Guild Wars 2

Dosvidaniya.3260:

I have nearly every single piece you can get from rank rewards and tournament chests. Looking at the list it’s pretty obvious that I could get the vast majority of those skins by bouncing around to hearts, crafting, farming anything, and maybe spending a little money on the TP.

One of the biggest exceptions would be the Orrian skins – it’s very easy to get all of them naturally as a regular PvPer but very time consuming to get them as a PvEer.

Also more importantly, the cheaper availability of dungeon and cultural armor when bought with glory would have been extremely attractive to PvEer. In an ironic twist of fate, PvPers probably didn’t have the money to buy them anyway :P This doesn’t feel like an optimal transition, but I understand where they’re coming from.

Can you guys at least make Consumable and Gear tokens from the Glory vendors purchasable by coins instead until the patch? I have hundreds of PvP crafting mats that I can’t do anything with because I have 0 glory remaining and no way to buy those tokens.

I wish…

Oxalis.3084:

Also, I bet 99% of you are same scrubs who cry because you get wrecked by arrow carts (probably because you’re all squishy zerks in pve builds.) You probably have no idea that retal is the one of the only counters to arrow carts that no one can reach. Where is your god now if now we can’t counter those arrow carts with aoe retal?

Too bad they removed retaliation on arrow carts shortly after launch then. Please calm down and breathe…

Oxalis.3084:

Learn to blast water fields and heal back up, you will NOT die instantly unless you are a total scrub

Correct. The problem obviously isn’t that you’re going to die instantly from the retaliation alone, the problem is that it adds up with the damage you take from other sources. For example, you might have survived an enemy burst with 3-4K HP left, but you die because you lost 5K HP from retaliation on e.g. Whirling Wrath shortly before that.

hydeaut.1758:

I almost feel sorry for you, guys. So much work and thought put in here, but it seems all wasted for me.

I used to do game modding and I like to keep that part of my brain busy

The main point beeing: I don´t see why that changes should promote taking an engineer in a group instead of a second Guardian, a Warrior or another Ele in the raid.

Engineer will always be a more diverse jack-of-all trades with good damage and support, but not as much as a more specialised class in any specific way. A small number of engineers could nicely complement a warrior/guardian melee train.

The healing from bombs is so much less what a Guardian can heal with much lesser trait-investment

Guardians can heal 450HP/s without sigil of stamina spam and while doing decent damage at the same time? I’ve mostly been raiding with guardian in the last 3 weeks and that’s news to me

Engi waterfields are nice to have, but also not needed with a few Eles.

An extra 480 radius waterfield is always welcome. The main problem right now is that our only water field is also our only heal. Regenerating Mist becoming a 2s field in a 480 radius would make us extremely valuable.

In reality all wvw-Engis can expect is incoming nerfs due to decap-Engis and critdamage-changes (how I hate that balancing based on that odd pointholding-gamemode).

In the future we’ll have new PvP gamemodes that will likely encourage very different builds. In that new meta our weaknesses will likely become more obvious and I’m optimistic we’ll eventually get some nice changes – but it might take time to get there.

For the sake of discussion, here are two possible engineer builds after some of my changes. More builds would be opened up with retaliation improvements and/or the longer-term changes and there are plenty of fun variations possible besides what I’m describing obviously!

1) Cleric Bomb Engineer

• 10/0/30/30/0, full cleric, runes of the monk, 1.5K+ healing power
• With stacks: 2200 power, 22K HP, 3K armor, -53% when Stunned
• Healing: 450HP/s AoE + 5.7K AoE with 3.3K Self-Heal + 200HP/s Self

• Pistol/Shield with various foods (e.g. lemongrass, healing power, etc…)
• Pistol/Pistol for Glue Shot + Glue Bomb with +40% condition duration
• 2 of 4+ other utilities:
  • Rocket Boots (mobility and especially immobilisation removal)
  • Tool Kit (pull into the melee train especially for GvGs + invulnerability)
  • Elixir Gun (combination of mobility, stunbreaker, condition removal, etc.)
  • Throw Mine (boon removal and disrupting their restacks)

2) Toolkit Offensive Engineer

• Rifle/Toolkit/Flamethrower/Rocket Boots
• ?/?/?/20/20 (anything with Power Wrench + Deadly Mixture)
• Mix of knight/zerker/valkyrie/PVT with offensive runes (or Melandru)
• Use tookit magnet combined with rifle immobilise to pull into the train
• Use toolkit auto-attack for perma-cripple(!!!) and burst with FT 2+Rifle 5

Not sure where this is coming from, but EG is standard in PVP triple kit due to Stunbreak + Inertial Converter + Mobility that Pistol Shield lacks. The only other replacement for EG at the moment is Rocket Boots.

Interesting, the NA meta must be different from the EU meta then? EU tPvP meta is GK+BK+TK for triple-kit condi (new Teldo build with various alternatives for TK) and BK+FT+TK for bunker/decap builds. I’ve seen EG but it’s quite rare.

As much as I appreciate a 30 second stunbreak, 30 sec CD with 30 in tools makes Healing Mist an unprecedented 23.1 second stunbreak. […] At most I’d make it remove 1 condition. Even this might be too strong, as Healing Mist is a 240 radius AOE.

Traited Shake It Off on warrior is a 20s CD stunbreaker that also removes one condition in a 600 radius – not comparable because it’s a whole utility not just a toolbelt but you get the point. I like the idea of removing 1 condition AoE as an alternative to a shorter CD.

Elixir F: but you forget Invigorating Speed. I love crippling my enemies to get Vigour in return.

Woah, I’m a bit embarassed I never thought about that, especially after the Speedy Kits nerf! Hmm, not sure then. You could make it prioritise new enemies maybe?

Why duplicate Cripple from Elixir F? Vulnerability covers the Poison, which is important for down state control. It’s also useful for increasing group DPS

It’s a constant application so you can’t just remove it once like Elixir F. Vulnerability isn’t very good in large-scale except as a cover. One problem is the two biggest sources of condition removal convert it to protection (warrior warhorn and guardian pure of voice). Still just adding the self-cleanse at the end might be enough.

Autodefense Bomb Dispenser: Drop a Smoke Bomb when you are disabled or Immobilised. (Cooldown: 30 seconds). When you use a Toolbelt skill, drop a Bomb 100 units in front of you.

Interesting – it might help diversify power builds and help PvE DPS as well. It goes against the intention of my post (minimal changes that mostly affect WvW balance) but it could work.

Honestly Exploit Weakness should just become an Executioner type trait.

Agreed, good suggestion (maybe 10% is too strong for adept though).

Acidic Coating is too RNG to be a reliable Blind tanking trait

Hmm, seems a bit strong. I think my change is reasonable given that it remains a minor trait, but everything involving blind is hard to balance (easy to make either useless or overpowered).

Whoa there, buddy. 50% more Evade Frames is no joke, especially now that you can only get 50% Vigour uptime through Speedy Kits/Invigorating Speed.

You’re right, 50% is too much. If it became adept it’d have to be 25-40%.

When Turrets are debugged, you will also find Deployable Turrets in there.

Doubt it. It’s too slow and it makes Healing Turret a nightmare to use as a heal. Also in large-scale, Speedy Kits is useless (enough AoE swiftness) so adept isn’t too satured. But I see your point in general and I agree.

What about this:

1. Move Leg Mods from Master to Adept (Warrior’s Dogged March is an adept trait that does the same with extra regeneration!)
2. Move Adrenal Implants from Grandmaster to Master (probably no nerf needed).
3. Move Kit Refinement from Adept to Grandmaster and make it awesome.

I’m not going to derail this thread into a discussion about KR but obviously I want cooler effects and per-kit CDs back!

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

On retaliation, I agree that it’s better to change the mechanic than individual skills. I posted my suggestions in the WvW retaliation thread and Allie said he’ll pass it on to the team so hopefully something will come out of it one day: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/retaliation-and-wvw/page/2#post3666236

insanemaniac.2456:

jump shot doesnt need a buff, its in a good spot as is.

I agree I probably went too far but reducing the animation a bit wouldn’t be too much. Or if that’s impossible, then increase range from 700 to 800 (traited 900).

Bombsaway.7198:

If I could have an E gun change it would be that acid bomb leaps you TOWARD the enemy vs away. That could lead to better combos.

Hmm, interesting. I’m extremely used to it leaping backwards and it might make rifle+EG+RB too mobile. It’d also be clearly overpowered if other aspects of EG were also buffed. But it’s worth thinking about!

MonMalthias.4763:

A better change would be to keep the delay, retexture the bombs to have individual colours, and make bombs be placed 75-100 units in front of the Engineer.

I agree that placing bombs 75 units in front would fix all the problems. My suggestion was to only reduce explosion delay for auto-attack so it doesn’t change how easy/hard it is to tell other bombs though. But your idea has a lot of merit if ANet wants to make a bigger change that affects PvP as well.

Do you mean for the chain to be dealing +25% damage on top of what it does now? Or do you mean for Thwack to deal 25% damage on top of what is already a double damage final chain?

The latter so +10-15% DPS. I’ve never seen anyone use TK autoattack seriously so I’m skeptical just adding cleave on Thwack would be enough to make it worthwhile. Most chains have a reason to want to finish the chain which TK lacks (bigger damage but same/lower DPS?)

Toss Elixir B: I think the RNG is fine as it is now. Stability at 4 seconds is plenty to secure a stomp; especially given that it is AOE. The only change I would advocate is for the projectile speed to be faster.

Makes a lot of sense for small-scale but in large-scale you use your stability before you push into the enemy. And so you want to always hit 5 allies and ideally you want to hit your party members so the raidleader can optimise the parties around who gives and who receives stability – both are impossible with engineer. Again I don’t want to make it as strong as Stand Your Ground but it’s problematic right now.

I think it’s just a tooltip bug. Cleansing Burst already works with Healing Power.

No, the tooltip says it scales, but it actually doesn’t: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Engineer-Cleansing-Burst-with-Healing-Power/first#post3468970

I’d rather Evasive Powder Keg to instead drop a Flash Grenade and deal no damage.

180 radius blind-on-dodge would be very strong in large-scale! I’m also scared of the impact on bunker/decap builds that are already prevalent in the (EU) PvP meta.

It’s true that 240 dodge bombs isn’t weak either, but the guardian’s Selfless Daring always has a 240 radius and in a different way it’s a much stronger dodge trait when geared for full healing power like some guardians are (up to 1500+ HP/dodge): http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Selfless_Daring

Hi Allie,

The patch did not change retaliation in WvW, it only fixed a bug in EotM. The -33% retaliation has been present in WvW for many months and I expect that nearly everyone in this thread is talking about retaliation in that context.

The main issue is that damage from retaliation is excessive for small/fast attacks which some classes are more susceptible to than others. For example, engineers with both flamethrower (4 attacks/second) and grenades (3 attacks/second). On most classes it’s mostly a few specific skills that are well balanced overall but problematic with retaliation (e.g. guardian whirling wrath).

There are many possible solutions:

1. Set an ICD, either:
   1. On the person with retaliation (e.g. will only do damage on 1 attacker every 0.5s).
   2. On the attacker (e.g. you don’t get retaliation damage again from anyone else for 0.5s)
   3. On the attacker+defender combo (e.g. 1 attacker can only get retal damage every 0.5s for every person he hits)
2. Set a damage cap:
   1. Percentage of Damage (e.g 20% of attack maximum so 500 attack would hit for 100 retal – stronger impact on glasscannons)
   2. Percentage of HP (e.g. 5% HP/s max – weaker impact on glasscannons)
   3. Fixed Maximum (e.g. 1K HP/s max – stronger impact on glasscannons)
3. Individually rebalance specific skills (e.g. flamethrower doing 4 attacks hitting 5 enemies instead of 10 attacks hitting 3 enemies).

My personal preference is for a 0.5s ICD on the person with retaliation. I believe this has the smallest impact in small-scale and the best possible impact in large-scale.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to post your ideas

Bombsaway.7198:

1. Bomb Kit really isn’t our primary kit. I’m not sure anything really is “must have” for an engineer.

I really wish this was the case for large-scale (15++ players on each side) and many of my other changes intend to make it true. But in my opinion, the problem is Bomb Kit is the ONLY kit with a high damage multi-target auto-attack. The auto-attacks for rifle/pistol/elixir gun are practically single-target, and the auto-attacks from flamethrower and grenades suffer too much from retaliation.

While a good engineer will switch between multiple kits (and weapon) a lot, the sad reality is that you still want a strong auto-attack or you won’t be doing anything half the time, and bomb kit is the only one to provide that (or grenade kit if you’re not afraid of retaliation).

I would think a larger radius for the base bomb is in order. Decreasing delay increases DPS and the bomb is quite powerful as it is.

I think you’re confusing cast time (back-to-back) and explosion delay. The former would stay at 0.89s so the DPS wouldn’t change. The way it works is you drop a new bomb every 0.89s but it only explodes after 1s so there’s actually 0.11s where you can see two of your bombs on the floor.

Reducing the explosion delay is a simpler change than increasing the radius which is already massive and that would significantly affect PvP balance which I don’t want to do (and ANet/PvP players don’t want to do).

3. You can’t have Thwack hit 3 targets and keep its healing of turrets (assuming they fix turrets).

The wrench auto-attack chain has 3 skills. All 3 of them repair turrets but skills 1/2 cleave while skill 3 doesn’t. I’m suggesting changing that which shouldn’t have any impact on turret repair. Or am I missing something?

5. Turrets scaling with HP would be quite OP I think.

You’re right, it would probably be OP and affect PvP balance. But the tooltip claims it scales with Healing Power so that at least has to be corrected. An interesting change would be to remove the HP scaling on the base skill then add it to the (AoE) cleansing burst…

6. I would say that Glue should create stability for the engineer and his team. Makes more sense that you are “glued” in place. Both the bomb and the pistol have longer timers so it would be reasonable. Beats the elixir idea IMHO.

Hmm I really like that idea! I’m afraid it would be a bit overpowered though because glue bomb is already very strong and while pistol offhand could use a buff, it’s still only a weapon skill. You could make it very short but then it might be useless in large-scale.

The best way to make your idea work might be to add a trait for it and that’s a bigger change. My idea isn’t quite as cool but Toss Elixir B is weak right now so it’s a worthwhile improvement anyway to boost build diversity.

8. E-Gun’s Healing Mist could move to 30 seconds but that may be too much.

You might be right. EG is still a weak kit in the PvP/PvE meta (you lose a lot compared to going say GK/BK/TK) so I don’t think it’d be too big a deal to buff it. But I completely understand your concern.

a. I might argue that reducing the time of Super Elixir would be better.

“Field pollution” is a serious problem in WvW guild raids. You DON’T want a light field on your restacks instead of a water field and this is already the longest light field in the game. Might be a good change but it wouldn’t help that much in large-scale.

For Elixir F, I agree that bouncing to allies is annoying but it ensures more bounces often. I would move it from swiftness to adding a might for a short time.

I’m suggesting making it work like Static Shot which I don’t think has any problem?

Elixir F acts a bit strangely BTW; it will never bounce back to the same target it bounced right before. In a 1v1 it will hit the enemy, bounce to you, then stop. And in large-scale with equal allies and enemies, you’re wasting half the damage and cripple.

9. Retaliation is sort of the cost of having grenades that can hit up to 15 targets

But there isn’t really any benefit to hitting up to 15 targets except tagging more loot. The overall DPS of grenades is lower than bombs (of course it’s ranged but you get the idea). The problem is the damage multiplier and every skill in the game that does a lot of small attacks suffers from this (e.g. Guardian Whirling Wrath) but engineer is by far the most hurt by it.

It’s already balanced for shields (e.g. Guardian Focus 5) only losing a charge for every skill use rather than every attack. You could implement the same for retaliation overall but it goes beyond the scope of this thread, and to be honest I think that’s probably overkill. I like your idea of a trait but I always prefer a simpler solution

I just started a thread on my WvW Engineer Balance suggestions in the Profession Balance forum, might interest you guys and I’d love to see your feedback there!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/WvW-Simple-Changes-for-Engineer-Balance

The retaliation is a big problem for grenades and flamethrower. There’s no way around it without balance changes from ANet; the best you can do is pew-pew from the wall or a safe distance then stop as soon as you see your health dropping from retaliation – and unfortunately against any decent guild group, that means never attacking.

In my opinion there are several viable WvW builds:

1. Cleric Bomb Engineer: 10/0/30/30/0 – good damage (2.2K power) with good survivability (20K HP / 3K armor / defensive traits) but brings an amazing amount of support (1300 healing power -> 400HP/s AoE bombs) so it’s a setup that’s (rarely) run by good guilds. Usually running pistol/shield or pistol/pistol with a mix of Rocket Boots, Elixir Gun, Toolkit, or Throw Mine.
2. Offensive Bomb Engineer: Many possible traits. This is a balanced critical damage build with decent survivability that can play melee or mid-range. Usually running rifle with a mix of Flamethrower, Elixir Gun, Rocket Boots, Toolkit, Elixir B.
3. Backline Engineer: More glassy build that targets the backline. Usually running Static Discharge or HGH with rifle with a mix of elixirs, grenades, toolkit, or skills with low toolbelt CD for static discharge. This is a very hard build, especially in organised groups because you don’t have the stealth or mobility of a thief, but it’s crazy damage.

My balance suggestions focus mostly on the first two because I feel the latter is closer to existing PvP builds (even if the meta is more condition-heav there). I’m also suggesting a simple change to toolkit that would make it a viable autoattack kit to replace bomb kit in offensive builds. Again please check it out and let me know what you think!

Longer Term Changes (Minimal)

The following changes are more involved (changing game mechanisms and balance slightly) but they’re still as simple and minimal as I could make them. It’s not required to make the engineer viable but would open up a lot more build diversity in WvW without changing balance much.

The most complex but important changes are the reduction in retaliation to Grenade Kit and Flamethrower. I should point out that they already only reduce shields (e.g. on fractal lava boss or guardian focus 5) by 1 tick despite being multiple attacks each taking retaliation, so there is strong evidence that it makes sense and it’s technically possible (even if the code couldn’t be reused).

• Ascended Weapons increasing kit damage
  • Large Scale WvW builds are all power-based and this hurts us by ~5%

• Elixir Gun (small buff in PvP but probably still won’t be used much)
  • Healing Mist: Cooldown 40s -> 30s
  • Elixir F: Only bounces to enemies (no swiftness on allies)
  • Fumigate: Remove 1 condition on self at end. Replace vuln by 1s cripple.

• Grenade Kit (Retaliation!)
  • Very strong despite slow projectiles but retaliation is a really big problem
  • Only 1 of the 2-3 grenades should suffer from retaliation at all (random)
  • Flash Grenade: 5s->3s Blind but 2x damage (still less than base attack)

• Flamethrower (Retaliation!)
  • Autoattack should suffer from retaliation on 1st and 10th ticks (1/5th)
  • Autoattack burn duration on final tick: 1s -> 2s (good change for PvP?)
  • Autoattack could maybe hit 5 targets instead of 3 (see guardian staff)

• Jump Shot
  • Range: 700 -> 900 (gives a decent gap closer without rocket boots)
  • Alternatively find a way to significantly increase effective speed
  • Maybe add an evade at end because it prevents dodging (PvP balance?)

• Glue Shot
  • Significantly increase projectile speed (it’s effectively melee range)

Increasing Trait Diversity in WvW

• Autodefense Bomb Dispenser
  • Cooldown: 30s -> 25s (same as smoke bomb)
  • Also trigger on immobilise(!)

• Exploit Weakness
  • 1s immobilise (instead of 5s cripple)

• Acidic Coating
  • Inflict AoE blindness in a 130 radius around you
  • 120 would not be enough due to 130 melee range

• Tools Traits (significant awesome impact on PvP/PvE)
  • Adrenal Implant: Move to Adept.
  • Kit Refinement: Move to Grandmaster. Make it awesome.
  • Not WvW-specific but could be amazing and great for build diversity

Again please let me know what you think!

Analysis

• 1st change is small but key. Bombs are dropped every 0.89s but take 1s to explode in a 240 radius while players move 270/s (in combat with swiftness). So Elixir Bombs won’t heal you if you’re running. And it’s hard to damage moving enemies as you need to be 30 units ahead if you are both moving – while a regular melee can be 130 units behind! It’s okay against disorganised zergs but against guilds you won’t hit as many enemies as a melee despite the 240 radius.

• This is not a problem in PvP because of fighting on point. As a compromise not to hurt PvP balance and the timing of Big Ol Bomb + Bomb 2/4/5 combinations, I suggest that only the auto-attack is reduced from a 1s to 0.75s. Again my goal is minimal changes that don’t hurt balance in other game modes.

• 2nd change will not significantly affect PvX balance (any good engineer can dual-blast in 1s) but will make a huge difference in WvW as 2s water fields can be called on TeamSpeak and blasted by others.

• 3rd change is amazing because it opens up a whole new build! Combined with Power Wrench this gives us a melee auto-attack chain that cripples on every hit. It’s good soft-CC and allows for melee engineers that don’t use Bomb Kit!

• 4th change is intended to remain inferior to Stand Your Ground as it’s not instant, it’s not a stunbreaker, and it’s still limited to a 300 radius with a clunky toss mechanism. But at least it’s a reliable source of AoE stability. Also making it only give Fury or Retaliation (excessive random effects).

• 5th change turns an utility that’s strong on paper into one that’s useful in practice. Mine Field removes up to 25 boons (5×5 AoE) but the cast time and limited radius with the wide dispersal makes it weak (just check your combat log to see how few targets you’re hitting). It’s bugged with the tooltip saying 240 when traited but testing it to only be 180.

My goal is to suggest simple changes (easy to understand and easy to implement) to make engineers more viable in large scale combat without affecting PvP balance (as a Top 100 YoloQ engineer player, I wish debunk got slightly nerfed and build diversity increased, but I agree with ANet it’s decent overall). This post is not about WvW roaming (although I enjoy it very much) as it is a very different topic which is somewhat closer to PvP balance.

Engineer is an interesting place for WvW balance today. With bombs as the primary kit, we can easily run in the melee train, but it’s missing some key things to be competitive with guardians and warriors. We aren’t bad at all but our only strong differentiators are our water fields and healing with bombs, while the differentiators for guardians and warriors are harder to live without.

Here are the simplest changes that I believe would be enough on their own to make multiple melee builds very competitive:

1. Bomb Kit Autoattack: Reduce explosion delay from 1s to 0.75s (only delay!)
2. Regenerating Mist: Water field duration: 1s->2s (time for others to blast)
3. Toolkit Thwack: Should hit 3 targets like rest of chain(!) and +25% damage
4. Toss Elixir B: Radius 180->300 + Stability 4s->5s + Remove Might/Swiftness
5. Mine Field: Cast time: 1s->1/2s, Fix Radius (240 traited), +60 Proximity
6. (Bug?) Healing Turret: Fix Cleansing Burst to scale with Healing Power
7. (Bug?) +Evasive Powder Keg: Radius: 120/180 -> 180/240 (match other bombs)

Explanations in the next post but most of it should hopefully be self-explanatory. Slightly more involved changes to game mechanics are in the post after that.

EDIT: For bombs the back-to-back time would remain at 0.89s so this would not change DPS at all. It only makes it easier to hit moving targets. See explanation in posts below.

FWIW: WXP R250 Engineer, WXP R200 Warrior, WXP R75 Guardian, WXP R50 Necromancer with ~60K kills in both large-scale and small-scale. Top 100 YoloQ EU. That does not make my opinion worth more (or less) than anyone else’s.

TL;DR: These are simple changes (literally only changing a few numbers) that would make a huge difference in large-scale WvW. Please let me know what you think!

WvW Medium/Large-Scale Perspective:
1. Ranger (not a serious profession for WvW raids)
2. Engineer (bomb explosion delay, retaliation, stability)
3. Mesmer (used mostly for veil and null field in guild raids)

Agreed. At this point my guess is that Sylvari are indeed dragon minions of Modremoth but that that something (likely Ventari’s teachings) have protected them from its influence.

When Ceara went into Omadd’s cube, she lost that protection, and she is succumbing to Modremoth’s influence. This aligns with what Vorpp said in the latest story instance and could imply that every Sylvari would turn into a minion of the Elder Dragon if it is not defeated.

Bump, tested this hasn’t been changed with the December 10th patch or any more recent hotfix.

True poetry the likes of which the world has never seen before and will likely never see again.

+1.

8v8 hotjoin has always given significantly more rank points than tPvP. Too many people feel high ranks mean nothing because of Skyhammer farming and zerging. Making this retroactive would fix this long-term imbalance and make ranks more valued by everyone, not less.

If we’re keeping ranks long-term then I truly believe this is a necessary change. And I say this as someone who’s r34 and wouldn’t even make it to r40 with this change, so while I would benefit, others would (deservedly) benefit much more than myself.

I started playing bunker/cc engi with AR a few days ago after running a grenade/bomb condi build for a long time. I’m going to keep it simple:
1) AR is OP, requires little skill, and should be nerfed.
2) Bunker engi is still viable without AR.
3) Dec 10th patch will nerf vigor.

IMO the counter against AR bunker engi in the current meta is to 1v2 with 1 condi and 1 burst. If they both know what they’re doing even a very good bunker engi will die very quickly. However the fact there is a soft counter doesn’t make it any less stupid.

I think it might be good to rework the trait completely; anything that encourages you to stay below 25% is a bit silly even if it wasn’t OP. I would suggest removing X conditions at 25% with a long cooldown or maybe -67% condition duration at <50% HP.

Hi Chris, that topic for WvW is unusual in that it’s not the responsibility of the WvW team itself, but rather of the server team, and Bill Freist has already been very open about it in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Official-state-of-skill-lag-and-server-optimizations

While a CDI on skill lag could be very interesting, I’m not sure what you expect the community could really contribute, and what responses/feedback the dev team could give? Thanks!

This sounds amazing!

Q: My main question is how do you plan to use the beta process to balance factors that are dependent on player interest and activity level?

I was very active on the test server for Ultima Online’s PvP Factions system in late 2000 (feeling old even if I was very young back then!) and I remember how the last few days/weeks of the beta were amazing fun as they finally got lots of stuff right. But then it launched, very few people played it on my server (and most other servers AFAIK), and the mechanisms simply did not work when there wasn’t a large amount of people playing it 24/7 (worse than WvW) so I basically never played it again.

I can imagine some issues here that will require very careful and difficult testing to get an idea of what will happen on live servers, e.g. what happens when the number of overflows or players on each overflow goes down massively after primetime, what happens if many people play on that map by choice and abandon the borderlands because it’s more fun, does it encourage PUGs (blobbing) or guilds (will it be easy to get on same overflow?) too much?

My other question is related to queues. Yes, yes, I know, but it’s directly related to the new map.

Q: Since this should allow everyone to still have some fun in WvW even when there are queues on every map, what do you think of adding a server-wide queue?

Basically you cannot enter the normal maps if you have (say) 50% more people than either other server across all 4 maps combined. This would do a LOT for making unbalanced match-ups more fun to play while keeping an advantage for the server with greater population or coverage.

Anyway really hope FURY gets in the beta, but either way please take your time (and get as many developers and testers as required) to make this as good as it could be!

Using all of your skills perfectly is good. But having great battle awareness and using your key skills at the perfect time is much more important in GvG and large scale WvW, especially as a caster. And unless you’re a god, you will usually have to compromise between the two. I’m sure there are better lesser known elementalists out there, but Chemso does a really amazing job.

Congrats on the title!

Hi Bill, thanks a lot for working on this, keeping us updated, and especially for responding to our questions! I think this is definitely what a lot of us want to see following Chris Whiteside’s “Collaborative Development” thread.

I’ve noticed that fights in Garrison and Stonemist tend to have more skill lag than comparable fights in other keeps or in the open field. My guess is that this is because the collision detection is more complex (multiple floors etc.) – if that’s correct, is this something you’re also looking at optimising?

More importantly, I was wondering since it seems you agree that WvW suffers the most from skill lag and that you said you’re going to optimise every skill one by one, would it make sense to prioritise the skills that are most widely used in large-scale WvW builds?

While there are obviously variations, the basic templates are by far the most common and you could probably get 90%+ of the effect by optimising only 25% of the skills.

This might change slightly with the patch (although I expect not much based on Jonathan Sharp’s teaser) but here’s a list that I hope will help you if you do decide to prioritise common WvW skills and don’t already have that data with your internal tools. I’ve listed the classes very roughly by their frequency in the meta.

Warrior
Weapons: Hammer, Sword/Warhorn (rarely Axe/Axe or Greatsword).
Skills: Healing Signet, Healing Surge, For Great Justice, Shake it Off, Balanced Stance, Doyak Signet, Endure Pain, Signet of Rage, Warbanner. (6xRune of the Soldier with Vigorous Shouts)

Guardian
Weapons: Staff, Hammer, Greatsword (rarely Mace/Focus).
Skills: Shelter, Signet of Resolve, Stand Your Ground, Hold the Line, Save Yourselves, Wall of Reflection, Sanctuary, Signet of Judgment, Renewed Focus, Tome of Courage.

Elementalist
Weapons: Staff by far most frequent (some Dagger/Dagger).
Skills: Ether Renewal, Lightning Flash, Mist Form, Armor of Earth, Arcane Wave, Tornado, Glyph of Elementals.

Necromancer
Weapons: Staff, heavy use of marks. Second set more open but often axe/dagger.
Skills: Consume Conditions, Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption, Well of Darkness, Spectral Wall, Plague.

Mesmer
Weapons: Staff, Scepter/Focus, Sword/Focus (rarely Greatsword).
Skills: Ether Feast, Veil, Null Field, Feedback, Blink, Timewarp.

Engineer: Pistol/Shield, Healing Turret, Bomb Kit, Throw Mine, Elixir Gun, Flame Thrower, Rocket Boots, Supply Crate (note: supply crate is one of the most lag-prone skills I know sadly).

Thief: Shortbow, Hide in Shadows, Smoke Screen, Shadow Step, Shadow Refuge, Blinding Powder, Caltrops, Basilisk Venom, Dagger Storm.

Ranger: Sorry, no clue.

I hope this helps and that you continue to keep us updated on your progress!

Huttunen.8309:

That’s what we tried to do with Kale. We kited him upstairs all the way to the balcony thingy near oil, threw tons of lines, called and tried to kill every single warrior we saw coming towards the lord, but still it wasn’t enough.

Ah okay cool. That’s still close to the waypoint though, for example it’s possible to kite him all the way to west inner AFAIK. And yes it’s very silly something like this is the best (and very imperfect) counter to that ‘mechanic’…

Completely agreed that the banner mechanism is massively broken (it should not reset the capture progress). And the waypoint mechanism is also somewhat broken.

But unless I’m missing something later in the video the keep lord is nearly always in easy locations and you just naively kill him as soon as he’s back up. It’s actually possible to kite him in pretty crazy spots if you’re organised about it, and then you can have a guild group defending his corpse there and make it harder (not impossible ofc) to banner.

Not sure why you’re complaining given how much farming you were able to do there anyway

Orangu.4213:

to end all this forum warrioring once for all?

But… why?! This is a great thread, I genuinely hope it doesn’t get moderated too much so that it may serve as inspiration (read: warning) for generations to come.

Don’t be silly.. It will be a draw!

Yup, both would post a screenshot proving they won -> draw. The fact all enemies might still be alive in one of those screenshots is obviously completely irrelevant.

Agrios.9071:

And to FURY, another lessen about “Siege in Combat”. A Flame Ram would have helped them more to protect their ac. The Fear from skill 2 hits 50 people!

But SOUL was applying a lot of ranged pressure, so I think a catapult with Rank 5 mastery for the shield bubble would be better. Of course, in a perfect world, you’d have 2 ACs, a treb, a ram, and a catapult.

More seriously… hai FSP! <3

I have been told great tales of the epic forum wars waged in this thread, and it did not disappoint so far! I look forward to the day GH faces Gandara again, so that I may watch FURY forum warriors fight it out in open thread with the best of you! Some of us are rumoured to have more than 250K forum kills.

More seriously, miss you Gandara <3 I wouldn’t have anything against fighting MS/AR either ofc!

Condition duration is additive, so if you’re roaming with -65% via Melandru + Lemongrass and you fight a necromancer with +90% condition duration, he’ll still have +25% overall. I think it’s quite balanced although it sadly hurts hybrid builds disproportionately.

As for overall condition removal, it’s really very strong right now against damage conditions, but always reactive so doesn’t do miracles against e.g. immobilise. And then there’s plagueform necros doing 1s blind+chill every second which screws up quite effectively with hammer warriors for example.

As for stability, just get better mesmers/necros/engineers (mine OP!) and don’t let them keep it.There’s no greater source of mortality than rushing inside the enemy thinking you got stability only to get a 2s stun on you with everything on cooldown. And heck, there’s no way to get truly permanent stability without removal unless you have a fairly gimmicky composition anyway (or depend on like +90% boon duration which makes you even more vulnerable to removal).

DevonCarver.5370:

The server calculates things every time a skill fires off and the more people it hits the more calculations it does.

Thanks for your patience replying to everyone who keeps poking you about this, I’d probably have become a hermit by now if I were you

However what you’re saying seems to be missing one significant factor in my experience, and one which your team can optimise without changing the engine. Here’s a simple thing I’ve noticed: when there’s a massive fight in garrison or SM, it always lags horribly. When there’s a massive fight in Bay or Hills with comparable numbers, it doesn’t lag much if at all.

What’s the difference between Bay/Hills and Garrison/SM? The latter have multiple floors. At any horizontal position, there is only one floor in Bay/Hills (except for the bridge in Hills) whereas there are 3-4 floors inside Garrison/SM. As a former game modder (with full engine access) who roughly understands the current state of the art in physics engines, I think it’s really quite expected that the collision calculations take longer in that kind of environment…

So my question is this: do you know how much of skill lag comes from collision detection versus damage calculation? And if it’s mostly the former when it’s lagging really badly as I suspect, what about limiting the number of floors in future maps or even changing the current maps accordingly. Don’t get me wrong, the extra floors can be a lot of fun in Garrison/SM, but I’d much rather not have skill lag!

Again thanks for your many replies recently, and I hope your apparent lack of interest in the GvG scene is hinting at a longer-term GvG project by another team rather than a genuine dislike for it.

It went down earlier today, but fixed now Feel free to let me know if you have any issues or suggestions, although I think there’s not much to add really. Maybe if there was more research into WvW loot bags to know exactly what the drop rate is for fortunes…

I still find it quite interesting that mithril is now often the cheapest way to get it – I guess that indicates that the thick leather/silk prices are about where ANet wants them now.

Hey guys, I just created a quick web page (minimal interface) to figure out the cheapest way to make a Zephyr Box. It uses real-time data from gw2spidy and is updated every few minutes. I hope this saves everyone some time and money!

Direct Link: http://gw2state.com/bazaar.html
Also feel free to upvote on Reddit!

I’m confused – what does trebbing have to do with bunkering? If anything it prevents the other server from bunkering behind their walls! Or do you think you have a god-given right to your precious walls?

I remember our defense of Fort Ranik’s (paper) Bay for 6+ hours at primetime against 15+ enemy attempts with significantly greater numbers before the AC boost. By the end every single inner wall and gate was down. And yet our (pre-patch/non-superior) ACs combined with excellent use of chokepoints killed them every time.

Walls are just decoration. If you can’t win without your walls, you don’t deserve to win anyway. I would always like there to be even more open field fights, but that’s a completely separate issue. We want more people leave their walls to fight in the open field but that doesn’t mean the keep fights should involve nothing but zergs auto-attacking the gate while defenders hit them with random AoEs.

If you don’t like keep offense/defense, then stay in the open field. If you don’t like open field fights, then stay close to keeps. The only problem is when some servers in the match-up have completely opposite preferences (e.g. Riverside bunkering vs Gandara open field) and nobody has any fun, but I think everyone in this match-up likes open field without necessarily hating keep fights, so it should be a good week!

After transfering from FSP to Vabbi and immediately meeting a Blacktide blob taking our garrison 1.5 weeks ago (how dare you have more people online than Vabbi!), I’ve now transfered to Whiteside Ridge, only to be met by FSV’s awesome naked dance party in front of Blacktide’s keep on EB. I’d call it justice for Vabbi but I think Kami placed more rams towards their spawn than the size of Blacktide’s zerg

More seriously, figured it would be fun to transfer to Whiteside to troll some FSPs and hopefully have some nice duels I’m hoping some other WSRs/BTs are interested and we can try organising something, otherwise I’m up for taking you all 1vMap

JonPeters.5630:

This is intentional. Looks like some of the added stun breakers got lost from patch notes. I’ll take a look at which other ones and post something on it tomorrow at the latest.

THANK YOU! <3

(next on the list, move kit refinement to master or grandmaster and actually make it useful again? )

Rima.5314:

The population of AM is middle, the one of FSP is high and the one of AG even very high.

I won’t be able to play GW2 again for a while but I just wanted to get rid of this extremely false idea.

Server population in GW2 is calculated (partially?) based on the number of accounts on the server. That tells you nothing about the actual activity of those players on the server. My website (http://gw2state.com) internally keeps track of how many events have been completed on every map/server which is a better (even if still imperfect) measure of PvE population.

Data for 22nd and 23rd of June on Cursed Shore:
313/374 for AM
333/344 for AG
292/298 for FSP
72/120 for Vabbi

It varies significantly per-map but as far as I can tell AM is definitely ahead overall. So it doesn’t matter that AM is a “medium” server and FSP is “Very High” – you still have a higher PvE population than FSP/AG. It seems like it’s not as big a gap as WvW population but I just wanted to make the record straight.

I’ll try to be positive so: very effective use of omega golems by SPRT.

Unfortunately that’s the only positive thing I have to say, and I’ve just permanently transferred to Vabbi.

Contiguous.1345:

We’ve got this HUGE zerg-ball of players running round the borderlands. I don’t know where they’ve all come from, I can only assume they are all fair-weather soldiers who’ve joined on because we’re winning so heavily.
They sure weren’t around when we were facing RS last week.

Bingo. We had the exact same thing with Gandara. Two weeks ago, they completely obliterated FSP and Arborstone with huge zergs. Last week, because AM had superior population, their ‘fair-weather soldiers’ left and we actually got second place by 8K points.

The match-up rating simply cannot take into account how servers that are winning by 2x get higher population because everyone wants to farm while servers that are losing by 2x get lower population than usual because it’s no fun wiping to massively superior numbers 10 times in a row.

I think we can still have a lot of fun at prime-time and I’m hoping for good fights against your guilds, but except for small-scale roaming or WXP farming, I don’t really see the point of playing offpeak this week.

Caid.4932:

Uttar.2341:

Oh well, I’m sure your commander had some kind of plan, but hopefully you can understand my frustration

Tenner bets his plan was to frustrate you lol. We’re trolly kitteners

kitten you guys are good!

multivira.7925:

I think most people on Gandara are like us, we just target whatever we fancy, regardless of ownership. Sadly that means we sometimes run towards our own camps, but ah well.

<3 And yes, agreed, I definitely shouldn’t generalise an entire server.

I’d never complain about another server attacking something of us, well not on these forums at least. Internally of course, since you’re kitten ed, but it’s still fair game to attack and easy stationary target.

Oh agreed, I’d never complain about any server attacking a tower or keep while you’re busy attacking/defending the third server. What I’m specifically referring to is double-ganging the attackers/defenders with absolutely no benefit for your own server (e.g. killing attackers with very little chance of taking the objective yourself).

First Gandara wiped us inside SM when we had inner at 5% and their zerg was still far away (we even tried wiping AM for you when we came back but they retreated inside), then later you actually went to our keep and killed one of our SM trebs for no apparent reason. Oh well, I’m sure your commander had some kind of plan, but hopefully you can understand my frustration

It’s great they refunded, now I can spend all my points in AC instead, and get the awesome radius trait

jaimy.4108:

Cheers to DW in EB, only real fight we got this very dull and boring evening. Thanks for leaving the blob.

Yup nice fight, I asked in map chat for everyone but DW to stay on the commander, and I’m glad people actually listened! It’s more fun wiping that way than against the BLOB

Also cheers to Chelios for our perfectly timed double-ganging of the AM blob at Umber. Don’t think they knew what hit them until they were all dead!

Far Shiverpeaks [EU] just opened, enjoy!
(thanks to Leafea for asking for help in LA and all fellow DWs for coming!)

Jski.6180:

That would destroy being part of any server.

How would it? I suppose it would be a problem for the naive “allow everyone both an EU and NA server at any time” approach which I briefly mentioned but that wasn’t at all what I was suggesting in my posts (and if you did go down that route anyway, you’d likely want to limit which region you can access at which time).

Most people play more at primetime, and more guild events are at primetime, so nearly everyone will likely see that as “their server”. It doesn’t mean they can’t have a lot of fun elsewhere at other times with great balanced match-ups, while a few people might genuinely feel part of multiple servers.

Amins.3710:

Plus, it’s a great way to cure altitis.

Altitis is a disease now?! kitten ! (more seriously, discouraging people from using alts if that’s what they enjoy feels very backwards to me).

Jski.6180:

They said this some time ago it was called night capping. There realty not that much you can do about it beyond shunting down wvw when the prime time is over for ppl and truly that just not fair for ppl who CAN only play during the non prime times.

Agreed, but as I indicated in my posts, you don’t have to shutdown WvW globally, only on that specific server. If you allow everyone to play WvW on multiple servers (as in my proposal, or more naively both NA and EU servers) then you won’t have any problem.

There’s a delicate balance between making these objectives useless and turning WvW into PvE. I personally think that the balance is about right for EB but should definitely be improved in the borderlands.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Skritt could be enlisted to steal supplies from enemy owned camps and delivery yaks, and deposit it in towers and keeps.

While that’s an interesting idea, it made me realise what could be a much simpler but still very effective change: make it so that centaurs/skritts position themselves on the roads that bring supplies from the north camp to the towers/garrison and kill any dolyaks they see.

This should only happen when they are owned by an enemy team (not neutral) and the 3 points for the dolyak that you normally earn should go to that team if/when the NPCs kill a dolyak. Also, the skritt capture should really be made faster – the respawn rate is way too low, it takes forever to complete.

The hylek/dredge/orges/quaggans could use a buff too

I think EB mercenaries are very good as it is, and it’s genuinely worthwhile to capture them. It might be slightly too easy to capture it back from an enemy (no indication it’s contested and very fast for most of them) but even then that’s a useful indication that enemies will come to your camp soon.

Bu the quaggans are definitely too weak. I think they should be strong enough to take an unupgraded south camp on their own (like tkitten NPCs) but not either not go to vale/water at all or not send as strong a group there and not be able to take it on their own (as that would likely make them too desirable).

It might also not hurt to make the quaggan shamans that destroy enemy siege in keeps stronger so that they can do their job without often being killed by unupgraded guards (making them just weak enough that they’d die against upgraded ones would certainly help make that upgrade more useful too).

Glog.4275:

Lost my 17k health pool in 3 seconds after throwing my nades twice into a blop of zerg. It wasnt the actually impact of the nades that did it, it was my bleeds. 374 retal a tick from multi targets with my bleeds. And my bleeds do 108 per tick, a pretty nasty return i must say.

Retaliation doesn’t trigger on bleeds. If it did trigger, then that’s a (serious) bug that I’ve never seen. If there was a delay between your last attack and when you got the damage, I’d be tempted to blame server lag.

With grenadier, you can launch 3 grenades each hitting 5 targets every 0.5s. That means in theory, you could trigger retaliation 90 times in 3 seconds. That’s 33.7K health with your claimed 374/hit retaliation (which would require 2340 power but never mind that). Honestly, as an engineer, I have no problem believing you took 17K damage in retaliation in 3 seconds if the enemy zerg had retaliation and was tightly grouped up.

Lesson from this. Dont play with the zergs, just not worth it. Back to killing roamers.

Yes, engineers are a very fun roaming profession, but as it is we’re simply not that good in larger scale fights (the same applies not just to zerging but also GvG afaict). Sure, we can get lucky and the enemy might not have much retaliation, but against guild groups that’s wishful thinking (and if you think not, you probably just don’t realise how much of the damage you’ve taken is retaliation).

And sure, we can stop attacking when we’ve taken too much retaliation damage, but then the total amount of damage we’ve done before we stop isn’t that impressive. It’s a shame really because grenadiers should be good zerg busters in theory…

skinnyb.5920:

What needs to be changed with the Downed System is the fact that one person on your team dying has no cap on the amount of people they can rally on the opposite team. It’s very frustrating to have all of your efforts negated by one person dying.

Bingo. While I’m not a fan of the downed system and wouldn’t shed any tears if it was removed, can we AT LEAST make it so that one death cannot rally more than one player?

Master of Timespace.2548:

It works just FINE in Eve online. The reason for this is that Eve isn’t meant to be a hello kitty world where everyone immeditately starts to cry when something is a little unfair . (Oh they they do, but in space nobody can hear you scream, har har!)

I’ve never personally played EVE (which I somewhat regret) but I have friends who played it hardcore and I’ve discussed some of the mechanics with them.

AFAIK the main reasons why this works in EVE are:
1) Single server for NA/Europe. This allows nearly every timezone to be covered.
2) You know when you need to be there well in advance because POS defense isn’t instant.

So I’m sorry, I should have been more careful with my phrasing and said that “24/7 servers for specific regions” is a marketing gimmick. Not as catchy as my original statement but heh

Personally I wouldn’t have anything against NA/Europe using the same servers for WvW with a single global ladder. I think it might even fit my own playing times better and it could be a lot of fun (when I was a kid and played Ultima Online, I lived in Europe and played on an USA West Coast server, and was in turn part of a Korean then an American guild – fun times!)

However because WvW is inherently real-time, Point 2 wouldn’t apply, and you’d still have a problem. Some timezones would inherently be much lower population than others (e.g. european morning which is also american night).

By separating servers by timespan, you can simply have as many servers as necessary for every timezone so that every match-up is always perfectly balanced, and you wouldn’t have either population holes during weekdays or huge queues during weekends. While it’s a more complex solution than global servers, I think it’s also a better one.

Preventing players from playing isn’t a solution.

The only solution is to:
- Separate PvE and WvW servers.
- Make every WvW server open for 6-8 hours a day.
- Allow every player to join multiple non-overlapping servers.

24/7 servers (edit: dedicated to a single region) is a nice marketing gimmick, but it has never proven itself to work in any MMORPG I’ve ever played. And I’ve played MMOs for the last 15+ years. I wish someone actually realised that for once…

EDIT: To clarify, the timespans for the servers themselves could overlap in theory. However, this may not be practical as if one server was perfectly timed for east coast primetime and another was perfectly timed for west coast primetime, then these servers could never face each other, and this would needlessly break up guilds.

What this does allow is for anyone who plays at any hour of the day to have fun fights and not just PvD. Players in other timezones (e.g. Oceanic) should actually be excited about this because it means they’ll effectively have their own servers that will be highly populated at these times (even if they may or may not remain hosted elsewhere and have high latency).

Another complexity is weekends where everyone is likely to play at different times than they do during the week. I think the most fun solution would be to split weekday and weekend servers and let everyone join one of both for every timespan.

I believe this would solve the population issue both between timezones and between tiers. Every timespan would have a dedicated ladder. Guilds could join multiple timespans or be dedicated to a single one. You may have to increase the guild limit to more than 5 for some people, but besides that, I have yet to hear any good argument against this.

Also, I’ve been a hobbyist game programmer myself, so ArenaNet, if you’d actually be willing to implement something like this – please let me know so I can send you my resume