Guild Wars 2

To wipe your tears. Because there’s no reason to cry over the proposed changes in SotG.

They’re just proposed changes. Not patch notes. Things may change, but since its ANet tradition to nerf the Engineer every balance patch, let’s assume the worst.

Think about the implications of these changes. There’s no build that’s going to be removed by these changes. There’s no change in play styles or builds unless they’re for the better (think about having Overcharge for every Healing Turret detonate). Any nerfs to the mentioned Sigils can be overcome by slotting other Sigils. So Signets are getting buffed and we don’t have any – at least its not a nerf! The only possible change they’ve talked about that might screw things over is a further nerf to grenades, but I doubt they’ll go that far.

Don’t shed your tears here on the forums. There is no point. The devs have a clear vision of how they want to balance their game. They don’t care about what you want or any fancy ideas you have for ‘balancing’ the class, because you don’t consider:
- other classes
- implications in PvE and WvW
- their vision for roles the Engineer is supposed to play
- their vision for how long fights should last, what sort of interactions they are looking for from the players in sPvP and tPvP

If you really can’t stand the way Engineers are being treated this patch but still love the game, then you’re better off rolling Mesmers. They’re the only class the devs have acknowledge to be balanced after all. Stick with Engineer only if you love the class.

If you still can’t accept things, then vote with your silence. Stop posting, stop playing, write an email to your choice of dev/ANet staff about why you’re boycotting their game and go do something else. There are plenty of other interesting things to do in life than getting emotional about a game.

Edit: I’m sorry if it sounds harsh, but that’s how it is.

Dear OP. Things aren’t as bad as you think they are. This is hardly at the level of the butchering of KR and their refusal to take away the GCD. That was an amputation to the engineer class; this is just a punch to the crotch.

So IP’s been nerfed. It’s weaker to condition removal now, we’ve lost around 30% of burn uptime, and its been all done in the name of ‘increasing build diversity’ which is the painful part. Come on ANet devs, if you really wanted to increase build diversity you’d just drop the ‘on-crit’ portion so anyone can use the trait reliably. No need to sugarcoat it.

Also, even if they nerfed Sigil of Battle, there’s still Sigil of Strength. Heh, if I’m forced to use Sigil of Strength that’s one less ICD I have to keep track of – even better! As for Elixir S, if you can’t swap kits or heal, you just have to play more conservatively and save a dodge for after it wears off. I can live with that if it means Eles have to do the same and lose their dodge/dodge/mist/hooray no more conditions/dodge/dodge combo.

On the bright side, if you don’t follow Jonathan Sharp’s advice to try and keep your 6k hp Healing Turret alive in a team fight (good luck if you do), you can get a free complete condition removal every 20 seconds in addition to the usual benefits of detonating your Healing Turret since OC’s cooldown will always synch up. Assuming of course they reduce the cooldown of Healing Turret’s OC to 20s and compensated for a nerf to the initial heal via the OC somewhat reasonably. They might realize its too OP and not do it. /shrug

All in all, nothing much to complain about unless you’re new to the engineer class and aren’t desensitized yet.

I’m just happy they aren’t reducing build diversity in the name of increasing it, like they did last patch. Or maybe I’m happy because I’ve been asked by my regular tPvP team to play mesmer, and like every other patch the devs say they’re ‘in a good place’. Hooray for class stability!

Edit: typos.

Ayestes.1273:

…

It’s easy to see why they removed 100nades in light of the quickness nerf, and if I’m honest with myself the old KR was a little too powerful for certain bunker builds too. Before someone comes in and tells me how eles and mesmers get powerful low cost traits too, I’m aware but I don’t really want to compare classes – that’s ANet’s design vision and I don’t play enough of anything but engineer and mesmer to form a useful opinion.

Regarding the new KR, I’ve spent the last two days trying out every effect and forming combos around them. I can tell you MagBomb and Glue Trail have potential – only if you don’t overload your slots with kits and make them impossible to reliably trigger. I found myself using Healing Turret even though I love the Medkit because I cannot afford to have a magnetic shield pop seconds before I need to toss out a magnetic bomb. Kit Refinement is making me limit my kit slots. /sigh

With the global internal cooldown this is the logical way to use KR now. I really wonder if its worth 10 points for a single semi-useful effect on a hidden 20 second cooldown. If I take a step back and look at my current list of builds for sPvP, I’ve benched every single one that had 3 kits, and reworked a few that used 2. It’s pretty scary how build defining the old KR was, and how useless the new one is in comparison.

Maybe they’re not idiots and they’re trying to steer us towards less kit usage. But why though? It makes no sense, what does that accomplish? You say their goal is build diversity, so where does this KR change fit into it?

If they really wanted to give us more build diversity, couldn’t they have looked at bugged and broken traits like Scope and Acidic Elixirs? Perhaps make some of our Grandmaster traits have more impact? Look at Armor Mods and Adrenal Implants. Why couldn’t they just have swapped the old KR with one of those?

I still stand by my opinion that ANet are detached. They have their vision of what the engineer should be, and apparently multikit engineers with the old KR are too strong to be in it. 100nades is too much burst to have since quickness was nerf. That’s is fine. I’m sure they have numbers and trends to back up their changes.

However their new KR is too clunky to be used with multikits which is counter-intuitive, and turret buffs don’t address the most pressing issues with turret builds. The things they changed that worked on paper worked, but not the things that needed practical testing.

Sigh. I wish I still had your faith in ANet. I guess that’s where we differ – you think they’re patient and responsible, I think they have detached designers who have no time to play the classes they’re changing. I think they are understaffed with a mountain of backlogged bugs and issues to fix with no manpower to do it. Maybe we’re both wrong and the reality is somewhere in between.

I hope I’m just being overtly pessimistic. I do like the game after all.

Moddo.7105:

irakai.6891:

Having two condition removers for free – that is, having to use FT and EG and spend 10 points in traits – is too powerful!

So 2 condition removers every 20secs is OP for 10pts. Why is a condition removal every 9 secs not? Go look at Ele traits in water line. Also take a look a Guardian traits. 1 condition every 10secs passive..they don’t even have to devote a skill slot and switch to it to achieve this. And these are class that already have a much better condition removal system in place. Imagine if 10pt instead of kit refinement was a boon you could get for hitting tool-belt skill. That would be better than what we have now..And ele one is on a 9 secs

Its 2 condition removers every 20 seconds provided you use two utility slots for EG and FT. To be fair, EG and FT are also very good kits for our survivability, so its not exactly terrible synergy.

The thing is, I’m just stating that this is ANet’s vision for us. They say we’re supposed to be a tanky mid ranged skirmisher – I guess having 2 condition removers at the cost of 10 points and 2 utility slots is too tanky for their liking.

I’ve said it before months ago that when it comes to power balance between classes, we as individual players do not really have much credit to our opinions because this game is balanced around classes working in teams, and ANet might have a better big picture view with collected statistics.

While recent changes have shown that they might be clueless too, we’re powerless to stop them because this is their game. The most we can do is provide a compelling reason as to why their change was bad, and hope they read the forums and agree.

However, you don’t need numbers to tell you the current KR change in regards to global cooldown is stupid. It’s pretty much useless in builds with more than 2 kits. Add to that the fact that they think a little damage increase is going to make turrets useful again shows that they’re disconnected when the reality of the class.

I would actually be somewhat okay with the changes if they weren’t done so poorly.

Ayestes.1273:

irakai.6891:

…

Yes I’ve tried Turret builds pre-patch. My impression has always been that Turrets are too vulnerable. That doesn’t make my impression correct though, and with these changes I see many of the Turrets being more feasible to use.

I’m not the best engineer out there, but I can tell you any class with any build that has has half decent AoE can take out turrets easily while still hurting the engineer, if he places the turrets close by. I’ve been nading turret engineers all day.

Targeting is still crap. Rifle is completely useless against the illusion/pet classes. Luckily, its great for Static Discharge. Flame and Thumper are AoE so they’re.. okay I guess? But they haven’t really changed anything fundamental. This buff is like giving an broken car a new paintjob and rims. It looks nice, still doesn’t start.

Now I know ANet likes to take things slow, but I don’t know what they’re going to get out of this change. A better way to start would have been to drop the cooldowns or increase survivability across the board so they can actually watch turrets in play, rather than… die in seconds and provide no useful data other than that “they die in seconds”.

Ayestes.1273:

That is also what I got from the State of the Game discussion. They have the right plan. The right ideas. Buffing things that are weak so that build diversity is increased.

The problem is this patch hasn’t really made any new builds viable, at least in sPvP.

Okay, maybe I’m wrong and bad at playing my engineer. But we all agree that they’ve gutted 100nades, and any other build that revolved around the old KR right? They’ve also hurt EG-centric builds with the Rifled Barrels fix.

Maybe there’s some magical turret build I haven’t found. Perhaps someone’s found a way to let their turrets survive more than a few seconds. Maybe KR’s actually very good and someone managed to reliably use it in a hectic fight.

Perhaps I’m not completely horrible and turrets and KR are broken. Can we agree then, that they’ve actually lowered our build diversity?

Honestly, I hope I’m the problem. It’ll be a lot easier for me to learn a new build than to get them to patch things.

Ayestes.1273:

Specifically with Kit Refinement, I think people will figure out how to make good use of it. It will take a bit of work, especially in multi-kit builds, but I think it still has a place. I don’t think this trait is lost by any means, and I don’t think it was necessarily to a successful direct-dmg build.

True, you can do pretty decent burst with a number of Power Rifle builds without the old KR.

The key here is control. This trait is stupid because we cannot properly control it without drastically sacrificing flexibility in kit swapping. It doesn’t matter what it does. It could fire cats and dogs out of our backpack for all I care. It just has to do it when I want it to.

Ayestes.1273:

When you mention playing a class throughout, what level is through enough for you? No single person will find all the quirks, bugs, strengths, and weaknesses of a class if they specifically played it trying to find them all for years.

I understand its very hard to find bugs and overpowered mechanics as a dev. When you design or code something, its your baby and you’ll find it harder to find the problems with it. It’s always better to have someone look at your work to tell you if anything is wrong. That’s why there are concepts like pair programming.

There’s also not enough time in the world to thoroughly test something as complicated as a class on your own. But its entirely possible to play a class in your free time while having fun and learning lots about it. If you like a class, you’ll also find out what other players are doing with it and learn what’s trending.

100nades survived a very long time for something the class balance team considered too powerful. If it hadn’t gotten so much attention and vitrol from the other classes, they’d have blissfully ignored it.

This shows a certain amount of detachment from them. As though they look at the engineer not from the player’s seat, but from the public’s perspective. The changes they made to KR just amplifies this sense of detachment. All I’m saying is they need to get attached to the class to have their vision make sense to the rest of us.

But that’s not the only way forward. They could also use public test servers. Or they should try speaking to the community.. or at least the top % of the community. It’s hard to judge who belongs in the top % for WvW and PvE, but its entirely possible in sPvP.

And as I’ve said before, unless the top engineers are playing a different game than we are they would not think the recent changes to KR cooldowns are good. They would also have picked up on the bugs with turrets almost immediately.

Resouled.5614:

Well it’s somewhat decent for static discharge I supose..

Hmm, I guess if I go deep into Tools you’ll be right, since there really isn’t anything else I’d grab in a Static Discharge build.

But then again, if I were to make that build, I’d rather invest my points elsewhere, like Firearms. Also, I don’t see the point in going more than 15 points into Tools… and even that extra 5 points for Inertial Converter is a stretch.

Honestly, they should just change the trait to something else that works. I sure as hell wouldn’t miss it, but I’m a pure sPvPer so I have something against standing still in a fight. :P

I’m afraid you just have to get used to it. It’s actually quite accurate at close to medium range.

You’ll also notice that most of our skills across our weapons and kits are only truly efficient at melee to medium range. Poison Volley isn’t bugged, it’s just following the trend.

Also, why are the lot of you defending the devs for shipping buggy patches and making questionable changes?

It’s not like engineers are overpowered and causing imbalance in sPvP, WvW or PvE. Or are causing some irreversible problem to the game. They always have the option to piggy back certain changes to a future patch – what they’ve done is silly.

I’m a programmer. I know there’s datelines, there’s need for quick fixes, and sometimes people are given unfamiliar problems to solve and end up making things worse. I’ve been there, done that.

Maybe they don’t have enough manpower to play each class thoroughly to make balance changes. That’s fine, I suggest they hire more, but I’d understand if that isn’t feasible. So spend more time perhaps? Not feasible as well? Well, I’m sure there’s something that can be done. Test servers would help. Listening to their top players would help too. I don’t claim to be an amazing engineer, but I reckon they wouldn’t like the counter-intuitive crap KR’s been these last two patches.

But the bugs are silly. I mean c’mon, any decent programmer would test his own code before sending it down the pipe. Even if he didn’t have the time to do it, any decent QA tester would have gone through each trait/gear effecting turrets and caught the bug with Deployable Turrets. I know sometimes the coder isn’t the dev with came up with the change in the first place. But any dev with love for his work would beta test it himself to make sure it worked.

And if they did, you can bet Jon Peters or someone else would be here telling us not to worry, fixes are shipping out soon, because what company wants to look like idiots for overlooking simple testing?

Look, we’re not obliged to lick their shoes. We’re paying customers. Well, at least I am. They did a poor job with the previous KR change and this as well, and shipped bugs a kindergartner could catch. I love their game, and ANet on a whole isn’t half bad either, but if you’re too much in love with them to see and point out their faults then.. well I guess too bad.

Ayestes.1273:

Since I took notes and created a thread on the topic, I think you can have my assurances that I watched it. To me it’s astonishing that that State of the Game wasn’t wonderful to hear from everyone. I loved the Engineer discussion and am very optimistic of the Engineer future because of it. The patch only gave me more evidence to support my optimistic impression.

Have you tried to make a turret engineer before the patch? I did and the problem I came across was threefold. Turrets were hitting for insignificant damage and were too easily killed for the long cooldown they incurred which only started after the turret blew up. Worse still, they had horrible A.I. and targeting problems.

They talked about damage for Rifle, a cripple for Thumper and that was it. Nothing was really said about cooldowns or durability. I didn’t expect them to mention a fix to the A.I. since that would have been a general improvement to all minion classes, but there was nothing about improving targeting or making it player assisting. It sounded like they didn’t know what the biggest problems with turrets were!

In the patch, we got a cooldown buff for Rocket and Flame, of which only the Flame Turret was significantly changed, and a little more health for the Net Turret. It’s nice, but turrets are still relatively useless in sPvP since the other two more pressing issues aren’t addressed.

Why were you optimistic? Was it because of what they mentioned with the KR changes? They spoke about it being too powerful and it needed to be brought in line with other 10 point traits. They also mentioned more utility than straight up damage. That’s fine, nothing to be excited about. They failed to mention how unusable it was in its recently changed formed – now that was disappointing.

Ayestes.1273:

The previous Kit Refinement change was terrible, and I talked about it back then too. The rest of the changes at the time were wonderful though. We all talked about how Kit Refinement should’ve been nerfed in a different way, and what did they do? They did pretty much exactly what we all discussed back then. They nerfed it and took the internal cooldowns on top of internal cooldowns away to simplify it.

The problem with the previous change to KR was complication – I agree. It was also bugged like hell so you could still chain certain effects together, and 100nades actually still worked. Kind of defeated the purpose of it all, which made me wonder if they tested it before they shipped.

The current problem with KR is the inability to trigger what you want in the heat of battle. If you want to use it, you’d have to severely limit your reactionary kit swapping and in exchange for a small advantage.

The change to effects were cool. MagBomb in particular. Good luck triggering it perfectly in a combo when you have more than two kits in your arsenal though. Opposing players don’t tend to stand around and let you do what you want, when you want. Waiting on a kit swap when you’re in a fight is borderline suicide.

Ayestes.1273:

The assumption they didn’t play Engineers with Kit Refinement to me is absurd. The assumption they lack QA testing is absurd as well. It adds nothing to the argument at hand. If you want to discuss how much you disagree with the changes, that’s great. That’s real discussion and there are points to be made on both sides. Assumptions that are inflammatory and boil down to “the devs are bad at their job” add absolutely nothing to the discussion and only serve to remove any good discussion that was around. Why should a dev read a thread that is essentially nothing but “you should be fired” from what is very likely someone who has no industry knowledge at all? There are ways to discuss all this, and even if I disagree with you there are good points in what is brought up. The way it’s brought about now though accomplishes almost nothing.

I know its absurb. That’s why I said this should have to be asked in the first place. I guess I’m just venting.

But consider – if they did play the class thoroughly, would they have shipped the previous version of KR? Spend 10 minutes in sPvP and anyone would be annoyed. They would also realized that it was bugged as hell. If they had QA would they ship the turret changes bugged with the most important turret trait? It’s rare to make a turret based build without Deployable Turrets, unless you’re just using Rifle Turret for static discharge like I do with my Power Rifle builds. Besides, testing the new turrets with all the turret related traits would be the most logical thing to do!

By the way, when have I said anyone should be fired? If anything more people should be hired for play testing and class balance.

Still works. Maybe you’re lagging? It’s a bit hard to land with my latency, I tend to get it off only 3/4 of the time.

Ayestes.1273:

There are far too many assumptions in this thread. Apparently we can pick and choose what the devs say and determine it as lies or truth depending on whether it supports our argument or not. I don’t see how this discussion does anything at all to help us, and from the look on this thread I’d honestly feel the desire to not even balance the Engineer at all anymore. Which is probably the opposite effect you all want, but then I will assume alongside all these other assumptions they are professional enough to ignore these kind of threads.

My assumptions are based off what the devs have said in the SotG interview and the changes they’ve made to our class from day 1. And honestly, they’ve said very little.

I’ve been pretty okay with the changes made, even though they were mostly nerfs. Hell, I defended ANet quite a bit back then. I even took a break off the forums, because I didn’t have anything to say – they seemed to have the right idea about balance. I rather spend my free time playing.

But the previous change to KR which started the global shared cooldowns annoyed me to no end. It showed that whoever thought it up doesn’t actually use KR, or doesn’t play multi-kit engineers, or engineer at all. I came back to the forums to say my piece in hopes they actually read the class forums. I’m beginning to suspect they don’t.

Then they talked about turret buffs in a frankly embarrassing interview that showed how clueless they were about the class. If you haven’t watched it yet, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zCUvIrH2BlU&t=35m32s

I don’t care how many people are working on class balance. It is not important. Be it 2 or 200, it doesn’t matter if changes are not made with relevance to how the class is played and with quality assurance.

Amadeus.5687:

On the topic of Power builds? It’s to early to say for me, I got a lot of testing I need to go with, but I have a feeling stastic discharge and that rifle Turret is gonna have a hot date with me soon!

Power Rifle with Elixir H, Rifle Turret, Elixir U (yay stunbreaker!) and Elixir B. HGH might stacking, things go splat very quickly. Lots of fun in hotjoin!

Unfortunately, I go splat pretty fast too. I’m considering dropping Elixir B for TK – that way, I can use sigil of battle, so I only lose Fury which isn’t a bad trade at all.

@Rfreak

Dude, I’m disappointed in the class balance team too but you need to take a step back and chill out for a second. We’re not that bad. We’re definitely viable in tPvP.

I wreck faces in hotjoin pretty consistently despite using it mostly as a testbed for new builds. Hell, I just finished a match testing the new Elixir U in a burst rifle build. It isn’t 100nades, but it certainly killed other glass cannons in under 5 seconds.

Confusion condition builds with pistol and tool kit aren’t bad either. Yes, its not a scepter shatter mesmer but we’re not mesmers. But that’s a good thing, in a way. We’re cooler and aren’t purple.

I run p/p with TK and Grenades and Elixir S and HGH. Its similar to the HGH cond everyone’s hyping about, but without Elixir B. In exchange I get a block, a pull and pry bar in exchange for might stacks and fury. It works great for me.

Firstly, we’re not that bad.

We can still put out decent numbers, our bunker options are decent and there are still burst builds beside 100nades. While we’re not as outstanding as other classes, we’re not Warriors, especially after the quickness nerf. Well, not yet. Hell, warriors aren’t even as bad as some of them would like you to believe.

The game isn’t broken guys. But I do have a problem with the way they adjust our class. It’s being done by people who don’t seem to play it. I’ve said it about the SotG interview too – they have no idea what we do. I predicted they’ll buff turrets in a disappointing manner because they don’t know what’s wrong with turrets in the first place. I think I was right.

I don’t think we need drastic buffs. We need changes that promote build diversity that MAKE SENSE. If they wanted to make turrets viable, they’d make them a lot more survivable or give them a lot lower cooldowns. Also, give them player-assisted targeting.

This just feels like a half-hearted attempt to quell the whining. Somewhat along the lines of “look guys, you can’t say we haven’t given you anything” before they turn their attention to some other class. Probably the warrior.

Until we get a class representative or at least someone on class balance or perhaps a dev with authority to play our kitten class, we’re not going to get jack in terms of useful changes. If you can’t live with that, I suggest you go roll something else or stop playing entirely.

Um, not to diss you or anything but your opponents didn’t really have a clue. You have no stunbreaker. You would die in seconds against a decent thief, warrior or mesmer. I’m not sure you’d fare that well against anything with decent ranged abilities either, like staff mesmer/necro/ele or bow ranger.

You also pop Supply Crate every single fight, 1v1. Now, that’s not a bad thing. But its a 3 minute cooldown, and in tPvP I really hesitate to use it in anything that’s not a game changing team fight.

All in all, its another curbstomp video and while I applaud you for the effort, it does not show that turret builds are viable.

No.

While the buffs were nice, they show that they’re making changes without actually playing the class. KR change to 20 second global for all effects is unthinkable for anyone who plays the class, and the new bugs with Deployable Turret is embarrassing because it shows no one actually sat down and made a turret engineer build after the changes.

Perhaps they have some idea or vision in their heads about how engineers currently are, and have some grand plan for us in the future. But until they familiarize themselves about how this class plays, the changes they make run the risk of being completely stupid.

Sladeakakevin.4162:

Do people seriously think that developers don’t play Engineer at all? ArenaNet is a multi-million dollar company and you SERIOUSLY don’t think their developers know a lot more about class balance than their players? It’s their job to do this, we all do it for fun. Of course they have people who play each class, it would be insane to think they don’t. A lot of these changes are made in mind with ALL other changes made to other classes, everyone likes to look at their one class and scream “STOP NERFING US!” but never take it into the big picture.

It’s not like these changes are permanent, they do a lot of things to “test the waters” and see if it works or not. These forums are a mess, crying every patch I swear.

You know how I realized FT was broken with Deployable Turrets? I spent 5 minutes putting together a turret build and went into a sPvP match with a buddy.

5 minutes. That’s all it took. If a dev bothered to spend 5 minutes testing the new patch changes and the subsequent cascade of bugs that will follow, they’d realize its broken too.

You know how I realize the KR change is stupid? I think back to all my times playing my engineer with more than 2 kits. I realize that I swap kits whenever I need something from it. It’s a reactionary. I can’t fit in a effect on a 20 second global cooldown that fires whenever I swap to a kit into a useful rotation. It’s going to go off whether I want to or not, because sometimes I just need that FT for knockback or Bomb Kit for smoke.

This isn’t a whine about the nerfs. Fine, KR was OP for 10 points. Its their vision and I can live with it. They even buffed Elixir U like crazy – I’m definitely not complaining about instant use + stunbreaker. They nerfed EG with the Rifled Barrels fix, but that’s fine too – that was an unintended thing.

I’m just sad that there are things that arrive broken on patch day. Things that don’t take weeks and extensive play testing to be caught, but mere bloody minutes and some attention.

And before you say KR on a 20 second global, hidden cooldown isn’t broken, let me ask you – do you actually play on a strict timer based rotation when using kits? Do you spam smoke off cd? Or frost grenade? Or FT knockback? Of course you don’t, because you have enough intelligence to keep them ready for when you actually need them.

This is not about class power. Changing KR and fixing Deployable Turrets isn’t going to make us that much stronger – just fix us. And if you can’t see that, I’m sorry for you.

That’s all we ask. It’s not a lot to ask and it shouldn’t be asked, but in light of the recent changes it seems necessary.

It’s nice that we’re getting some attention and bug fixes. Thanks for that, even though we came out significantly weaker because of it.

But it feels like no play testing has been done at all, as evident by KR having stupid hidden global cooldown, which makes trying to proc the desired effect in the heat of battle nearly impossible with 2-3 kits, as well as Flame Turret being broken with Deployable Turrets, a trait you’d most likely have if you play tested a turret engineer.

Now I’m sure you have a reason for not having public test servers. But since you don’t, could you please assign someone to play the class on a regular basis? Preferably in tPvP or sPvP?

Thanks.

Having two condition removers for free – that is, having to use FT and EG and spend 10 points in traits – is too powerful!

We’re supposed to be a tanky medium ranged thingy, and having free condition removers would make us too tanky, because we’ve got so many tanking tools built in already!

All right, I’m done. It was kinda too good, especially for 10 points. They really should have kept the old stuff and pushed it up a tier or two in traits. Its not like anyone uses Scope anyways right?

(P.S. If you use Scope, it’s been broken since forever and you’re bad and should feel bad.)

So the devs heard we didn’t like the global cool down on our awesome KR procs, and thought the right thing to do was to replace all the useful KR effects and keep the horribly long global cooldown while applying it to everything, thus completely missing the point that it is impossible to control what procs when you’re using many kits and THAT IS A BAD THING.

They’re not that strong now devs! Good job, you’ve certainly seen to that! Can we please have individual cooldowns back?

Turrets are still mostly bad because they still die very quickly and are piloted by drunk kittens. They need to give us a ‘Throw Ball of Yarn’ skill or something to make our turrets pay attention. The 5 minute self-destruct is pretty funny because I’d like to see a turret last 5 minutes in any fight, even with a engineer hitting it constantly with a wrench.

At least there were some bugfixes. Too bad that also nerfed the Elixir Gun for me, but on the bright side, the new KR is making me rethinking using a EG in my build anyway. Grenades firing without LoS is nice too.

Well, time to test out everything in-game. Then probably go play something else until the next engineer patch hits.

Zinwrath.2049:

Also, if you listened to his little “description” of the engineer…he considered us a tanky mid ranged fighter….doesnt sound like arenanet ever really considered us to be able to excel at burst damage. Especially when the guy balancing your profession considers you a tanky class…and it makes sense, notice the engineer rune set is toughness, and the default spvp gear it gives you is rune of earth (toughness and protection duration/proc). Then consider no matter what weapon your holding, most attacks give you extra benefit for being close.

I don’t know, is there a class out there that cannot be tanky? I can build and play a pretty survivable condition thief, and we all know just about every class out there can make a bunker spec. We aren’t even the best bunker class out there, although we’re not the worst. We only average base health and medium armor.

So are we supposed to be tanky regardless of how we build, or am I missing the point?

Either way, looking forward to patch day. Whatever happens guys, remember this is a no-subscription game. If things are really screwed, just walk away and come back when they’ve got a clue.

google.3709:

also..

for the people talking about point holding in sPvP, please try things before you speak so you have a base… have you guys considered that a 3 second cripple will not do anything to anyone? currently the turret has a 50s cool down, and 30s for special skill which you cannot time and a radius of 240..

so for the current theory to work, you would have to kite your enemy at meele range of the turrent for it to hit, and keep him there for at least 3 second for 380-440 damage and 3 second cripple, and if you use the special ability, you will hit for a mind blowing 1k damage and 1s knock down.. assuming it had survived this long. and this only works more melee. 2/8 classes, and thief 2 shots you so that leaves warrior’s incredible AoE swing with GS..

this skill work work best to keep ranger’s pet busy at best :S

would you take this skill over tool kit which has AoE cripple/bleed on a 10s cool down, confusion, pull and block ?

My answer to your question is a resounding NO.

My question to you is, why are you even asking the obvious? Those of us who talked about using turrets for sPvP are simply theorizing how they may be useful once appropriately buffed.

There’s two ways to approach improve turrets.

• Make them semi-permanent point defense structures. Dial their health and toughness up to 11, crank up the raw damage, add damage on detonation, keep the long cooldowns. Dropping a turret is an important decision, not something you’ll spam off cooldown.

• Make them throwaway helpers. Keep their stats close to what they are, give them minor damage buffs and more utility, drop their extended cooldown to 30 seconds. Engineers will be encouraged to drop and detonate turrets when the situation calls for it.

Option 1 seems to make sense with the traits we have right now, but it promotes immobility which feels like a huge detriment in this game.

Option 2 doesn’t benefit much from traits and repairing, since you’d rather just pick up or detonate the turret since the cooldowns are short, but it makes playing with turrets more interactive.

Personally, I don’t care what they do as long as it’s viable. I only hope they don’t go for some silly middle ground and screw it all up.

Aristio.2784:

Zinwrath.2049:

to make it better for kiting players while holding a point.

How does one kite a player while holding a point?

Won’t kiting said player, bring you outside the radius of the objective? If you try to kite him, while in the circle; that just won’t work since they could just stand directly in the middle and circle turn with you.

Depends on how large is the point. Also, kiting doesn’t just involve running. You can knock someone away, blind them, knock them down, etc.

If turrets are useful and super tanky so they don’t die to collateral damage from a 1v1 or 2v1, then ideally you’ll want to keep the enemy within turret range (on point) to whittle them down while they try to kill you or get you off point.

Look, if you play bunker specs in sPvP you’ll know intuitively how turrets can fit in to point defense. It has a lot of weaknesses, sure, but every bunker build needs a weakness to make things fun.

EDIT: edited “chin .k in the armor” to “weakness” because racism.

Dear OP, if you don’t want turrets as point control, what exactly do you want them for? Honestly, if ANet are willing to give people the mobility that they’re crying for, I say just rename them bots and make them reskins of necro pets, because they’re essentially the same thing.

The fact that we have traits for precise deployment, repair and increasing the longevity of turret shows that they intended turrets to be a semi-permanent fixture that engineers would want to fight around. The long cooldowns are there to discourage mobility and act as a balancing mechanism – the turret engineer decides his territory, and he has to accept the consequences of that decision rather than pick up his turrets and redeploy on a whim.

Turrets done right would have been an alternative bunker playstyle – it forces attackers to either kill the engineer out of range of his turrets, or burst him down in his nest before his turrets do too much damage.

Well, what about balance then?

It doesn’t really matter if you made turrets insanely strong in WvW because the sheer overwhelming number of AoEs will crush however many turret nests pop up.

It also doesn’t matter in sPvP because a team can easily overcome dumb immobile structures, even if they had the same HP as a player – the Engineer(s) casting those turrets would have to give up traits and skills to use them, and they’d be definitely easier to kill and a lot less mobile than a bunker build.

Think of it: Turrets would be strong 1v1 or even 2v1 if the enemy is forced to fight on point – but then there’s many, many ways to force someone to fight off point. 3v1 and above, even if the turrets were invincible the engineer would be pulp in seconds because he’s not specced to be a tanky bunker. And since the turrets won’t be invincible, they’ll likely get pulped along with the engineer through collateral AoE damage.

In PvE however, strong turrets would trivialize open world content outside of boss fights. But then again, Engineers already trivialize most PvE content with perma-swiftness/vigor and bombs/grenades so I for one don’t see the point. Hell, I wouldn’t even give up my super speed and infinite dodge and effective dps at any range to have super strong turrets. I’d probably farm a lot slower that way.

So I really don’t see why we can’t have tanky and powerful turrets. It feels like that was what ANet was going for anyway before they chickened out and made them completely weak so they didn’t have to worry about balancing them.

Unless ANet is willing to drastically change turret raw damage and health, these changes will be nothing to write home about.

I’m okay with long cooldowns on turret actives and laying turrets. It promotes immobility, which is the point of laying turrets – they are point defense structures after all. They need to be menacing when faced head on, and hard to break with an engineer defending and repairing them. Hell, I’ll settle for annoying rather than menacing.

The problem is right now they feel like they are made of kittens. They also hit like kittens. Note that when I say kittens, I mean infant cats with their soft, furry, clawless paws.

The sad thing is turrets would function better if they were truly made of kittens. At least some people would be nice enough to stop destroying them.

Learn to circle-strafe while tossing grenades, dropping bombs and medkits. Get Speedy Kits as your priority, learn how to keep perma-swiftness up.

Grenade and dodge everything that attacks from range. Kite everything that doesn’t while blowing them up with bombs. Drop medkits when they’re off cooldown to give yourself a steady supply of emergency health.

To be honest, you can trait and gear almost however you like, as long as you get Speedy Kits. I also recommend Invigorating Speed, which gives you perma-vigor as well. As long as you learn how to move while attacking and dodge big hits/cc, there’s nothing much that can stop you.

Disappointed. Devs were awkward as hell, not much information on changes were given, and information given showed that they didn’t know what to do with the class. Turrets need more than just a tack on buff to be useful.

Devs, there’s no point in being secretive with your changes before you release them. Air them out to the community through a public test server, let statistics and feedback help you.

Dear god what a mess.

Adding an internal cooldown is a ridiculous way of toning down Kit Refinement.

This is a 10 second invisible cooldown IN ADDITION to the base invisible cooldowns on each kit effect that was have to keep track of. If you want to nerf the trait, tone down the effects, not making it clunky and unreliable.

Also, thank you for FINALLY adding a detonate to Flame Blast. Its something I’ve suggested and been asking for since the beta, and I’m glad to finally see it in.

Please consider giving damaging Turrets some form of scaling next so they stop being completely useless.

All I think off the top of my head – the guy was probably using a shortbow, running with a Carrion amulet and a signet build. He probably had 22-24k health, and when he was dying he just hit his Signet of Stone.

You gotta admit, it’s kinda of broken for getting blast finisher buffs.

What I don’t understand is why isn’t BOB fixed. It’s a big bloody bomb for crying out loud. On a 30 second cooldown! If anything deserves a blast finisher it does.

ANet has been pretty sensible about buffs and nerfs. Besides, its way too early to throw out balance changes. They’ll do it once the majority of the class bugs are fixed and people are given time to play around with the classes as they are meant to be.

Condition removal is your only hope. This is the biggest reason why its so hard to 1v1 a good mesmer. Its not hard spotting the player among the clones, but who needs clones to hide amongst when you can blow them up and throw 4-8 stacks of confusion on your enemy?

Of course, not standing near the clones when they blow up helps too, but I know its hard. It’s not that bad when I’m on my ranger since I have range and mobility, but when I’m on my engineer I’m lost as to what I can do about it.

Or you can try rolling a necro – just toss the confusion back to them! I love doing that.

Im Too Godlike.5629:

Saying guardians are the best at point defense, thieves are best at roaming, and mesmers are best at 1v1 is really ridiculous. I couldnt find a more false statement on this forum if i tried. Pvp depends on skill. A guardian with a burst setup can be just as good of a roamer as a thief (often better). In short, a skilled roamer/pt defender/1v1er is better than an unskilled one, classes make no difference.

Wrong. Classes do make a difference.

Have you tried roaming on a mesmer, which doesn’t have a swiftness buff on demand? Or point defending with a thief, where you have to stay on point or your team loses? Or tried to get a good bunker guardian off point with any class but a bunker-buster engineer? Or tried dueling a good 1v1 specced mesmer who knows your class as well as his?

There are certain things some classes can do better than others. That is a GOOD THING, because this also means every class has a counter and something they cannot do.

Actually its more likely that due to the large number of people leaving losing teams constantly, you have a higher chance of being put into the losing team to balance out the numbers.

I’ve been in several matches where people were leaving the losing team one by one, leaving only 3 people playing versus 8 as people join and leave again and again.

When you look at the scores and see a lot of people with 0 points, chances are you’re experiencing the same thing.

That’s the thing – the mesmer must not be able to react fast enough to hit distortion before his hp drops to 49%. That’s not hard when you have a proper burst thief against a burst mesmer, who is likely to be squishy and will only have 17k hp – one mug/backstab/autoattack combo will take out at least half of that, and suddenly the mesmer is on the backfoot.

Also, remember that the thief always has the option of baiting out fields by going into stealth, hiding behind something and letting the mesmer fidget/throw out AoEs before actually going in with a steal.

If you think mesmers are a thief’s worst nightmare, try a good condition staff/scepter+whatever necro with all his cooldowns up, especially when you’re trying to assassinate him solo on point.

The only problem with pistol whip is it grants evasion.

It is spammable, CCs, and makes the user invulnerable. That’s the same problem I have with Blurred Frenzy. 2-3 seconds of invulnerability with a built in stun/immobilize. Its slightly worse with BF, since even if you dodge the skill, there’s likely to be a Phantasm somewhere nearby still wacking away at you.

So even if you predict the move, dodge it, or eat it and chug a stun breaker, what can you do? You can’t counterattack. This isn’t like a warrior’s HB where you can follow up with your own burst. Where’s the cost and risk to using these skills?

Your best option is to heal/buff up and try to time when the invulnerability ends so that you can counter, but against a smart opponent who has dodges/stun breakers you won’t get your CC/burst off and suddenly its PW/BF to the face again.

But in the end, this is a team game. You can’t run an entire team of thieves and mesmers in a tourney and hope to beat a well-designed team composition. I wouldn’t shed a tear if ANet nerfs some of these skills, but outside of dueling I have no problems with them.

Braxxus.2904:

2v2 = Thief / Thief, Mesmer / Thief, Mesmer / Mesmer. (or go home)

3v3 = Thief / Thief / Mesmer, Thief / Mesmer / Mesmer, Thief /Mesmer / Guard, Thief / Guard / Thief, Mesmer / Guard / Mesmer (or go home)

Arena implemented, enjoy.

I’m only SLIGHTLY sarcastic here

You forgot Guard / Guard / Guard, and their wonderful circle of rez.

Sjach Darasv.3729:

Mesmer is easily one way to hard counter a thief, even in a 1v1 a skilled mesmer and a skilled thief the outcome will be either the mesmer wins, or the theif escapes.

It also depends on their builds.

Burst mesmer vs burst thief boils down to if the thief can make the mesmer lose 51% of their hp before they get off a distortion and heal, since most of them will run with Illusionary Invigoration.

Bunker mesmer has it a lot easier against burst thieves, but condition thieves can give them a run for their money if played cautiously.

There’s quite a few more build pairings I could list, but to summarize those two classes do decent against each other.

About sPvP balance, I believe there won’t be any significant buffs or nerfs incoming to any classes. ANet is likely to focus on fixing the numerous bugs plaguing every class first before deciding if anything needs balancing.

The problem is against good thieves they will do their burst, run away, and before you go out of combat come back and kill you. This is my experience with defending a point and in team fights, btw.

1v1 you have to do damage to them in the short period while they’ve waste their burst on your invulnerability/dodge/toolkit shield, and hopefully land a immobilize as well. But against good thieves built for 1v1 and burst you can expect a shadowstep/inflitrator’s arrow away the moment you gain any sort of advantage.

Also, if you think thieves are bad to 1v1 try a good mesmer built for dueling. I still have no idea how to beat those.

One of the biggest reasons why rocket boots doesn’t work as a escape is because it doesn’t have evasion on the self-knockback animation. When you’re fighting more than one person with CCs being spammed on you, you often get locked down again mid-flight.

The grenade kit is useful, but only against AI. Anyone with half a brain is going to step away from the red circles.

Also, remember that a warrior can easily hit 10k-15k with HB, has several tools to ensure their targets stay still for the whole duration, and by sacrificing two utilities can put up stability and frenzy to guarantee one death.

Don’t forget the thief’s Pistol Whip – the lesser version of hundred blades with a stun and evasion that’s usable at least 2-3 times in a row. Or the mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy, which has a immobilize and evasion, also on a 8s CD.

All those are melee skills that root their caster in place and provide incredible damage. Honestly, I don’t mind the fact that HB does that much damage. At least it doesn’t do it while making its caster invulnerable!

See the rifle for what it is. A medium/short range control weapon that deals average burst in a power/crit build.

The only problem with it is that its 5 is very slow to start up and finish, its 3 has a weird arc of fire and deals only full damage at less than melee range, and its 2 can be obstructed/avoided when its 1 would normally hit.

We don’t need the Warrior’s rifle. We just need improvements on our own.

It lasts all of one second. Perhaps even less. It’s nearly impossible to coordinate a combo with someone else over voice chat.

The only use of it is to self-combo with mines or exploding turrets, and even that is hard to do in the middle of fights with 250-300 ping, which is the norm for oceanic players on NA servers.

Perhaps make it 1.5 seconds. Or two. At least make it so that it doesn’t disappear the moment I blink.

Thank you.