Guild Wars 2

I know you can’t please everyone, but I just wanted to voice my concerns about the last update. I figured it would be here to stay, so I dropped a lot of gold on coloring my T3 cultural to work with the Hellfire achievement armor. I logged in today to find that every color I have (even Molten dyes) can’t replicate what I had before. Here’s a before and after of what happened.

Suggestion
Is it at all possible to find a middle ground? Maybe make all dyes of a particular material behave differently from another type? This would give people the option of dying to more natural tones to dying to bolder or even ‘glow’ heavy colors. Vibrant could be like it was before and Natural Leather and Metallic dyes could behave like they do now.

At the very least, can the back half of the T3 female chest piece actually match the color in question? Every red and orange I have becomes a bright pink or purple from the backside when dying one part of it. It looks nice if you use another color to complement it, but if you’re mixing and matching armor like myself, it’s nigh impossible.

Just throwing this out there, but why not make it an unbound item? Then the mini can be traded openly on the market and the true value of it in-game will be governed by its demand in-game. I’m a bit confused as to why ArenaNet decided to make this miniature account bound only and obtainable only through a couple conventions/promotions. It only promotes people selling the item on eBay and other online trading venues for real money – something ArenaNet ‘technically’ looses out on. (Since they wouldn’t be gleaning the 15% trading post tax values or putting another high demand mini in-game that people may purchase gems to convert to gold for.)

This would make it a highly desirable, but ‘technically’ obtainable item for anyone – assuming they have the drive (or cash to convert through ArenaNet’s Gem Exchange) to obtain it.

The Lost Witch.7601:

ionfone.5803:

Amazing stuff

Nice posts, these are some really good observations and ideas!

Following up on the potent elixirs idea:

Potent Elixirs

Increases elixir duration (20%) and effectivess. (30 seconds recharge)

• Elixir H now grants all three boons.
• Elixir U also grants stability for 2 seconds.
• Elixir S also removes immobilize, chill & cripple.
• Elixir R also grants vigor for 10 seconds.
• Elixir C heals you for 250 for every condition converted.
• Elixir B grants an additional 5 stacks of might.
• Elixir X grants 6 random boons and inflicts 3 random conditions on yourself for a short duration.

Oh and I’d love to see this added to the Elite supplies trait:

• Elixir X now grants rampage if activated above 50% endurance and tornado when below 50%.

But these are all long term plans I guess.

Thanks for your comments on my wall of text, I really appreciate it! It’s nice to know someone read it. If you feel it deserves it, be sure to +1 my suggestions so devs have a better chance of reviewing it.

Yeah, most of these are going to take longer than just the December 10th update, but I’ve seen dev cycles capable of modifying some of the smaller suggestions within a single month (Dev, QA, refinement and deployment).

JonPeters.5630:

Ok all it’s been a long 3 days of reading. We talked for a few hours today about this stuff and I won’t summarize it until tomorrow morning but at least wanted kill a few minutes on the bus here to keep you up to date. We felt like this was a good useful exercise and will continue to do it for future patches if we can. Thanks to everyone who contributed and continues to positively contribute to the discussion. Due to the time it takes to finish up, fully test and push these changes forward I am going to lock this thread at the end of the week. Keeping it open past then is disingenuous as far as what we would reasonably be able to accomplish.

Thanks all and I’ll be back with some concrete stuff tomorrow,

Jon

It’s great to hear feedback on both sides this early in a patch’s development. I’m sure there’s a lot to filter and plenty to take into consideration – hopefully it’s not too overwhelming on your team’s end.

I’ve gone ahead and posted my suggestions on some of your dubbed ‘lackluster’ traits for the engineer in the subforum that was created in regards to this patch. I don’t want to fill this up with another copy of it all, so here’s the link. Enjoy.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/December-10th-Balance-update/page/5#post3152830

I look forward to seeing balance previews in the future. It’s an enjoyable (but oftentimes messy and stressful) process in game development and refinement I wish I could have had more experience in.

Power Wrench – This trait probably sees little use because it’s also focused entirely on Tool Kit builds and loadouts. 20% CD reduction is a nice boost, but turret healing is very meh. Improve turret healing substantially to see more use. Grant Throw Wrench a percentage based heal that’s significant and the Thwak, Whack, Smack chain of skills an incremental boost to healing on a turret that is HP (not percent) based (eg: 1K, 2K, 5K heals @ level 80, respectively). Another reason this trait sees less play is because turrets have very limited use in most modes due to a multitude of functional and AI bugs. Fix turrets and you’ll see this trait used more frequently than now. In a kit heavy build, having the toolkit skills available with another general trait is more valuable than having it on a slightly shorter cooldown since you’ll have so many other abilities to choose from while in combat.

Leg Mods – Add a bonus function on Gadget activation (The first thing that comes to mind is bonus Power-based damage on offensive skills like Rocket Kick or +1 second duration on Super Speed, since your legs are stronger). There are only 5 gadgets. 3 of them can easily be associated to a trait based on legs. If this isn’t an option, change how these conditions are affected, not just their duration. Reduce the effectiveness not the duration on them instead. Cause chilled to reduce movement by only 33%, crippled to reduce movement by 25% and immobilize to just reduce movement by 95% (allowing a player to pick up an antidote or even dodge if necessary). If that isn’t an option either, tie a Kit Refinement like ability to Gadgets to grant a bonus effect involving the trait’s name. This trait is a bit iffy, since Rocket Boots is capable of eliminating exactly these conditions and a minimal reduction in mobility condition durations, unless stacked with additional condition duration reduction runes, has limited use in a firefight. Most of the damage in higher tiered combat is done immediately after a condition is procced on a target.

Phew. There’s my two cents on all that.

I hope this provides some constructive suggestions for your traits seeing less use Jon! I’m not familiar with the technical aspects of Guild Wars 2, so some of these suggestions may not be possible without massive code manipulation (condition behaviour for example). Regardless, I feel these changes would improve these traits’ ‘power’ while keeping them in line with the other traits available to the engineer at those tiers.

Edit: I’ll post more about the other changes you’re making later in the week when I have time – they’re mostly on par with what I’d expect to see. I’m currently in the process of job searching, so my time I have is a bit limited. I am a bit interested in what metrics you’re obtaining to make some of your modifications (mostly of other classes though). Are they primarily from high ranked gameplay in sPvP or varied in all three primary aspects of the game (PvE, WvW, sPvP)?

(Also, tell Karl that Stan says hi.)

Deadly Mixture – The primary issue with this trait is what it does. It is a trait that boosts power-based damage output on weapons not strongly associated with power builds (and when they are, they’re secondary to grenades, bombs or the rifle, all better alternatives for actual damage output). The only reason players grab this is to boost the two ‘burst’ skills on the kits – Acid Bomb and Flame Blast. Every other option at Master is defensive and great, vital for elixir builds, condition removal and passive healing. This is everything 90% of engineers speccing in this tree will be attempting to build towards – not improved damage output. The end result is a trait that provides poor synergy with what the tree focuses on, something a player will swap to when they need a bit more damage output without resetting their traits. I suggest you boost the power of both of these kits’ standard abilities a small amount and modify this trait as below:

Redesign this trait to function like an inverted Transmute (Call it Mutagen Additive or something like that ) – have a chance on hit with these two kits to convert one of the opponent’s boons into a condition. If you see this proccing too frequently, apply an ICD similar to Transmute when it activates. The only problem I foresee with this is it loses effectiveness against multiple targets and can be wasted on ‘meat shields’ since some of these skills are AoEs. Regardless, it turns this trait into something that is in line with other Alchemy traits and a desirable one at that, especially for offensive support.

Potent Elixirs – The fact that Potent Elixirs affects all elixir skills (aside from Healing Elixir from the Elixir Gun) including the Toss abilities while Fast Acting Elixirs only affects the base skill and not their Toolbelt equivalents alludes me. That said, this is also a Master trait (compared to Potent Elixir’s Adept tier) that’s up against a few other more desirable traits that work with all builds, not just elixir focused ones. If you want this trait to be extremely useful, add another aspect – give the trait a Kit Refinement-like attribute based on elixir usage. Toss an ICD on it every 30 seconds or so to prevent players from exploiting their use. This will make it a viable option for any build with at least one elixir slotted (with a consistent bonus if only one is used).

Packaged Stimulants – This is a tough one. I love Healing Kit, but typically when I’m running a very squishy build against a lot of powerful AoEs that prevent Healing Turret usage – it provides a lot of heals and with toolbelt cooldowns reduced, a very fast and powerful direct heal. This trait is great on paper (and unfortunately doesn’t affect your toolbelt), but requiring active mouse targeting is something most players dislike. When you’re in the middle of combat, throwing a heal where you’re going and timing it correctly can be a huge pain. My biggest pet peeve is when I end up throwing a heal behind or on myself due to my speed (or swiftness kicking in via team boons or procs) and its cast time. If you toss the item directly on you, you’re unable to pick it up until you move off and back on the item. Without the trait, moving forward and using the skill will automatically pick up the boost if you’re in need of it. This makes it a fast and effective heal (assuming you’re not immobilized). A nice improvement to this trait could be as follows: Reduce the cast time on healing kit skills by 50%-100% (You still have to wait for the boost to get to your target, which can take up to a couple seconds). If this is still lacking, allow the “Throw Antidote” skill to cure two conditions instead of the standard one. This would improve all five skills the kit provides, not just those with a heal or boon duration associated with it. The new expected functionality would be as follows: “Med kit skills can be quickly thrown and are more effective. Effectiveness increased: 25% Casting speed reduction: 50% less (Or 1/4 or 0 sec) Antidote: +1 condition removed”

Continued…

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes sic, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents sic, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

Keep the discussion going and let’s see if we can find some room in those traits to bring those trait lines some more into play.

We won’t be able to address all of the concerns, but we will address the most pressing if we can.

Thanks,

Jon

Here’s some suggestions for modifying how these traits behave and putting them in-line with other similar traits in power, effectiveness and viability.

Explosive Powder – Improve on the current list (and identify) what exactly is considered an explosion. This is a small modification, but could be what you’re looking for (improving Rocket Kick, Blunderbuss, Flame Blast, Acid Bomb, Supply Crate, etc). Honestly, I see this trait as a bit lackluster, but effective for any players utilizing bomb, grenade and turret focused builds, while also giving them an option between reducing skill cooldowns (20% via short fuse) for condition focused builds or improving power-based damage (10% via Explosive Powder) at the Master Tier. If your metrics are seeing a massive lack of use of this trait and no like-viability in other Master tiered Explosive traits, improving this damage to +12% or +15% is always an option. (Not one I would suggest, since Bomb and Grenade builds already consist of a decent majority of engineer players)

Enhance Performance – Completely redesign this skill to function similar to Speedy Kits or Invigorating Speed. Apply a Might on receiving the Regeneration boon. Unlike the former two traits, apply an ICD lower than the boon’s duration (~3/6/9 seconds would provide great synergy with many abilities), allowing stacking might similar to the Juggernaut trait under certain circumstances, (probably not as powerful though). This makes sense as other boons that stack in intensity often have ICDs that ‘overlap’, so to speak. If placed in line with other similar traits, granting Might on only Regeneration application would have synergy with the following skills available to the engineer as well as promoting certain forms of team gameplay not seen:
Elixir H (And Toss Elixir H), Healing Turret (And Rejuvenating Mist), Elixir Gun’s Healing Mist, and Supply Crate.
The most active change in combat would be with Healing Turret’s current use – Most experienced players will drop Healing Turret, overcharge and pick up the turret to place it out of harm’s reach and under a faster cooldown. The majority of this healing is provided via base Heal, not Regeneration. This trait would give players the option to risk leaving the turret up, with an additional bonus application of Might boons. This falls in line with the Explosive trait-line’s offensive nature. Elixir H would see more use as well, since it could provide bonus might, a great synergy with HGH and other elixir builds.

Power Shoes – Does this trait really see less active use compared to others in the Inventions tree? That’s surprising to hear, since I love this trait while creating certain mobile builds in sPvP. One option is improving the effectiveness of certain foot-related skills or reducing the ‘blow-out’ effect duration while this trait is equipped by a certain percentage. This makes thematic sense as you’re getting up on your feet faster from a knockdown effect. There was a time this worked both in and out of combat too, right? Why in combat only? See Leg Mods below for other ideas.

Elite Supplies – Simply put, fix this trait by fixing the skills associated with it. Elixir X sees very limited use and a small duration boost to a skill that takes well over a minute to recharge is fairly lacking. Maybe add effects on the skills associated with the elite? Mortar doesn’t work well at all. I try to use it when I can, but it always results in facepalm worthy results. Awful Skill lag, lacking range, low durability, and weak power all result in an underwhelming elite that a trait can’t do anything to save. Fix this elite to fix the trait. Of all the elites, Supply Crate is used by the majority of engineer players, but an extra turret and a few more med kits every few minutes doesn’t justify the trade off of other more valuable traits with active ICDs or passive boosts. Reducing the cooldown of all the skills it affects would also improve its viability, but not by much. I can’t say I’ve been in a live or die moment as an engineer where 10-20 seconds less on an elite cooldown would have saved me. I can understand that this is very difficult, given WvW balance can be a pain with class-summonable pets or mortars. Maybe grant a WvW or guild siege equivalent boost to these skills for PvE exclusive environments?

Continued…

I’d be very interested to see if this leads to the revealing of the unknown underwater Elder Dragon that drove the krait, quaggan and largos from the Great Sea. That one dragon that has yet to be spoken of aside from being nicknamed the Deep Sea Dragon (assuming Mordremoth is indeed the name of the Jungle Dragon, thanks to Subject Alpha and the combat log).

The image attached was from a panel at PAX about creating dynamic events. You’ll see references about Krait – in particular a tower collapse. The context of all this is completely unrelated to the current location, but who’s to say bits and pieces of this are being utilized for a future project? So if anything, that confirms that a tower related to Krait is something that’s been on their possible to-do list…

If I had more time, I’d probably make a heatmap of all the krait sightings in-game so far, especially denoting any structures they currently have built throughout Tyria. Maybe also discover a Ley Line equivalent across the continent. lol

Speculating future events is always fun when it’s slowly hinted at like this.

I think it’s important to note that the event ArenaNet held for Guild Wars 2 did not require admission to PAX. They simply held it at the same time at a relatively nearby location. Honestly, I preferred the ANet event over the majority of PAX. Staff came outside to meet and greet people waiting in line due to occupancy capacity and even did trivia and random giveaways! The line wait was relatively short and once inside, everything was organized and clean. There was never a real dull moment. I even got to meet and mingle with handful of players and guildmates at the event!

I can’t say the same about PAX – I, among with plenty of others, waited for hours to demo games and get shirts three times larger than what we wear. The booths that did have promising ‘swag’ had even longer lines. Some people I spoke with waited 4+ hours to get the chance at some giveaways. -__-

Regardless, great job to those that organized the event during the PAX weekend – I hope more events like this are to come in the future.

(And maybe a better organized tourney with semi-finals @ the event next time? That was the only lackluster part of the evening imo)

Unfortunately, it is working as intended. Just like a stunbreaker breaks out of an active stun/knockdown/daze, if any of those conditions are reapplied immediately afterwards, you’ll be ‘stunned’ again.

Rocketboots doesn’t actually dodge/evade during or after its activation, so if there’s a persistent effect where you use it, you run the risk of getting hit with the chill/cripple/immobilize again. The worst part is many targeted skills will ‘track’ you until you land, even if you’re beyond its maximum range. It could be a lag issue, but it seems to occur fairly consistently.

Still – Rocketboots are still a great gadget compared to before. The built-in knockdown is something that always bothered me. Especially if they ever iron out the occasional weird ‘landing lag’ at the end…

I don’t see how legendaries not affecting your damage with kits isn’t an important issue. Most of my ranged rotations don’t use my Predator at all for damage. My Elixer Gun, Grenades, Bombs, Tool Kit and Flamethrower all do not benefit from its legendary status. I’m better off having made an exotic pistol/shield, or p/p, to contribute as much base damage, plus the bonus of an additional sigil.

That’s pretty important if you ask me.

Granted, this particular problem is more an issue due to ascended weaponry going live more than the legendaries I guess…

Anybody who legitimately cares about this thread’s core topic should go through and +1 every post they feel adds some value to the issue. I would love for devs to review a lot of this, but there’s a lot of fodder too. :/

If enough of the community really cares and makes that statement, maybe ANet will take the time and effort to finally address it.

This reason is why you’ll see more engineers running into melee combat with grenades. They have a much less random spread at minimum range – especially with Poison Grenades. Some testing has resulted where frequently, two of the three grenades won’t even fall within the targeted AoE that was placed. On the bright side, the land variant of Grenade Barrage seems to be unaffected by the changes.

This effect has both pros and cons to it, as they’re not as useful for spike damage (unless in cramped quarters) due to them not all hitting at once, but tend to be a tad more difficult to evade thanks to its large spread. The result? A lot of wasted potential damage and another ‘random’ aspect of the class serious PvPers will tend to avoid utilizing.

wondergod.2498:

Honestly I don’t see that as an excuse. They went through the trouble of updating some of the legendaries, they could’ve used that time to fix what was currently broken, AND NOW they are even talking about new legendaries without any mention of ours being changed to actually display when using kits.

We have been waiting patiently for a long time. Some of us were ready months ago. Everytime we mention we are a forgotten class, some dev reminds us that he has an Engy too and is sad, I feel like we are just getting lip service so we are sympathetic. It’s time we started screaming louder than the other classes. For the PvE fans its end game content that we still really can’t use.

I didn’t say it was a good excuse. However, with the limited experience I’ve had in the game industry, I wouldn’t be surprised if something very similar to what I mentioned is occurring. Cost-analysis results in many cosmetic features never being implemented after sitting on the backburner or idea bucket for ages. The reason they revamped many legendaries was because the entire community was outspoken on how ’un’legendary the legendaries were. ANet responded with a video and dev diary in addition to graphical updates to passive and active animations on nearly all of the legendaries.

Heck, like you stated, there are devs at ANet that have mentioned this disappointing lack of flair without any concrete solutions suggested. Hopefully they’re still monitoring this thread and picking some of the excellent ideas up. Maybe remember to +1 comments you think would be fun if implemented?

Unless it gets a lot more screen-time from the community and attention by the devs, nothing will happen with it.

I’ll still continue to keep my fingers crossed that something is in the works with engineer kits in future Legendary updates. Hopefully they don’t make Legendary kits either – since that would limit the use of my Predator or progress on my Frenzy.

Speaking of which, kits could easily be modified to be Frenzy-friendly when underwater as well, but from the sound of it the weapon has enough issues without worrying about kits at the moment…

I think the easiest (possibly short-term) solution to this would be adding particle effects to each of the kits’ primary attacks in addition to some of their toolbelt skills based on the Legendary that’s currently in use. Lastly, keep certain effects like footsteps and auras active while toolkits are also active. It’s a bit odd, but due to guild member requests, I’ve found myself actively swapping out of my kits just to ‘show off’ my rifle. :/

Currently, the only kit ability my Predator affects is the Grenade Barrage skill (whether or not the rifle is currently active). Every other kit skill and toolbelt skill behaves the same regardless.

Any combination of the weapons, bags or skills themselves could be skinned for Legendary use.

For example, have the Predator be more fire themed by having lava oozing from the packs or leave trails/residual effects from their explosive-based skills. Maybe add a Char or dragon-themed effect to Flamethrower kit skills. Also make the footprints from the weapons a little more discernible and in line with some of the other legendary weapons.

Give Quip users different particle effects that fit the pistol’s theme as well – Maybe medic crosses or heart particles when an Elixer Gun is active (like the overhealed effect for the Medic class in a certain popular free-to-play FPS) or something completely silly – like flowers or confetti exploding from the Flamethrower, Bomb and Grenade kit abilities when used or kit-swapped to.

There are a lot of options available out there for the devs to decide on – there’s just a key problem to it all:

Most, if not all of these options require concept artists, model designers, VFX artists and QA testing to refine and implement. While oftentimes they’re busy working on new content for the Living Story and such, they’re also spending a decent amount of time working on other new content – like the Jade Weapon & Aetherized Weapon Skins. From the standpoint of an accounting manager or anyone in charge of finances, I might be more inclined to focus on new content that will help generate revenue (key sales and BLTP purchases), not content that already exists in-game and is ‘good enough’. When enough of the community have these legendaries and the new ones are introduced, ANet will likely have Engineer Legendary weapons, among others, higher on their priority list. At that time we might be fortunate to see some changes in kits when legendaries are equipped.

TL:DR:

Put effects and/or skins on kits that are unique for each engineer Legendary weapon.
ANet is a business. They have their priorities and limited man-power. Be patient.
Just be glad the rifle, pistol and shield all contribute their stats and sigils when kits are equipped now.
Also, future functionality for stat-swapping Legendaries on the fly is for the win.

Priority : Moderately Low – Functional bug unique on cosmetic item

Issue:
Item “PvP Pop Gun” does not allow user to apply the following sigils to it in Heart of the Mists:

PvP Superior Sigil of Nullification
PvP Superior Sigil of Purity

Expected:
Both sigils can be applied to PvP weapon while out of combat or in HotM.

Notes:
Tested all other sigils on weapon and they applied properly as expected.

figjam.5296:

Unique exotics don’t drop anywhere.

Wintersbite, Jormag’s Breath/Needle, Feathers of Dwayna and Melandru’s Gaze etc can be acquired only via MF

I just got a Wintersbite from Jormag’s chest last week (not the daily chest bonus). Nobody believed me until I screenshot it. Sold it to a guildmate for a 20g discount off the AH value.

I just tested Super Elixer from my information I had last week with my healing gear – it has not been modified further from the last update over a week ago. The effectiveness of builds utilizing Super Elixer have basically been cut in half.

This does require builds that are primarily healing to focus on healing power and only healing power – as the healing difference between a build that focuses and ‘dabbles’ in healing power is now fairly considerable.

DC’ed at the end too with a crash. No chest or rewards for all that effort. Great.

Thanks, I’m hoping a dev sees the suggestion and rolls with it. Honestly, there’s absolutely no cons with a feature like this – someone could even customize certain kits to behave uniquely from others if they prefer.

I absolutely love that my medkit doesn’t unequip when pressing its hotkey while it’s already equipped. I wish other kits worked similarily, especially since the <` key> is always used to return to your primary weapon. I don’t need my other skills to duplicate that functionality.

I’ve grown accustomed to quickly tapping my med kit hotkey before using the skills since it guarantees I’ll use what I need, in particular the antidotes. This is especially useful since I often times randomly unequip my kits while in the middle of a fight (which is another strange bug itself).

I wouldn’t mind having this implemented across all kits or at least be an option that’s added in the game’s UI. I know ANet has yet to do it, but having an advanced option like that could be a very nice feature.

One suggestion: Currently, enabling Auto-attack [Ctrl+Mouse 2] on kits themselves has no functionality whatsoever. Why not make [Ctrl+Mouse 2] a toggle that enables/disables the “Stow ____” secondary ability associated with all kits? This would allow all players the decision on how kits function on their own skill bar.

Here’s some screenshots of my engineer. The first two are what I’m using themed for the current festivities.

Next is what I typically wear, with the color palette changing every so often.

Lastly, I still haven’t quite figured out pistols yet… but I love my shield!