Guild Wars 2

Some more ideas.

As an idea for a source of stability, I have three ideas, each revolving around the seldom-used turrets.

1. An entirely new turret that pulses stability.

2. Make an old turret, such as the Thumper Turret, pulse stability.

3. Or, my idea. You could create a new trait that buffs turrets.

My idea was that you could create a trait that causes all turrets to pulse stability to nearby allies. Because turrets are already extremely fragile, I fail to see how this would be overpowered. It would bring refreshing new gameplay to Engineer PvP and grant him the powerful pointholding he currently lacks, while simultaneously making turrets a much more valuable asset to the team rather than tiny ticks of damage that even the squishiest thief wouldn’t notice. It could be 30 in Inventions, to finally give people a reason to spec 30 in that traitline…I feel as if almost every major trait in that line is completely useless…Most of them are barely noticeable passives, like “reduce damage by 5% when endurance is full.” I’d be happy to see any new traits that buff skill lines or kitswapping rather than incredibly boring passives. Throw out a minefield below X hp, reduce damage by 5%, increase damage by 5%. These are all boring. Maybe useful, but pretty boring.

Anyways, back on turrets: At least make turrets scale with power. They already scale with condition damage. They truly aren’t overpowered in any way in high level PvE or PvP, and they’re fragile on top of that. I know Anet probably wanted to have turrets not do all the work for you to prevent PvE afkers, but right now, the turrets don’t do ANY of the work for you. Currently, out of all the utility turrets, I only use rocket turret for the decent damage and command knockdown. If I ever use any other turrets, it’s because I’m building a crappy build just for fun and wishing turrets were good.

Also, turrets are typically more useful when exploded than when actually up. You can trait them to knock back, and they do flat ~1800 damage irrespective of your Power. Personally, I would make turret knockback base functionality just because turrets are currently so awful.

And finally, on Turrets, the Mortar is completely useless in PvP and general PvE compared to the other elites. Believe me, I’ve tried to make it work. It isn’t affected by your stats at all, not condition damage, power, condition duration, or healing power. The tooltips on the respective skills change, but the actual numbers when you fire the thing are always the same. The Mortar can’t crit, the knockback is on a gigantic spread and unreliable, with a huge cooldown. The heal would be good…if it scaled with healing power. Everything does mediocre damage, and the caltrops calculate damage based on zero condition damage. The 10s Frost Field is the only redeeming aspect of the elite, and I’m not going to take an elite just for that one condition that can be removed. MAYBE it has a niche use in WvW siege, but please, don’t make us the kittened class that has only two usable elites and then one we can sometimes use in just one aspect of the game. Don’t even forget, that if you try to use it in WvW, it can be instantly killed by other enemies with range, because it only has 1400 range and is incredibly easy to break.

And on the topic of the range…why the hell does it have a shorter range than traited grenades? A small cannon has less range than my throwing arm? I would not complain about this elite at all if you just gave it 5000 range. It wouldn’t be powerful, but it would have extreme ranged support, and it would be possible to provide small support on distant points in PvP and WvW. Apparently, the Elite Supplies trait doesn’t even affect this elite yet, and some turret traits affect this while others don’t. Please clarify trait descriptions and give us more interesting traits. We’re the engineers, after all. We leap into the air like crazy idiots and drink elixirs of questionable origin. We shouldn’t have such stagnant traits.

Give more traits that improve these, and give all conjured weapons on-summon effects! I’d love for a competitive PvP build be able to revolve around using a few of these spells.

From a PvP standpoint?

Boon Removal. Mine doesn’t count, it’s trash that removes just one boon. I’m talking about a cleansing wall similar to Null Field that removes several or all boons.

The reason why I want Boon Removal is because the Engineer has effectively zero sources of stability. Anyone who has played serious PvP for more than an hour has seen how rampant it is and how much of PvP revolves around people either having it or not.

Among all the classes, let’s see:

Warriors have a solid stability source in Balanced Stance.

Guardians have some of the best stability sources in the game in their shout and consecration.

Rangers have to put in a hefty trait investment to receive signet active bonuses, but in doing so he can receive an invulnerability signet on top of his stability signet.

Thieves has stability only in the related Steal item and his Dagger Storm elite. However, this is likely to compensate for the numerous stunbreakers and sources of stealth that he gets. After all, we’re talking about the only class that gets a stunbreaker on a weapon skill, and the one with the most teleports in the game.

Mesmers receive stability only in the associated Mantra, but they have numerous sources of invulnerability, which I will count as a pseudo-stability.

Elementalists have an invulnerability and a stability, as well as having one of the best stability traits in the game.

And finally, the last two: The Necromancer and the Engineer.

The Necromancer is in a similar situation as the Engineer, although even he isn’t in as bad of a situation. The Necromancer can at least trait to receive a reliable stability if he really wants it, even if it is a hefty trait investment. Beyond that, he can only receive it from his elite.

The Engineer, however?

Let’s see:

He gets an invulnerability, and on that skill he gets a (maybe) stability for 4 seconds. Beyond that, he can only receive stability on his elite skill.

Now, at first, I thought that this would make sense from a game design standpoint. The engineer has the most CC abilities in the game. It makes sense that in return for all that, he would also be easily CC’d himself.

Except that it doesn’t work that way.

Any time in Tourney PvP where you need to CC someone off a point, they will use stability to counter you, and then CC you back. Because the engineer doesn’t have any reliable stability, he simply can’t play this game of back-and-forth.

But wait, you say! He must have other tools he can use instead of stability to play on par with the other classes. What about blinds and immobilizes? He has those too, and those bypass stability.

The answer? No. That isn’t enough.

No, I can’t keep up a perma blind on that Hammer Guardian at mid on Kyhlo to avoid getting CC’d. Oh, and don’t forget, he can summon his hammer that will push me back on every third hit, and that can’t be blinded!

No, I can’t reliably defend myself against a mesmer that just stands at 1200 range and spams phantasms and his magic bullet and his Domination signet!

No, I can’t defend a point reliably at all against anyone who has just one skill that Pushes, Launches, or Pulls! Because there will be one time when he isn’t blinded or CC’d and has a clear shot on me, and then he will immobilize me and CC me off the point, neutralizing it in the 2 seconds he managed to push me off the point!

The main reason why this problem exists isn’t because Engineer doesn’t have stability. Several classes have no easily accessible utility skill that applies stability. Mesmers, who have to rely on distortion to survive, can’t contest a point while invulnerable. Then why am I not complaining about Mesmer gameplay?

Well, that’s simple. Because out of all the classes, probably the one thing that has been one of the stupidest game design choices I’ve ever seen was limiting effective boon removal to two classes: Necromancer and Mesmer. Several classes can remove boons through traits, and every class has access to the sigil that removes boons on crit. However, these are all on cooldowns and will randomly proc. They will proc on that regeneration that was ticking for 5 health a second, removing that, and then not doing anything about the stability that went up a moment later that enabled the enemy to launch a critical attack.

The only reliable, on-demand boon removal belongs to the Mesmer and Necromancer, the only classes with skills that can remove multiple or all boons on an enemy at once.

If Engineer had more boon removal, I wouldn’t care about him not having stability. It would be a fun “CC them before they CC you” sort of gameplay, which I think matches the game design of the class. Without boon removal, however, it becomes a horrible waiting game, all during which the Engineer can be CC’d because he has effectively zero stability.

Just a small suggestion. I noticed earlier on my thief that if I used Heartseeker (a leap finisher) through a smoke field, I would get stealth, which was not broken if the Heartseeker did damage. I like this, it makes it so that the stealth combo isn’t completely wasted if you accidentally hit someone with the finisher attack. I was just hoping that the same could be applied to blast finishers; using a big bomb or a shield inversion on a smoke field will instantly reveal me if I accidentally hit a mob with them, so it’s as if I never stealthed at all.