Guild Wars 2

Rezzet.3614:

maybe turrets should be replaced for a bot like the ones in Wildstar

This is honestly what I thought that the scrapper gyros were going to be, when I first read about them — I was a little disappointed to see that the attack gyros were ground-target abilities, rather than drones that follow you around.

I doubt it’d be a popular idea, but I’d rather have the gyro skills summon a permanent follower, but only allow one drone to be out at a time (sort of like the kits), however, they could also have an “overcharge” function while deployed, like turrets. For example:

Medic Gyro would continue to do it’s initial heal and periodic heal (which would likely need to be toned down, if it could be out permanently). Overcharge would grant regen to nearby allies.

Blast Tag Gyro would instead function like a mobile thumper turret, flying toward your target and periodically releasing a fire AOE (like the sigil of fire). Attack rate could be relatively slow (every 2 – 3 seconds) for this to balance it out. Overcharge would release an AOE knockdown.

Shredder Gyro could move around and unleash its AOE attack, rooting itself while channeling its attack. Overcharge would cause it pulse its damage every 1/2 second instead of every second while channeling its attack.

Purge and Bulwark could remain largely the same, with Purge’s overcharge converting conditions to boons and Bulwark’s overcharge granting an area similar to Guardian’s sanctuary.

Stealth would need some balancing to not grant permanent stealth — maybe making it’s primary function inflict blindness on nearby enemies, with its overcharge leaving a smoke AOE field as well as making the stealth drone pulse stealth to nearby allies for the duration of the overcharge.

Edit: The turrets could probably be re-worked into gyros as well, but I PERSONALLY like the idea of turrets’ strength being that you could have a bunch of them out, but with gyros, you could only have one (with its strength being that it is mobile).

Axelwarrior.9084:

Did I miss something? Why are we assuming a leader is getting attacked?

Because in E2 of the LS, one of the conversations is about how a leader is being targetted, though I seem to recall that they only specifically mention Traehearn and Jennah.

Stooperdale.3560:

narwhalsbend.7059:

SkipOne.8430:

you meen this painting? It looks more like the Realm of Torment

It really does, but I see no way they could connect the two.

I think there’s been a general assumption that the Jungle Dragon is somehow responsible for nightmare, but maybe it isn’t. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between Torment and Nightmare but perhaps this is the first clue to suggest there is.

Now that you mention it, I seem to recall the realm of torment having the giant thorny tendrils, much like the ones in Dry Top and Nightmare Court areas. Wiki also says that it’s called the Nightmare Realm. Sort of interesting, but Mordremoth has been thrown around a bit in the lore, and the teaser was pretty clear about a dragon awakening, so where would that all fit in with this?

Destai.9603:

Boneheart.3561:

Destai.9603:

Falathar.9215:

my thought on the LS season 2:
“that’s a bit…. dissapointing… for that much of a wait”
what are your thoughts?

I was excited to see the new zone, thinking it’d be huge and complete. Nope. I should have known better.

It is complete. Dry Top was always this small.

No hearts. No world bosses. One champion. Two waypoints. It’s a tiny corridor, nothing more.

I’ve run into at least 3 champions so far. Three-toe, Golem-suit guy in the inquest mine, and a champion dust elemental. I have reason to believe there are more too. The heart quests were also done by the time you reached Orr in the base game — there, as in Dry Top, those are replaced with events. Dry Top was, and remains tiny — that’s just how it is. It is a great start zone for S2, though, in my opinion.

I just wanted to throw out a huge thank you to ANet for listening to the players concerns about the low availability of dragonite ore compared to other materials needed for vision crystals. Finding dragonite in the buried chests in Dry Top was a pleasant surprise, and a big help in getting some of the much needed, but rare material. Thanks!

I’d like to think that if they did a boxed expansion that it would be along the lines of what they did with GW1, which treated the expansions as stand-alone games that could enhance on another. In that case, the Living Story could likely continue as planned, but in some sort of “shared” area between the two games. If there IS going to be a true expansion, they would almost have to be saving either Elona or Cantha for it.

Well, obviously this is pure speculation, but here’s what I was thinking: IF she was acting on behalf of Mordremoth (that’s a big “if”), it’s possible that the pale tree may be seen as either a great meal for an elder dragon OR that with Mordremoth awakened, that she felt he could have some level of sway over the tree eventually. It could potentially even be something as simple as not wanting to commit genocide against her own people (we don’t know what kind of impact the loss of the Pale Tree would have on the Sylvari as a whole, as the children of the Pale Tree seem to have some level of connection to it throughout life — if she destroyed the tree, would that have meant her own suicide?). Again, all complete speculation — I suppose we’ll get a better picture as the story presses on.

Ok, so I am by no means a lore buff, so I’m mostly just kind of curious:

When exploring Scarlet’s room in Dry Top, one of the pieces you can investigate is a picture of the Pale Tree as the center of a “mechanical” drawing of Tyria. Now, the team makes note of that, but brushes it off as being due to Scarlet being a Sylvari, so naturally revering the Pale Tree. HOWEVER, we also know that Scarlet was Asura educated, and that she had a scientific (albeit maybe MAD science) mind, and dug much deeper into things than a mere surface regard. Now, with her research into ley lines and the diagram on her wall, this makes me wonder if perhaps she determined that the Pale Tree stood at some sort of nexus of ley lines. Is it possible that this is what makes the Pale Tree remarkable over its “sister” trees? After all, I seem to recall that in the Sylvari story line where you meet the Sylvari from ANOTHER tree, he mentions that there is no dream with his tree. This could also give some reasoning behind why the Pale Tree has some level of prescience (you’re given a glimpse of the future when you visit her with Traehern).

Well, I’m at work, so I haven’t gotten to check out if anything has actually been added that’s not in the patch notes. I’d imagine there’s something new going on in Brisban, but I have to wait to find out

Facepunch.5710:

I for one am glad. I’ve wanted to get a set but I’m not willing to pay 19g each. More than happy to take a small stat cut if it means these are no longer the meta and prices can come back down a bit.

Yeah, it’s still a very powerful set. It’s relatively trivial to keep the 5% bonus up permanently, and the duration boost for might is still tough to pass up.

Shanks.2907:

2% damage and 5% duration. A small nerf, but I’m sure the rage will ensue.

er… 50% base duration. Dropped from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. It’s a decent nerf — not unfair at all, but still a decent nerf.

dual shield guardian ftw? Seriously, though, where would you keep the primary shield? I do like the idea of having bow as an option, and think it would fit nicely since we have the spirit weapon bow. It could even fill a similar role, with condition removal secondary abilities. Personally, I’d love to just see the spear become a terrestrial weapon option (or some sort of javelin, so that they could avoid terrestrial/aquatic overlap) — i miss that from the paragon class.

I kind of think the rampart armor looks a bit like this, but that’s probably just me.

The most important thing I learned when starting was to pay attention to skill “types,” and to trait appropriate to the ones I preferred using. For instance, on a warrior, if you find that you like shouts, grab traits that reduce recharge, heal, or cleanse when using shouts. Nearly as important are weapon skills, but those are easier to trait for, in general.

While the trait picks don’t make a whole lot of sense to me, i don’t necessarily think going completely overkill on toughness is a bad thing. People think is scales poorly, but according to some of the math I’ve seen for damage calculations, there doesn’t really look to be diminishing returns on toughness/armor. Granted at higher levels of might vs. toughness the effect is less pronounced, it’s still there. For instance assuming ~3500 might vs ~3700 armor, you’d need a coefficient of around .94 or the attack would do less than base weapon damage for hits. Most skill coefficients are well under the .9 mark, so with some traits built out for cleansing, this could be a pretty tough build to down. On the other hand, with a relatively low crit chance (that also relies on sigil of accuracy), it’s going to be more of an annoyance than a threat in most encounters. I would suggest swapping force of will for pure of voice or empowering might, glacial heart for altruistic healing (if you go for EM) or purity, and signet of mercy for another shout or bane signet. That would help patch up some of the condition vulnerability or give you some extra semi-passive healing and add some extra push to the build. It’s still not going to be burning fights to the ground, but in theory it should be able to act as a sort of area-denial build by just being there.

Edit: I just remember that I didn’t note any flat damage enhancements (ie. 10% vs. targets with conditions, etc), so it is still possible to do more than base weapon damage at a .94 coefficient in the scenario i described. Whoops.

Well, you don’t have to use the bobblehead station if you look at it like a blight, and you won’t see bobbleheaded stuff everywhere. It’s a completely cosmetic thing, which i think fits WONDERFULLY for a cash store purchase — that’s what cash stores SHOULD be used for (I have some problems with things like storage expansion, endless tools and such being cash store purchases, as it DOES give an edge in game, but it’s in a sort of grey area of that — i’d love to see these things have other methods of earning, but I digress). I would imagine that sooner rather than later, bobblehead will be added as a tonic that can be found in chests and such, even if it is not currently available. I don’t, however, understand complaining about “toys” that are used purely for entertainment in the game being sold as cash store items — especially those that have no effect on people who don’t actually use them (there is very little, if any, complaining about instruments and you can hear those even if you don’t use them).

I’m assuming this is mostly for WvW, based on the infusions/defense/hp. Looks pretty solid to me.

Edit: I might suggest maybe throwing in some on-crit sigils rather than intelligence, at least on the S/T side — you’re using right hand strength which should knock crit chance up to 60%, which with the multi-attacks gives you assured procs. Also, my PERSONAL opinion is that the sigil of rage isn’t really up enough to warrant using, but your mileage may vary.

Most of the time WvW is the fastest route.

Meluna.1764:

Does AH still get play? Is there an updated version? Some of my traits have seemed to move.

It’s part of my current guardian build, but I would never claim to have a great build. I mostly run it with empowering might to compensate for my low hp. I don’t think it’s been updated, but I didn’t use it much on my old guardian. It’s around 75 hp/boon, which seems to be better healing than zealous blade in most situations for me.

Edit: This is my current actual build. I’m still working on laurels to buy precision-based knights trinkets to replace the two exotics I still have.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVQQJASRl0ApWoFCxRI0uNR8AVVAweKb5/XHjjcDA-ThCBwA12fYryiuKFQrEUpSsFmYkcJAwp+DgnAQLdBAA-e

I’ll preface this with the statement that I am by no means an expert on guardians, but I’ve leveled two of them to 80 using different methods and they are definitely useful more than than just a couple of their utility skills. Overall, it seems to me that guardians to a really good job of serving a hybrid role. My current guardian is built somewhat selfishly (using an AH focused build, but providing some support traits as well), but serves as a damage dealer and boss occupier. Sitting around 3k armor with perma-protection and 10% damage reduction seems to allow me to keep the boss’ attention, but the traits, skills, power and precision allow me to dish out respectable damage and keep myself and my teammates alive. My warrior has certain builds that are more survivable, BUT they sacrifice a lot in the damage dealing department. Guardians seem to be a happy balance of heavy-hitting (though mostly slow) attacks and defense. The major drawback is the severly limited ranged options. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt useless in battles where ranged is the only option slowly plinking away with a scepter or staff.

Rozbuska.5263:

kitten my screenshot is so popular:-D

Out of curiosity, what build are you running to pull those kinds of numbers with the bomb auto attack? That’s insanity.

Raiff.6742:

Bad at PvE? That’s like asking who is the best breather. But, if you are asking if we DPS, bring utility, and debuffs the enemy all at once in a group play scenario, then it is a resounding yes. Yes, we are the best at that. My current build is 20/30/0/20/0. I run with elixir gun, healing turret, bombs or grenades, supply crate, and an elixer of my choice. Dual pistols. I dps with a condition build rotating between explosives, elixer gun, and pistols. Elixer and the #5 elixer gun help my party while everything else is dps.

Engineer is the best pve group profession. Hands down.

I’d say it’s definitely versatile, and a heck of a lot of fun to play, but definitely not best overall for pve. We can throw the hurt, but not as well as most of the other professions, we can heal, but not as well elementalists, we can bring great support, but guardians (and some warriors) are generally better overall, we can lay conditions very well, though, and I think we can compete with necromancers in some ways here. Really, it comes down to engineer being a “jack of all trades, master of none,” but in a lot of ways elementalists are also a “jack of all trades” without the limitation of not being a master in those. Our biggest benefit is being pretty dang durable, which is something that’s tough for other professions to compete with at our level. Expect to be the lone survivor in a lot of instances and rezzing your teammates on a frequent basis.

Mayonnaise.9624:

It cannot be simply toggled PvE people since you need to be able to see what weapons are at disposal to an engineer you PvP with and against.

The solution is simple as it was already stated countless times. Make status icons as you did for elementalist attunments, or at least ANet take 1 minute and leave us a reply and explain why nothing has changed since your last reply (1 year ago)!

Well, aside from that, it’s generally pretty obvious what sort of engineer you’re facing off against by what they are doing. And since packs can change from moment to moment, in PvP seeing a pack (if you actually CAN) doesn’t mean that the engineer is going to be using that kit from one second to the next. Also, I can’t even reliably see my Asura’s pack when staring at it from the back, so I question how well someone trying to look past my giant head from the front could identify the pack I’m wearing.

Yeah, I don’t even try to get into groups tagged for speedruns because I’m certain I’d be kicked as soon as my engineer symbol showed up. I have run with a lot of pugs though, and generally they’re very happy with the engineer’s ability to throw down combo fields and keep them in good fighting shape. I don’t think that engineers are BAD by any stretch of the imagination, but in generally I’d have to agree that there is considerably more struggle for less effectiveness. That said, engineers are a lot of fun to play, and a lot more engaging than the seemingly mindless play style of, say, a warrior or guardian. If you’re bored, try an engineer — you’ll be earning your keep through broken keyboards and mice.

Edit: Side note — engineer is the only profession I’ve been able to successfully solo an elite risen noble on.

I will say that it certainly seems like on my engineer that I pull aggro 90% of the time. I know it’s not my damage as I generally run FT (judge all you want, I love it — even though it’s not optimal, it’s still respectable with the right traits and sigils). Best I can tell, bosses tend to prefer beating on meat shields (high toughness and vitality), which is fine as engineers have utilities/traits that allow them to take a pretty stiff beating for a pretty substantial period of time.

Edit: If you need to dump aggro, I’d recommend using Elixer S — the toolbelt skill grants stealth and as a utility can be a decent panic button. You can also use flame turret’s smoke screen and immediately detonate it for area stealth. Both decent dumps depending on how your build is aimed.

BillX.4987:

(These questions are based off of the ‘perma-regen crit-tank escapist warrior’, ‘perma-stealth blind-bot condi-crit escapist thief’ and ‘perma-tele condi-crit stealth escapist mesmer’ combat experience)

~would a (1-3 second) ‘Cripple’ or (1 second) ‘Immobilize’ be too much on [Binding Blade]?

~would an ‘Evade’ be too much with [Leap Of Faith]?

~would having [Renewed Focus] affect ‘Utility Skills’ as well as ‘Virtues’ over-power a guardian?

~would having the damage from ‘Retaliation’ trigger the ‘Burn’ from ‘Virtue Of Justice’ passive effect over-power a guardian?

~would having ‘Symbols’ or a ‘Trait’ apply ‘Weakness’ over-power a guardian?

~shouldn’t the ‘Yarr’ shout from ‘Rune of the Privateer’ trigger ‘Pure Of Voice’ and remove the condition(s)?

(By all means, please post proper hows and whys…as opposed to sour opinions and comments)

My personal feelings:

Cripple on binding blade may be a little overpowered, simply because it’s already granting damage over time and CC in the form of a pull/knockdown.

Evade on Leap of Faith could be justifiable, depending on the length of the evade portion (I’d say 1/2 second would probably be appropriate)

Renewed focus affecting utilities would be overpowered, as you already get invulnerability along with being able to pop and refresh virtues. That’s a lot of utility on its own. Granted, I’d love to be able to refresh all my abilities on my guardian like that, but with things like heal on meditation that would allow for insane burst healing (with the base heal for monk’s focus, and meditations in heal/utilities you’d get around 16k JUST from monk’s focus on top of the healing from litany of wrath and merciful intervention — which would be another ~4k area and ~3k self heal for a total of 23k burst). That of course is just one example, I’m sure plenty of other scenarios would be equally or MORE broken. I could maybe see it refreshing the heal skill, but all utilities would be a bit overkill.

Weakness is one of those conditions that you don’t see often, because it’s powerful (50% chance for 50% damage reduction as well as endurance regeneration cut in half). Stack that with perma-protection symbols available to guardians and you have a recipe for tears. I may not be doing the math right, but that would be an effective damage reduction of a bit over 50% just for fighting inside a protection symbol with the added benefit of eating your opponent’s ability to dodge while damaging them (and making them vulnerable, if traited). Edit: This would also effectively make symbol of wrath nearly as tanky as symbol of protection, adding considerable damage reduction to the already heavy-hitting greatsword. Combine that with a weapon swap to hammer and you’ve got double-stacking duration on weakness.

I actually sort of hoped that the privateer rune shout counted as a shout when I ran in on my warrior, but I can see how it could be unbalancing to have a “free” shout proc every 20 seconds.

BlackBeard.2873:

I know that many engineers here are going to defend this trait vociferously, and nothing that is said will change their opinion. However, I do think it is good to raise some of the design issues that exist with this trait. Pretty much every class has similar design problems that could be brought up, and fixing them gradually would be an excellent thing to make this game more skill-based and fun to play.

I honestly used it and didn’t really notice a huge difference, so haven’t used it since. It may be more useful for a single-target build, but with most engineer “preferred” builds being AOE centered, I can’t really see Incendiary Powder being reliable in application to the intended target. Honestly, I wouldn’t care if they changed it to be more like the current iteration of Dhuumfire, and I doubt many others would either. I think most people who are questioning the cry in this post to change it are doing so because there really isn’t any driving NEED to change it. Again, engineers can’t spread conditions like necromancers, so this is a single-target only trait.

Oswaldzl.3652:

6-8k damage one round of flame channeling that’s times the number it hit….

Are you talking about flame jet hitting for 6-8k? I’ve never seen that kind of damage from it ever, even in full berserker…

Even assuming 25 stacks of might and 25 stacks of bloodlust, that looks like it would peak a little under 4k, and with 25 stacks of vulnerability that’s still peaking at around 5k. Am I missing something?

Edit: Fiddling with traits to include the damage booster and going full 6 points into Explosives, as well as having full ascended gear seems like it would peak closer to 6k with 25 might/bloodlust/vulnerability, but there’s not a lot in explosives that benefits flamethrower — are you making up the difference here with incendiary powder? I’m honestly interested in how to get that kind of damage.

I’d rather see a “mobile turrets” trait that hangs the turrets from a balloon (already seems to be this way underwater) with a propeller that allows them to follow the engineer for their duration. Similar concept, but much less confusing fringe scenarios like above.

Never capitulate!

Tim.6450:

Well then let’s revert the nerf to dhuumfire and make it a master trait.

I suspect the dhuumfire nerf had less to do with it being overpowered itself, and more to do with the ability of the necromancer to spread conditions with epidemic. That’s obviously just my opinion, though.

law.9410:

Engineers are a rare profession, therefore they are bad. Strong logic…

I don’t think anyone is saying engineers are BAD, just that there are far less viable builds for engineers, and that those viable builds really rely on a few key traits. I will definitely say that I have FAR more builds that I can do reasonably well with on my guardian and warrior than on my engineer, and that the engineer takes considerably more work to achieve results that those other two professions get. I don’t have a lot of time invested in the other classes, but looking at the subforums, there is a much wider variety of builds that are acknowledged as appropriate than you will find on the engineer subforum. In general, for engineers, if you’re not running some form of bomb/grenade build, it’s generally accepted that you’re going to be considered as sub-par in group content. A lot of it comes down to engineers seemingly being balanced on a notion of relying on conditions to boost damage, which means that traits like IP are the backbone to engineer damage builds. If engineer base damage was a bit closer to normalized in comparison to other professions, I could see this being a bit more of a legitimate concern.

Edit: Also, the cooldown on IP is 10 seconds, which means that it’s not exactly an “always on” sort of thing. My warrior has a 33% chance to apply bleeds on EVERY critical, not just one critical every 10 seconds. I don’t understand why IP would be such a big deal over other similar traits.

I realized that I forgot to report back. I tested on some training dummies to negate crit chance, and sadly rifle mod does not appear to affect the damage of kits.

@robertul

I’ve honestly been using it for all PvE content so far (albeit a relatively short time, since it’s a new build for me, so I haven’t had a TON of experience with everything). I’m mostly just looking to run a relatively effective and survivable flamethrower build.

@Ronin

Mostly just looking for flamethrower, as I find it a lot of fun (I know it’s far from optimal, but who doesn’t like a portable barbecue?). I’ve tried bombs (which I sort of enjoyed, but hated the connstant stooping) and grenades (killed my fingers), but honestly probably haven’t given elixer gun or toolkit a fair shake as they didn’t really appeal to me.

As for your questions on the build I posted, in general, I’m just really new to engineer, which is why I’m looking for valuable feedback like yours! But for specifics, the reasoning behind each was:
-chose medkit over healing turret for the super-low cooldown bandage wounds, and because the turret is available in tougher fights through supply drop. I’m definitely not opposed to swapping back (used it in the first build I posted), as medkit seems to be pretty terrible for condition removal.
-I partially went into inventions for the 25% movement speed (admittedly the lazy man’s speedy kits), but mostly for the toughness (wanted to break 3000 armor), the smattering of healing power, and the power bonus from energized armor (from the most recent build i posted, 146 bonus power). I could definitely see moving 2 points from inventions to tools, but energized armor is something I’m not sure I’d be willing to part with
- I’ll definitely give invigorating speed a shot, but with speedy kits, is infused precision redundant? Honestly not sure, but would be interested on your thoughts there, but the 20% cooldown reduction for flamethrower seems like it might be better bang for the buck?
- I’ll try swapping out backpack regenerator for experimental turrets and try the rifle turret. I mostly have the goggles for the 10 stack vulnerability toolbelt skill and a stun break (the fury is a “nice to have” too).

I noticed you went more knight’s heavy on your armor, with berserker for the trinkets — you wound up with double the crit chance but a bit less “standing” power and a lot less health and armor. How does this build hold up in large fights durability wise? Is there a specific method you use to keep alive?

Thanks again for your feedback! I’ll try some of this stuff tonight to see how it seems to go

I’ll try testing it (FOR SCIENCE!) when I get home to see if there’s a noticeable difference in damage.

My engineer is an asura, so the hobosack has never been a huge deal to me, but I did notice how awful it looked during the ghost transform in AC. I feel really bad for races/genders that have to deal with the hobosack on a daily basis. +1 from me for having an option to turn it off.

So last night I spent a bit of time crafting some new armor and bought what I didn’t have the materials to craft, and wound up with this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlsTpvrtdxWLseNSdBFydWQQGgCI6FGjhA-TxRBwARuAgSwU6Aot/AO1fSq8DwDAQh5PA-e

Pretty much the same, but swapped clerics for soldier’s and swapped out sigil of bloodlust for sigil of fire, and I have to say I’m incredibly pleased with the results. Not only did it feel like I was a lot harder to kill than with the heal-heavy build, the sigil of fire seems to have considerably higher damage potential than sigil of bloodlust, especially with the rapid attacks from FT1. I actually felt almost as effective as some of my other professions at killing things in Orr and in Dungeons. Healing turret’s drop in effectiveness did hit a little harder than I was expecting, but medkit seems to make up for it and then some (the low-cooldown bandage wounds is insane, but feels kind of greedy). I engaged a champion ravager (is that the one with the purple bubble and axe-pull?) with a group of 4 and was the only one standing through most of the fight, but managed to drag him away from others when they downed so they could rally, and it really seemed to perform well. When I can dredge up the money to try a Zealot’s build (I don’t have the recipes or sprocket node), I’ll give it a shot as well and see how it performs. Thank you again for your feedback — it’s been incredibly helpful!

@dancingmonkey

From a numbers point of view, that actually looks very good. Looking at a Soldiers (armor) with Knights (jewelry) combination, it maintains decent critical chance (thinking of swapping from bloodlust to fire sigil, since that seems like it would be a decent boost to the poor damage of FT #1, which an almost certain activation every other use) and seems to have considerably more HP (~3000) with a loss of 300 healing from the turret (though I’m thinking I may swap to med kit — more selfish with healing, but bandage is up as often as the turret toolbelt and it also comes with more burst healing) and ~30 healing lost on backpack regenerator, which I think I may swap for something more useful.

@guanglai

Looking at the numbers, is the loss of the extra toughness really worth the healing boost in this set up? I’m honestly not asking rhetorically, I’m pretty new to the engineer game, so I honestly don’t know.

Also, thank you both for your feedback. It’s helping a lot in deciding what to tweak.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

I’m hoping someone will give me some tips. I tried out flamethrower, and that was fun for a few levels. The downside is that apparently there are tons of bugs with it. For example I was trying to kill some maggots, but even though they were right in front of me my guy aimed at the ground and wouldn’t deal any damage. I died trying to figure out how to hit them. Sometimes an enemy will be slightly elevated, like on a little hill. I will aim up to hit them, the animation plays, but no damage. Yeah I died that way, and it sucked. So I thought “o.k. let’s try out these grenades”. Except with no auto I’m spamming the 1 key, but it doesn’t lock on. I use my mouse for turning, and movement, so it’s hard to constantly adjust to aoe where I want my grenades and control my character. So I usually end up sitting still, and just throwing grenades. Against enemies that are moving though I get beat up pretty badly.

I might be doing it wrong, if anyone has any tips please give them to me. If it ends up with just go bomb kit and spam the same thing over and over that seems like Anet should fix something. There is no way that is what leveling is supposed to be like. I remember on my warrior one of the awesome things was just using all of the different weapons/combos. I could use a hammer/gs one day, the next day sw/shield, or lb axe/mace etc. With engi it seems like there aren’t as many different things I can try.

I tried to like the bomb kit, and it seems like it’s the most powerful of the kits, but I just couldn’t enjoy seeing my engineer constantly kowtowing all over the battlefield no matter how much bigger those numbers were. Grenades were fun for a while, too, but ended up wearing down my fingertips to bloody nubs. I really enjoy the flamethrower, even though it doesn’t have it in the damage department — there’s something satisfying about slow-roasting your enemies. I did find that the trick to flamethrowers is turning the camera to ensure that it’s facing with the enemy you’re cooking in the center of the screen. Flamethrower seems to require a lot of movement to line up enemies, which (to me) makes it feel a lot less mind-numbing than some other professions.

Well, I finally hit 80 on my engineer and so I’m trying out my build now. I swapped out the soldier’s trinkets for knight’s trinkets (and grabbed a berserker’s backpack from the guild armorer, since I haven’t finished the story yet), and so far it seems decent. Definitely not on par with the damage of my other characters (flamethrower seems to hit for a lot less than pretty much any other weapon I’ve used — is this normal?). I did find that the numbers on the build calculator are a tiny bit off. Without buffs I sit at around 1900 power, rather than 2100, but after swapping to flamethrower and building up bloodlust stacks, I do sit right around 2300-2400 power. The precision from the knight’s trinkets also gets me a bit over 30% crit chance, which seems a bit more useful than the 2000 or so health that I’m missing from not using soldier’s (apparently there’s no way to craft soldier’s trinkets without getting recipes from dungeons). I ran a bunch of large-scale events last night, and there were a few times that I was the only one still standing, and while I wasn’t always at 100% health, it took focus fire from groups of veterans and their minions to really burn me down — on the flip side, it took a lot longer to kill them than it does on, say, my guardian or warrior. Healing turret seems to be almost overpowered with this build (except in instances where there is a lot of AoE, as if I’m near it when the stacks of AoE attacks go off, it’s generally down in seconds) with the turret bringing me from 50% to 100% health if I drop it and activate the overcharge at the same time. Overall I’m relatively happy with the build, but would love to see if I could squeeze in some more damage, but I’m really at a loss as to how I could do that. If anyone has any feedback, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!

Just looking for a little feedback on a potential engineer build I worked up. It’s PvE focused, and relies almost entirely on the flamethrower.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQFAUlUUpvrtdxWLseNSdBFydWQQGgCI6FGjhA-TBSAwA42fQpyPiq/Aw8nFlgPuAAEeAA10BAA-e

It seems like it might be a little overkill on the “tanky” stats, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to get decent mix of survival options and still maintain decent damage. I’m a bit concerned about almost non-existent critical chance, but just wanted some general feedback on it.

I guess I’m really an odd man out on this one. I quit playing for a while and came back last week and created a new character, and I’ve actually been enjoying the the new trait system. It’s pushed me to explore a bit more, which has been fun for me. I haven’t, however, really had much interest in any of the new GM traits that I’ve seen on my current level 80’s — none of them have really stood out over the old GM traits, but it is nice to have the variety. My only real complaint about the new system is that some of the lower-level traits require access to areas that are far outside the level range for their respective tiers, which is a little odd and frustrating. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment, but I enjoy it overall.

I suppose that could be true, but with a small measure of foresight, they could exclude the horribly broken skills (or have a “toned-down” version that is awarded). I’m definitely not against adding more base skills to professions — more variety is always more fun. The real reason I’d love to see this, though, sort of boils down to bragging rights. In other MMOs, you have gear progression, but that doesn’t really fit the bill in GW2. Guild Wars has sort of always been about skills, and I remember in the “old days” it was a symbol of prestige to be sporting a rare elite skill, and people would farm areas for rare spawns just to get that skill they were looking for.

This may not be a popular idea, but with the new traits and re-engineering traits to allow “unlocks” via feats, it sort of reminded me of the Signet of Capture in GW1. I have pretty fond memories of running around hunting down rare bosses to grab a new skill (or luck out and find a shiny new elite skill), and would love to see something like that in GW2. There are obviously a ton of mobs that have unique skills, and I, personally, think it would be neat to have the ability to capture some of those for our own use. Now, I’m not talking about having to unlock current skills or anything, just the ability to add more skills to our ability pools.

I think the Halloween event has been brilliant. There was a bit of a rough start, and I think a lot of folks let that ruin the whole event for them, but I really think that it’s turned out incredible. I’ve really enjoyed the events and the activities in the Mad King’s Labyrinth. The boss-fight dungeon is also a lot of fun, and having a fight that spans several different areas of the dungeon is pretty awesome. Despite the complaints that a lot of folks have about the Clock Tower, it does seem to invoke a feeling of chaos, which is sort of what the Mad King is all about. I’ve not finished it yet, myself, but I think it’s fine the way it is (I may complain about the fat Charr and giant Norn characters, but I still love it).

Just going to throw this out there: folks that paid for gems (I’m included in this lot — purchased gems for myself and my girlfriend) got their gems — that is what the money is spent on. From there, you can convert gems into other things, including keys. Forcing a refund because opening chests with keys didn’t pan out the way you had hoped is actually credit card fraud. Note that this is a serious offense. Also note that posting your intention to do so through questionable means is basically posting evidence that can be used against you if any legal dispute takes place.

ANet provided exactly what was paid for: gems. Just because you spent those on a lottery system that did not pan out for you does not equate to you being “wronged” or “defrauded” in any way. Had you used your money to buy a lottery ticket at a store and not won, is it reasonable to expect a refund?

Mystfit.8309:

Looking at the recipes, I’m wodnering if I should jsut sell the recipes and rarers mats I’ve been getting? It seems like there’s no way I’d ever collect what’s needed…and I"m not saying that negativly or for pity, just a statement of fact. Rather then cluttering up my bags with ingredients I’dlikley not use, wonder if it would be better to sell?

It’s up to you. You have a lifetime subscription, so I’d say you’d eventually be able to craft them, regardless of the requirements. Would you still WANT to by then? Who knows? Long term goal vs. easy money. It’s a toss up in my book.

I’m actually astonished that folks are touting that they’re leaving due to Black Lion Chest stuff. I mean, I can understand not buying gems (or not spending them on keys), but there is a lot more to this game than awesome weapon skins. Anyhow, I said it, but I’ll say it again: I’m very happy with the Mad King Chest solution. I came in with the understanding that Black Lion Chests were a gamble — my gripe was that either you got one of the rare event items, or no event items at all. The Mad King Chests addressed this by giving folks a way to not only get more chances at the rare event stuff, but ALSO guaranteed event items. I just don’t understand how that’s not an acceptable solution.

I don’t use a staff that often, but The Crossing seems pretty cool. The lantern on the chain is physics-enabled, so when you swing it around, it flings about like a flail. I haven’t even seen the scythe.

Edit: As I said in another post, I’d love to see more of the weapon types get special skins — very few currently have animations past particle effects.