Guild Wars 2

Are you an upset Clone on Death Mesmer?

Muchacho.2390:

There are alot of things that necros need but taunt is not one of them.

Very specific criticism. Any constructive suggestions?

I agree with Push being more important than Pull for Necro, but that there needs to be just a little bit more Pull so that a Necro can have the same kind of control over fights that a Warrior does. A Taunt mechanic would make Necro a lot more viable imo

Post title is fairly self explanatory. Whether it’s from Death Shroud, Axe, or some other mechanic, if Necro is supposed to be a close to mid range fighter, which the design of Death Shroud suggests, then I think it needs the ability to pull enemies in without having to specifically build Spectral Grasp.

The Revenant should be better at Taunting than Necro, but whether it’s a new Grandmaster Trait in Blood Magic or part of some weapon skills, Necro would greatly benefit from a Push-Pull system where Push > Pull, but the Pull is more pronounced.

As a Warrior, I can do quite a few things to keep people where I want them for melee. Necro does have Chill and Cripple, but if they have Taunt I think that will solve quite a few problems of the class in one fell swoop.

TheAngryDuckling.5481:

Lets be honest every warrior build will be defense and discipline with a longbow.

In Conquest yes, but in Stronghold the build options are much larger.

That said, I’ll do a Strength, Defense, Discipline Hambow for Power

Strength: Physical Training, Body Blow, Berserker’s Power
Defense: Dogged March, Cleansing Ire, Defy Pain
Discipline: Warriors Sprint, Destruction of the Empowered, Merciless Hammer

Amulet: Soldiers
Rune: Hoelbrak
Hammer w/ Intelligence and Battle
Longbow w/ Battle and Doom
Mending, Balanced Stance, Berserker Stance, Bull’s Charge, Rampage

Body Blow is excellent b/c of the Weakness. This will punish Medi Guardians severely, which is something we are missing in that 1v1. Mending presumably will benefit a lot from Physical Training, and another CC will make Merciless Hammer hit harder. Anti-condi is a Warrior archetype so I’m sticking with that so Engis and Necros don’t get cute.

I agree with the adrenaline on hit being baseline and adjusting traits so that Warrior isn’t filling it up too fast. It only makes sense that a class with no stealth, teleports, and whose archetype is “Come at me Bro” to be rewarded for being such.

The reason I went with Arms is because 100% critting Earthshaker and Combustive Shot is a massive DPS increase, and so is Unsuspecting Foe. I like the burstiness of that vs. the sustained DPS from Strength.

That would be an interesting Celestial approach.

Here’s a Power version

Arms: Berserkers Fury, Rending Strikes, Burst Precision
Defense: Dogged March, Cleansing Ire, Defy Pain
Discipline: Warriors Sprint, DotE, Merciless Hammer
Healing Signet, Stances, Signet of Rage
Hammer w/ Intelligence and Battle
Longbow w/ Battle and Energy
Soldiers Amulet
Strength Rune

Hambow would probably be Arms, Defense, and Discipline.

Arms: Berserkers Fury, Rending Strikes, Burst Precision
Defense: Dogged March, Cleansing Ire, Defy Pain
Discipline: Warriors Sprint, DotE, Merciless Hammer

So I wanted to start this so Anet see what ppl would want to run with the information revealed so far. The more they know we would utilize, the more they can informed balance passes beyond what they think is fine.

I personally think Warrior is better off building one of two ways for Conquest – Support or Node Fighter.

Here are two builds for Support I think would be useful.

Shoutbow Upgraded
Tactics
Quick Breathing, Shrug it Off, Vigorous Shouts
Discipline
Warriors Sprint, Destruction of the Empowered, Burst Mastery
Dogged March, Cleansing Ire, Defy Pain
*Amulet: Celestial
Rune: Soldier
Weapon Set 1 & Sigils: Sword/Warhorn, Battle and Intelligence
Weapon Set 2 & Sigils: Longbow, Doom and Geomancy
Healing, Utilties, Elite: Adrenaline Rush, For Great Justice, Shake it Off, Balanced Stance, Battle Standard

Your usual Shoutbow but with the added survival of the full Defense and Discipline line, making Combustive Shot stronger and Defy Pain to keep you alive longer. Presumably the already strong condition removal will be even stronger with Adrenaline Rush.

Hulk Really Fooqin Angry
Tactics
Empowered, Shrug It Off, Vigorous Shouts
Defense
Dogged March, Cleansing Ire, Defy Pain
Strength
Physical Training, Body Blow, Distracting Strikes
Amulet: Celestial
Rune: Soldier
Weapon Set 1 and Sigils: Mace/Shield, Battle and Geomancy
Weapon Set 2 and Sigils: Longbow, Doom and Geomancy
Healing, Elite, and Utilities: Adrenaline Rush, Stomp, Shake It Off, For Great Justice, Rampage

Stomp, Rampage, Mace / Shield would make successful CC not only disrupting, but stacking confusion, bleeding, and weakness as well as stacking might(!!!!). The Shouts would do what they usually do. A massive Norn would be required for this build lol

I can see a Celestial Support Necro build coming out of the new changes.

Blood Magic with Ritual of Life, Transfusion, and Deathly Invigoration
Curses with Enfeebling Blood, Path of Corruption, and Terror
Soul Reaping with Soul Marks, Master of Terror, and Foot in the Grave

All that healing support, Fear, AoE, and being less easily focused would be an interesting ally to have.

I would actually be okay with AI builds if the AI is easy to kill, but they have a low cooldown and placement matters a lot. That would force movement on the part of the attacker to get rid of the Spirits, but not so much time that the Ranger just laughs and kills them easily.

The thing about it is that all classes are getting that kind of global buff, and while the traits are fantastic I think the amulet and rune choice will be just as critical.

The question is if or how much they are adding stats to Amulets and Runes to me. These traits will need to be tempered with lower stats so that an S/D thief can’t OHKO people while being untouchable.

Limiting the range would be an answer to that, like 600/900 range or something.

It seems like its a very short duration guys… a little much on the sky is falling rage

I think they would benefit from ground targeting, like how Turrets can be.

Its a transforming Elixir… it fits….

Shadow Arts will continue to be terrible in Conquest, but in WvW and Stronghold it will certainly be strong.

The other four choices, however, all look like legitimate alternatives to one another.

If anything, the stats need to be lower not higher. The potential for insta burst and unkillable builds is through the roof if all the amulets get 800 more stats.

I’m going to pretend Anet has a system in place that forces teams to not be able to stack classes because stacking Engineers, Eles, and a Thief would be too strong.

Mid

• Celestial Warrior Shoutbow
• Celestial Engineer w/ Tool, Nade, SS
• Celestial Staff Elementalist

Close

• Meditation Guardian

Escort then Roamer

• D/P Shortbow Thief

What I hope can happen in Post-Specialization GW2 is that there can be more classes that can compete.

Bio Flame.4276:

I don’t think Josh even understands why is it that Turret Engis are so OP.
And he doesn’t understand why is it so frustrating to play against one of them.

Can they be beat? Sure, I kill them all the time but it’s not fun. It’s annoying.
VERY annoying.

And it’s too kitten ed easy to just face-roll with a Turret Engi and still be extremely effective.
The proposed change won’t be enough. Not by a longshot.

There will be quite a few ways for classes to kill a Turret Engi is this goes through.

AI builds really do need to be addressed in this AMA as a general concept. I’m sure people would be okay if Anet formally said, “Guys we are just as tired of AI as you are and will only make this worthwhile for PvE and maybe WvW players,” but in the interest of build diversity I think they should at least try to make AI more competition-friendly.

Yeah I really doubt the classes that already have shouts are getting any more. It might be the Revanant’s other specialization, since Shouts seem to be a heavier armor thing.

ronpierce.2760:

I will say, I’d either rather amulets not be buffed, and just have less tanky tanks/less bursty glass (in net less extremes across the board, but this includes Cele) which I think would be good for the game, OR some sort of gem system so we can at least shift around stats some way. I can’t say I’m a fan of pushing the extreme glass and extreme wall sort of playstyle further.

Totally agree. The thought of Berserker amulet getting an addtional 800 stats as “compensation” is actually pretty scary, especially for new players that are going to be really annoyed if they die in 3 seconds to something they can’t read or react to, like a Thief’s or Medi Guard’s instaburst

My questions

• Instead of adding more stats to amulets in PvP, how about adding Boon and Condition Duration to amulets as a way to keep the stats lower overall?

I’m concerned that having three maxed out trait lines, in current terms, will make the “compensated” stats too pronounced in pvp. Zerker, for example, could get 800 more stats as compensation for the lost trait stats and the already nasty Thief builds become even nastier with Panic Strike, Executioner and Sleight of Hand. It would also make amulets more interesting, like 30% Condi Duration on Soldiers making it an amulet where you might want to stack Vulnerability and Cripple/Immob over time to be a bruiser.

• Everyone hates AI builds. It seems to be a cultural thing now and it’s a problem short and long term. What’s Arenanet’s plan for how to handle Spirit Weapons, Turrets, Spirits, etc. without causing a riot on the forums any time they’re viable?

One solution is just make them easy to kill, keep current functionality and make team support of the AI person more necessary for it to work, which appears to be the direction moving forward. I personally think that the summon-sacrifice-low CD concept works better for AI builds than the current system of fire and forget that we see in the above builds. While it would “copy” the way Mesmers use their AI, they could be tailored to have a class-specific feel to them. For example, a Necro specialized in Death Magic could be able to summon a Shadow Fiend and activate it, destroying it, but giving the Necro a couple of boons, or put a couple of conditions in an AoE.

• I personally don’t care about the QQ on this, but what about the builds that cherrypick minor traits, like Justice is Blind for Guardians? How much do certain majors/minors factor in to the design of the new system, if at all?

Again, I personally think that if a Guardian, or any class for that matter, wants a powerful trait, then they need to go all in and have a cost/benefit analysis to make. This is an opportunity to tell these people that there need to be more tradeoff in builds so that there aren’t obnoxious superbuilds that can do too much at once.

• Now that each class appears to be capable of being expanded indefinitely, are we going to see classes become more homogenized?

There are only so many mechanics and concepts that can be applied to a game system, so this seems like an inevitable part of the Specialization system. I personally don’t think that’s a bad thing, like how a Necromancer might be able to eventually provide a support role to a group that matches a Guardian’s effectiveness, but in a different Necro-themed way.

• How much has forum feedback led to the decision to centralize and condense the trait system to where it’s heading today? Have other MMOs’ systems influenced this decision?

Customization is a great concept, but when there’s too much of it, it causes an enormous amount of chaos, the players centralize that chaos themselves, and it just confuses new players. I think GW2 has been the poster-child of that kind of effect in the MMO world since its launch, and I’m curious to what made Arenanet realize that this wasn’t such a good thing.

Anything outside of these questions will be answered with the specifics of how the classes will be changed in the new system. I’m really curious about the lesser used ones and my main class Warrior, so I’m interested to see what the future holds.

I am almost positive these are the utilities that the elite specialization uses. That suggests that the new class is some master of storms / winds.

I was thinking about this actually and it makes sense that this would have a bigger impact than first glance.

For example, if Critical Strikes loses 300 Ferocity and Precision, the burst will have to come from Berserker’s alone + 78 stats + Rune. That creates a more important choice for gear as a Thief, so the burst won’t be as severe unless the Thief builds very squishy.

And there will be less wiggle room for traits so it’ll be a question of certain runes, sigils, and amulets being outliers instead of having all of that and traits to wade through.

Yeah it turns an extremely difficult problem into just a difficult problem. There’s all kinds of things that can “screw up” in balancing a bunch of different classes and specs, and since they’re adding basically 9 new trait lines and a whole bunch of new skills a better system was desperately needed.

All I know is a Panic Strike, Executioner, Sleight of Hand Thief is going to be killing people at will.

I guess you don’t see how strong it would be to have a Fresh Air full Water, full Arcane build.

Yes there are less choices, but the power of those builds will be potentially much greater.

Aaron.4807:

I agree 100 percent. Anet is killing off build diversity and build innovation. From what I gather we will be locked into 3 trait lines and in those trait lines we wont even be able to chose what traits we can take together? WTF is this?

ANet, WTF are guardians gonna do?

I know we don’t know the whole system but it seems like Anet are making irrelevant changes for the sake of… I really don’t know what they are trying to achieve. At least in wvw/pve you can still mix runes and armor to optimize numbers but it looks like they are changing pvp into a game mode that 6th graders will only find enjoyable, at least build wise.

I have zero pity for Guardians not being able to get Justice is Blind on every build for barely any investment.

They are giving 2 more major traits though, so a Right Hand Strength, Meditation, full Virtues build would be pretty kitten strong. Read the whole thing before getting upset everyone’s getting more juice.

You guys might be upset about it, but there has always been an illusion of choice in extreme customization systems like GW2’s, WoW’s and SWTOR’s old talent systems.

There is always a centralized, best approach that “kills build diversity.”

It’s better to limit options to a few good ones than to have millions of permutations of trash.

BTW, this is almost a complete carbon copy of SWTOR’s Disciplines LOL

Ya that’s a big part of how classes work right now. Pretty much every warrior gets a significant amount of Toughness and Healing Power for having points in Defense, whereas it is assumed that in HoT, you’ll have to take at least Valkyrie’s to get the same kind of output you got from simply speccing into Defense before.

I’m more interested to see how the offensive traits work. There are some really bad offensive trait lines that would be interesting to see culled and made more useful.

Also, I just had a terrible vision of impending doom. Panic Strike, Executioner, and Sleight of Hand D/P SB Thief.

Okay they just gave an update on Specializations.

My thoughts

1. Limiting the trait field to fewer and better choices is an excellent idea. There are a lot of useless traits in every class’ trait lines, and this might make the classes more balanced, but…

2. I’m kind of concerned that each class gets two more traits. For example, if the current Warrior traits remain as is, then as a Warrior I can spec Burst Mastery, Defy Pain, and Burst Precision all in one build. 100% critting Eviscerates and Combustion Shot that land while having Cleansing Ire, Defy Pain, and Destruction of the Empowered is insane.

3. I really like how stats aren’t tied to the Core Specializations anymore. In PvP, it appears your amulet, runes, and sigils are where all your stats come from. As a Warrior, I’ve always felt that I was locked into having to bring at least 650 Power in any build because Discipline gives Ferocity and it’s a waste to not have higher direct damage when you get a crit multiplier.

4. Very happy that all it takes is buying HoT to get the elite specializations. I was concerned that I’d have to PvE to get them, but thankfully that’s not the case. I might PvE to get the unique gear for them if that’s the only way, but having those options available from the xpac launch is a good thing.

5. No more cherrypicking minors is going to dramatically affect certain builds, like everyone’s favorite Guardian build (sarcasm). Actually, Guardian as a whole is getting a big nerf in that respect for not being able to have Justice is Blind unless they pick Radiance. That’s probably a good thing to be honest because the survivability of a Berserker spec should not be anywhere near that high.

Overall, I think Specializations appear to be a better system than before, but the additional 2 major traits might make some incredibly overpowered builds. This is from assuming that the choices are exactly as is, which they may not. Also, someone having a Defiance bar?! I hope that’s a very limited uptime…

Hopefully they keep to a theme for each Core Specialization, like we see in the pictures Jon Peters had. Water Magic is very clearly a support spec, for example, and the amount of emphasis for healing makes stacking Healing Power a good idea if you take it. It is my hope that they took their time to decide how all the specializations should be given incentive to gear a certain way.

dannymichel.6019:

Can we please finally just segregate the PvE builds and people from us PvP people? We dont want your builds in PvP. Change things for PvP and leave the PvE for someone else.

It appears they’re going all in on Stronghold so that they can take the easier way of letting players figure it out themselves. It seems like they’re just going to put bandaids on whatever the forums QQ about until they release HoT and cross their fingers in hope that ppl give up on Conquest.

It’s obnoxious knowing the conflict of interest inherent in economics and game design. It just promotes cynicism and assignment of blame between devs and players, when it’s short sighted publisher/corporate/management that is disrupting what would otherwise be a harmonious relationship.

NCSoft and GW2 makes an enormous amount of profits. The money is there. That is never the problem in these widely advertised and financially successful games. The willingness to spend the money on behalf of the players is what prevents more innovative solutions.

That said, Turrets seem to be so toxic to so many players that even if there were some clever fix the “mob” demands the spec’s demise. It has gone on for too long, and too many people are sick of it, which is the problem with sitting back and letting the players “figure it out themselves” vs. taking proactive action.

Is it a creative death? Absolutely. Is it necessary at this point? Yes.

I would strongly recommend that Arenanet’s management at least attempt to learn from this. You can’t just take the easiest, most economically profitable approach. People need to see that you’re reaching for greater goals than what your shareholders find acceptable, which is never going to be much. You can’t manipulate people into thinking that you’re doing that either. They need to see you addressing things that are broken, like floating turrets, invisible players, “underwater warriors,” etc.

This is why FFXIV is crushing you guys as a rival MMO. The attention to detail, immediate reaction to player concerns, and having a huge horizontal and vertical progression is making it clear that the American economics-driven MMO decision making model is not making players confident enough to continue to invest their time.

Maybe it’s different at competitive level, but I haven’t fought a Mesmer who didn’t need Moa or Prismating Understanding to survive against me in a 1v1 with Cele Axe Sword/Longbow. I haven’t really been threatened by Mesmers.

Mesmer does seem to need some help. It appears they exist to be a Thief’s delicious food and can’t win any 1v1s without goofiness like Moa or stealth.

jportell.2197:

Lux.7169:

The funny part is that none of these changes will have any effect on tournaments, or even ranked matches for that matter.

By no effect I mean none of substance—unless you consider the random Q’ing turreteer or troll-team.

Players who had issues with turrets still won’t be winning tournaments, and there was never a turret epidemic in ranked or tournament play to begin with. I guess this is a celebration for the little man.

Do we really need to get into this again? YOU PERSONALLY WERE ON A TEAM THAT DID PRETTY WELL IN WTS QUALS WTIH TWO TURRET ENGIS. A team with two turret engis made an absolute mockery of APeX Prime in an ESL monthly, and 6 of the top 10 players on leaderboards are turret engi mains. Stop saying this wont change anything it’ll change a lot and you know it

I think his point is it won’t matter if they have Turret Engi or whatever other builds that people will not be able to beat for various reasons.

Still, that doesn’t really lend credence to his argument that nobody who competes at a higher level could possibly lose to a 2 Turret Engineer team. They obviously have, and the teams that beat them obviously had to change their tactics to counter them.

The model of AI being a nice bonus, but easily disposed of works very well for Dota 2 and LoL, and I think it should be adopted in GW2 as well. Hopefully the people who are upset about not having a crutch build or demand Anet to go against what is obviously a large number of players’ issues with it for “artistic integrity” can get the wakeup call they need.

Sometimes build diversity ends up being unpleasant and obnoxious. Turret Engi is a perfect example of that.

Sagat.3285:

Alexander.9810:

Lux.7169:

Alexander.9810:

@ Lux

Nobody has been upset because it’s unbeatable except some of the more ignorant players. They’re upset because it is obnoxious to fight against, promotes laziness, and nobody wants to deal with it anymore.

That’s arbitrary though.

And actually I don’t mind fighting it at all, I actually enjoy fighting it a lot more than d/d ele or cele engie because those fights are boring. There, you’ve been proved wrong since you said no one wants to deal with it anymore. More evidence is the quoted players who, at the time they posted it, did not seem to have any qualms about fighting turret engies.

So based on your logic, if most people detest the cele meta they should just nerf it to the extent that turret engies were nerfed? Great, let’s get rolling with that. That will have a meaningful impact on COMPETITIVE play and would not just be a hot join nerf.

Why should devs waste the few precious updates and balances we get on nerfing things for HOTJOIN when they could make meaningful balance changes for PvP.

Clearly anyone who wasn’t horrible just steam-rolled turret engies, so that’s not the issue. Teams apparently just obliterated them so that’s not the issue. Thus, the issue must be that new players were being discouraged by them in hot joins… Sucks for them, but how about fixing competitive PvP instead?

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have said nobody. Maybe I walked into that one. You obviously don’t miss details lol. Yes there are people who find Turret Engi an amusing diversion from dueling the same meta builds over and over.

But you do realize that Anet is not making very much money from pro players right? They are making money from said new players that buy the game and gem store purchases. The competitive scene is a way for them to promote the game in a different way, but, like any promotion, costs money.

Balancing for competitive does need to improve, but if you’re allowing builds that newer, less experienced players are angry about continue to anger them that has more tangible consequences than the preferences of a tiny minority of your players.

#Moneyrulestheworld

Kind of this, that’s why active to hardcore players don’t prefer f2p, game might like content and is advertised as a fashion show also why sub games are usually not casual those players are not usually interested in costumes but gameplay. I disagree on 1 thing tough the problem is the casual player focus there is a difference between active,casual and hardcore. The casual doesn’t want to learn,the active is fine with learning if fun,the hardcore wants to claim, GW2 removed learning treadmills and left casual out of control and unsupervised that’s why they call easy content hard,same with classes, it’s related to NPE and GW2 design but slightly off-topic.

They should have casual only as brand new, they should have filtered them into actives while leveling instead of karma train and alike. It’s ironic how they tried to separate modes but each ended affecting others anyway. What do the newer players understand of tournaments,rotations and alike they just throw money at the screen for costumes.

Yeah I play FFXIV for a reason. SE is cranking content out faster than anyone can play it. There’s literally too much to do in that game lol. Raiding, crafting, playing the market, the ability to max all classes on one toon… it’s crazy.

That kind of thing doesn’t seem to be happening in any of the B2P, F2P games though. There’s a dependency on new players that is not as present as in WoW and FFXIV, which I think explains why there appear to be so many logistical problems with GW2 that simply don’t exist in FFXIV.

I mean there’s a threat with players who can make themselves permanently invisible. FFXIV fixed the balance issues almost immediately when their PvP’s most popular mode came out. Healers were OP b/c they had damage output that matched DPS b/c of a move that is important for PvE, but ridiculous in PvP. They changed it. They changed a lot of skills for PvP and kept them the same for PvE.

I don’t know why Arenanet doesn’t copy the fastest growing and most universally acclaimed MMO more lol.

@Elitist

I’m shocked that you have been banned from the game. What a disservice to the GW2 community.

Carry on

Lux.7169:

Alexander.9810:

@ Lux

Nobody has been upset because it’s unbeatable except some of the more ignorant players. They’re upset because it is obnoxious to fight against, promotes laziness, and nobody wants to deal with it anymore.

That’s arbitrary though.

And actually I don’t mind fighting it at all, I actually enjoy fighting it a lot more than d/d ele or cele engie because those fights are boring. There, you’ve been proved wrong since you said no one wants to deal with it anymore. More evidence is the quoted players who, at the time they posted it, did not seem to have any qualms about fighting turret engies.

So based on your logic, if most people detest the cele meta they should just nerf it to the extent that turret engies were nerfed? Great, let’s get rolling with that. That will have a meaningful impact on COMPETITIVE play and would not just be a hot join nerf.

Why should devs waste the few precious updates and balances we get on nerfing things for HOTJOIN when they could make meaningful balance changes for PvP.

Clearly anyone who wasn’t horrible just steam-rolled turret engies, so that’s not the issue. Teams apparently just obliterated them so that’s not the issue. Thus, the issue must be that new players were being discouraged by them in hot joins… Sucks for them, but how about fixing competitive PvP instead?

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have said nobody. Maybe I walked into that one. You obviously don’t miss details lol. Yes there are people who find Turret Engi an amusing diversion from dueling the same meta builds over and over.

But you do realize that Anet is not making very much money from pro players right? They are making money from said new players that buy the game and gem store purchases. The competitive scene is a way for them to promote the game in a different way, but, like any promotion, costs money.

Balancing for competitive does need to improve, but if you’re allowing builds that newer, less experienced players are angry about continue to anger them that has more tangible consequences than the preferences of a tiny minority of your players.

#Moneyrulestheworld

@ Lux

Nobody has been upset because it’s unbeatable except some of the more ignorant players. They’re upset because it is obnoxious to fight against, promotes laziness, and nobody wants to deal with it anymore.

@ ronpierce

I think that’s motivated by the player culture more than design competence. Anet looks like they are very much driven by opportunity cost discussions regarding changes. Talk, talk, talk some more, talk even more, then go with a plan that covers all bases.

Player culture appears to be very heavily against AI builds. I see people complaining about spirit rangers from apparently a very long time ago, so it seems to be a deep source of bitterness toward those types of builds. I doubt that is going to change, so they have probably written them off and may continue to moving forward.

As far as building a character for ALL AI, I don’t think that’s something there should be incentive for. Certain utilites, like Cantrips, Stances, Signets, etc. should, but AI gives up way too much and shouldn’t make the character a one man army as compensation.

It might upset the small group of people who want to be a one man army in PvP, but when there are more than one of those in a game… it’s a huge problem.

ronpierce.2760:

Well, not that anyone cares, but this is basically along the same lines or handling MM and Guardian Spirits, they took the easy way out and deleted them. Such a shame. At this point turrets may as well be removed from the game, along with any other summon that is essentially useless across the board. Not sure why they ask for “feedback”. I’ve spent hours making several page write ups on how to make certain AI builds acceptable contenders without being overly frustrating to fight OR play, but it seems they always get ignored.

If you want a “Good job, we can pvp again!” You got it, good job. But this isn’t a design victory at all.

You appear to be the “AI guy.”

Even in games like Dota 2, AI is somewhat of an advantage but is usually killed really fast. Warlock Ulti, for example, is like Supply Crate – the AoE stun is where the value is, not really the AI or 2 AI you get. Sets up teamfights really well for teammates.

AI could be a low cooldown annoyance that can complement you for a time, but should always be pretty easy to kill, just like how Mesmer clones and phantasms are.

Zatoichi.1049:

good changes for the most part, but realistically, how exactly does one poison, bleed, and torment a mechanical object?

had I known you could poison mechanical objects, I would have done so to my enemies cars irl by now =D

Burn = thermite
Poison = extremely PH rich base or acid
Bleed = cause hydraulic fluid / oil leak
Confusion = user interface hack
Torment = magically induced hypercreation of rust

#RP, #ForScience, #RIPTurrets

Those are good changes if they go through.

This makes a 1v1 against them much easier as a Warrior, dropping Combustive Shot on them will be more meaningful with the burn ticks, and for Arcing Arrow to potentially crit.

Turret Engineers will still be useful in teamfights to a degree, and multiple Turret Engis will still be annoying, but at least the turrets can die faster.

Any word on the floating turret bug?

I am not going to play this game’s PvP until Turret Engineer is properly addressed. While it does have weaknesses and people aren’t being smart about getting in their faces and being bounced around like a pinpall…

It is a crutch build. People who just want to win with the path of least resistance are flooding to Turret Engineer, which explains the leaderboards. Stack Turret Engi, make everyone mad, they ragequit or rotate poorly, easy win.

If Anet is not going to limit build options, which would solve the entire Conquest balance problem, then at least make sure that AI builds other than Mesmer are given less incentive than builds that require the player actually risking something by going to a capture point.

I think the leaderboard needs a total revamp after this post.