Guild Wars 2

Since staff has five skills, and staff is mainly a magical weapon? A staffgineer would look like an air-attuned ele tbh.

I really can’t see how you can manage to build 25 stacks of vuln on an engie, though, on champs. Most I can get is a 17, and that drops off once grenade barrage is on CD. Do you take the on-crit 50% vuln option as well to nearly double vuln done by a single nade barrage + nade AA?

I can understand spike application of vuln on bosses, though – analyze + nade barrage is around… 10+8+max 8, but optimally >4 from the on crit trait if it’s 30/10+x/x/x for around… 4-5 secs (because of defiant) + constant 9 from normal grenades. Buuuut that’s just at the start, and it tapers off, though. Am I missing something?

Zerging works because it’s just adding more bodies to deal damage until the target dies. But what people don’t know is that it’s highly inefficient as compared to organized parties, which can deal more DPS than the zerg can do at a certain amount of time.

I do wish that ANet designed encounters which required large groups of players to split up (like objectives having to be done in x amount of time). That way a large mass of zerg balling up inefficiently can’t finish the events in the encounter.

What party comp did you bring, anyway? We can start with the help there.

The pillar strategy for CR in AC P3 is intended? I… never knew that. I had the assumption that the boss attack should hit all of the areas, save for the ones where the NPC casts a bubble upon.

The things you learn in this subforum…

https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/4d6b89-17_TR_NextHero_EN.jpg

The filename seems interesting. Probably something new will be introduced?

Maybe scale the times between time needed to complete and the times it opens? As how I look at it, they made the dungeon being available as reward for completing the dynamic event leading to it. Problem with CoF is that the time between uncontest and the time period where the dungeon is open isn’t really the same with CoE. Arah, on the other hand, was changed because the entire chain to open the dungeon was so long, and the associated events to it had scores of bugs that ANet went the breezy way and instead changed it so that it’s open all the time, except if it’s on the boss event which is the final event on the meta-event chain.

If you can invest on two SSDs and have a RAID module on your PC you can set loading times back to around 2-4 secs depending on the number of players in the map by setting both SSD’s to RAID 1.

Anyone seeing reduced procs of the shrapnel trait on PvE?

For engineers? I’d go with no-kit elixir engineer using dual pistols and traited fully for pistols, using only AA.

That’s as worse as I can think of, since it’s a fairly selfish build and plinks at the enemy. Very slowly. Although other engineers may say something else (I’m looking at you, elixir gun-only-centric build).

What if fiery rush just dealt damage once and procced burning several times instead? Like tracking a target and just stacking burn on the target if they follow. Would it kill the skill?

Ah. Wait. Is fiery rush designed by leaving small AoE’s per distance covered? If that’s the case then I think it’s either a design oversight or a sloppy way to code a trail-based attack.

Wethospu.6437:

I don’t think it is an exploit. The skill is just overpowered. I think they should make AoEs bigger but reduce their amount.

So instead of doing four hits (using wiki data), it should be less than four hits?

One thing I just noticed about the skill, though – fgs whirl/war gs 3uses nearly the same damage ratio with the autoattack per hit, while giving evade, cripple and a whirl finisher all on a low CD. Was this the skill that the GS/fgs was designed for, though?

I’d say it’s an advanced mechanic, which rewards pinning down an enemy properly…. although they really need to fix mob AI so that it can react with regards to getting pinned down.

On the ele/thief end, though, I’d say pulling off a fgs rush then TPing back just when after passing to deal more damage is a very, very great technique to learn, as well as being fun to do.

PSA: Please don’t take your buy/sell orders off the TP while having the problem, as you may lose the items.

Kay, login check: can you relog and get back to the game, or do you get the error something on the launcher?

Reporter check: are you all playing on EU shards?

How about changing the so-called powerful crit procs to something like how ranger Opening Strikes is, but this time it’s a cyclic passive? Say, gain a buff that grants burn for <4 seconds for any skill cast with an ICD? That way, engineer offensive procs are predicatable, and only the defensive boons triggered are of the RNG on-crit nature.

Just a notice – what are spirit rangers built for? Are they, in comparison to other classes, built around their weapon sets providing as much evade as they can, all while having random on hit boon procs from every attack?

I think a way to balance spirit ranger is to have the on hit effects have a global cooldown, let’s say around 2-3s for each proc per player – but that would defeat the purpose of spirit rangers. Another fix could be reducing the duration of the on-hit effects, as the ranger might be able to boon stack easily.

To counter the change, improve the ranger’s longbow so that it has better power scaling options. Currently, shortbow > longbow since you have ok conditions with it. What if longbow was boosted back to good power, but only if – and only if – the range was >600 or more? Realigning traits to improve the ranger’s power options at a good distance might make rangers excellent ranged DPS but once you do get close, a ranger is effectively gutted.

I don’t have any other ideas to balance out stuff, since this does not take into account pet stuffs, so yeah.

Conditions and tankiness seems to be a grave issue in PvP, noticeably the resistance of condition-specced classes to direct damage whatsoever. One thing I really noticed is that condi builds usually go with Rabid gear, a setup that gives greatly increased cond damage (+) as well as increased precision (+) and toughness (+)

In comparison to other specs, there’s zerker, which is your purely offensive amulet, and it’s sister spec: valk, which is a bit defensible.

Now, what if Rabid was made the same as well, offering +++cond damage, ++precision, and +tou (same values as vit in zerker builds) but this time, add +15% condi duration to it? That way, Rabid becomes the full offensive cousin of carrion trinkets?

I.E: Rabid should now have these values: +798 cond damage, +569 prec, +284 toughness, and +15% cond duration, mimicking zerker which is +798 pow + 569 prec +284 vit, and +15% crit dmg.

Query check: are all players reporting this scenario in EU servers?

Kay, for double verification: did you have a time before where the TP’s acting weird and fuzzy? And do NA players have the same issue as well?

DC’ed too. Gameplay auth errors connecting to EU servers. Anyone on EU having the issue as well?

Holy kitten what a necro.

Level scaling still combats this problem in PvE – if level scaling did make it to a point where you get limited by the max gear for a specific dungeon. For example, what if all dungeons scaled down so that all gear choices higher than exotic will be scaled down to exotic? That way, ascended won’t necessarily have that much impact to PvE, and only affects high-level fractals and Arah.

Just something to think about: should mortar DPS be increased to outmatch other classes’ DPS? Mortar should be a painful weapon to use against targets, because the risk of mortar is: a.) it’s destructible and b.) it’s rooted.

There are bits of open world that do need more difficulty. Some mob types newly introduced might be ANet’s way of creating more of the said difficulty, but they still lack in the fact that mobs don’t have a lot of skills and reactionary stuff to use. For example, most mobs don’t have a complement of actions to drop, using around two to three pre-programmed move sets, with a new skill per higher mobtype.

If mobs usually roamed in groups, and had more complementing playstyles, then it’d be great. For example, some Inquest groups are pretty okay, but the mobs still lack defensive capabilities. If there were new mobs to be added as part of difficult content, all kinds of mobs need to have at least a damage, support and control skill. Say… have a mob always have a self-heal/protect/regen skill, a CC skill, whether it be a hard or soft CC, and a debuff skill (multiple condition application, weakness/chill/hard vuln, etc).

Dredge in groups are a good example, but in small encounters they are not that much. In veteran and higher mob groups though, they have a higher difficulty to challenge.

An okay style would be that as a mob is smaller in number, the more skills and complexity of the AI should it have, adding skills and faster reaction time when the AI is small in number. The bosses in Crown Pavillion, while gimmicky at the very least, have better movesets than AI found in openworld.

Try heading to Orr. It’s the desolate place, and the only thing out of tune with it is the level of rewards – but that disparity is present within the LS, as balancing rewards so that players will do the LS, but at the same time have the old rewards not clashing with the rest of the content, is hard – and even very, very, complicated to do. On the other flip sides it’s a place where most WPs are contested, and the only way to uncontest it is to do the events blocking it.

Also, do lore explorations. There are lots of little things in the map that get zipped around by players. Try playing the game as a role-playing game, where you put yourself in your character’s shoes, or explore the small things. There’s a certain satisfaction seeing them without having guides on.

I think it’s related to the culling options they put in. If the character you’re looking at unsheathes and resheathes the weapon, the old settings are seen again.

Buttercup.5871:

Many thanks Aeneq for your clear information on the issue. I learned a lot more reading through the responses.

So, could I summarize the real concern, the elephant in the room that only you went out to clarify in more detail, as follows:

Third part TP programs using a session key can be programmed to become buy order bots.

You said it clearest, in the post quoted below:

aeneq.1760:

They can be modified to be automated tools yes, that said its limited to putting in buy orders (i.e. overbidding and cancelling buy orders if they want to put in lower bids).

However I also stated that there is no easy way to block this behavior at present, the functionality is a core component of the in game Trading Post and I don’t believe ANet will modify this API anytime soon.

The only quick solution is behavioral analysis on identified traders who has a high/constant/changing buy listings. But even then it becomes a bit tricky and bots can be programmed to be more human like (with lower profit, but if you spread this over multiple accounts they would still be able to accrue the same profit as before).

Let me know if I adequately reformulated the concern above, in bold.

To be clear, I still think that notifiers cross the line by a mile (Aeneq understood; use of the session key by a 3rd party program is why), but that ship has sailed due to Anet’s irresponsible behavior (ie. doing nothing in this respect for far too long).

The problem here is that programming it as bots already violates the ToS (if the session key retrieval is the grey area, the bot part is pushing it to the black area) because you need to modify and spoof game memory to authenticate the buy order with the funds necessary – unless the reduction of gold ingame can be done via the unofficial TP API.

Just 2c.

Something that probably makes them limit the kind of stuff they need to show ingame is a.) they have to export to countries that have stringent rulings on some subjects and b.) they’re limited by law on their ESRB rating, which is surprisingly a T.

In any case, that’s just my 2c.

swiftpaw.6397:

Dolan.3071:

We can speed clear together! I’ll bring my friends who run AH Guards and my Shout Heal Warrior, we’ll blitz through paths! Like an hour per path tops

I got my apothecary ranger with longbow/great sword and double bear pets, count me in!

You’re not going shortbow? Or double longbow?

On a well played CC class that can drop confuse, it can wipe people because the condition ‘can’ be stacked up to 25 if played really well (I’m looking at you, mace/shield + hammer warrior, mesmer, or even p/s toolkit/bombkit/x engineer)

This is a nice step, IMO, since it propagates watchful play (watching what to dodge, etc).

Actually, you forgot one more AI minion: the lowly engineer turrets, whose current use is just positional control/CC. Don’t look at it for it’s damage, as it’s an a.) immobile minion b.) dies to any dropped AOE and c.) did I forget about it’s plink damage?

Chiming in: one thing I noticed in GvG is that it promotes heavy booning, with blast multipliers and the likes. I think that’s the reason why ranged can’t propagate well in GvG – retaliation countering multi-shot ranged plays, as well as conditions not even penetrating through with the prevalence of condition time reduction food, almost nullifying spread condi, and weakening duration boosted condi. Just two cents, though.

Amusingly, the debate starting right now is whether trial and error gameplay is good or bad for GW2. Just an observation.

A good fix would be adding area wide AOE to the champ eles that hurt a lot, and triggers on a specific density of players attacking. Also, based on the number of players targeting it, eNPCs should gain defensive stats, such as regeneration and other defensive boosts.

Improving positional and conditional skills ingame would go a long way to making GW2 more engaging. While I think it was the devs intention to have combat on a fast paced manner, the lack of skills that disrupt combat flow by positional hazards make it a DPS centric game.

I have the slight feeling that warrior zerk stance was a fixed AR applied on a timer, but they forgot to update the engie’s AR trait code.

To Scarlet,

The Order is watching.

I think it’s because of the concept that mesmers are duelists – adding more mobility to them makes them become highly mobile scouts in WvW, where you can tag along a thief/mes running both speed signets and the mes buffing swiftness (thief can be traited to give swift on steal, focus can give a one-time swiftness boost), allowing the availability of the portal-bombing tactic effectively.

IMO, the mesmer sacrifices traversing speed for the advantage of being able to outmatch opponents on 1v1s.

TBH, I think that was why Guang was thinking engineers are OP. If grenades wasn’t nerfed in PvE by 33%, plus if kit-refine wasn’t reworked fully to lose the second grenade barrage, you’d be seeing a 25 vuln stack directly at the start of combat, as well as starting that with either +dmg modifiers from the runes embedded in the kit. Not to mention the fact that you’d be doing it per ten to twenty second window.

colesy.8490:

If he’d just make a video or get someone else to make a video he wouldn’t have to put up with people calling him wrong.

But of course what happens instead, is he claims things and then gets mad when people don’t take them face value.

Also, many mouses and keyboards would be destroyed should engi become a part of the meta.

Add carpal tunnel to that list.

I can confirm fighting steam creatures along the escort missions at Frostgorge Sound, especially with the top right balloon escort chain.

Erasculio.2914:

snipped due to length

Minor nitpick: That event’s not a dredge event, that’s a grawl event.

Wrt to the number of people in the instance: adding more friendly NPC’s make the game require more resources than necessary. Even if the map was large, and fairly not that resource-heavy, the set mobs spawns and the data necessary to index those mobs are limited (you can see a LOT of aetherblade eNPCs spawn in later on). You could see borking in the pathing in the Rox defend event, in that too many mobs intercross with their paths that Rox doesn’t stop when you’re not escorting her.

The issue I can agree in is that the update works really well from an RPG perspective -if- players were playing with the roleplaying aspect. With a max of 75 per instanced map, six cutout zones and six fight circles, you could spread out the entire area evenly, which makes the events seem not too zergy and still playable.

It’s just that people are attracted to that farm perspective, and not to the roleplaying game perspective.

On the arena points: Totally agree with the camera issue. Maybe they should make the red circles a little bit more visible? The metallic background obscures the red circles, as well as other ground-targeted enviromental effects. With the camera issue, I think it was an oversight, or intended design to give the match a feel like it was a cage. TBH, the attacks are well televised (one thing that people miss is that it’s a one vs one fight – you HAVE to track the opponent on what he makes, and what he does, and react decisively about it. Most attacks have a telegraph time of around one second or more, and even with bad pings of 300-400ms you can react admirably). The low-tier bosses have all their attacks described in their tooltips, and you can take a moment to understand and look at how the fight works.

The issue I can definitely disagree with is with the knockdown chaining. As a player,. it’s there to punish you for not watching a dodge. The chain knockdown forces you to watch your surroundings. Most of the knockdown effects have around one and a half second to two seconds of dodge window, and you can reliably dodge or move out of the way if you have swiftness by then.

With the changes to particle effects, combat in melee range is now easier in NPC zerg events, as you can see the animations clearly now, as compared to before where you get yourself kittened once the ranged players drop a mess of animation attacks on you (AOE attacks, anyone?).

Erasculio.2914:

Pawstruck.9708:

Grinding is not defined as something that you personally find un-fun.

To me, a grind is repeating the same task over and over because I have to in order to progress.

(…)

Dungeons can be grinded for tokens for sets of armor/weapons

Do you notice the contradiction in your own post? If grinding is doing repetitive content you need to do in order to progress, why did you say dungeons could be grinded for tokens, if tokens are not needed to progress in anything?

Gonna go run semantics on this one. I think he meant that he wanted to progress in a specific dungeon armor piece/set, since it requires x number of tokens to have, ergo.

I think the new rewards will get increased once the dungeons get fully revamped. That’s just my 2c, though.

Would giving engineers AOE boon punishment be OP?

Konu.1826:

Kain Francois.4328:

Having played Ranger recently (with 1h sword and Jaguar) I noticed the damage really aint that bad at all.

What they lack compared to a warrior is burst, but make up for it with superior ranged damage (yes) and the ability to apply chill longer than any other profession.

Ranger also has the pull on his offhand axe, which is very very VERY GOOD! (Possibly the most underrated and under-appreciated ranger skills.)

I wish they changed sword 1 chain, that’s the biggest issue with ranger for me at least.

Sword 1 chain was designed to be a chaser against moving targets, IMO. The issue there is how do you remove rooting from the character while not mucking up the leap animations done by the second and third attacks in the AA chain?