most likely be playing against people lower than me on the leaderboards. My first 14 games were in the first two days of solo queue; decay has so far been seemingly non-existent.

The problem with Skyhammer is that engis and necros can too easily swap a utility and make very minor build changes that make them a bit over the top on the map without having to go back to HotM.

Mausser.7530:

You forgot Mesmers Ostrrich : P . I don’t know why people rank Necro over Warrior. They’re both in the same state right now. I’ve seen some good aggressive Warriors popping up lately.

Personally I think warriors are weak, but they will gain more respect as people improve at the game. Their play style is much less forgiving of mistakes than any other profession imo (gs/axe+shield).

I don’t think rangers are S-tier simply because they are replaceable in a lot of team compositions. They are definitely incredibly strong, and being able to reliably win any 1v1 is more useful than it may seem, but sometimes it makes sense to sub the ranger out for an engi or a thief. I feel l like guardian, ele, and mesmer are top tier in that these three classes commonly make up the core of teams and are so essential. Portal tactics are extremely powerful, and ele/guardian arguably bring the best mix of damage, defense, and utility to team fights. I’d say ranger, thief, and engineer make up the tier below those 3, and necro+war are bottom tier. Does necro deserve to be lumped with wars? Most people would probably argue they don’t, but I feel like necros don’t do anything stronger than another class. Wars have the problem in that they just can’t pick that many fights. In team fights they are focused too easily as they have to be in the middle of things to get their damage off. In 1v1’s they are weak as well. They can be alright in small skirmishes between that though, but they really rely on opponents making mistakes.