Guild Wars 2

We’ve also been buffed many times alongside those nerfs, and we have some of the best builds out there. I’m not worried.

The thing is though, that with every nerf comes a ton more buffs. Did it ruin the concept of 100 Nades? Certainly, but did it ruin Power Grenades or any form of direct-dmg burst we have? Absolutely not. We can still burst with SD builds and we can still output incredible direct damage via things like HGH Power Rifle Nades. Heck we are one the only two classes that can put out a meaningful Condi-Burst, but even talking about that lately brings in a toxic discussion.

Is everything where it should be? No, but it’s certainly on the path to where it should be. I’d much rather see more emphasis on this forum being that of trying to discover, create, and refine builds, discuss strategies, and discuss in a positive manner suggestions and the like. Instead much of these forums are a basically what amounts to a pity party which is absolutely not constructive it all. In fact, it’s destructive in the way it hides and shrouds all the legitimate discussion out there.

When I or anyone else starts to discuss something being cool, viable, or potentially useful immediately there are a few posts in that thread that claim we are flat out wrong without much if any reasoning. The discussion that HGH is the only build out there for example is just silly. Maybe three or four months ago, previous to Teldo and Hiba making note of the build, I got basically laughed at for suggesting Condi-Nades was even viable. It was always Bunker builds or SD builds back then. Simply because something is believed to be non-viable does not make that actually non-viable. When we shut down innovation and discussion because we simply believe that it’s not possible, then we are shutting down ourselves. Not every new idea is going to be competitive, but that does not mean that every new idea will not be competitive. We should be nurturing ideas and testing things, not having this pity party.

As it stands, the Engineer is on the right design path. It’s by no means as fast as many people would like it, but make no mistake we aren’t alone in that. Most of the other classes have many of the same real and supposed issues we have. We can help that by having wonderful discussions and creating a positive community. As it actually is right now though, every-time we have a patch we get something like a full list of bug fixes and buffs while getting that one nerf that gets talked about the entire month until the next patch. It’s not exactly fun to be around here.

Luckily there is a good chunk of people here that do have a fantastic mindset and I’ve had wonderful discussion with. It’s the only thing keeping me here, and for that I’m happy. I just wish there was a way to convince everyone else to continue that kind of atmosphere.

It wasn’t much of a balance patch, but that wasn’t ever said to happen anyway. Not til Feb/March. Instead we got some awesome bug fixes, which is pretty nifty.

Yeah I was just being silly, I think the Signet-Utility skill argument is likely the real reason.

I figured Ascended gear would be the first priority.

A Sword Warrior as well can hit the bleed cap on their own. I don’t see many people advocating how powerful Sword Warrior DPS is. Heck I originally want to be a Condi-Dmg Warrior until I realized how bad it is compared to what other builds the Warrior has and what other Condi builds the other classes have.

I’m not entirely sure how you hit the Bleed cap with just grenades though, the proc chance on that one skill isn’t really that high. Is there something I’m missing with it…?

I’m pretty sure I ran into someone using Pistol / Shield, Flamethrower, and Battering Ram once. I spent most of that fight on my back.

Half the reason I can stand using Elixirs is because:

• Each elixir cleanses a condition.
• Each elixir grants guaranteed Might.
• Elixir B has no RNG.
• Elixir H always heals.

Regarding the thrown Elixirs in particular for S, H, and B (the ones I use) I hate the base skills. Especially when it comes to Elixir S I never get stealth when I want stealth and I never get Stability when I want Stability. Thrown Elixir H and B aren’t worth the cast time in combat without traits, and even with traits it’s questionable if they are worth the cast time.

I can understand having some RNG in the game, but it needs to be mild. I honestly don’t see why Thrown Elixir S given the cooldown would be too strong if it applied both Stealth and Stability. When it comes to thrown Elixir H I think it should apply guaranteed Regen and then one of the other two boons randomly, while thrown Elixir B should apply guaranteed Swiftness (hey I can buff my group with Swiftness now) and randomly one of the other three.

Of course, there is a lot of other gunk that needs to be cleaned up in the Engi. The big areas of importance to me are a general gunk cleaning, turret scaling, kit viability, and elixir rng.

Basic concept of doing high damage as an Engi in a Dungeon environment is swapping kits, a lot. Run through each damage cooldown as best as you can. It requires a very active style of play and you will spend very little of it auto-attacking.

If the rest of the group isn’t using conditions, then a Condi build running 30/10/0/30/0 with Bomb Kit, Grenade Kit, and Shrapnel is actually extremely effective. The damage contrary to what most people would seem to tell you is right next to the Greatsword Warrior. The only problem is, it requires no one else to be using conditions. You will maintain 25 stacks of bleeding and burning nearly the entire time.

Otherwise, you should stick to a direct damage variant. Contrary to what seems to be commonly believed, Grenade Kit autos are not the highest damage fallback option we have. Tool Kit autos are actually higher damage, but you must finish the chain. Bomb autos are also higher damage then grenade autos if you are in melee. Even then, the way to do direct damage is to swap through multiple kits at once. When I run direct damage it consists of running through the Rifle, Grenade, and Tool Kit damage cooldowns most often. I’ve seen Elixir Gun’s Acid Bomb also be used as well. There is a lot less grenade auto’ing then the forums would lead you to believe, but obviously it reigns supreme in terms of ranged AoE damage. You will spend most of the time swapping through kits and mentally managing cooldowns.

There are also a bunch of support variants that many people run, but I’ll be the first to admit I have no experience with them. I most often run with my condi-build, because there are hardly ever any other condi-builds in dungeons now. Make sure you adjust your trait selections and utilities to the fights at hand. Basically, you have to do a lot more work to achieve optimal output for damage, but it can be done.

I just hope they consider PvE DPS as well with the sword auto change. Maybe reducing Impossible Odds upkeep by something to compensate, or as mentioned above by shifting some of the damage into #2 and #3.

The problem is being a solo team fighting a premade team is a very frustrating experience, win or lose. Regardless if we stand a chance at winning, it’s a very different game experience that isn’t nearly as enjoyable as it would be against other solo teams even if we have to wait a little longer to get a match.

This is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t mean the change, because any patch fix is great for this game. I mean this whole line of thinking. They fixed a bug, and just because it wasn’t the Engineer’s bug you are all complaining?

I get it, you are frustrated that Scope is still bugged and that Deployable Turrets recently is bugged. However the fix to Hidden Killer was probably exceptionally easy to do. Now this is speculation driven by experience with programming, but to me I’d imagine the Scope bug is incredibly difficult to fix and the Deployable Turrets one is at least more difficult then the Hidden Killer one. The Hidden Killer bug is also a much higher priority as many more people were using it then these other two Engi traits. Is there anything wrong with that? No!

There are tons of bugs across every class that are like Scope and Deployable Turrets. Do all the other professions complain about things like this too? Actually yes, they do. We are not alone in this department. They have a lot of things to fix, and it sounds incredibly petty when we identify a bug fix and complain that it wasn’t ours.

What should you do instead? Make a thread with a topic concerning the Deployable Turrets bug. The Scope bug. Make bug reports about it. Put it in the Bug forums. Do anything other then the completely unproductive task of complaining about the bug in a thread obfuscated via complaints that other classes are getting fixes. That’s not going to get anything done and is nothing more then a fruitless activity of pessimism.

Scope right now doesn’t work, so don’t take it. A lot of players recommend Static Discharge while leveling up in a direct-dmg build, but I have no personal experience with it.

Why would you rule out Speedy Kits with the Flamethrower though? It doesn’t take much to swap in and out.

Retal really needs to be rebalanced in the extreme cases. Grenades and Flamethrower are the extremes, I cannot fathom how it’s possible to balance the difference of an average damage output of Retaliation compared to taking something like 15 ticks of it in a second.

Honestly I’d rather have Retaliation rebalanced to work as an intensity boon. Each time someone takes Retal damage they remove a charge. Then you know how much damage the Retal is going to put out and you don’t get these extreme cases where a Guardian ends up causing over 16k damage to one person and a mere 500 to another. It still means multi-hits eat up the charges quicker and retain their vulnerability in that way, but it curbs the cap.

I did miss using P/P HGH Nades for condi’s so I gave it a try. Without boon removal though you are a slave to Mal Revs, and Necros are more common then they used to be. Although it’s surprisingly more effective than I thought at getting past Diamond Skin when you have Nades, and when you have repeatable access to every condi except slow and weakness condi removal still has troubles against it. You can melt anything without complete condi wipes or tons of resistance though in seconds still. It’s also a glass cannon surviving only with boons, and a pair of invulns. I did really well with a Condi Rev ally removing boons or Tempest ally covering up my defenses. It ain’t gonna be a meta build though.

I’m definitely more on the strong side of thinking Confusion and Retaliation need to stack in intensity with a stack removed each time it’s triggered. Would be much more reliable to balance.

Without doing math, I think it’d still be weaker then Ele healing. I however don’t think our healing should be as strong as an Ele, but I would love it if our survival did actually come more from healing then evasion or mitigation.

As an example I think our Perma Vigor access should be pushed deeper while our Heals get a unique boost in functionality. Toss Elixir H should have a splash heal, Healing Turret should actually pulse some direct heals with a smaller Regen effect, and Med Kit pickups should splash the effects in a small radius. That’s kind of me just being wishful though, as I kinda think we should be the perfect mix of moderate sustain, moderate evasion, and moderate mitigation. Not superior in any category unless specialized, but not equal to or weaker then anyone else in those categories either.

I think in general our survival isn’t really where it should be though, and I would like it improved. I think improving it mostly in the sustain department would be the right place to do it design and flavor wise.

Retaliation simply needs to be balanced in accordance to the extremes. There is something wrong when I throw maybe 2 or 3 volleys of Grenades onto a point and end up taking nearly 15k damage.

The extreme situations simply need to be curbed. Either through % reflection, Retaliation stacking in intensity and releasing a charge per activation, or through some limit on Retal you can take per second. I don’t know what the best solution would be, but I do know it’s a bit ridiculous that multi-hits and AoE’s get punished as severe as they are. I think it’s okay to be vulnerable to Retal because of those types of skills, but the punishment is too extreme.

Patch notes can still make for some interesting days, but I think a lot of the negative attitudes mostly stay quiet now. Which is nice since I’d rather read threads about strategy and min-maxing what we are capable of then complaints. Suggestion threads are great too as long as they don’t turn into a pity party.

They never said the balance stuff was in this patch. They only ever mentioned Feb/March in this regard. We were the ones that posted all the stuff about balanced changes in this patch.

I mean I wish there were balance changes too, but we got our own hopes up this time.

Screenshots of scoreboards are fantastic and all, but without some sort of strategy discussion or video context it’s kinda meaningless to me.

Yeah the sPvP player-base is notoriously small at the moment. There does however seem to be strong precedent though that introducing a solo-queue system grows the player-base significantly. I’m not sure I like the splitting of the player-base argument, and instead prefer the development, testing time, and prioritization argument. There are solid reasons to stay on the current path temporarily, but I’m not convinced that the size of the player-base is a concern.

As to their discussion in general, I really liked it. Insight is better then silence to me, even if we may disagree with (a small portion of) it. Rational discussion on it is awesome. I honestly have a lot of faith in ANet and love what they have accomplished.

The whole solo-queue system to me is more personal then most perhaps, because I get very little competitive action with children and a career in the way. I live vicariously through the streams at the moment. I’d love to play a fair solo-queue every night rather then hotjoin, free tournaments, and the occasional paid I scrape together. It makes sense not to have it “right-now”, but I’d like there to be clear plans for it.

Endure Pain is quite a bit different then Elixir S. Endure Pain does not avoid all the attacks and instead reduced direct damage to zero. That leaves them vulnerable to being applied with control effects and conditions. It also has a longer cooldown then Elixir S.

Honestly, Elixir S is still very good. The nerf was needed.

I didn’t mean to say he could do it. I mean t to say when it’s fixed, and someone could theoretically try to fit it in, it perhaps could change how turrets can be viewed defensively.

Turret traits are a fair bit too scatter brained, I’d agree with that. Tool Kit is an odd fit with it as well, but I see no reason why a Tool Kit + 2 Turret build wouldn’t be capable of ever being viable. I don’t think the point would be intentionally repairing your turrets, I think it’d be more a side benefit of using those skills near the turret.

A lack of a stun breaker and condi-removal is a bigger deal to you then it is to me, clearly. I fully acknowledge how useful they can be, but to flat out say they are mandatory to me is a bit of a stretch. I wouldn’t be against any ideas that introduce more of that functionality into a theoretical turret build though, either.

I agree Turrets got a lot better, and honestly I agree too that there is still a way to go. I acknowledge though, that I could be wrong with the way to go part. I still think there needs to be improvements though, trait scattering and turret cooldowns are a good place to start I think.

Maybe we can convince Chaith to showcase the HGH variant then?

The problem with the Mortar is the I can take the Grenade Kit and nearly triple the damage output with an extra 100 range. Arguably, the utility on the Grenade Kit is better too.

It’s something I didn’t know before.

I could only imagine how awesome it would be though if Mortar was automatic like a turret. It’d actually be useful, given it’d probably have horrible accuracy issues, but it’d be interesting to see.

There is plenty of reason to keep 8v8. During the majority of the match you have people leaving and joining the game constantly, as well as a few afk’ers before they drop from the match. It’s very rarely if ever an actual 8v8.

5v5 would be fantastic in a solo queue system with leaving penalties and a rating system that gives you incentive to win however.

Hotjoin isn’t necessarily an unskilled zergfest. Especially if you avoid the zerg. You can get tons of 1v1, 1v2, 2v2, 2v3, and 1v3 fights that are a whole lot of fun. You just literally avoid your own zerg. Heck it actually wins you more games too alongside picking up tons of capping glory. I personally find I get more glory by avoiding the zerg then by joining it and having some battle over a neuted cap point.

It’s not properly competitive, but it’s not necessarily an unskilled zergfest either.

Yeah Bomb Kit with Kit Refinement could be pretty good. Big o’ Bomb, swap to Bomb Kit, then Glue Bomb…

Seems like the Kit Refinement changes towards utility ended up looking pretty good. We’ll have to see what we can make out of it.

Magic and Physical aren’t really things in GW2. They all just deal damage. The difference in damage types are direct damage and condition damage. Direct is boosted by Power, and can critically hit with Precision and Crit-Dmg while being mitigated by Toughness. Condition is boosted by Condition Damage, and can be boosted with Condition Duration while being mitigated by condition removal activation.

Weakness in particular forces all direct damage attacks that aren’t a critical hit to have a 50% chance to do half damage. Against someone with no critical hits, it’d reduce damage by 50%. Against someone with a 50% crit rate, it’ll reduce damage by 25%. Against someone with a 100% crit rate it wouldn’t do a thing. Weakness also cuts down on endurance regeneration significantly.

daydream.2938:

Adding to this . ( i think not 100%).

bomb kit, skill 3 concussion bomb.
applies 5 stacks of confusion, i believe it was previously 3.

It was 5 stacks of confusion before in the Bombs.