Well, gee, it feels about as strange as retaining Corruption/Accuracy/Bloodlust buffs after swapping weapons.
Speed is the problem. Some players simply cannot do a jumping puzzle quickly, so making them timed automatically eliminates us from ever completing them. I can do the other jumping puzzles because they’re static and I can take my time on them to line up each jump. I still fall multiple times before completing any given puzzle (they are the worst part of the game bar none), but when they simply do not give you time to line up a jump at all, that is just bad design. Twitchmasters and Counterstrike players can pull it off no problem, I’m sure. Then they sit there and offer patronizing comments and explain how easy it all is. Well for some of us it’s not, and invalidating our experience by explaining how it’s so simple and our problems must be because we’re bad players is insulting and offensive.
Time is the problem. Some players simply cannot spend more than 30 minutes on a 5-man instance, and that eliminates us from ever completing them. I can do heart quests because they’re static and I can take my time on them killing each mob as slow as I can. I go down many times because I’m awful at the game. But when they simply do not make it so that dungeons are completed in 5 minutes, that is just bad design. NEETs and No-lifers can do it, I’m sure. Then they sit there and offer patronizing comments and explain how the instance took a relatively short amount of time. Well for some of us it’s not, and invalidating our experience by explaining how we need to spend 30 minutes to complete a dungeon is insulting and offensive.
^— OP realizes he is awful at dungeons and makes a new rage post in the Dungeon forums calling for difficulty nerfs
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You hit what your camera is facing. The flame jet is misleading.
Yeah turret engineer = free kill, how’s that good game design?
I actually know the answer to this though. The turrets are the way they are because of spvp. If they make turrets too strong, then engineers would have the advantage defending points. So engineers in the rest of the game have to suffer, because of spvp.
Spirit weapon guardians and Phantasm mesmers are already pretty much this, you know.
Spirit weapon build with hammer and sword, NPCs that actually follow you around, attack your target without target change delays, and have immensely powerful command skills.
And don’t forget, they can’t be damaged.
How do you even get to level 80 without having heard of stunbreakers?
Compare the two rings Solaria and Lunaria. They’re the exact same stats. The only difference is that Lunaria has a defensive infusion slot and Solaria has an offensive slot.
The merchant does not sell offensive slot infusions, only defensive and omni infusions. Omni infusions cost 225 tokens while defensive infusions cost 75 tokens while offering the exact same agony resistance.
This means that someone who gets an Offensive infusion slot who just wants some agony resistance from the merchant will have to pay triple the price.
Mystic forge recipes are completely broken for both offensive and defensive slots. 20+ gold for +5 to a given stat is completely insane.
Please, if you’re going to make such crappy recipes for infusions, at least implement an offensive infusion that’s the same token price as the defensive infusion.
Turrets suffer from a lot of the same problems gadgets do. For one, I’d like to see more traits that affect them. I’d also like to see some traits combined into one trait.
I think my biggest gripe with turrets is that they don’t act like turrets. What is a turret in any other game? It’s supposed to be something that you do not want to walk into. If you do, you’ll likely be gunned down.
In this game, they deal a miniscule amount of damage before being destroyed by a passing breeze.
They are incredibly useless compared to a necromancer’s minions, a mesmer’s illusions or a guardian’s spirit weapons. I understand that they take a very short time to set up and last near-permanently until destroyed, but to me the trade-off just doesn’t make sense. Please, give them long deploy times or make it so they can’t be deployed with 100% uptime in exchange for more survivability and more damage. It wouldn’t make a large difference if they only lasted for a limited time after being deployed, anyways – a turret typically gets destroyed extremely quickly after it deals any damage at all.
Above all, I’d like to see them function more like spirit weapons. Spirit weapons have a limited duration but have incredibly powerful base mechanics. Their “command” is also a similar mechanic to “overcharge”, but they are destroyed if the player does this, unless the player has spirit weapons traited. However, in exchange, I would say that typically, their command skills are much more useful than our overcharge skills. I would like turrets to be more like this, limited duration and destroyed on overcharge unless traited, if it meant more powerful turrets and better overcharge abilities.
Beyond all this, if the problem is concerns with engineers using turrets to farm in PvE, it doesn’t make sense to me to kitten turrets in the rest of the game just for this. Just make it so minions/turrets cannot deal all the damage to a monster for an engineer to receive any reward. It would also stop AFK farming to give turrets a duration.
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Forceful Explosives increases the radius of all bombs and mines EXCEPT for the two traited bombs, which it renders nearly useless.
I would say this is definitely a bug. Whether it gets fixed on a timely basis, that’s a completely different story.
Kit refinement creates a bomb when bomb kit is equipped. Putting 5 in Explosives traitline creates a bomb on dodge.
These bombs, as far as I know, function as slightly weaker versions of the regular 1 skill in bomb kit. However, both of these bombs have a bug: If you take the trait Forceful Explosives, the damage radius of both of these bombs is reduced dramatically. If you put a bomb right next to an enemy by dodging or equipping the bomb kit, the bomb will not hit the enemy unless you are literally inside of your enemy. The bombs can be placed a foot or two away (100-130 range) and still hit the enemy, if you don’t take the trait.
Please fix this ASAP. I love the dodge bombs and I love kit refinement, but this is a horrifying bug that makes these bomb perks useless.
The bug you are experiencing comes from the trait Forceful Explosives, number III in the explosives traitline, which causes the two traited bombs to almost never deal damage.
What happens when you equip this trait is that it reduces the range of the Evasive Powder Keg to roughly ~30 radius. In other words, the bomb must explode directly INSIDE of your enemy for it to do any damage.
This trait also causes the bomb created by Kit Refinement and equipping the bomb kit to suffer from the same issue.
The issue is nonexistent with the trait Forceful Explosives unequipped. In that case, the Kit Refinement bomb and the Evasive Powder Keg bomb both have about a radius of ~150 units.
It’s a rather large problem because almost every bomb-based build should be taking this trait.
If you want to test radius, go to the Heart of the Mists in PvP and test out Evasive Powder Keg radius on the dummy golems. I can get my traited bombs to deal damage only if the bomb is placed directly inside of them, which is a near impossibility in both PvE and PvP.
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Signet of the Wild active effect functions as a Transform. This means that you can’t rez or stomp after you activate the signet, which seems to be pretty ridiculous to me. It cuts the value of the stability by a lot in PvP.
Nope. Using any of the other stunbreaker utilities would almost always be more useful.
If you’re talking about PvE, then you will never encounter a situation where, oh boy, I’m immobilized and cc’d and dazed and 50 AoEs are being laid on top of me by an intelligent, malicious enemy player. You’re fighting predictable computers with predictable rotations, and you might as well just be using a regular stunbreaker to get back into the fight faster. And if you need an “oh dang” stunbreaker every 24 or 30 seconds – Just what the hell are you doing? Are you getting pulled in by every single one of Kohler’s spins? You’re not being useful to anyone being on the ground for 2 seconds out of every 30, and if you’re not using it that often, you are using an inferior stunbreaker, because the main draw is the “relatively” short cooldown time.
Also, I don’t “only play PvP”. I play WvW, PvE, SPvP, and TPvP. In SPvP Rocket boots is only good for gimmick builds and running away, and any burst class with intelligence and mobility will instantly be on top of you again if you try to use that as an escape in SPvP. I don’t speak out of turn, either – I’ve tried it. A thief will steal or shadowstep to close the distance, an elementalist will ride the lightning or teleport, and a warrior will rush or whirlwind attack. The list goes on. And the enemy will be in your face again, and here you are down a utility skill. If you are fighting less intelligent enemies – well hey, I can use a 4-turret build and demolish people! That doesn’t mean the build is good, that means your enemies are bad.
And even if your Rocket Boots skill does work, that’s all you can use it for. Just one thing. Running away. Your extremely precious utility slot, doubly precious for being a kit-wielding engineer, is now useless because you decided to take a utility just for running away. Elixir R can be used for two extra dodges and Elixir S can be used to hold aggro, and those are on top of the stunbreaking capabilities. They can also be traited for additional elixir effects.
On the other hand, Rocket boots can be used for running away. And that’s it. The toolbelt skill is subpar if you don’t spec for condition damage, and provides no extra utility. Rocket Boots is probably the only stunbreaker in the game that can only be used for a single purpose. The ONLY time I could see it being used intelligently is perhaps in WvW scouting where you would combine with another stunbreaker for a fast getaway from enemy zergs – overspecialization at its finest.
Believe me, I want every Engineer skill to be good. But you’re deluding yourself in attempting to make this skill out to be anything other than subpar.
Sure, I can make a subpar skill work. But it will almost never be the best skill I could be taking in any given scenario.
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Sounds more like a targeting exploit to me than intended functionality, to be honest.
@Townopolis
Steal is also an instant cast and can be comboed with incredibly easily. If Acidic Elixirs made elixir throws instant cast as well, I’d be perfectly fine with the trait. It’s a slap in the face that it does subpar damage and the only justification is “well, it’s AoE! And you can throw up to four of them!”
If you want to contend that Acidic Elixirs should be better at AoE damage, let me advise you that it does roughly 1/6-1/7 the baseline damage of steal. That means that you would have to gather up many many mobs, and then have to have multiple elixirs, just to make this trait worthwhile.
But then if you wanted AoE damage, you should have just been throwing grenades! Oops!
Rocket boots ccs the user, and is probably one of the worst skills in the game. Great, a stunbreaker that stuns me! Just what I needed! Oh wait, I’d take Lightning Reflexes any day. I honestly want someone to prove me wrong on this. Saying “Oh, using it in a smoke field is useful though!” Doesn’t make sense. It would be like Shadowstep on the thief only being useful if he also took another skill to make it useful. Then it’s not very useful at all…And on top of that, Rocket Boots has only single-use functionality. We can’t use it to gap-close, since that will leave us CC’d near our enemies. We can ONLY use it for running away, and it’s subpar at that. Versatility at its finest?
I’ll grant you that Elixir S is probably the best invulnerability in the game. Not only is it on the shortest CD, engineers also benefit the most from invulnerability, because they have full access to their kits while invulnerable. The only problem…Arenanet seems to think that because we have a good invulnerability, we don’t need access to stability.
Stability is important for pointholding, and until we have a reliable source of it, (An elite that hardly anyone uses, and…Elixir S toolbelt 50% chance to proc stability on an extremely short duration, 50% to…stealth. Which makes it so we can’t contest.) we’ll likely always be inferior to Guardian and Elementalist bunkers in TPvP.
Different classes have different strengths and weaknesses. I’m okay with that.
What I’m not okay with is a class that has singular, un-synergetic strengths that pigeonhole us into certain type of builds forever.
Acidic Elixirs will never be useful in current implementation.
Rocket Boots will never be useful in current implementation.
And by the way, saying that “if you set it up properly, and in this one situation, and things are like this, then it has potential to be useful!” that’s basically the opposite of useful. It’s overspecialized. The opposite of versatility.
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So…why does Thief get a tier one power trait (Mug) that causes his F1 to do an instant ~500 base damage, while the Engineer gets a tier one power trait that causes his elixirs to become damaging projectiles…for about a ~50 base damage?
Our trait for damaging elixirs is objectively, unarguably worthless, especially compared to the thief’s Mug, which almost every single thief takes in his arsenal. Both are what I’d consider extremely similar traits in theory, yet with extraordinarily different baseline damages.
I’m wondering, how many of these traits and skills do we have that are clearly inferior to other classes’? Until recently, tool kit was just an inferior mishmash of skills from other classes – Box of nails is a horrible version of Caltrops, doing roughly an eighth of the bleed stacks and cripple. Gear Shield was a Shield Stance that lasted half as long. Magnet was a Scorpion wire with a shorter range and a tripled cast time.
Now, I know Tool kit received a massive buff recently. After months of being largely considered the most useless kit, it’s finally found a place on some of my builds despite still having a horrendous 1 and 2 skill. Regardless, this doesn’t change the fact: How many of these things do we have? Anyone have an answer?
I’m beginning to feel as if our class either got left behind in the dust in the pre-release balancing, or we our class has been purposely designed to be inferior to other classes. Why else would we have joke traits like Acidic Elixirs? I can spec full glass cannon in PvP and this piece of crap will be doing 450 damage on CRITS to other glass cannons. That’s less than the damage that a full toughness specced guardian bunker might do with an autoattack.
I’d be fine with this trait if all classes had useless traits in the adept traitline, and only started getting useful traits in master and grandmaster.
But thief gets Mug, and we get Acidic Elixirs.
PLEASE BALANCE OUR CLASS.
Kit refinement creates a bomb when bomb kit is equipped. Putting 5 in Explosives traitline creates a bomb on dodge.
These bombs, as far as I know, function as slightly weaker versions of the regular 1 skill in bomb kit. However, both of these bombs have a bug: If you take the trait Forceful Explosives, the damage radius of both of these bombs is reduced dramatically. If you put a bomb right next to an enemy by dodging or equipping the bomb kit, the bomb will not hit the enemy unless you are literally inside of your enemy. The bombs can be placed a foot or two away (100-130 range) and still hit the enemy, if you don’t take the trait.
Please fix this ASAP. I love the dodge bombs and I love kit refinement, but this is a horrifying bug that makes these bomb perks useless.
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Thanks for clearly not reading the entire thing before responding. I never made any mention of changing thief skills to a cooldown system.
You also have the opposite. Thief is the class that can spam the 5 skill the MOST out of any other class. Even if you swap weapons, that skill is typically on a 25+ second cooldown, much longer than a single weapon swap. For a thief, he just needs to wait a few seconds for 5-6 initiative, then he can use his skill again.
I’m ticking this in the category of “Senseless kneejerk reaction.”
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The typical response to the people that complain is “L2P! They can be countered!”.
However, just because something can be countered doesn’t mean it’s balanced – and even if it’s balanced, it’s pretty boring. I’ve played a thief a lot, and I enjoy pressing single buttons and getting large numbers. But thief gameplay takes it a level beyond just “easy damage”.
In even high level thief gameplay, such as rank40+ tournament play, it’s typically not about executing amazing and unexpected combos, it’s just setting up enemies as much as possible so you can repeatedly press your most damaging skill. Any other class has to rely on rotations rather than spamming just one or two skills, due to cooldowns.
I personally feel that spamming one attack over and over to the exclusion of others is by definition unbalanced. I don’t feel I’m alone when I say that rotations make for a more dynamic and appealing gameplay. The problem arises when trying to apply rotations to the thief, who has no cooldowns and can spam whatever he wants when he wants.
I do like the initiative system a lot, and I feel it adds something unique to the class. However, I feel it’s broken in the current implementation. It says something that every thief, even the most glass cannon thief considers 15 in Trickery almost mandatory, just for the 3 initiative – despite the fact that the traitline doesn’t offer much in the way of damage.
To diversify the system, I would return the initiative pool to 10 points. The trickery traitline would offer only a single extra initiative point.
However, in compensation, the thief’s initiative would be restored each time he swapped weapons. Either completely restored, or partially. In essence, each weaponset would have its own separate initiative points. With this system, you could no longer spam 2 for quite so long, but you would actually have more initiative, encouraging weaponswapping and dynamic combos rather than constantly just spamming 2 or 3 on one weaponset. It would also encourage more diversified weaponsets, due to the fact that the thief would no longer be able to rely on just one set to do all the damage for him.
I’d love to hear any legitimate thoughts or replies or incoherent flaming about the current state of the thief. I feel it needs a major rework in order to bring it in line with the rest of the classes, giving it more utility but less spammability in order to create a solid class with multiple viable roles rather than just “damage”.
I make a lot of assumptions in this thread based on personal observation only. I don’t have specific numbers. However, having spent quite a bit of time in WvW, SPvP, TPvP, and general PvE, either playing thief or watching other thieves, I feel that my observations aren’t completely wrong. Most thieves run extremely similar builds – it’s rare to see a venomshare thief or an evade tank thief. The vast majority of thieves I see do direct damage based on high precision and critdmg%. As well, almost every thief uses a shortbow. These two components of thief gameplay have become stale to the point where I feel they’re one of the classes with the least originality in build composition. This thread is about me musing why, and if it’s a problem. It’s a bit of a long read, but I’d prefer you read everything before responding.
The shortbow on thief is often dictated as a must-have by most experienced thieves. Some of the thief’s only AoE, a spammable blast finisher, a pulsing poison field that will apply weakness if the thief has 15 in deadly arts, a spammable evade and a teleport are all featured on one weapon. It’s hard for any of the other thief’s weapon options to outweigh this kind of utility. Typically, only niche builds can get away with not using the shortbow. It’s just too good.
By too good, I don’t mean it should be nerfed. But for one weapon to be used to the exclusion of so many other weaponsets is by definition a balancing problem. Thief players don’t just magically gravitate toward a certain weaponset for no reason. It’s unarguably one of the best weapons that the thief has, solely based on its utility.
The question that then comes next to my mind is based off that. The shortbow is used mainly for its utility. It excels only in ranged AoE dps. Single target ranged damage still belongs in the realm of p/p, highest dps and highest AoE dps both belong to the sword, and melee burst belongs to the dagger. If you always take the shortbow, just for a backup weapon, you’re giving up a lot of options.
In looking at what might be causing so many thieves to so heavily favor the shortbow over all his other sets, I tried to imagine the shortbow if thief was just another class that had to play by the cooldown system instead of his initiative system. I thought it might look something like this:
Cluster Bomb: 10 second recharge.
Disabling Shot: 15 second recharge.
Choking Gas: 20 second recharge.
Infiltrator’s Arrow: 35 second recharge.
Of course, I can’t read Arenanet’s mind. I don’t know what the thief would be like if he used cooldowns. However, I think these numbers aren’t too far off what the weapon might be like.
As you can see, with everything on a cooldown system, the thief no longer has easy access to 2+ teleports, he can no longer spam blast finishers or hefty AoE damage, and he can only use a single evade before it’s put on cooldown. To me, this is now a mediocre weapon. The autoattack isn’t enough to justify using this weapon.
In other words, what’s probably already become apparent to many people already, the thief occupies a unique space in the world of Guild Wars 2 combat. He can stay in one weaponset indefinitely yet still be contributing just as much as any other party member due to his unique initiative system. A thief never needs to swap weapons because all his skills are on cooldown, because his cooldown system is tied to his person, rather than his weapons.
Because of this, weaponswapping becomes a rather less important factor in combat for the thief, and so many of them will take one set for damage, and the other set for utility, rather than say, a warrior, who might take a greatsword and an axe, both physical damage melee weapons with little utility, but he has to do this to output maximum damage. If hundred blades, rush, and whirlwind attack are all on cooldown, the warrior has to switch weapons just to keep up the melee pressure. If a thief wants to keep up melee pressure, all he has to do is stay in his same weaponset, and he is never in danger of being in the “wrong” weaponset at an inopportune time.
As a mechanic, I personally believe this is overpowered and bad for dynamic combat and build composition. There has been a lot of complaining about spamming skills and doing large amounts of damage while pushing single buttons. You probably haven’t played enough sPvP if you haven’t seen one of these people: The majority of complaints come from the thieves that spam a single skill, usually Heartseeker, Pistol Whip, or Unload.
What it needs to do is a lot more damage up close. It makes absolutely no sense that even with a full glass cannon build, you can spray a full load of flames onto an enemy and it doesn’t even do noticeable damage compared to something like a blunderbuss on the rifle.
Because the class that can stack the most might obviously deals the most damage, right?
Maths back me up in saying might is an overall worthless boon.
Gee, sure sounds like how TPvP and PvE is already, for other classes.
The problem is that it’s not a knockdown, it’s a knockback for 0 ft. There’s a large difference in the disable time of the enemy.
Actually, I’m pretty sure there was a change. Whereas before (and also still in the tooltip) you countered with a kick that pushed enemies backwards, you now do a horizontal chop with your greatsword that doesn’t push enemies back. The attack also no longer cleaves and only hits one target.
Is it just me, or has the kick portion of the greatsword been nerfed?
I swear the pushback used to work, and now it doesn’t, at least in PvE.
On top of that, I thought the kick used to hit multiple targets, but now it only hits the person who attacked you, which makes the block useless when multiple enemies are attacking you.
I don’t exactly understand the argument where people say “Oh, there’s no way rangers can receive a bonus for ignoring his class mechanic, no other class gets that kind of compensation!”
Clearly these people must be playing a different game. Either that, or they haven’t heard of traits like Berserker’s Power for warrior, which is a TIER ONE trait. It increases your damage by an impressive 12% when at full adrenaline. It clearly punishes you for using your class mechanic, providing only a small burst damage boost if you use ever use your f1, in comparison to a forever-lasting sustained dps boost. If you take this trait in PvE, it would almost never be a good idea to use your class mechanic.
In addition, the argument that “it’s been implemented by the devs, they intended you to use it!” doesn’t hold in many other aspects of the game, either. Otherwise, traits that benefited you when your endurance was full wouldn’t exist.
Definitely agree. Even if it was just a trait that gave you stat bonuses when your pet was dead, there needs to be a playstyle for ranger that has focused DPS that doesn’t rely on AI. Which means there needs to be some kind of no-pet mechanic.
And if they do drop precursors, it will be a 0.0001% chance, and Arenanet will claim that the drop rate was unchanged from the actual chest.
Bomb explosions are fine in my opinion. It’s enough when a smoke bomb and big ol’ bomb covers almost an entire cap point or more when I’m playing SPvP. Mines could be increased by up to 30%.
I do agree that mines need to be a kit like they used to be in BWE1. Please, make mines more like mines, not something we throw out in midcombat, but actually devastating hidden traps that enemies do not want to step on.
Also, mines in general will never work if they are visible to the enemy. Not in a game where you can just roll on the ground and “evade” a giant explosion. Unless you make it so that mines that have been laid cannot be evaded.
Yes, having kits with your mainhand weapon would be amazing. Because the main gimmick of the class is that we can’t weaponswap, I would take it even if it meant that we were stuck in whatever kit we were once we entered combat. (Initiate combat in sniper kit rifle, stuck in sniper kit rifle and can’t swap to shotgun)
It would improve our weapon choices a lot. I don’t think tying the kit to both a utility and a wielded weapon is viable, though.
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Because beyond the 3 skill and the f1, there is no damage. It’s extremely squishy, and yes, having to wait 8 seconds between bursts is a gimmick by definition.
Cluster bomb spam, on the other hand, will be dealing almost as much damage AoE in the same timeframe, with just 300 less range. On top of that, you have the mobility that the thief offers.
And on top of everything, backstab as an option is much more viable than kill shot in almost any situation that’s not WvW.
Oh, the best part is that kill shot is a projectile, and can be reflected. If you have never meet an enemy zerg that has somebody spamming reflects, you probably haven’t played enough wvw. In SPvP and TPvP it’s an absolute joke unless the enemy is completely unaware you’re there (and in that situation, might as well play a thief for the added mobility and increased compressed damage potential)
Rez up to three people, potential rez on yourself, rez an ally at your location, rez an ally with full health.
Gee, Elementalist players sure love to complain.
Downed state vs. Downed state, Necromancer is definitely in a good place. The only autoattack which actually heals, and a poison field to deal with enemies that can heal themselves in downed, such as ranger and guardian.
But personally, I think downed v. downed is less of a problem than just downed v. player right now.
It’s my hope that Anet just streamlines downed state abilities to work similarly to each other rather than spending too much time balancing a minigame.
There is a warning that appears when you try to salvage an item of a certain rarity or higher. (I believe it’s green or higher)
Problem becomes apparent when you’re doing chain salvages, especially on PvP gear, all of which is exotic. There’s no way to do this easily other than double-click the kit, click the item you want to salvage, and move your mouse to the warning screen and click “Yes, I do want to salvage this item.”
Please create an option to turn this warning off. Not all of us are interested in carpal tunnel.
By self-rez, the OP means the 3 skill on downed state, not a utility slot rez. Please read the entire post first.
You forgot to mention that mist form is instant cast and cannot be interrupted. All classes bar the thief can be forced into a stomp with no resistance by launching them and then instantly starting the stomp. With the elementalist, he has an instant cast that lets him move and heals him to original downed state.
Mist form was obviously designed as a 3 skill. Please rebalance it to be on par with a 2 skill. Give it a casting time, and don’t have it change health.
Necromancers and Engineers definitely have the most underpowered down states. You can be blinded, blocked, double stomped, or stability stomped, and we have no downed state mobility to avoid people just spamming damaging skills on us while we’re down. Not to mention that the 3 skill on necromancer is absolutely horrendous. The poison duration is rather lengthy, but how the hell is that going to help me or my team? Unless the 1 skill was modified to do something special to poisoned opponents.
Make the gadget targeted instead, like jump shot, and remove the knockdown. Make the toolbelt skill apply cripple as well as burning and improve the leap range, so there is some use to the toolbelt skill other than on condition damage builds. Either remove the condition curing aspect of the skill, or increase cooldown duration to compensate for the added utility of the skill.
Now it’s suddenly viable for a lot more environments, and the only people who would complain would be the people who were using it for a one-shot “run away” skill. This skill has so many problems. We can’t even open engagements with it like thieves or elementalists can with Shadowstep or Ride the Lightning because we’ll just be knocked down, sticking our backside out at the enemy if we do that.
This is a problem with the engineer. Many classes have skills that have multiple purposes – Shadowstep can be used to cure conditions, as simple mobility, as a stunbreaker, to close gaps or to run away. Putting this similar skill in comparison to Rocket Boots creates a stark comparison. Saying “no, it’s good how it is because it’s good for this one situational thing” is an unacceptable argument, doubly so for the engineer who is starved for his utilities as it is due to his lack of weaponswapping. Having a utility I can’t use unless I’m perfectly situated, my back isn’t against a wall, and it’s okay to run away, and there aren’t any enemies that can easily chase me, and is still probably going to be useless unless I have a smoke field up means there is a serious problem with this skill. I don’t care if it works on your gimmick build in wvw, it still doesn’t make it a solid skill for 99% of engagements in SPvP, TPvP, and general PvE.
In the end, Rocket boots can only be used for running away. It’s barely even passable at that role.
I would trade for Shadowstep any day.
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You should consider using runes of the water for even more burst healing, unless you really feel as if regeneration is worthwhile.
The reason why stability is important is because in PvP, if you go invulnerable, you can no longer contest points.
The toolbelt skill gives a 50% chance to proc stability…and a 50% chance to proc stealth, which will also cause you to lose control of the point.
We need more defensive options in regards to pointholding.
Please have a feature in the options to turn this off. That’s all.
I feel like Anet really didn’t do a great job with the Toolkit. They took skills from several professions (Caltrops, Shield Stance, Scorpion Wire, etc.) and purposely made them worse, either with increased casting time, less damage, or less duration.. It really adds to the theme of engineer being an inferior class in general. Is that what they want? It seems to be where the class is headed. Want to be a bunker? Go guardian or elementalist and spam heals, all of which heal for more than an engineer could ever hope to. Oh, and also you get stability, which engineers basically don’t have.
You forgot to mention that hip fire looks absolutely ridiculous on the legendary rifle.
Elixir X can go on full cooldown if you trigger the Tornado form but are interrupted in any way during the 1 second or so cast time. (moving, CC, jumping) This doesn’t seem like intended functionality.
So because it doesn’t fit your idea of an engineer, it shouldn’t exist?
I can say my idea of an engineer doesn’t include flopping around like an idiot with Overcharged shot and Rocket Boots and self-CCing myself because, you know, I’m supposed to be some sort of talented inventor with some amount of intellect. So then these skills shouldn’t exist, right? I sure don’t see any finesse in these skills.
I honestly have no idea why anyone would say “No, I don’t want it, it doesn’t fit in with my worldview.” This is an MMO.
I like the idea of having a torch, but I feel like it would overlap with the offhand pistol that we already get. It would also overlap with the flamethrower.
I’d much prefer to have a power-based physical damage weapon that is held in the main hand, like a mace. That way I could finally use the shield without being a condition-based build, and Engineers would finally get their melee weapon.
We really just need more traits, and fixes to the ones that exist.
I’ve played full elixir builds before, and they work fine. Lots of condition removal, buffs, and whatnot. It plays similarly to a thief that only uses two of the same weapon set to acquire on-switch buffs while always staying on the same weaponset.
Turrets and gadgets, however?
Turrets are almost universally agreed to be useless except in gimmick builds. Even when you spec for them specifically, they’re of questionable value. Going with three or four turrets is beyond overspecialized.
Gadgets suffer from the same deal. They’re generally situational, and they suffer from not having any unique traits that buff their usage – there’s only a trait that reduces CD.
On the other hand, we have amazing traits like Grenadier, Powerful Explosives, Fireforged Trigger, Deadly Mixture, Speedy Kits, Kit Refinement and so on, all buffing kits. If there were two or three more traits that buffed gadgets, and if turret functionality was improved, then I do feel as if the engineer wouldn’t be as kittened.
My idea would be to create a trait that causes turrets to pulse stability to nearby allies. It sounds overpowered as a permanent source of stability, but you could limit the radius to something short. And because turrets are already fragile, they’d probably die quickly anyways – unless you brought more than one.
I’d love to see a gadget buff, either through base functionality or through traits, that added passive effects to gadgets when equipped and not on cooldown, similar to signets. It’d improve 3-gadget gameplay immensely.
I would like a portal gun kit or a teleport. Anet probably feels that “hey, engineers have perma swift, that’s enough mobility” but in most situations, it’s really not. We have few leap-type skills that close distances fast, and our only option for really going fast in combat is Super Speed from the Slick Shoes.
Personally I’d even be fine if they removed perma swift, but only if they gave us strong team mobility support in return, like this.
Yes please. On top of that, add some new traits that affect turrets and fix the old ones.
On top of everything I’d love to see turrets give stability somehow. Either a trait that makes turrets pulse stability or a new turret that gives stability. They’re already really fragile, so I wouldn’t call this “permanent” stability OP
Yes, Engineer needs a melee weapon, and he needs a weapon that can deal a lot of damage. Rifle hardly counts, you’ve got two skills that do just OK damage even with full full glass specced. It’s more for the CC than anything.
While I would love to see five brand new skills in a two-handed weapon, I think I’d love it even more if I could use a power-based weapon with the shield and not a pistol. So a mace would be just great.