Guild Wars 2

What does this even mean?

I really would like an explanation cos this sounds like artschool level of presentation.

If you cant word the reasoning better than this what makes you sure of this change?

Vagrant.7206:

A fundamental difference with engineer is that we have to use slot skills for absolutely mission critical kit skills. No other class has that problem.

They tried to address that with the hammer, but the result is that in PvP, hammer is the only viable meta build, and the rest of our few weapons have been left in the dust.

They should have realized this when they designed hammer. We’ve only been complaining about it for a year and a half now and they still haven’t done anything to bring pistol/rifle/shield up to being playable.

Character: Henry rank million/Duke Henry
Necromancer/Casual Warrior

Nothing surprising.

Manuhell.2759:

Phineas Poe.3018:

To be honest, I think our next elite specialization should lock us out of kits but give us weapon swap.

It wouldn’t work. Not after several years in which everything else has been balanced over the use of multiple kits. Our gadgets are terrible, and the few that got some niche use got even nerfed to the floor (hello, slick shoes). Elixirs are but measle self-buffs that have no use in party settings (other classes can provide those boons far better, and at the whole group). Turrets…that they’re used just to be detonated says enough. And even our weapons were balanced over kits, anyway (something we know due to some balance note released back then). And being a new specialization we wouldn’t be able to use gyros and hammer. We would have to rely on new weapons, and only those. But all the old things would end up being too weak for the aforementioned reasons.

If they ever did a redesign, they would have to decide what to do with kits. They can’t be optional and yet impact so heavily over the balance of the class in its entirety.
If they balance them so, they should end up being the class mechanic – something the class always has at their disposal. Or delete most of them and put the remaining ones as elite skills (thus limiting the amount of kits available at a time as a single one). Maybe that could be enough to not have to balance everything over kits, dunno.

I’m not so sure. We were incredibly dependent on kits prior to Heart of Thorns, but the only ones that regularly see usage in PvP and WvW these days are the Elixir Gun and, to a much lesser extent, the Tool Kit. The only reason kits are still dominant in PvE is simply because they’re a damage increase over any other choice—and that’s pretty much how it always will be.

But imagine if we got a weapon as strong as the hammer, that truly stands out on its own, but could be used alongside the rifle, pistol, and shield? Lesser used utilities like Elixir U and Utility Goggles might actually have a place with them having more room to breathe, and would give us a much more offensively-minded specialization that works in tandem with the defensive-minded scrapper specialization, while still giving us an alternative to kit-spam builds that core engineer, as you’ve said yourself, is kind of stuck with for balance reasons.

I’m not even expecting such a radical move for the new specialization, but if ArenaNet wanted to do something really different, completely forcing us out of kits and giving us weapon swap (and obviously powerful utilities to complement their disappearance) would make me drop $30-60 on the new expansion faster than anything else I can think of … and would be a much cleaner and balanced decision than a lot of the pipe dream ideas being promoted in this thread.

It would also offer a pretty healthy mid-point on the gradient scale in profession play styles between core kit engi spam and the passive-heavy gyro/scrapper faceroll, and help normalize engineer in comparison to other professions. After all, haven’t we been complaining for years that kits are way too important? Maybe forcing us out of them with a new elite specialization would give ArenaNet a prime opportunity to reimagine our profession and give us some toolbelt skills that are far more interesting.

I have 9,8k pvp games played so far, and honestly, if they (ArenaNet) really thought that solo/duo queue was going to be a good decision, it just shows ArenaNet lacks people to make good decisions. I don’t believe it’s really difficult to make a code that will match players who are solo queueing against other players who are solo queueing as well.
When I read they were going to test out solo and duo queue for ranked pvp I already knew this was going to be an utterly bad idea. One or two players aren’t supposed to carry the rest of the team, hence we group up for 5v5, which means that excluding the possibility of queueing with pre-made teams screw up with many competitive players. I am a competitive player as well and I don’t accept the fact that it’s competitive to be obligated to get together with 4 strange people that don’t know how to communicate with each other and tell their builds, their strengths and weaknesses and then hope this team (yourself included, ofc) to succeed. That’s not competitive to me, it’s gambling.

I don’t play meta because it’s lazy and totally against that…what was that…GW2’s Manifesto? It’s against the “spirit” of Guild Wars 2, but since when GW2 has a proper balance team? Since when GW2 PvP balance team test every single trait of every single profession in every single combination possible against one another in order to find out unbalanced and lacklusting build options? Every single balance patch and it’s all the same, buffs here and nerfs there, not only a consistant decision. And this solo/duo queueing.

TL;DR You asked how we manage to survive in this scenario, well I can tell you that I just play whatever I feel it’s the best for me, whatever I like to play and think it’s good. I care about my teammates so far as they tell me what they’re going to do based on their builds. If they don’t tell me and let me to guess based how they didn’t get mid or that dh went far, well then, I won’t worry with whether my team loses or not.

Solstace.2514:

I play scrapper and I have trouble in a 1v1. But then again, they can’t kill me either. I have same issue with warrior.

I find with Scrapper that if I get my CC just right, I can actually uncap the point…. it takes like 10 min…. not very exciting and a lot of work. Really just kinda exhausting.

Did people forget that a thief cannot 1v1 or team fight in spvp ? Due to the amount of AoEs and on point pressure, thief is beyond worthless in a team fight, unless they have a very squishy target u can take out fast but nobody is squishy with a bunker ele next to them Combine that with the fact that thief cannot cleave because its too easy to counter cleave a thief with CC and condi bomb, its even easier to just get a res and reset the fight again. So that makes thief pretty much useless in team fights.

Now lets talk about thiefs 1v1 capability, thief loses to engi, druid and guardian and condi warrior aswell, a Mesmer that knows how to kite and stands on spot where thief cannot steal also beats thief 1v1.

So thief has only good match up against rev and enemy thief, it can kill necro too but it takes so long that its not worth fighting,

So that leaves thief with the role of decap and +1. Now can a thief really +1 effectlvely against top tier players than know how to kite and jumping puzzle on a bunker build? Nope. You cant kill a good engi even in a 1v2, same goes for druid. Because its too easy to reset yourself on a bunker build and troll the thief 1v2 and waste his time.

With all the weakness listed above I still do not see how thief is overpowered. Is it OP aganst less experienced players? Yes but so is every class, if a noob cannot dodge or use cooldowns properly he will die to anything not just thieves.

I think they are far too many nerfs threads on the forums about thieves where in reality its not even as strong as most builds right now. Engi/Druid are far superior at most roles and necro is still a better DPS team fighter because of nerfed rev. And DH would be the most broken class right now if support ele did not exist.

The only problem with the thief that I see currently is acrobatics traitline which allows some really brainless build like acro staff and D/D condi, the meta DP build is not overpowered.

It can be a complete different story in solo Q in the current system cuz most people are morons and thief shines in uncoordinated play where people cannot rotate and cannot survive longer than 3 secs but that’s their fault and not the games fault.

The balance right now is in a pretty good spot except for rev that needs buffs.

I think he just wants this skill to follow the logic of every other two-part skill and give the opportunity to dodge to avoid the second part, even if there is still a lesser effect (like Guardian GS 5 still knocking down if you dodge the pull)

Consistency is always a good thing.

@Gwaihir.1745 stop defending a broken mechanic

same was with taunt on ranger pets, you couldnt dodge it and anet fixed it cause its absolutely broken

if a thief gets hit by the f1, thats his insta death cause he gets pulled into traps and into longbow ground attacks

every attack in this game should be dodgeable, otherwise other classes will have an automatic disadvantage (speaking in general)

pls stop yelling

Make of it what you will :^)

(none of it necessarily means anything btw either, only winning the game means anything)

And the chances they stay at the top with the decay are very low.

What’s really going to happen is the final day of the season will see the rise of a ton of 10-0 accounts taking all the top spots lol.

When you lead with over 100 points, greedy teammates go far because they think we will never win by holding two points. Enemy regroups, far gets wiped or we get outrotated.

I actually disagree with you keeping conditions as good as they are now, even with reevaluated application ability. I think one of the worst changes to happen to pvp (Outside of HoT) was freestacking conditions. It made condition builds capable of massive bursts and the ability to keep up burst like damage indefinitely (Depending on the build and the player’s ability to apply their conditions efficiently instead of missing everything). I’d rather see condis go back to non freestacking so that we see less burst from those builds but they can keep their damage going for a lot longer (stacking durations) and then it truly acts as a DoT rather than a burst that ignores armor.

Edit: Also saw somewhere somebody was talking about not letting any traps start recharging until after they are triggered, I support that fully because otherwise they are too spammable, also they need to have a 1200 range leash (You get outside of that range and traps go bye bye)

Crapgame.6519:

Need to find a way to punish those who throw games or clearly stop playing a 1/4 of the way into a game. Could be back luck on my part, time of day, no idea, but this is the most frustrating thing at the moment I see.

Enter game. 1 or 2 minutes in you are down 50 or so and the team in-fighting starts. Someone or some two give up and it is a 3 v 5 no win situation. There isn’t much you can do. Rest of it, well, should work itself out. But this throwing games in spit, or giving up, or afk, whatever, is hurting those of us trying to honestly manage our score to climb the ladder.

Can’t carry afk.

I’m doing fairly well in mid gold and was planning to get to mid platinum, but I’m already done with this season. Every time I join a PvP season I remember why I stop playing PvP for long stretches: Babies that quit at the start of the match. It ruins the game for 9 other people, and the games are fairly long.

You get much better small scale fights in WvW where people play for fun instead of giving up at the slightest hint they’ll have to play decently rather than just coast.

What you are saying is “If you don’t play the current META don’t play at all!”

Invuln spams need to be nerfed globally. Nobody likes classes that are immune to damage 90% of the time.
Of course, nobody likes being forced to take all of the incoming damage either like Necromancer, so there has to be a middle ground.

Duo is good for the social aspect but, lets be honest here.. it’s unfair to those of us who only single queue.

I don’t get overly upset about it since I have seen plenty of duo queues that aren’t good and help give my team an easy win but when we play good duos it becomes very obvious. Especially when they are able to communicate on voice chat. That ability to instantly communicate without stopping to type is a HUGE advantage.

For “purity of purpose” I think Rocket Boots shouldn’t move you as far as it does, I mean its clearly a damage skill since they buffed it’s base damage for purity, it should barely move you at all! Someone get ANet on here and explain why rocket boots seems like an escape skill!

Also I think that hammer should have some Condi on it and remove some of the DPS, its clearly lacking in “purity of purpose” as well!

Lol @ ANet, they really have no clue what to do with Engineer. I cant wait to see the next train wreck elite spec they give us. Maybe another set of AI minions will do the trick!

I propose another 1 second duration shave off of Gear Shield, maybe with a slight direct damage buff to Rocket Boots to make up for it. Am I hired yet ANet?

Nah, just kidding.

I was just trying to get Engineer mains happy that someone was complaining about them.

Did it help?

Alec B.8905:

Engineer

Jump Shot: The damage of the initial jump has been reduced by 56%. The damage of the landing has been increased by 28%.

The best part is ANet clearly devoted resources to review this particular Rifle skill but still didn’t address it’s lack of evasion frames like similar abilities across multiple other classes. Especially needed for compensation as opponent players react to and dodge the landing damage …

I’ve been playing Condi Scrapper with the new amulet. The enemies I’m fighting currently don’t give me much trouble as long as I execute the appropriate tactics to defeat them. I can even beat the average mesmer believe it or not.

Well you mean Scrapper with Hammer tbh, not engineer in general

I’m in that range too, I’m not seeing too many trash players. Maybe folks with different non-coordinated strategies, but not a lot of insta kill fodder. I’ve also noted that eles seem annoyingly effective with their seemingly spammable area CC, then rock glidy mode then back to area CC thing. If one is speced into defence I literrally draw it on point and cannot take it out with my engi. I guess I could go marauder but then I’d be spike bait.

See the attached image and you too can achieve PvP superiority.

Alec B.8905:

Only 2 out of the countless things engi needed changes on were changed, does not seem evenly distributed/looked at by the Devs.

#scrapper screwed core engi

At least you didn’t get full nerfs like some professions got.

In general I think everyone can agree that Anet could stand to balance a lot more skills/traits with each balance patch considering how infrequently we receive them.

This entire “balance” patch is a BAD joke when it comes to engineer rifle. It seems the developers do NOT understand the game at all nor the engineer profession.

People choose hammer over rifle, because of the utility it gives. I haven’t done any tests, but I think the damage between rifle and hammer is roughly the same, but hammer has far better utility. You can reflect and black and do good damage at same time with hammer. Hammer has 1200 range AoE stun, blast finisher, lighting field etc. A mere 10 % damage buff to bluderbuss isn’t gonna make it break or break it. And why the change is just pvp specific? Rifle engineers are rare as hen’s teeth in WvWvW, so they would even more require buffs in WvWvW. Hammer is much more common there as well.

If Arenanet would have wanted to buff rifle, they would have been adding functionality to rifle:
- make blunderbuss (rifle #3) a blast finisher
- add evade frame to jump shot (rifle #5) and make the animation tiny bit faster to make it a viable movement skill (now immobilize in air really ruins it)

I would leave overcharged shot (rifle #4) as it is. High risk and high reward. And yes, I would shave off hammer a bit, it has too many goodies going on at same time.

It is really sad that Arenanet doesn’t seem to get “it”, when it comes to balancing engineer. They added some damage to rocket boots, which is was another stupid change. People do NOT choose rocket boots for the damage, but for the utility. At the current form most gadgets are sorely underpowered compared to kits, elixirs and gyros. A better to way to make them more viable is to add some functionality e.g. make rocket kick a stun break and/or lower the cooldown.

Not to mention Arenanet destroyed medkit when they turned in into “toss” skills. Medkit really needs attention. Why an earth still medkit #1 doesn’t heal the engineer himself and has so small cone it is really utterly useless skill in the game (compared to druid staff auto attack and ele water staff #1, which both do damage and heal at same time).

*The lack of viable healing skills for many professions is a serious issue e.g. almost all warrior’s use healing signet for obvious reasons. *Arenanet could have made some other healing skills viable e.g. reducing the cooldown “To the limit!” to 25 s and lowering the healing amount accordingly or reducing the activation time to 1/2 s.

The lack of diversity in viable builds is one of the biggest problems in spvp and I don’t see this patch much fixing it. The deletion of many amulets + HoT power creep was the last straw for me.

mov.1246:

Seems the devs are looking at this thread.
I will talk about my concerns about engi rifle:
Rifle is in a bad spot now, you just have to look at the engis forum, there are a lot of suggenstions and ideas how it could be improved.

Theoritical rifle damage isnt THAT bad, the problem is the fact that it is very hard to land any good damage.
Bluderbuss on a 10 sec CD and jump shot on a 20 sec CD is just to much to provide a good sustained damage during a fight.
In addition to that, HoT projectile hate is out of control (especially in wvw).
Overcharged shot is in most cases a self CC because to much random spam of stability, blinds, blocks or reflects, and I see auto attacks also often beeing destroyed or reflected.

At the moment rifle needs at least one damage kit to be effective. That isnt bad, but this is a lost slot for an utility skill. You need to take grenades, FT or a SD build, but all of this are also suffer to projectile hate or retaliation damage.
Cool downs are too long to be a stand alone weapon without swapping kits.

Hammer provides defensive aspects on 3 skills (reflect, evade, block) I know that a melee weapon needs more defensive because you stand directly in the fight. But spvp is about holding little points, so hammer is always the better choice. Hammer provides good defensives, low cool downs and good damage.
But nerfing scrapper wont solve the problem, the problem is the game mod itself in relation to rifle. That means only adjusting numbers for rifle is uselsess, it really needs an overhaul to its mechanics, defensives and cool downs.
I.E. net shot needs proper target landing, blunderbuss could be unblockable, overcharged shot needs to remove its self CC and it shouldnt count as projectile, and jump shot needs an evade frame IMO.

Also I dont understand why the only rifle trait is in the condi trait line?
Firearms trait line either need more real rifle specific traits, or at least this single trait should be baseline.

TL;DR: Engi rifle needs an overhaul. Only adjusting numbers will not solve the problem.

If I could pay 5000 gems to make a dev read this post, I would.