Guild Wars 2

Yupp, these were the nerfs of that update.
but tbf, orbital strike wasn’t already landing on a foe reliably, it was always way too easy to sidestep it, especially in wvw. Have you ever seen a roamer being dumb enough to get hit twice by it? I mean, sure I have, but that was more a lack of skill on their side, not something I could pull off against a reasonable good player.
but now it only has a 10 sec cd, outside of the actual mortar tb, so you can keep an enemy more effectively on their toes, bait their dodges and blast your fields way more often, especially if you stay close and comfy in melee range. Bonus: I can take this rng blastfinisher and are not even forced to slot mortar itself for it.

>Kinetic Battery nerf was devastating
never really liked that trait, tbh. way too unreliable, but I understand that this is just my personal opinion. Still, in exchange we got the gadgeteer & lock on changes, which especially s/d builds will profit from. PBR both has nice dmg, low cd on the tb skill, and uses the ammo system on a 4sec cd, and especially because of the latter, it kinda serves as successor to the defense from the old APT trait.

Additionally, photon forges’ tb skill particle accelerator only has 8sec cd, that has slightly less dmg than surprise shot, but pierces 5 targets and cripples. Even better, it comes on top of the photon wall that will reflect projectiles above 50% heat while also getting bigger and always moves with you.

so slot rifle, photon wall, PBR and rifle turret, and you can spam s/d bolts on top of fairly hard hitting skills that also apply cripple and – in case of PBR – additionally daze.
S/D probably will have a comeback sooner than you think

As I said, yes this update came with some nerfs, but in general, I’d say the pros way outweight the cons, at least in my opinion. I mean is -5% boon duration really a game-changer? What did we get in turn: EPK has no internal cd anymore. Big boomer, and blasting zone both giving awesome stats, and minesweeper is a surprisingly decent trait, especially in wvw.
Gadgeteer is freakking amazing as well, and outside of s/d builds, if you pick gadgeteer, reactive lenses now profit from it as well.

I had a hiatus for 2 years, and I have to say, the current state of the engineer is the best I’ve seen it in since 3 years, arguably even since the death of 100 nades…

As Trogdor pointed out, the Server you choose only matters for WvW.
So if you want to participate in large-scale pvp (what WvW basically is), you want to choose the right server rather now than later, since Transfers are expensive, and will lock you on a Server once you have opened your first character.
Ofc you always have the option to delete all your characters and transfer freely. It’s not even as bad as it sounds for new players, since you will keep your gold / other currencies and all items in your bank, even if all characters are deleted.

Anyways, to choose the right server, I’d recommend to read a few threads about the following keywords:
Roaming.
Zerging.
Blobbing.
GvG’s.
Karma Train.

Top tier Servers (gold-league) usually have a huge playerbase, leading to ques on their actual WvW maps (you still can enter eotm – “Edge of the mist” which is a unranked overflow map, ruled by power-levelers and Karma-Trains, doing nothing but Objective-flipping for loot / karma / badges / wxp and xp). Due to their big playerbase, most Servers on the top tend to blobb up and have lag-heavy large-scale encounters 24/7. Roaming does exist to a certain extend, but usually ends in being steamrolled by a bypassing zerg or blobb.
PvD (player vs door) is the prefered method to take objectives, and the advertised besiegments of giant keeps always never happens. Either they kick in the door and take it, or they fail horribly.

On the lower end (bronze-league) you have mostly desolted maps, bare of any players. Here and there a guild-group can be seen during prime-time (usually from 4pm-1am), but most people simply solo-roam, flip supply-camps and are subject to stomps against slightly larger groups from all the servers above them who “out-blobb” them. Occasionally you will have enjoyable fights, making smart use of siege, but most of the time the maps are simply empty.

In the middle you have Silver-league, which has a strong prime-time, that almost always forms blobbs that barely fill the map-que, and have many roamers and guild-groups in the off-hours to downgrade other Servers’ stuff and defend their own.
Upgrades do matter, and fights for objectives can last from 10min to several hours. The downside is that the servers in Silver-league have usually still a rather small, but more active community, which leads to coverage issues that is heavy exploited by the other servers who tend to be strong to exactly that time.
My server f.e. has a strong prime-time & nightcapping crew, but we lack numbers in the early morning and around noon. Therefore you will often earn nothing but frustration if all your efforts are gone down into the sink the next time you log in, because no one was there to hold it when the other servers grabbed your stuff.

So there you go.
Low tier is a roamer paradise, given that you don’t care if your server looses the week
silver tier offers a bit to everybody.
gold tier is a blobber-paradise, giving you a good chance for much loot or becomming a loot-bag for others.
Then again, eotm already is a loot-fest, accessible for all Servers equally.

Welp, supply-crate surly is less effective now, but when it comes to the healing turret, I’ve not seen any impact on its performance.
I believe that this issue appears only if you do not correctly execute the healing turret combo, so I go ahead and explain to you how it works in detail:

1.: Spam your healing skill. Seriouskly, spam the button until you see the white circle of HT.
2.: pick it up immediately (reduced cd, therefore more cleanse per second) OR use the toolbelt to explode it right in the second when the white circle is visible (therefore blast its own waterfield for max healing).

Turrets will execute their overcharge instantly if it’s que’d up while the turret-placement animation is going, therefore minimizing the required uptime for healing turret down to a split-second since the AOE cleanse and heal are instant. Still the waterfield will remain for its full duration, allowing for further blasts from other utilities / weapon-skills.
The only scenario that I can think of where the healing turret dies faster than you can use its overcharge is when people press their healing-button once, wait for the turret to spawn and then start to spam the healing-skill. This will result in the Overcharge being que’d after the first AA (in this case aoe-regen), therefore unnecessarily delaying the cleanse / heal and forcing you to wait a couple of seconds more before you can pickup / explode it again, which delays the actual cd even more.

I make sure to drop -> overcharge ->pickup/explode my healing turret every time asap, and other experienced engineers do so as well. So far (after the patch) I did not notice my HT getting destroyed before I got the effect, even while used in the middle of wvw-blobbs.

So please make sure that you execute the HT-combo properly before you assume that it’s suddenly broken. From my POV it still works perfectly fine, therefore the issue must be at the side of those who appear to be struck by the nerf-bat.

wait roughly 11 hours & we’ll know.

engi here.
just wanted to check the thieves subform to clarify some things about the goggles’ Belt ability “Analize”:
Yea no, its on a middle cooldown. 30s default !CAN NOT BE REDUCED BY TRAITS DIRECTLY! to reduce the cooldown we need to spend points in our tool-traitline that will reduce the cd of ALL belt-abilities by 5% for each point spent. So the max-reduction is 30%, which would bring the minimum cd of analyze to 23sec.
Yes, its on 1.2k range
No, it does not bounce. If we choose the trait static discharge we fire a bouncing bolt with each belt-ability being used, but the bolt itself does not inherit the effects of the skill he got triggered from, so the bolt will not reveal.
In addition to the previous posted info about this skill: it does not have a projectile and is instantly casted. You have no pre-warning before it fires.

Still you can expect many engis in wvw favoring this skill now, not only because of the reveal, but its parent-skill “utility-googles” is a stunbreaker and therefore an important part of most of the builds we zerk with. In addition we get 10sec of immunity to blind from “Utility-googles” which helps us to land every hit we fire.
Your best counter would be to evade often and keep us cc’d.

How I’d fix it:

- Explosive Powder keg – no ICD
- Thermobaic reaction – no ICD
- Soothing detonation – doubles the effect of waterfield blasts (Only proc’s when we blast a field. does not proc when others blast our fields)
- Energy Amplifier – Switches place with healing resonator / grant 150 toughness to allies in 600 range while under the influence of regeneration. 2nd effect: Proc aegis for 5sec when being hit. 15sec ICD (Armor mods is back, now with improved group-support)
- Bunker down – ticks 500 healing (scales 0.5 with healing-power) in 360 range whenever it procs. Affects yourself + 4 allies / drops a mine that explodes automatically after 10sec or when enemies cross its proximity range. (While not bound to bombs, that should bring the group-support from elixir-infused bombs back)
- Healing resonator – Switches place with energy-amplifier – whenever your traits / utilities / boons / blasts grant you healing, grant 10% of that healing to yourself + 4 allies in 360 range. NO ICD (that should prevent infinite back&forth spreading between 2 or more engis running that trait) / (great synergy with bunker down, and support builds in general)

As chorazin said, in a balancing where people spike-burst you pretty fast, we should have meaningful ways of group-support, so toughness-spread and drastically improved group hps would be the way to go. Also, I switched energy-amplifiers place with healing-resonator to
a) get improved synergy between bunker down and our minor
b) to give players the options to choose between group-regeneration + arial denial (bunker down) or group-dmg reduction + dmg negation (energy amplifier) as grandmaster-decision.
In addition, we would get a class-unique buff, improving the groups toughness, that can stack with the class-unique buff of guardians, while further giving us more frequent personal aegis. this should greatly improve our synergy with guardians IF a guardian chooses to run the bunker option.

And our doubled output of water-field blast healing, should finally give us a solid spot back in the meta, being more than just nade-dispenser and anti-rampage/lich/plague bots. Also, it would greatly buff the currently popular FT build, since it has access to frequent blasts, while also rewarding ppl more, who choose mortar for its waterfield + thermobaic reaction.

I’ve considered buffing backpack regenerator as well, but for a master-trait, giving roughly 50% of “bunker down”‘s hps output, I guess it’s fine where it is, especially since the alchemy line already has many solid traits.

These changes can potentially be OP, but from my POV it’s better to over-do it once, to see how it goes, and then gradually tune it down, until it has a solid balancing with other classes.

edit: forgot about medkit.
- #1 should heal for 500 per tick, with decent healing-power scaling. It is way too weak in its current iteration. The long-cast time & obvious animation should be “red-flag” enough for the enemy-team to deal with the supporting engi, but if they fail to do so, healing up allies with medkit should have a meaningful impact on the fight.
- Optionally, all dropped flasks should be replaced with shout-like skills, roughly performing the same and affecting allies in a 240 radius. since they now affect multiple people, their cd’s can be upped for compensation. I’d rather see them not having any cast-time, hence “shout-like”. the F1 should keep its cast-time ofc.

edit: heal-resonator == medical dispersion field.
I completely kittened that up on multiple spots in my posts. Whenever you read heal-resonator in this post, think medical dispersion field.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

@ Choovanski
You’re missing the point entirely my friend!
@Arantheal
You are also missing the point of this thread!

Just to cite you, seems that you miss the point of your own thread.
The point is not to inform everybody that they miss the point (and therefore miss the point entirely), but to discuss the fact that in your (limited) perception of the game there are 2 clear camps of players.
One easily can read that from the topics title.

Further you argued that Gw2 is less popular because it does not have solo-que, while in my (limited) perception it rather suffers from a VoIP solution for all game-modes, especially PvP.
We both presented valid evidence for our claims, still none of us seems to have the authority to speak for the whole community. Hopefully this thread spawns a vivid discussion about the topic at hand, so we all can obtain a more reasonable and broader view on the topic and maybe come up with new ideas about how to promote Gw2, while also answering the initial question:
Are there 2 well defined player-camps that are split precisely by the age of 30?
Stop missing your point, m8.

- Increase of skill power by usage.

For me, it would be really awesome if skill could actually expirience passive upgrades. I think it’s plausible to say that GW2 technically already supports some kind of xp-system for skills, since the weaponskills must be unlocked by usage already anyways.
My Idea would be to take this system on the next level and “upgrade” already unlocked skills by actually using them.
Not only would this encourage players to actually get used to the whole variety their classes offer, but also reward those who felt in love to certain-skill combo and want to gain more effectiveness out of their favorited gameplay.

this could be done with 2 methods:
3 or more (relatively)strong upgrades that you unlock after a certain amount of xp farmed (to take account to the different CD’s, it would be a bad idea to actually count how often they got triggered) these upgrades could be not 2 but 3 stacks of a condition applied, increased dmg, reduced cd’s, increased range, a.s.o.
OR
many small upgrades, accomplished relatively fast, that tweak skill only a little bit, but add up over time to let a player actually feel how his set of skills suits him more and more.

I think overall all players would profit from this system, but the highest rewards would come to those who actually found their favorite class and want to max out its potential.

To answer the threads initial question:
no.

Seems like I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Yes, I don’t need more dps, but when it comes to versatility and new stuff I think we can’t get enough toys. I want new kits, new elites, new gadgets and a way to run elixier builds effectively even without HGH. Maybe even a new weapon-set. New traits are fine, but I not only want to upgrade my old stuff, I want to incorporate new toys to my builds.

What makes turrets that strong currently is the actual bugfixes so they work like intended. The buffs they give are nice but not really a OP game changer since we already had ways to keep them up (altought not that easy), and even their bubble triggers to late and only lasts shortly compared to their high cd, so the actual balance changes were minor.

So, some bugfixing would be awesome for underwater nades targeting and FT mechanics. The only thing I can possibly think of as direct buff would be to give us back the old juggernaut trait and a pull instead of a push on FT #3. Then we would not need higher base dmg on that kit since it becomes viable as a tool, not as a weapon.

Apart from that: I WANT NEW TOYS!!!

especially annoying if you go to a elevated place, cast the turret and then jump off, so it stays really high up (khylo and silent storm are maps where that is really easy to set up)

I asked here before, maybe last year when I were running turrets myself, but never got a response. I also never got any message from a-net even tho multiple salty people reported me for placing turrets like this.

So yea, a-net is still silent on this, I never got warned/banned, so I guess it’s not a break of the TOS, especially since casting skills mid-air is considered skilled play anyways.

I don’t run turrets anymore since they are not viable, but if you wanna troll some people with this, go ahead.

Turk.5460:

Arantheal.7396 obviously mains a Turret Engineer, otherwise he wouldn’t be so zealously defending this brainless build. His “counter-points” to everyone’s arguments is to just change your playstyle to play around this one class. Apparently that doesn’t raise a red flag to him.

Because most other users would click my name next to my post, check my post-history, and find all the builds I actually promote and come up with myself in the engi subforum…
Thanks for the laughable conspiracy-theory around me, tho. It shows that at least people listen to what i say, even tho they generally do not like my input, if they happen to sit on the L2P side of the fence.

Also yes, you will play around all classes. You will focus or run from the power-lich until he times out, you will LOS the power-ranger, you will have at least 1 roamer to counter a enemy-roamer, you will purposely ignore the bunker and go for the squishies first, you will bring poison spam against cele builds and warris in general, you will switch target and focus a casting staff-ele, and you will out-rotate or rush the turret engi(s) together with team-mates.

You sound like you want to defend the playstile of “ignore all other players around you and just mindlessly spam your rota on the next best target, and move from A->B->C without paying attention to your map the slightest.” That, my friend, IS a l2p issue.

This discussion is hilarious.
HT still works exactly like before the patch.
Devs never nerfed the healing turret, they actually made it more viable for group-play. Yes, it requires high apm to be used correctly, but when you invest it, you support your group even more.
You artificially construct problems where are none.
If you want to complain about the turreteer build being gone, there are numerous other threads.
For me this topic is answered.

I don’t get these scrubs…
Turrets are part of the game, so better learn about how to counter them or stop complaining.
“HURR DURR turrets take no skill” or “HURR DURR nerf this kitten” will bring you nowhere but in downstate. And no, these new grandmaster traits do only very few to increase your own capabilities. You only have exactly 1 option when it comes to deal with turrets: learn how to overcome such a build.
Complaining about the player who uses it just lets you look petty, and complaining about a-net for not being able to balance the game properly is just as complaining about rain making you wet.
In the end you want to win the round, and if that means to use the “currently” most effective tool for the job, then you do it. Your “skills” – that you may not even have outside of the text-window – will not win the round for your team if you refuse to realize and work against or with every aspect of the game.

Ofc no-one is telling you what you have to like or not, and I can clearly see the point that these builds are maybe a bit dull for people who are used to high APM builds, but just as you have the right to play what you want, everybody else has that one as well.

Just a personal example:
Yesterday I was sparing with a friend who came up with multiple classes and builds against my current turreteer build. I did not loose a single round, regardless what he packed out, still we had fun and he actually learned how to put a lot of heat on me, resulting in multiple occasions where only pure luck saved me from going into downstate.

It was a private arena, tough the password is shared between multiple guilds, so not soon later 2 more people showed up in the middle of the night. 2 thieves, there for sparring as well, and in the beginning both of them were really friendly people. after a while one of them wanted to fight me and got burned down pretty quickly. He asked his pal about what he could do as a thief to counter this and after the other one looked into my build he just said that a thief has little to no chance and challenged me to duell his staff ele.
The fight was going approx 5 min, judging from how often my elite’s cooldown went through and it was a really close call, but finally I succeeded. Told him that the duell was fun, but instead of getting the same response, this guy suddenly started to rage in the chat like a child, complaining about that he
- actually is the better player
- does not accept to have lost against me (as I said, friendly sparring oO)
- thinks I’m a complete noob for running this build
- thinks that this would bring PvE to PvP (makes no sense whatsoever)
- a.s.o.

Seriously, this guy was raging that hard that I simply whispered his now silent friend some tips to bring pressure on turret builds and kindly left the arena.

You guys, all of you who complain about players who use turrets – you are exactly this guy. What exactly that means is up for your judgment, but I felt nothing but disgust for this raging child.

A guildy droped the legend yesterday.
He’s a fresh 80, with maybe a week playtime.
Got it from a random payer drop in WvW.

ender, there is no optimal spec.

condi-builds will loose against condimancers all day long
squishy zerker-builds get their teeth smashed in by cc’s

basically you can try to secure yourself against any possible situation, but that actually lets you end up as useless pool of HP and toughness that again get rofl-stomped by any bursty setup.

the core-principle in this game (unlike wow) is movement. you must know the other classes in order to understand what happens on their side of the battle, so you can read / predict their animations to dodge the few skills that could really throw you over, while trying to mitigate the rest with defensive cd’s, while also figguring out when a good window for a attack pops up so you can lock and kill your opponent fast and effectively.

gear does not even matter that much in this game (even tho the more suited to your playstyle the better), what does matter is your choice of weapons, utilities and ultimately your experience (as a person, not as character, lol), knowledge, understanding and most importantly: reflexes.

Continue trying out new builds until you find something that feels right, but the ones you’ve posted so far are deffinitively effective in their own regards as well.
A good build does not make a good player, a simple fact that is even more true in gw2 than in any other mmo.

welp, adrenaline has more uses than just scaling up its weapon-ability.
if traited, it grants a ticking heal and/or higher base-damage and/or increases your crit-chance.

to fill it up you have various options, be it on being hit, on hitting, on using shouts, heck, even when using your burst skill if traited…

If you want to use it for open world, use berserker stance to fill it up quickly, healing surge to insta-fill it, or trait your shouts to grant adrenaline and use them as soon as you go into combat.

Seriously, just equip double-axe, spin for the win, trigger your shouts and eviscerate your way through anything that actually manages to get a hit on you.

Alternatively, equip greatsword, 100blade everything and don’t care about this confusing yellow bar above your weaponskills.

And for dungeons:
Please stay on guardian.
I have the feel you’re much more useful on it than as warri

Nemesis.8593:

I knew that if i am ever going to continue making guides to builds that actually work without icebow, and advertise real DPS numbers in them… without people going “pffff… so small… sinister engineer does 20K”… i must first break the false “berserker meta”.

I have done that…

Except you didn’t.
The meta started experimenting sinister builds & condi-dmg in general as soon as a-net lifted the stack cap & introduced sinister stats.
That was way before you even released your first clip in your trilogy.
And now that they’ve revamped condi-duration into a numeric value, while introducing Viper stats, builds are in a revamp process once again.

You did not cause any of this, if anything you’re being part of that motion, once you actually release builds that are not meant for PvP. Until then you just repeat what we already have known before you came along.
Welp, apart from using a dps calculation model that shows nothing but what you – you alone – will do with a given build.

So, I want you to consider the following points, and tell me if you agree with them, and if you not, tell me why you disagree with them:
-disclaimer, none of these questions care about critical damage at this point. This comes later, to the end.
1.) The game’s engine uses [on the wiki] documented formulas to calculate power & condition damage ingame for each skill / ticking conditions. True or not?
2.) If the toughness values of any given creature are inserted into the power-dmg-formula, it will give out the accurate dmg-range (since weapon-strength is partly RNG) of any given skill, BEFORE applying buffs. True or not?
3.) If that dmg-range is altered by -33%, it accurately reflects the influence of protection on a mob. True or not?
4.) If that dmg-range is altered by +25% it accurately reflects the influence of vulnerability on a mob. True or not?
5.) If the dmg-range of a skill is divided by its full animation duration (pre-cast & aftercast included), added with the full condition-damage (duration x stack.amount), you can determine its Burst dps. True or not?
6.) If its determined burst dps is higher than the dps of your AA, you will prefer to use the burst over the AA. True or not?
7.) If you add the cd of a skill to its pre & aftercast duration, you can determine its full cycle-duration. True or not?
8.) If you know the burst-dps, the full cycle duration & the full animation duration of each skill a class offers, you can engineer a chained segment of burst-skills, while filling the gaps with your hardest hitting, available AA. True or not?

If you do not disagree up until this point, we agree that rotations can be engineered entirely theoretically within a spreadsheet.

9.) It is possible to estimate a boss’ toughness value by hitting him 100 times (or more), calculating the average hit-dmg, and then resolving the – in the wiki documented – dmg formula to give out toughness, while inserting the previously calculated average hit-dmg, the power value of the build used, and the weapon-strength of the used item. Further present toughness can be compensated by increasing the claculated average hit dmg by 33% before inserting it in the resolved dmg-formula. True or not?
10.) If the calculated toughness value gets applicate to the dmg-calculation of any given skill, it will accurately return the true hit-dmg-range of that skill on the same boss ingame (in case of irremovable perma protection, after reducing it by 33%). True or not?

If you agree with me up until here, we agree on raw dps being determinable for each boss specifically, just by a spreadsheet.

11.) All bosses have skills with specific cd’s. True or not?
12.) A dodge takes 0.75 seconds. True or not?
13.) If you identify the skill of a boss that apply greater dmg than you can outheal them, then their overall cd (actual cd + precast + aftercast), determines the time-interval in which you loose 0.75s dps. True or not?
14.) You can calculate the percentile dps loss if you know how often you have to doge within your own rotation. True or not?
15.) Invulnerability-phases of bosses follow a determinable pattern, be it by a given skill-rotation, a HP-trigger, or simply by the cd of the invulnerability-spending skill. True or not?
16.) Group-stuns, like given from the colossus fractal’s final boss can be treated as “invulnerability-phase”. True or not?
17.) The existence of said pattern allows for developing boss-specific formulas that give out the rough percentile vulnerability-time to dmg, which can be used as further, dmg-reducing percentile factor (F.E. determined dmg-uptime is ~50%, so power-dps gets reduced by ~50%). True or not?
18.) The kind of invulnerability is important to note, because some just become completely invulnerable/evade, and others still take hits with zero dmg, allowing for condi-application. True or not?
19.) Because of this behavior, condition dmg & power dmg uptime always must be calculated separately per skill. True or not?
20.) The combined dps loss from dodging & boss invulnerability phases can be utilized to determine your boss-specific dps-uptime. True or not?
21.) Calculating the final dps up until this point with crit-chance, crit-dmg, dmg-modifiers, and crit-related procs allows for accurate, boss-specific results. True or not?

If you agree with me up until this point, we both agree on builds being able to be compared in theoretical, boss-specific scenarios within boss-specific spreadsheets, coming up with dps conclusions that are very close, but still slightly above reality.

The rest-discrepancy to reality is caused by individual player-skill & therefore require mechanical perfection from a player wanting to achieve these numbers. Still the above described methods allow for coming up with builds that not only reflect very realistic numbers, but can be used to analyze a wide range of boss-encounters, without ever recording your dmg ingame (beyond probing the values for this build-process).

So if you (and others) think that this would be a valuable tool for theory-crafting, how about we stop dps-recording builds (and smash our head against each other about who has the best muscle-memory), but start recording boss-behavior to feed this more accurate (and more complex) kind of spreadsheets.

Keep in mind that the presence of healers (or passive healing within a build) influence which boss-attacks might need dodges or not anymore, while cc-caused breakbar stuns increase the dmg uptime directly, due to less dodges per rotation being required.
So when looking away from the individual build, but into the group comp, cc & healing become a lot more valuable as well.

So if you want to be constructive, start working on these spreadsheets, especially since raids will highly profit from a more in-depth analysis (once we know their boss-mechanics ofc).