Guild Wars 2

That trait was probably the best trait in that GM line in my opinion. As said above, you can spend longer in photon forge, have more passive might, and is easier to juggle the forge so you stay above 50% heat capacity for spectrum shield and the like, and more health regen from more heat loss. I much preferred it to the 3rd trait which locks you out of forge mode completely afterwards and has no passive heat loss, or the dodge roll which you need to practically dodge roll through the person to hit them.

MrCameron.4863:

If anybody wants to see my gvg footage or duel me or something idk to validate my experience to have these opinions, let me know.

Can you duel me to validate?
Completely agree though.

And for the love of SD engi, move SD out of the same tier as power wrench for any other trait but adrenal implant!

Have ya tried defender runes yet?

The game doesn’t have a severe snowball effect like others games with the surrender option so there’s no point to it. It’s a pretty poor mindset to have when you can always make a comeback until there’s only less than a minute in the game left anyway.

Rifle doesn’t need such a large work-over to be a viable choice in pvp/wvw. Evade on jump shot, making the punishment of OS not as harsh, and some general damage increase either to the 3, 5, and/or to the auto, will go an immense way to making it competitive in pvp for both dueling and conquest purposes.

You’ve pretty much summed up the state of engineer at the moment. For conquest pvp there is really nothing else to run that’ll impact the game anywhere near as much. It depends how seriously you’re taking pvp and how far you want to climb the ladder.

It depends on what scrapper traits you’ve taken and how focused on might stacking you are. If you’re solo roaming roaming with little focus on might, then defender runes will perform better as a whole because of the 4k heal it provides. If you’re in a small group, with more of a might-focus (like MM over RR) then durability runes will be better suited.

coro.3176:

Twigifire.8379:

Rifle needs quality of life changes not a complete overhaul. It’s a very fun risk vs reward playstyle at the moment with a little too much risk involved.

There’s a lot of risk you can’t mitigate with smart play. Specifically, if you hit someone with Overcharged Shot, and they have an on-cc trait equipped, you usually lose the fight or have to disengage.

Last Stand procs – Warrior hits you with cc burst chain instead. You die.
Shared Anguish procs – Ranger hits you with staff or bow to trigger Ancient Seeds while you’re knocked back from your own attack. You would normally clear immob with OC shot, but you can’t because it’s on cooldown. You die.
etc. etc. (although, those 2 traits are the worst offenders)

See also OC shot into unexpected reflect, Jump Shot over traps or guard lines, Net shot just being completely ignored by Warriors & Thieves.

That’s what I meant by ‘a little too much risk’ but there’s still plenty of out-play with the passive stunbreaks. If you’re vsing a warrior test the waters with a different CC first instead of blindly OSing. They’ll most likely have a stunbreak ready for it anyways even if they don’t have the passive. You should be trying to self-stunbreak your own OS as often as reasonably possible as well to maixmise your safety and follow up burst. The easiest way around the stunbreaks is to land a pull first, to either proc their passives or get them to use their stunbreaks so you’ll be able to hit the OS afterwards. Most of the things you mention have plenty of counter play, i.e. not jump shotting over theirs traps since you’ll see the placement animation.

The issues with rifle at the moment is the amount of projectile hate, and the amount of stability/stunbreaks people have. Passive CC’s shouldn’t be too much of an issue and can easily be forced out.

Rifle needs quality of life changes not a complete overhaul. It’s a very fun risk vs reward playstyle at the moment with a little too much risk involved.

I would like to keep it as is. Gives more meaning to the elite spec you choose which should in-theory be your role-defining traitline.

I was hating the changes a LOT but after playing some more now it’s actually not bothering me much. Look for the much-larger water field and detonate once that appears instead of going off of other signals and don’t spam it more than for too long when placing it. The healing turret before still didn’t instantly place the water field on overcharge and you could botch it with a preemptive detonation, however, it was harder to do that and everyone was used to it.

Endure pain is a joke. It doesn’t even last as long as a lot of the games CCs.

They could just take the mid node of foefire, that’s perfectly suitable. Maybe even make it conquest-esque where it’s an actual capture node and once it gets capped, or opponent dies, game ends.

NeXeD.3042:

do you all have some sort of special knowledge of inner workings of anets finances or how they are allowed to allocate funds? Is that why you all think without esl all of a sudden there will be tons of money for Balancing and fixing loll

Nah I have no idea. And really I was just pointing out that if said money was around, then focusing around making a more fun and balanced game would probably be best.

Honestly, I would’ve thought the best marketing idea would be a big juicy balance patch with meaningful changes that fix the games glaring issues. But you’ve convinced me. A video of mindless skill spam to an audience of gamers who have mostly played the game or know of it’s existence would be far more effective, both short and long term.

Let someone with condi damage fight them instead?

If they were to swap power wrench with any last tier or mid tier trait, so that it could be taken in conjunction with power wrench, it’d be instantly playable imo.

Wouldn’t an easy fix be to lock ranked until the person reaches level 60 or something in pvp?

Incoming Lengthy Response

You shouldn’t need reactive lenses or utility goggles. It will help but it’s not viable to run those against most other matchups, and there are other tricks engineer has to effectively and efficiently remove blinds. If you run rifle, I’d seriously recommend toolkit, elixir gun, and assuming no scrapper, mortar kit, as those will benefit you the greatest in every matchup. For the third slot I’d run elixir s but it can be fit to whatever you prefer (e.g. Elixir B is a very good substitute).

Here’s what can be down to beat them more consistently:

You’ve probably already found this out but overcharge shot is what carries power rifle engineers, so land it as often as possible.

The first step to beating a thief is using acid bomb at your feet (by cancelling it) and standing in it when the thief has engaged/about to engage. Also use the mortar blind/chill/poison fields while standing in super elixir/mortar 5. A good thief will stay the heck away and a bad one will try to engage and die in the AoE. In the circumstance that the thief is good, wait for him to engage and then follow it up with the AoE so that he is forced away. However, I cannot stress the importance of using flash shell and standing in it vs a thief as soon as he engages, it will mess him up very badly.

Second trick is to do blunderbusses where you think they are stealthed at as that’ll hit them like a truck and they will most likely not expect it (i.e. at their black powder or where they leaped to).

Another way around the blinds is to use box of nails. It’s cripple/bleed pulses will remove blinds so whacking that on top of the other AoE’s will also work, or using it by itself. It lasts a while so do it while he’s in stealth (but not immediately or when he’s stealthing up), as it generally lasts long enough that he will de-stealth/engage before it disappears, or when your kiting a bit away. This helps you land an overcharge shot.

Furthermore a stealthed thief generally doesn’t have too much time to engage (3 seconds or so) so if nothing happens for a while and ya know he’s going to engage within the next second or so, do a jump shot at your feet and he’ll probably be put to half health before/as he hits you or at least use up a blind which you can follow up with an overcharge shot. Alternatively, you can also jump shot away. This also applies to acid bomb and mortar F5.

If the thief has just stealthed up or is stealthing up and you’re not at full hp, use super elixir and/or mortar 5 and stand in it for some regen while you wait for the re-engagement.

Last trick is to spam mortar autos at your feet or a bit behind you when you try to kite away about or when he’s stealthed, as it’ll waste his blinds/make the engagement more unfavourable for him.

Here’s a quick summary if you don’t have the time/can’t be bothered to read it all:

1) Use overcharge as often as you can land it.
2) Use mortar fields and acid bomb at your feet as his engages. Flash shield will destroy him.
3) Blunderbuss in the direction you believe he is at when he is stealthed.
4) Use box of nails while kiting away or chasing, and before he engages from stealth.
5) Thieves can’t stealth forever. After it’s been a while and there’s been no engagement, jump shot at your feet or away from your position. Same goes for acid bomb and mortar.
6) Stand in super elixir/mortar 5 when your hp is low and the thief is stealthing up.
7)Spam mortar autos when the thief is in stealth, and if you’re doing a bit of kiting.

It comes down to mix of reactive, predictive, and defensive gameplay on your part. You pretty much want to make every engagement the thief does unfavourable for him, and when you’re a bit vulnerable from a lack of cooldowns/health, at least make it.

There isn’t a need for a surrender button like with other games because these matches only last 15 minutes maximum. People should really just keep trying because with the way conquest works you can easily make a comeback. If it’s just a huge skill gap between teams then you should lose in under 10 minutes anyway.

And if people are expecting to win 80%+ of their matches then you need to stay out of pvp. People who actually believe they cannot win a match because of the 50% matchmaking are jokers who are mostly average players suffering from the dunning-kruger effect.

In actual 1v1’s it’s a bit hard due to some builds countering others but in my opinion the best in general are condi zerker, druid and power rev when vsing other power builds. Scrapper, if you’re good staff thief, chronomancer and guardian I think are mid tier and necro/ele are on the worser side of things. That said a condi reaper can stomp power revs and any other build which struggles with conditions.

Saiyan.1704:

Lets just ban core thief from the tournament until we get this straightened out. /kappa

I think medi guard should be banned as well /kappapride

I don’t PvE much but wouldn’t that just make the game easier as opposed to more challenging? I also thought bomb kit grenades/bomb kit hit pretty hard anyway?

You’d have to tone down the effects of bulwark, sneak and medic gyro for PvP. They’re already used by meta-scrapper (aside from medic gyro but if it’s around permanently then that’s some serious team healing ).

Mortar on engineer can reach both spawns on foefire and forest. There are safe spots but it takes a bit to find them. There isn’t really any way around it.

Spicy.2481:

https://youtu.be/3xXJovG2Vsw?t=3h13m2s This is what top tier revs look like. In my opinion no rev on NA comes even close to these guys on EU.

Firstly conquest =/= dueling and secondly Kronos is pretty much the best player NA in terms of dueling. I’m pretty sure he’d give anyone a run for their money in EU as well. There’s no need for EU>NA when there’s never been cross-region dueling, similarly saying that these guys aren’t top tier when I know Kronos at least is pretty much the best dueler around. Of the clip you showed as well, it just shows muscle memory of a skill rotation which pretty much everyone does, although I’d be comfortable saying those guys would be top tier also.
Back on topic, Kronos’ video is actually helpful to people trying to play Rev and find out the combos, which, if everytime someone does this the content creator gets butchered for not being skillful enough, when he literally wins every 1v1 tournament there is, then this game is reaching all new levels of toxicity .

Konakona.4130:

Azukas.1426:

What condi build is harder to play then a power build for the same class?

engi

Depends if it’s a core spec or not. Core power rifle is far harder than a p/p condi build if both the specs are core. I definitely agree that power scrapper would be easier to succeed with over condi scrapper though.

Iain Ross.6903:

Mid Tier*

lol no. These guys are good.

NOTE: I’m specifically addressing core-engineer, not scrapper, in my post because I find it’s play style to be far funner/harder/healthier and I would appreciate it to not be gutted like they did to older rifle builds like SD engineer.

Gear shield traited is pretty much the sole reason core engineer is actually usable in pvp… If Scrapper is OP then they should nerf SOLELY scrapper skills and traits, leaving core engineer out of it. For one, Scrapper and core engineer have hugely different playstyles, and secondly, scrappers don’t even take the tools traitline if they want to min/max their setup! All this nerf did was lower build diversity and promote more bruiser-based builds as opposed to running glassier higher risk vs reward setups because they simply won’t be able to survive long enough as soon as a revenant, thief, berzerker, druid, chronomancer, scrapper, reaper, tempest, shows up because they all have bursts, which, even if they blow all they can in the first 2 seconds, still have enough to nuke you in the third. At least 3 seconds gave us some time to delay and/or get away. With two it’s just going to be useless against lots of bursts which we won’t be able to outlast, i.e. unrelenting assault.

I’ll admit gear shield is still good, and is definitely still going to be run to allow core-engi builds to still have some survivability, but at this rate of nerfing healing turret, bunker down, and now gear shield, core engineer is going to be in a very sad state because of specifically scrapper and not the engineer itself.
Why nerf something which nobody complained about and promoted lesser-used, higher skill builds?

cyberzombie.7348:

Engineer, old-school zerk rifle specifically. The finesse of it isn’t as good as it used to be.

If only SD engi was still a thing. Q_Q

At least rifle is ‘meh’. Shield is simply terrible. I’d hope the next weapon we get is an mainhand because that might save shield a little.

maddoctor.2738:

Amaimon.7823:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Elementalist
right on the top, 2 popular builds for pvp

From the build:

This build provides great team support by mixing damage mitigation, condition cleansing, direct healing, and projectile denial.

Eles have been on the support for years now, is it too much to ask for something else to be viable?

Cele ele wasn’t really a support build. And that was around for ages.

Don’t go for the bait!

For those wondering dolyak runes heal for between 60-70 per second with menders.

Please just give us a beta for 1v1/2v2’s on courtyard at least for now Q_Q

nicknamenick.2437:

i just hate that instant spear..

Unblockable? Ok i get that because of reflect problems (well its not really a projectile)
Pull? sure its because guardians are slow (well used to.. In combat teleport is fast)
Pierce? well sure why not its HOT so it should be good lol :-)

But its so kitten fast! i have to do lucky dodge to counter it.

All HOT stuff is crazy compared to Core stuff.. but atleast make it somewhat counterable…

Pretty much what I think makes Guardians pretty good at the moment. That, and their amount of healing their trap does in total. Just slow down the speed of it, or give it a 3/4 second cast time animation of a glowing spear windup. Anything else would probably put DH back to season 1 warrior level :/

The division of the playerbase is of concern, but 2v2’s and 1v1’s require way less people and it would fit nicely in as just a niche thing to just begin with and see how it goes, and further develop it if it gets a much bigger following. I’d also think it’d draw in a larger crowd as it’s funner to play with just your friends and not with randoms.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Twig, my last remark was in contradiction to what Jaxom said. Although your remark was sarcastic and embellished, it has shown frustration from someone who is tired of seeing user posts asking about 1v1 arenas. In other words, there are a lot of users asking about 1v1 arenas.

Should troll posts be taken seriously? Your answer towards your own post was “no” because it was “over-exaggerated”.

Guild Wars 2 has too much negative buzz. Try contributing with some actual feedback. Otherwise you’re doing nothing but contributing to the problem that Helseth was mentioning a couple weeks ago.

My answer wasn’t no. —>No. is shorthand for number. I would actually really like to see 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 arenas. My remark was hence emphasising that your post has already been put forward a massive number of times, pretty much at least once a month since the game’s launch, and was not a troll post. If I had said “1v1’s are for the baddies l2p” then it’d be a troll post. My post wasn’t even negative. Furthermore, Helseth probably isn’t the best spokesperson for having a non-negative community but lets not de-rail this thread.

1v1’s are only going to happen if Anet finally keel over to it, and it’s of course something they’ve discussed a lot. I can only hope constant forum thread posts supporting the idea will reinforce the idea we want 1v1’s. I’m actually in SUPPORT of what you’re saying. My post was to raise awareness of how many people actually want your idea…

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Should troll posts be taken seriously?
Well if so, according to this guy

Twigifire.8379:

Post wanting 1v1 Arenas No. 92018402375128

There are at least 92,018,402,375,128 people who have posted that they want 1v1 arenas.

So judging from this particular troll remark, apparently many people have posted saying that they would like to see an in-game 1v1 arena. Maybe it should be considered.

It’s not a troll post. It’s clearly just an over-exaggeration of the extremely large number of times people have recommended 1v1 arenas and there are still no arenas…

Post wanting 1v1 Arenas No. 92018402375128

Evade frames on jump shot.
Unblockable overcharge shot.

Rifle would probably be viable again without being over the top

Thoughts:

Suggestion Number 1094 for arenas.

I still don’t get why they can’t just make dueling a proper thing. It’s way more fun to watch/play than conquest pvp..

duster.7013:

Aktium.9506:

Engi is a lot harder because there’s a kittenload more of stuff you have to aim and lead.

It’s around 7 times as easy to win as engi as staff ele, and three times as easy as d/d ele

That’s like saying it’s 5x easier for a staff ele to win than a SD engi, or 10x easier for a d/d ele :P

In general though it depends entirely on what build someone is playing on the class, not really the class itself.

Because Arenanet doesn’t support arenas :O Just like Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have guild wars :P

Well it’s a good thing all those amulets were banned…

BlackBeard.2873:

No HoT specializations allowed!

This would probably actually work as well :/

At this point in the game balance I’d pay for a non-HoT queue haha. Would be heaps funner!

Akashi.3245:

try 230+ ping for us ocx players and theres more then skill lag for us. skill lag happens here when its 3 large groups fighting and its a horrible experience.

Yeah I find it hilarious. People complaining about getting 150 ping and I’m just here happy to get under 250 haha

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Wait for new patch and then decide.
If you see any nerfs to these: druid, scrapper, tempest, herald, thief – then yes.
But if you see any nerfs to these: dragon hunter, reaper, chronomancer – then probably no.
If you see any buffs to these: druid, scrapper, tempest, herald, thief – then definitely no.
But if you see any buffs to these: dragon hunter, reaper, chronomancer – then probably yes.

Should be this:
If you see any nerfs to these: Elite specs – then yes
If you see any nerfs to these: Core specs – then no
If you see any buffs to these: Elite specs – then no
If you see any buffs to these: Core Specs – then yes

Pre-HoT balance was pretty much as good as it got despite the few hiccups it had in my opinion!

The solution is simply to get your own roamers.. or have at least one competent solo player in the zerg who can go and defend the camps for you while the zerg does its thing.