Guild Wars 2

Diet Plain.4513:

Xinrut.1743:

Suggestion: Include a way for this skill to be cancelled while executing especially after the first leap, such as tapping 3 again.

switch to a kit, then switch out. it will cancel the skill

No, it does not. I ended up trying this with flamethrower quite a few times. What happens is that you will bash people with the flamethrower as the action continues to execute. :P

I anticipated these changes to enable me to run in an organized WvW group as a frontline engi and for the most part they have. I’ve totalled about 10 hours of WvW playtime on Scrapper in a 25-man guild group and this is what I’ve come up with.

The hammer has great attacks and cc; the electro whirl and thunderclap are especially fun. I don’t expect the gyros to last long in large clashes but they do their share especially the toolbelt skills for medi and bulwark.

Two major things REALLY affected my ability to successfully keep up as frontline:

1) Hammer #3 Rocket Charge: While a great initiator, this frequently messed up my positioning very badly. This skill has unpredictably sent me into odd spots in terrain, over ledges or deep into the enemy blob where I didn’t want to be. This is both with and without autotarget enabled.

Suggestion: Include a way for this skill to be cancelled while executing especially after the first leap, such as tapping 3 again.

2) Unreliable Stability: Having a trait that grants a bit of stab on evade isn’t enough if you need it for a first push. Unsteady ground, lines of warding, etc have been a persistent bane to any engineer attempting frontline and forces the Scrapper to heavily rely on another class to grant it.

Suggestion: Buff Stabilization Core to apply to any gyro summoned. That would allow for a scrapper to get into the fray in the first place, even if it the trait had a 15~ sec ICD.

As always, thanks for all the dedicated work on this amazing class!

They could be a visual representation of the warrior’s adrenaline or we get an elementalist’s attunement ability to assign different properties to the base weapon skills.

The warrior’s adrenaline mechanic is that the more strikes you do, the more “energy” you build up. The teaser video shows a drone attaching to the hammer upon a large explosive strike at the end of the chain. That strike could be similar to the warrior’s burst skill.

Another possibility is that the varied drones are properties you can assign to your hammer or equipped weapon that work like elemental attunements. You slot that particular drone set/kit in your skill bar and swap to it when you want your hammer to have additional properties like CCs or condis, etc and/or different 1-5 skills.

But think of how humorous it would be to see a head-mounted mortar on an asura!

My guess is that we’ll get something akin to adrenaline. The drones appear the more “energy” we accumulate from swinging the hammer and then we detonate them with the hammer for an explosive impact, similar to a warrior’s burst skill.

Either that or they alter the properties of the hammer attacks much like an elementalist’s attunement swaps, but more like a kit you equip/swap into that changes up the properties of your base weapon skills.

Dimes.6024:

There are some several rules of good behavior, or how do I call it:
Don’t put light field on the gates, only fire
Use only water on stack,
Light on the move etc

Generally it is hard to see while fight what combo fields are placed, no matter if they have different or same visual effects. So if you put a light field under water on stack, bad play by you.

There’s no confusion on what skills are being used here or an engineer mistakenly placing Super Elixir on a water stack. That’s a separate issue based on the engineer player’s knowledge and skill.

This is about other players, especially non-engineer players who are unfamiliar with the class who see an engineer casting Super Elixir on themselves or elsewhere to remove a condition and think it is a water field, as the white AoE looks the same as the Elixir Shell.

From visual cue they are identical.

Given they are two entirely different fields, they should have different effects to reflect this.

Pretty simple.

Orbital Strike. I love it. It’s like a smite from the heavens. But I think it can be refined.

Given the HUGE tell, delay before it impacts and cast time, it seems fair to either increase its damage or reduce the cast or delay time and keep the damage the same.

Sure it takes some finesse to place the reticle optimally while taking into consideration cast time, delay on impacts, and enemy movement. But it is all too easy for an opponent to see the tell and simply walk out of the impact zone.

You can chill them, cripple them, immobilize or other methods of CC to lock them in place to cast it, but Orbital Strike still not as a reliable skill to use as it potentially can be.

This isn’t just in small scale spvp but also in WvW. An enemy doesn’t even need to look at the ground to see the AoE among the mess of friendly and enemy AoEs as there’s a white line from the sky pointing to where it’s going to be.

Compare this to burst skills that other classes have that are quick and have a high payoff, such as near instant necro wells of suffering, spammable thief heartseekers, mesmer shatters (which are pretty OP right now) and so on.

I could go on in comparisons and someone can say to me, well that’s not engineer. You’re right. They aren’t engineer. But if engineer is to have a few really high damage burst attacks that have a reasonably high cooldown, it should be balanced out when it’s given an extremely obvious tell that it’s coming. It is a bright white line from the sky that pinpoints where it’s about to strike.

Very few classes have such an obvious tell. Necro Lich form is one, but it’s a transform that lasts a certain duration in which they can spam their hard hitting auto attacks.

So, yeah. I just think the Orbital Strike damage should be increased or the delay in initial impact greatly reduced, given that enemies currently have so much time and visual cue to prepare for it.

Your thoughts?

Haha, my engineer either has a severe burning case of athlete’s foot or something else is going wrong.

I’ll be using flamethrower in dungeons and occasionally the flamejet animation will persist the entire instance, shooting from the tips of my character’s feet.

I really have no idea what causes this as it doesn’t appear on my screen, but my party can see it along with the sound.

While turning down sound is easy enough, I’m sure the effect can be annoying when it persists the entire instance. At least I can be a hit at BBQs!

Short video clip a guildie made of it in action on my engineer’s feet:
https://youtu.be/YpMBfZalIhU

I always use TS or mumble and call out what’s being cast.

Fact is many players do not for various reasons.

It’s too bad they didn’t make it an option to keep. It made it a whole lot easier for me to visually discern what kit my engi was on without having to look at the skillbar all the time. Or if I was back in rifle.

So much kit swapping can happen in a few seconds that I only had enough time to look at my character and where he’s going/what the enemy is doing.

The aesthetics weren’t great but I suppose I am the minority here in that it did have a function.

It also helped me discern more readily what an enemy engineer was doing.

The Super Elixir (Elixir Gun) and Elixir Shell (Mortar) both have the same white particle effects and animation when cast to the ground, making it impossible to discern from one another.

This is a big problem because my allies don’t know if they are going to combo a Light field (from the super) or a Water field (from the shell).

This is especially important to discern in large scale battles or any other type of group play.

Please add either a different particle effect and/or make the Elixir Shell ground AoE noticeably blue to give a greater visual cue that it’s a water field.

Thanks!

LA QOL suggestion: Map Icons

Hello! I just wanted to bring a few minor suggestions in addition to the already incredible changes done to Lion’s Arch

1. Include more than one locatable repair merchant on the map

Currently the only repair merchant visible on the map is a quaggan by the Crow’s Nest that is in a very out of the way place considering where most activity is. There is an anvil by a Kodan merchant between the TP and Bank, but it’s unmarked on the map and easily missed. Please mark it! Additionally, consider having another anvil/repair merchant by the Mist Portals.

2. Add an icon for the Fractals of the Mist gate similar to the other Asura Portals on the map

Previous versions of Lion’s Arch have had a marker and made it easier to find. Map chat often has questions asking where it is.

3. Change the icon for the new Dungeon Token Merchant and/or add a better descriptor on the map

Currently it’s a generic merchant icon that gives no idea to anyone what type of merchant it is.

The vendor stands without any displays or a merchant stall, something the other vendors used to have that gave a visual clue to what they sold. It’s great the tokens can be redeemed all to one vendor now, but it looks just another random person (or salvage kit/tool vendor) standing around in an obscure corner and is easy to miss.

There have been questions rolling in LA map chat every few minutes since the LA patch asking the same thing, “Where is the dungeon token vendor?” and it doesn’t have to be so!

Impossible to complete LA Exterminator achievo solo as an engineer since the karka rifle is lost when entering water (need to traverse waterways to access some of the karkas). It will auto swap to harpoon gun.

The engineer loses the karka rifle when entering water. Makes it impossible to solo complete this achievement playing engineer as a few karka need to be reached via water.

Additionally, no kits were swapped or equipped. The rifle is lost on water contact and instead defaults to my harpoon gun.

They merged in a 50% chance to proc 5 sec swiftness on crit trait in Firearms (Precise Sights + Infused Precision). So you will have at least some swiftness stacking on you while in combat, but this should be buffed. If you are roaming in WvW, it will be more lengthy to traverse areas unless they return Power Shoes to Inventions as an alternative to Speedy Kits.

Swiftness while having a regeneration boon? Might be something to consider if it’s an absolute no to Power Shoes returning.

It would be cool to see it hoisted over a shoulder, but it would make the player a big target if it was oversized.

The way the mortar model is now seems a perfect size for humans or sylvari to use. It would need to be scaled a bit larger for norn and charr and of course smaller for asura.

I want to say it can be held like a mini-gun, but then the feel would be more like a regular grenade launcher. If it’s on the shoulder it’s more or less rocket powered like a true bazooka and you don’t want the back end anywhere near your parts.

Corrosive Fallout: boon stripping ability, boon duration reduction, or condi resistance removal when players are burning (or with X amount of burning stacks) and hit with an explosion

Motion/Heat Sensors or Target Lock apply a revealed debuff for XX sec when a stealthed player enters a field and/or is interrupted and/or is within a small radius around the engineer 25~60 sec ICD

Explosive Rocket Belt Thingy – rename to Volatile Salvo or Heat Seeking Missle

Tools Grandmaster Gadget TBD: Gadget Extraordinaire = Speedy Gadgets + Gadgeteer

Tools Grandmaster TBD: Cybernetic Reinforcement or Energy Shielding Armor Mods (w/longer ICD) + Stabilized Armor

Alchemy should be shuffled around to streamline some of the traits.

Minor TBD: Backpack Regenerator or variant
Master: 409
—Replace backpack regen that’s proposed in Master and move to Minor; this removes the conflict in choosing between Backpack Regen and Self-Reg Defenses
Compare to Warrior which will have access to both Adrenal Health (regen) as a minor and Defy Pain (similar to SRD) in the Defense traitline
Grandmaster: Automated Response: buffed to include condis on the player before it’s triggered and/or a higher threshold, and/or merged with a weaker version of AMR/something that restores health

Nirvana.8659:

-snip-

Let’s be clear,i’m not complaining about AMR and Stabilized Armor dissapearing.

I’m trying to contribute to the OP idea of let Anet know some of the builds that uses traits that dissapeared from the new specialization.The same Anet asked for this kind of thread.

That’s why the TBD Grandmaster Trait in Tools or the TBD Grandmaster in Alchemy would benefit from a combination of Armor Mods + Stabilized Armor like “Cybernetic Enhancements,” or some similar variant that introduces damage negation or reduction. I wouldn’t mind if some stability was thrown in there, too. If it’s placed in Tools, it may not be in the traitline you would specialize in, but it wouldn’t disappear. It would give some defense in a build that might not make use of Alchemy.

Some suggestions for the TBD and reshuffling of traits.

Explosives

Adept TBD: “Corrosive Fallout”: boon stripping ability, boon duration reduction, or condi resistance removal when players are burning (or with X amount of burning stacks) and hit with an explosion

Tools

Master TBD: “Motion/Heat Sensors” or “Target Lock” apply a revealed debuff for XX sec when a stealthed player enters a field and/or is interrupted and/or is within a small radius around the engineer 25~60 sec ICD

Grandmaster Gadget TBD: Speedy Gadgets + Gadgeteer (I love my gadgets)

Grandmaster TBD: “Cybernetic Reinforcement” Armor Mods (w/longer ICD) + Stabilized Armor, or Stabilized Armor + Acidic Coating (likely to see more use of these now that the traitline is auto-maxed and someone is elixir vs gadget build)

Grandmaster 409: Replace 409 (move to alchemy master, bump backpack regen to minor or merge with alchemy automated response trait) with variant of Empowering Adrenaline

Yamsandjams.3267:

The fate of cleaning formula 409 has me worried. It’s one of the only things that actually makes elixir builds work properly. Having it compete with other critical traits will force everyone into healing turret, unless they provide some other kind of condition cleansing option.

Speaking of condis, if they buffed Automated Response to include all previous condis on the player before it triggered and possibly merge the trait with AMR I’d be ok with that.

If they merged AMR with Automated Response that would be even better, actually. Automated Response as it is isn’t all that great unless it got a super buff. It needs its trigger HP increased from 33%+ and/or apply the duration reduction to conditions previously on the player before it triggers. As it is now if you’re at 33% HP and going down it doesn’t help if it’s layers of burning or bleeds applied before trigger that decimates your HP.

insanemaniac.2456:

ive found the times that i want to have SRD are times BPR doesnt do a whole lot. i want SRD when i zerg dive. when i zerg dive, SRD is my alarm clock that says “time to leave”, and im taking too much damage for BPR to be significant sustain. any other time, SRD is something my enemies can take advantage of by counting to 3, so BPR is the better choice, because those are more drawn out, small scale battles where the sustain from BPR really helps me out over a longer period of time.

the choice between invigorating swiftness and prot injection is more distressing to me

Agreed, SRD for zerg diving is a must. Wouldn’t be too bad to have the Backpack Regen shuffled around with Invigorating speed, so Invigorating Speed becomes a minor. Choices, choices. The traits really have to be tuned in terms of placement.

choovanski.5462:

Automated Response is an exiting trait that lowers condition duration at low hp. it’s other the same trait. also self regulating defenses has been moved up and now competes with backpack rgn. what a shame.

That’s right. The name was very similar, so I interpreted it as AMR when it is not.

Self Regulating Defenses competing with Backpack Regenerator does limit the engineer.

Especially considering you get a class like Warrior that had both Defy Pain (similar to SRD) and Adrenal Health (a regen skill based on adrenaline level) both in one traitline, the latter of which was proposed as a minor trait in the Warrior defense line. They still can take advantage of both damage negation and regen.

Backpack Regenerator should just become a minor trait, and AMR should come back either in the Alchemy or Tools line if it has no place in Inventions.

Explosives Much of this line looks strong. Grandmaster in Mortar is the shining jewel, and skill 1 potentially becoming a blast finisher would allow easy long distance combos on the fields they make. They synergize well together. While Barrage is exciting, I see much more utility from skill 1 being a blast finisher.

Alchemy is actually a very strong line of defense when used in builds for WvW raiding / heavy pressure and I would hate to see it torn up.

Backpack Regenerator competes with Self Regulating Defenses and I take issue with that. Consider this compared to the Warrior which has both Defy Pain (similar to SRD) and Adrenal Health (a regen skill based on adrenaline level) both in one traitline, the latter was proposed as a minor trait in the Warrior Defense line. They still can take advantage of both damage negation and regeneration.

Backpack Regen should become a minor trait and 409 put in its place as Master.

Automated Medical Response This should be the TBD Grandmaster trait for Alchemy. Of all the traits that were put on the chopping block, if there was one I would pick to return over all others, it would be this.

If Automated Response is kept as Grandmaster, it should be buffed to include condis on the player before it triggered or have its health threshold increased, or completely overhauled as a way to provide condition resistance.

Inventions is solid. Players can more reliably buff/heal allies with those minors and select traits. Coupled with Mortar Kit—this of course is relying on Mortar Elixir to be a water field and skill 1 being blast—waters can be blasted with more frequency. Group heal potential akin to a staff Ele so a real support Engineer is viable? Yes please!

Tools does need a little work, but I understand some of the difficulty here in balancing. Take into consideration that Speedy Kits and Kit refinement are pretty strong, so strong that it will likely overshadow the other Master traits in that line.

I made a few suggestions for the Master TBD here.

“Gadget Trait (TBD)” =Speedy Gadgets + Gadgeteer. The CD reduction is a must for AED and other gadgets such as Rocket Boots and Slick Shoes, and is a must for anyone using a gadget focused build. Gadgets don’t get nearly as much attention as they should, which is a shame, as they are a diamond in the rough.

Grandmaster TBD: Armor Mods + Stabilized armor or Stabilized Armor + Acidic Coating Reason it isn’t in many builds currently is that it required full vestment of points in the traitline, which some players didn’t want to commit.

409 shouldn’t be a Grandmaster in Tools, but thrown back into Alchemy as Master and Backpack Regenerator bumped to Alchemy minor.

I took note of that, too.

Makes most sense for Cleansing Formula 409 to be kept in Alchemy minor to make most use of the complementary elixir traits. Otherwise it just forces people to go into another traitline they might not want for an elixir build.

I’m hoping it was just a wonky misplacement in the Powerpoint and a dev can confirm.

There is an Automated Response (probably AMR) as a Grandmaster trait in Alchemy.

Powerpoint screencap: http://i.imgur.com/Mh0DUbq.jpg

With AMR placed in Alchemy, you can also take advantage of Self-Regulating Defenses and Projection Injection (or Invigorating Speed) all in one traitline. Streamlined defense.

Edit: Nevermind that, misread AR as AMR.

They should just make AMR as the TBD Grandmaster trait in Alchemy or merge it with Automated Response.

As far as WvW blob jumping, Gear Shield, Elixer S, and AED have good survival and repositioning capability, if triggered on time and you don’t have a weave of warding lines/rings infront of you. I’ve also used Self-Regulating Defenses successfully, but only when I’ve mentally checked the internal cooldown of it against my AED use.

AMR was an awesome trait especially coupled with AED in these scenarios. If it is no longer a minor trait, I would not want this trait to diminish into obscurity. It would be fine as a regular trait.

The only thing the changes mess up in my personal build is that Self-Regulating Defenses is now a Grandmaster Master, so I will have to potentially sacrifice my damage capability by going into a traitline I don’t really want. Since Engi isn’t a heavy armor class, it relies on damage negation in those blobby situations.

Overall, I never found much use for Stabilized Armor. I have tried it before and only found it to be meh. There are other traits that outshine it and there are other ways to get damage reduction on stun or stun durations reduced. If was super concerned about stun, I would get either Loaf of Saffron Bread (-20% damage reduction on stun/disable) or Roasted Lotus Root (-40% stun reduction). Melandru Runes for a -25% stun reduction (which are pretty awesome for WvW) have worked very well for me in the past. I get more concerned over conditions and immobilize chains.

If Elixer S/Self Regulating Defenses and Gear Shield can’t get you out of a hot situation, 9 times out of 10 the reason is bad positioning and not taking notice of oncoming enemies.

Nikkinella.8254:

I’m most looking forward to what that f5 on mortar can do. Looks like it would be easy to avoid in a small fight but in a large scale fight it could be devastating.

Oh yeah, Nukes and Support combined!

I’m alright with Moa. After all, the engineer borrows certain skills from other classes, Elixer X in particular. Currently, you can Rampage as a juggernaut (warrior elite) or transform into a Tornado (elemental elite) so why not Moa, which is a mesmer elite?

Don’t hog all the humbling Moa morphs to yourselves, mesmers.

Please pardon my zeal!

I love to play Engineer in WvW (with guardian a close second). However, when I am in a guild group of 10-30 people I wish I could contribute more to the support of my allies as an Engineer. The lower the number in the group, the more it counts. After watching the recent Ready Up, it struck me that the new changes could provide a real supportive and potentially nuker role comparative to a staff Elementalist (which is one of the four highly desired classes for WvW raiding to date).

Engineers won’t replace Elementalists, but they can offer support similar to what Ele already does with these proposed traits and potentially do so with an explosive flair.

This speculation is based on looking on the Explosives and Inventions line as the backbone, and is dependent on how the current stationary Mortar elite is retooled into Mortar Kit. There are a handful of traits that have not been determined yet, so I am working on current information only as of the 4/25/15 Ready Up.

Explosives Traitline:

Grandmaster
- Mortar Fields Last longer + 5 skill is barrage OR skill 1 becomes a blast finisher
or
- Evasive Powder Keg, which creates a bomb on dodge, becomes a blast finisher

Inventions Traitline:

Minor traits
- Using a heal skill removes damaging conditions from allies
- When removing a condition you grant regen to yourself and allies
- Healing power increased when with a regen boon
Adept
- Using a heal skill triggers a blast finisher on self
Master
- “HEAL-SPLOSION” blast finishers heal
Grandmaster
- Incoming heals on self will also heal allies for a % of that heal

Mortar Recap

The current Mortar is an Elite Skill for engineer that renders the operator stationary to interact with it. It is not a popular elite. The proposed Mortar Kit will remake the elite as a mobile, ranged AoE nuking machine. This kit will replace Grenades as the long ranged kit and also free up a skill slot that was previously used by the kit for another utility skill.

Current Mortar elite skills:

1. Mortar Shot- 2 cd – Standard long range mortar shot
2. Caltrop Mortar – 12 cd – AoE field bleeds 12.5 sec, 2.5 sec cripple per pulse, 6 sec duration
3. Elixer -15 cd – AoE heal, 5 sec pulse (not a combo field)
4. Ice Mortar – 20 cd – AoE Ice field, pulses 2.5 sec chill, 10 sec duration
5. Concussion Barrage – 30 cd – barrage of rounds knock back enemies

Mortar Kit Caveats

Presently the Mortar elite has 1,400 range. While not specified, it’s expected the Mortar kit will have at least 1,200 range, as they reduced Grenade kit max range to 900.

Combined with the new Elite in Explosives, the Mortar AA can become a blast finisher. That’s yet to be determined. What’s great about this, and I support it whole-heartedly, is that you can blast your own mortar fields which are already at range and complete your own combos.

The devs are going to tweak the velocity/speed of mortar when they make it a kit, and they are to change one of the skills.

As far as the current mortar skills… Ideally, they will keep the Ice Mortar even if the devs reduce the duration. Currently it is a 10 second ice field, but even if it was reduced to 6 seconds there is plenty of opportunity to blast it for that handy Frost Aura. I would be ok with and potentially have to pinch myself if Elixer mortar was made into a water field #healingoasis (anything but a light field!).

The mortar barrage as it is has potential; in WvW it can help strip the stability a large enemy group that has stacked upon each other, but just one stack. If it’s decided to make the mortar AA a blast and remove the 5 barrage… (insert starry eyed gaze) another skill becomes a combination of caltrops+napalm, a fire nuke similar to a molotov kittentail—bleeding, burning, cripple all in one—with an apocalyptic hail of cinder and flames. Any of these, you know. Make Michael Bay proud.

tldr version;
- large aoe attacks at range, potentially long duration aoe fields
- mortar AA becomes a blast finisher = heals and damage
- self heals => auto-blast, allies get healed % of + damaging condis removed + regen

Needless to say, I am super excited on how the Mortar Kit and Inventions changes will impact Engineer in group WvW play, and how the new (yet undisclosed) Elite Specialization can be incorporated into a Healsplode Engi.

It’s the console you have to interact with to phase. It has a health bar. When it gets destroyed by the mobs you will get teleported and she will reset. So either you need a party to burn her down quicker (before all the mobs show up) or you have a person kite the mobs away from the console before it’s destroyed.

Finally, we’ve improved the support for guild members in the system and made some improvements on the back end to reduce opportunities for griefing.

I can only speculate: guild mission control and who can take credit for missions. In my experience that is one of the greatest ways to grief a guild so far.

a) Guild mission control: As it stands now, after a particular mission has been activated in guild panel, anyone in the guild can trigger a mission objective on the map to start it (bounty, rush, puzzle, etc). It’s not exclusive to officers and that leaves room for trouble. A troll can start the target/mission before the guild is ready/rallied. There is no way to know who started the event on map, either. Very troublesome for larger guilds in particular.

b) Awarded credit: There are some notorious guild missions that have had not awarded credit (looking at you, Blightwater Shatterstrike!). Based on experience, this happens either by some sort of glitch or in the case of puzzle missions, another guild rushing into a puzzle that’s being run by a guild already. In the latter, the initial guild has done all the work to not be awarded credit. This really hurts smaller guilds who have to put in that much more effort into completing challenges and puzzles only for it not to work.

Sidenote: Logins! Yes, thank you, this was much needed. It helps to keep the guild roster tidy.

Hmm, what else…
Guild Calendar? Guild emails? Better vault permissions?

Come on, Anet. ;D Some teasing is nice, but that statement was a bit too vague.