Guild Wars 2

harryexe.5617:

Firstly, I recall (unsure if it is accurate) that stacking power wont affect damage on bombs and grenade…

This is inaccurate. Grenades and Bombs scale well with power.

Personally, ascended armor/weapons are not worth the investment if your budget is low. Excluding account-bound materials, it is at least 50g’s worth of materials per piece of armor and about 100g to get 0 to 500 in Leatherworking. Huntsman is about 190g for 0 to 500 and also at least 50g per weapon.

Sources:
Leatherworking Ascended Armor Costs
Huntsman Ascended Weapon Costs
Crafting Totals

To clarify, the December 14, 2012 allowed sigils to work with kits. For balance, the Grenade kit’s first skill “Grenade” was reduced in damage by 30%. Aside from a bug fix with Elixir Gun’s Super Elixir, no other kits were touched in that update.

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

I like using the Nageling Giant’s event frequency and large HP to practice dodging and play with different builds. I like it the way it is now.

The relationship between power, precision, and ferocity are not additive. They are multiplicative. So, you can’t conclude a 12% nerf from 6+6+6-30=-12. If you really want to know whether or not the 6% increase in stats is an overall offensive buff or nerf, you would have to examine the change in effective power since it condenses all three stats into a single number that can be compared to other builds of the same profession and weapon.

The same goes with the relationship between toughness, vitality, and healing power. There are many other variables that will favor one stat over another. For example, consistent incoming low damage scenarios will favor toughness and healing power while incoming high damage scenarios (and conditions) will favor vitality. So, again, you can’t conclude 6+6+6 = 18% defense buff.

EDIT: The math gets more complicated when you factor in other variables (profession, weapons, runes, traits, infusions, etc). In addition, you have to factor in the balance changes because the Celestial stat will change at the same time. Whether or not it is an overall buff, we won’t know entirely.

How do we know that the mine dropped from Bunker Down WILL have a knockback? Reserve Mines and Mine Field doesn’t have a knockback. Those are mines.

Unless I missed something, all I heard from the Ready Up was that Engineers drop a mine where they stand whenever they critically hit with 10s duration, 2s cooldown, and no boon strip.

A knockback on a 2 second cooldown seems way too powerful (and easier to grief in PvE with) as it would make the utility Throw Mine almost redundant.

I love the change. No more constantly waypointing and getting my traits reset!

THANK YOU for the change.

Edit: In addition to the free trait reset anywhere, I hope Anet removed the confirmation window when allocating X points into Y traitline. A small (I hope) QoL improvement since players will be resetting or adjusting traits much more often.

Gery.2718:

overall it’s a good change, but for new players leveling a mesmer as the first character will be even more painful

This. In regards to leveling to 80 without crafting/grouping in open world, some professions do pretty well without traits while others are more painful. When I leveled my Mesmer, I had a hard time until I reached Lv40 for Deceptive Evasion (clone on dodge). With the new patch, I would have to reach Lv60 to get it. While annoying that it takes longer for some professions to get up to speed, it isn’t too bad since leveling in Guild Wars 2 is easier than other games I’ve played.

I see the reasoning for moving the threshold up. Basically, distributing the learning curve more evenly from Lv1 to 80. However, I think too much is towards the later levels with the new trait thresholds.

My suggestion is to drop the thresholds to 20/40/60 for adept/master/grandmaster access and start at 20 for trait point gain. Pre-patch it was 10/40/60 starting at 10 for trait point gain.

Thank you! This is /extremely/ helpful.

I wouldn’t mind the change since the “Attack” value does not matter much.

My only suggestion is to switch boon duration and healing power so that all the percentages are on one side for consistency.

Penguin.5197:

ellesee.8297:

backpack regenerator is amazing. combined with protection injection, lots of toughness, eg 5, and permanent regen you have tons of sustain. putting 20 into firearms over alchemy makes you incredibly easy to kill even if you go full dire.

backpack regen 117 + regen 130 + eg 5 204 = 451 health per second. that’s warrior caliber regen.

I was gonna point out warriors heal until I saw your second statment. I think that actually proves backpack regen is subpar if you need a lot of healing sources just to equal the passive heal from warriors. But then again warriors are crazy.

Except Warriors cannot use their active heal without sacrificing the passive heal for 16-20 seconds whereas Engineers can use their active heal while also keeping their passive healing.

Has anyone tried this yet?

I recently bought an Endless Toy Tonic and tried using it with a Hot Air Balloon Souvenir (and Flames of Kryta and Lightning Kite). Cuuuute.

Galtrix.7369:

…When my friends tried to use peer pressure, that pushed me even farther away from this game.

This.

I have a lot of friends who play a lot of different games and they try to get me to play their favorite game. It only pushes me further away cause I still like the current one I’m playing and have no interest in switching.

If your friend has no interest in moving from WoW to GW2, then let him be. Let him make the decision to switch and be there for him if he ever inquires about coming back to GW2.

Can items in invisible bags not show up on the Mystic Forge?

Thanks.

I’m like the new female faces – especially the ones with little horns around the eye.

However the males feel too doglike for my taste. Hopefully someone can convince me otherwise.

Kain Francois.4328:

Underflow servers.

It’s not that the world isn’t populated, it’s that 50 people are segregated amongst 10 or so servers. So instead of 50 people in one zone, you have only 5…

I like this idea. Though, most likely easier said than done on Anet’s end.

Just tested this in the Heart of the Mist. Air Blast still applies its 2 second burn if the target is already burning.

Players who assume everyone else knows their strategy for handling the dungeon, and doesn’t tell anyone about it.

The Throw Napalm skill (Engineer’s Toolbelt skill for Flame Turret) is a fire combo field but it isn’t mentioned in the tooltips.

…at 30% condition duration.

Re: Engineers

If you trait 30 pts into Explosives for 30% condition duration, the Firearms Adept trait Sharpshooter tooltip displays the duration at 4 seconds. However, when testing it in Heart of the Mists, it only ticks 3 times – same as if you had 0% condition duration. However, the bleed damage listed in Sharpshooter is accurate (bleed damage as if 3 seconds instead of 4).

I haven’t tested this in other durations.

The Engineer Firearms Grandmaster trait Napalm Specialist increases burn duration by 33% but it is not reflected in the tooltips.

Assuming base and healing coefficients from the GW2 Wiki are correct, and Lv80:
- Adrenal Health heals for 360(0.15) every 3 seconds at max adrenaline.
- Healing Signet heals for 395(0.05) every second passively.
- Healing Signet heals for 3275(0.5) every 20 seconds if used on cooldown.
- Healing Surge heals for 9820(1.50) every 30 seconds at max adrenaline if used on cooldown.

At 0 Healing Power:
- Adrenal Health will heal for 3600 HP over 30 seconds.
- Healing Signet will heal for 11850 HP over 30 seconds passively.
- Healing Surge will heal for 9820 HP at maximum adrenaline.

At 1500 Healing Power:
- Adrenal Health will heal for 5850 HP over 30 seconds.
- Healing Signet will heal for 14100 HP over 30 seconds passively.
- Healing Surge will heal for 12070.

In terms of raw healing, Healing Signet by itself will outheal Healing Surge. However, Healing Surge is better for burst healing.

Edit: Fixed a number.

Here is my guess for making Chaos Gun:

An expensive recipe requiring gold, laurels, and karma
250 Ancient Pistol Frames
250 Orichalcum Pistol Barrels
5 Vision Crystals
An account-bound 4th ingredient that has yet to be introduced to GW2 but existed in GW1 and is time-gated to take 2-4 weeks to complete.

Basically somewhere between really tedious, really arduous, and really expensive.
My hope is that it’ll be easier than what I think.

Being the kind of person I am, I would love it if the guide had some pictures. I don’t run dungeons often, but I feel like this would be a great help to those who are not experienced or do not know the dungeons. Great work.

The chest piece is T1 Light – what Surbrus said. You can look for yourself at the armor vendors. That NPC is also not wearing any shoulders.

Bran.7425:

Did this get fixed recently or is it an armor specific issue? I switched to a mostly tier 2 set and blood legion shield no longer clip as it once did.

It recently got fixed (at least on my end) – shields no longer clips into my charr’s body.

I get this often too – even when I have the master volume turned down to 0. Scares me at times when I’ve had my volume up from listening to music and forget to turn the volume down after turning off the music.

To me, it seems like it occurs most often when I interrupt my own skills such as with Blunderbuss (Engi Rifle 3) interrupting Overcharged Shot (Engi Rifle 4). Though, I am not completely sure.

I’ve always heard it as “Healthy and able” because the audio triggers after healing.

EDIT: After some searching around in the GW2 wiki, I found out that charr females shout “Healthy and able!” after gaining vigor. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigor

Good work. I love seeing this kind of analysis. I’m glad to see that one trait is not superior to another. As other posters have mentioned, Shrapnel is to AoE/Long-term and Incendiary Powder is to Single/Short-term.

I do have one question though. How was the damage for Shrapnel calculated? I realized that you (Brtwrst.9312) stated you used average values due to the 15% chance but that isn’t clear to me.

I assume the OP means Med Kit with Kit Refinement which gives you Magnetic Aura (reflect projectiles) for 2 seconds.

Edit: I could be wrong though. Tool Kit #4 has a shield, but it lasts 3 seconds, not 2.

This happened to me once and was fixed after I reported it. Then it happened again. The shield is positioned such that it is on its side and facing backwards. I tried relogging but that didn’t work.

While I am not completely sure if this causes the bug, I think it has something to do with previewing items while having my shield out as that was the last thing I was doing before this bug occured to me.

There are many things I love about the Engineer profession, but here is one of them:

I love using Throw Mine when I am up against Thieves. Toss one one yourself, wait for them to Steal or Shadowstep. OR. Stealthy thief? Mine field. As soon as a mine explodes, Blunderbuss/Jump Shot there, then Overcharged Shot when they are out of stealth..

Wasdclick.1764:

HGH didn’t quite double, in my humblest opinion, since the throw is still just 1 stack. So it’s more like 1.5 time. But that’s nitpicking…

Sitting Duck is an incredible buff, and far more than “double” effectiveness. I think people should be really looking at this one with Rifle. You can Net Shot once per 8 seconds. Traited. Toss in the duckie, and now every 8 seconds we’re giving the target 5 vulnerability. More if we have condition duration improvements. For a team player, that’s downright incredible.

I agree for the most part with the Grenade nerf, since the low coefficients stack up to really high levels when multiple grenades hit. On top of great condition stacking. But AoE’s just shouldn’t be the single target DPS solution. ANet has said as such as well, and we’ll be seeing other AoE based nerfing on other classes at a close point in the future. We just get it first because our kits are being drastically revamped to allow for weapon stats and sigils, so it’s easier for them to work in the necessary changes.

Oh, I forgot about HGH working on thrown elixirs – I don’t use the trait much so I haven’t fully paid attention to how it worked. Thanks for the clarification – I will fix my previous post to reflect this.

Thank you all for your replies.

There is not much to say that hasn’t already been said, but I suggest many of you re-read the points made by Casia. I will rephrase them with my own points:

Grenade 1 was an extremely powerful ability in both single target and AoE. It still is powerful in single target, but it is not so powerful that it completely shadows all other Engineer builds.
- Pre-patch, Grenade 1 had a skill coefficient of 0.50. With the trait Grenadier, we can hit an opponent with 1.50 (1.65 with Explosive Powder) if all three grenades hit. That skill coefficient was extremely high compared to other Engineer 1 skills, and is extremely high even for Warrior 1 skills.
- Post-patch, Grenade 1 had a skill coefficient of 0.33 per grenade. With the trait Grenadier and all three grenades hitting, we get a skill coefficient of 0.99 – something more in line with other 1 skills though still on the high side.

I encourage everyone to look more closely at the changes to Engineers and how we can maximize our benefit from them.
- Shrapnel was buffed from a 6% proc chance to 15% – more than double.
- Transmute was buffed from 3% to 8% – more than double.
- Sitting Duck was buffed from providing 5% more damage when immobilized to 5 stacks of 8s (base) vulnerability – more than double duration.
- HGH now provides 2 stacks of might instead of one for non-thrown elixirs – better than no change or a nerf.
- Power Shoes, while situationally useful, was buffed from 10% to 25% – more than double.
- Harpoon was buffed to provide more conditions – a welcoming change.
- Grenade 3 and 5 were given damage when it previously had none.
- Most importantly, sigils now work with Engineer kits. I enjoy this change because of the higher versatility we can get from weapon swapping. Damage increasing sigils aside, we can do so much more than – such as leeching health on weapon swap, or freezing nearby enemies on weapon swap.

Thank you, ANet, for the engineering changes.

Meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy my Rifle/Static Discharge build even more due to the changes to Sitting Duck and my Bunker build more due to the changes to Transmute, sigils, and Harpoon.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to show everyone the change in skill coefficients for the grenade kit before and after the December 14th patch.

I recorded the damage on the tooltip, power, and used a weapon damage of 920 to figure out the skill coefficient. To make sure the tooltip was accurate, I took off all equipment and used all the abilities on a Heavy Golem (approx 2600 armor).

Skill No. | Pre Patch PvP
1 – 0.450
2 – 0.450
3 – 0.000
4 – 0.450
5 – 0.000

Skill No. | Pre Patch PvE
1 – 0.500
2 – 0.550
3 – 0.000
4 – 0.500
5 – 0.000

Skill No. | Post Patch PvE & PvP
1 – 0.330
2 – 0.550
3 – 0.100
4 – 0.500
5 – 0.200

In terms of PvE, the #1 Grenade got nerfed by 34% (from a skill coefficient of 0.500 to 0.330), but is compensated by (1) ability to work with sigils, and (2) giving damage to the #3 Flash Grenades and #5 Poison Grenades.

In terms of PvP, the #1 Grenade got nerfed by 26% (from a skill coefficient of 0.450 to 0.330), but is compensated by (1) ability to work with sigils, (2) giving damage to #3/#5, and (3) buffing (or bringing back to normal, whatever floats your boat) #2 Shrapnel Grenade and #4 Freeze Grenade.

In addition, the change to the trait Shrapnel from 6% to 15% chance for explosions to cause bleeding is nice. However, since I do not know the nature of the ability*, I can’t say exactly how awesome it really is.

From what I can see, the 30% damage decrease was not only just due to sigils, but also for the damage increase on the other grenade abilities, and the Shrapnel trait.

In case anyone was curious, the toolbelt skill Grenade Barrage stayed at a skill coefficient of 0.375 before and after the December 14th patch.

*What I mean by “nature of the ability” is that I do not know if the trait has an internal cooldown, and whether or not the bleed is applied to a single target or aoe.

Your numbers for weapon damage on kits makes more sense than mine. Yea… I’ll have to adjust my spreadsheet for the 920 weapon damage average.

And from the little testing I’ve done on heavy golems, I’ve gotten armor values higher than 2600 (I think my average so far was 2630, but I’ll have to double check). Most definitely slightly above 2600 though.

EDIT: Having used Casia’s 920 average weapon damage for determining skill coefficients, I get the same numbers kitten he did – which is more reasonable than what I have obtained earlier.

Final Edit: Ignore this post! I made math mistakes.

There isn’t a damage variation if you use steady weapons – where the lower, upper, and average weapon damage is the same. So you can assume any of the three to determine skill coefficients (when using steady weapons), then use a regular weapon to see if the tool tip is actually assuming average weapon damage.

My calculations/research for the skill coefficients are shown below if anyone is interested.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj4MGDyyA4tbdG5HcXBsZHBWLXZjN1Q0RVB4dEdhaVE

While I cannot confirm for weapon kits and utility skills, I do not agree with your weapon damage use for determining skill coefficients for rifle, pistols and shields. I do agree with your approach, though.

If you use Steady weapons from the PvP Lobby, you will get steady weapon damage (125 to 125 for Rifle and Pistols, 110 to 110 for Shields). This takes out the confusion on whether or not you should use the maximum weapon damage, lower, or average in the damage calculation from the tooltip.

Using steady weapons, I get the following skill coefficients:

Rifle
R1 = 0.65
R2 = 0.00
R3 (Close) = 1.60
R3 (Long) = 1.00
R4 = 1.00
R5 (Leap) = 0.90
R5 (Land) = 1.80

Pistol
P1 = 0.35
P2 = 0.40 (per dart)
P3 = 0.40 (per bounce)
P4 (Close) = 0.99
P5 (Long) = 0.33

Shield
S4 = 0.25
S5 = 0.50

The numbers you got versus what I got are close. For example, I got 0.33 and 0.99 for Pistol 4 while you got 0.1 and 0.3.