Guild Wars 2

Anet’s posted most on Ranger (if you count talking shop), with Necromancer being the closest second (and it takes the lead if you don’t count talking shop, putting Ranger in second), actually, while Mesmers and Warriors have the same amount of dev replies, with Engineer being the fourth-most-posted-in (or third, if you count talking shop). Yes, I counted. A little while ago.

Other than that…well, I honestly didn’t know there was any kind of “Fix Quip” initiative. Thought it was just the one joke weapon among our three choices of legendary.

The post on the bug report forums is also getting very little traffic. I doubt they’ll respond to either, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Claw exploit gets fixed in the next patch.

Also, thanks for the video.

Edit: I’ve deleted the thread on the bug forums, with the intention of starting another one specifically related to turrets, and a second thread, regarding the Claw of Jormag exploit, to see if either gets a response.

I use Sigil of Water, carry the Healing Turret and a shield. On crits with the Sigil, I have a 30% chance to heal (though I can’t actually recall it ever healing me…), and I make heavy use of Blast Finishers such as detonations and the shield bubble thing.

Mif.3471:

Using Rifle (Jump Shot) to cheat in jump puzzles :P

Don’t forget Rocket Boots. Might be harder to aim, but holy crap are they handy. I actually use mine to fight the Steam Ogre (or at least to get to him). Always funny (and sad) when you accidentally block a zerg from fighting him by doing it right before the FE pre-event starts.

I posted it there, too, don’t worry. I fully expect to be infracted for explaining the exploit, and perhaps to have the threads merged/moved for their being two of them, but if I have to get in trouble to get some kind of (this is not a swearword) acknowledgement that they know that Turrets are acting wonky (in order to avoid a repeat of the Scope “Oh, what? That’s broken?” thing), so be it.

Whenever I do WvW, I find myself running frantically from some loony bint with a hammer and Righteous Indignation.

it’s awful

Yeah, I knew about the overcharge fire rate issue, but I hadn’t expected it to just completely fail to function. Glad I’m not losing my mind, though.

Cercie.1025:

You might have trouble getting answer at all if you hide the topic in a list of other bugs. They love to use that as an excuse to ignore a post.

Hey, that’s why the title is ‘Turret Bugs and Claw of Jormag exploit.’ I kind of expect them to ignore Turret bugs, at this point, to be perfectly honest; they have until now (or at least shown extremely little interest in so much as acknowledging the Engineer’s most function-challenged skillset’s issues).

And that’s why the hook (in fact, the only reason I expect any staff member to read this post) is that there’s exploitable issues mentioned. Anybody who takes the time to read this post will find the major exploit mentioned – and that means that anybody who takes the time to read this post could very well decide to use it.

It’s an astonishingly simple little thing, too. Anybody using it, until they fix it (and I have no doubt that they will, long before they ever address the turret bugs, though you can bet that I’ll take that as proof that they’re aware of this post), will be able to chip away at the Ice Shield, or the Claw itself (depending on the phase of the fight) with no risk to themselves from mobs, the environmental dangers, or the Claw.

If they decide to ignore it, fine. I’m not going to say that I’ll use this until they fix it (I ran across it by accident and think it’s stupid, as well as actually preferring to do things in big fights), but the knowledge is now available.

Post converted to secondary list 2:35 AM, 10/1/2013; Bug added, exceeded post length limits
Bug added 9:59 PM, 10/2/2013
Deployable Turrets may be Detonated in midair without destroying the Turret, subsequently allowing a second Detonation upon landing. Toolbelt skills associated with the pseudoDetonated Turret may be used while the Turret remains in midair, but will be replaced by Detonate once more when the Turret lands.

Healing Turret is exempt from this issue, due to the fact that its Toolbelt skill isn’t replaced by Detonate until it lands.

Further testing found that the bug involving Thumper Turret’s odd interaction with Rifled Turret Barrels is not the only one involved with Rifled Turret Barrels.

The following Turrets are affected as follows: Regular attacks are affected by RTB, Overcharges are not, and attacks after Overcharge wears off are also affected by RTB. Specific ways in which they malfunction are listed alongside.
Rifle Turret: Overcharge not affected by Rifled Turret Barrels; fires as normal, but no damage.
Net Turret: Overcharge not affected by Rifled Turret Barrels; does not fire. Regular net fires immediately after Overcharge ends.
Flame Turret: Overcharge not affected by Rifled Turret Barrels; smoke screen does not occur. Fires normally after Overcharge trigger window ends.

List acknowledged ~3:27 PM EST, 8/20/2013
New bug added 7:31 PM EST, 8/29/2013
New bug added 8:14 PM EST, 8/29/2013
New bug added 6:51 PM EST, 9/10/2013

Engineer Turrets are ignoring large World Bosses (with yellow names), such as the three Dragons and Fire Elemental. I have video evidence of turrets failing to attack Dragons, but my software is rubbish at compression; it may be difficult to see. My apologies for that, but it’s not like it’s especially difficult to test for yourselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms3w2fEPTYk
Acknowledged 7:35 PM EST, 8/19/2013

Engineer Turrets are also rumored to have oversized hitboxes; the following video demonstrates this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL-BWRKWkLY (thanks to Ambrecombe.4938 for providing this video, especially for confirming that it’s not that the AoE’s indicator is inaccurate)

Engineer Turrets have an inaccurate rate of fire listed in the tooltip – or are malfunctioning and firing significantly slower than they should be, one or the other; pick one. Perhaps it’s an aftercast making it seem as though it’s inaccurate; nobody’s bothered to say anything, even to tell us it’s intended.
Rifle Turret fires 10 shots in about 27.3 seconds; this gives it an effective fire rate of 2.73 seconds. Its listed fire rate is 2 seconds.
Flame Turret fires 10 shots in about 40.3 seconds; this gives it an effective fire rate of 4.03 seconds. Its listed fire rate is 3 seconds.
Net Turret fires 10 shots in about 130.2 seconds; this gives it an effective fire rate of 13.02 seconds. Its listed fire rate is 10 seconds.
Rocket Turret fires 10 shots in about 50.3 seconds; this gives it an effective fire rate of 5.03 seconds. Its listed fire rate is 4 seconds.
Thumper Turret fires 10 shots in about 49.9 seconds; this gives it an effective fire rate of 4.99 seconds. Its listed fire rate is 3 seconds.
Healing Turret fires 10 times in about 54.5 seconds; this gives it a fire rate of 5.45 seconds, but it has no listed fire rate, making it impossible to tell whether it fires more or less often than it should.

Engineer Turret Overcharges are also malfunctioning, particularly Rifle and Net turrets. These two turrets allege a +50% fire rate increase on their overcharge, but don’t deliver on it unless they’re overcharged immediately upon placement.
Otherwise, they continue firing at the same slow rate as before…although the Rifle Turret’s overcharge speed boost, if activated upon placement of the Turret, continues until it is removed from the field as long as it begins attacking during the overcharge, and the Net Turret’s Overcharge, if activated immediately after placement, disables the Turret entirely. Video of the latter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arrGyoGtAYs
The Rifle Turret Overcharge issue wherein it keeps the speed boost is one of the exploitable bugs.

Yet another issue with Turret Overcharges is that, if using Deployable Turrets, activating the overcharge while the turret is in midair doesn’t actually activate the overcharge – it starts the cooldown, but no overcharge occurs.

Engineer Turrets aren’t reacting properly to downleveling; a shot fired by a level 80 Engineer downleveled to level 9’s Rifle Turret placed in Metrica Province deals 137 damage on the shot fired immediately after placement (beginning the firing cycle’s rotations), for example, and 45 damage on all others (tested on the spiders next to the Loch Jetzt waypoint, with no points in Explosives traitline).
This is another of the exploitable bugs.

Engineer Turrets do not contribute properly to achievements “Condition Remover” and “Skill Interrupter;” conditions removed by the Healing Turret’s Cleansing Burst does not count toward Condition Remover, and skills interrupted by the Detonation of Turrets traited with Accelerant-Packed Turrets do not count toward Skill Interrupter. Turret Overcharges that Interrupt skills (Net, Thumper, Rocket) also do not count toward Skill Interrupter.

The on-placement shot of a turret will not be affected by the damage bonus from Rifled Turret Barrels.

Net Turret: Never counts toward Condition Applier, no matter how many shots fired; overcharge does nothing.
Rocket Turret: On-placement shot does not count toward Condition Applier, all other shots do. Overcharge did not change results of Shot #1.

Everything before this point was present on the list when it was acknowledged.

Rocket Turret: Overcharge only lasts four seconds, not the seven the tooltip claims.

Thumper Turret: Thumper Turret is only affected by Rifled Turret Barrels’ range increase until Overcharge is activated; Overcharge and following attacks are not affected.

Turret-based Interrupts (Overcharges of Net Turret, Rocket Turret, and Thumper Turret; Detonation of Accelerant-Packed Turrets) do not trigger the Runes of Perplexity’s 6-rune effect.

Oop, new bug, I think. Net Turret Overcharge, when activated immediately after placement, fires one shot and then the turret stops functioning. Anybody want to confirm this one?

Edit: I’ve had difficulty duplicating this one against the Target Golems in the Heart of the Mists, but I’ve had it kick in when picking a fight with, say, a Dolyak in Frostgorge Sound. Kited the ‘yak (and a moa after that) around in circles for about twenty seconds well within the range of the turret and only got it to fire once (that one shot being ’right after placement and overcharge’).

I’m so tired of these bugs that I’m going to report an exploitable issue, but hide it in the middle of all the turret bugs. I just need to get a proper writeup/description of all Turret bugs I can find.

Chomper and Strugar are one of those pair-bosses that’s set up in such a way that one will get stronger if the other dies. I managed to take them out in my first attempt, though the Caladhog caught me offguard; it seems like it’s probably beneficial to use a lot of Bounce attacks, such as Static Discharge, or other attacks that will hit both, simply because that way they stay at similar HP.

Haven’t tried to perma-CC, but it’s theoretically possible; they don’t have any immunities that I can recall. Just that there’s two of them.

The only reason I’ve been able to come up with for having the domes set up as they are is so that other competitors can watch how the various challenges are handled.

Is this a good way of handling it? Hell if I know. I do know the camera being squished is irritating.

It would be a lot easier to accept that they don’t know how to fix it if we could actually tell they were trying – but the only thing they seem to be trying to do is pump out Living Story. They’ve posted on the Engineer boards that the resources that could be handling kits and so forth are being used for other things – but most of the things we see are just buggy Living Story content that then keeps the bugfixers busy for a while.

Apparently you’re supposed to get it from the one in the center of Divinity’s Reach. Be nice if their description was more clear, but then they wouldn’t have anything to hotfix.

If you do the one that starts in the center of Divinity’s Reach (the one in the garden) and still don’t get the thing…I think it’s having some issues with people who’ve done the other Torchbearer achievement.

So…yeah. I’ve now had three chests give me Support Tokens – the one at the end of Oola’s Lab, the one at the beginning of Goemm’s Laboratory, and the one at the end of Goemm’s Laboratory.

Yeah, I’m not sure what the deal is with that fight. It’s just…well. I don’t want to come off as whiny, but honestly, it seems like they didn’t really test it at all.
I can understand the intention of making something difficult, but two separate instant-death mechanics (one an AoE that covers half the field, one linked to the minions), a three-layer invincibility field (which can only be stripped by luring said minions into a small patch of light, and then hurling the resulting shard at the boss), a randomly-located Pull generator (which also, occasionally, somehow returns Obstructed when attacked), and an utterly unexplained “Oh, yeah, occasionally the screen goes wonky like you’re in Sanctum Sprint and get Solar Flare’d” thing just seem like way too much to have going on – and that’s just in the first half of the fight.
I’ve yet to get to the second half, myself, and I’ll probably hold off on trying to do it in case they patch her down like they did Adnul. Best of luck to anyone willing to brave it all and try to take her down, though.

For Strugar and Chomper, I used a combination Turret-Static Discharge build, with Pistol and Shield. If you place the turrets, they’ll help wear down both combatants, which makes finishing the fight much easier – when I did it, Strugar was a few hits (delivered via SD burst) from death when he whipped out his meatskewer.

Once I get better video software (or figure out a way to provide video on the forums without going through Youtube, as the compression to make it work with Youtube murders the quality), I intend to make a series of videos showcasing every single bug I can find of Turrets. Overcharge bugs, World Boss bugs, everything.

The Sorrow’s Embrace armor looks a bit on the Heavy side. I initially thought Centurion Gearclaw in Charr starting area was wearing Heavy armor, but he’s just wearing Sorrow’s Embrace gear.

Here’s a description of the bug:

When a Kit is equipped, it overrides back items. This is not the bug, but information for those who are unaware.
The bug is that back items continue to show through intermittently. Often, at first, the kit is the only thing visible, until you make an attack; during the attack, the back item will often show through. Sometimes it decides not to stop showing through, and this leads to the screenshot above.

Healing Turret’s Cleansing Burst does not contribute to the Condition Remover achievement.

I had a video of the bug in action, but I’ve come to realize that my video software is, well, stone-age. It’s on the Game Bugs forum if you want to look.

The Cleansing Burst overcharge of the Engineer’s Healing Turret does not contribute to the Condition Remover achievement. Here’s a video to show it; I feel I must apologize for the low quality of the video, but you can tell that A ) the Poison condition I am afflicted with during each segment has much longer to last than it does, and B ) that the number next to Condition Remover does not change (in fact, it stays at 15%; I cured three stacks of Poison with Elixir C just before the videos were taken).

http://youtu.be/ju-iYopj0LE

If the video is insufficient (it may well be) feel free to go test it. I know my video software is not the best (to put it kindly.)

Conan.8046:

Also: How are kits not our class mechanic? No other class has them, and they’re easily the most recognizable aspect of the Engineer compared to other classes.

So lets say i go a full turret build. 4 turrets…healing, net, rocket and flame. I have no kits but i still have a tool belt.
Turrets are as unique to the class as any of the kits but they are not our mechanic either.

Also, Elementalists have something that’s very similar in function (switching weapon skills to something different) to Kits as their class mechanic, and Conjure Utility skills to do the same with entirely different weapons (though they have a duration and ammo restriction, they do also have the ability to share them with allies).

This is one of the ancient issues of Kit cosmetics. We’re waiting on basically any of them to be fixed or addressed beyond ‘Yeah, our people are working on bigger things.’

As a long-time turret user: Turrets fire once (starting their firing cycle) immediately after being placed. After that, any overcharge will occur on the next iteration.

A fairly common method of use for the Healing Turret (and many other turrets) is to place them, immediately activate the Overcharge, and then either detonate or pick them up; with Healing Turret, this is especially prevalent due to the blast finish of the Detonate and Water field of the Overcharge combining to create an AoE Heal effect.

We don’t have any direct vigor-on-crit traits, but we do have one trait that gives Swiftness on 50% of crits (5-second cooldown) and one that gives Vigor whenever Swiftness is gained. I think that’s what OP meant by ‘too (sic) Major traits.’

About half of Ranger’s posts were from one of the devs (not even on the balance team) talking shop, four months ago. More recently, the Warrior has gotten a lot of devposts, with four in the last month.

At this point, I’m not sure if there’s any point threadbombing class forums, anyway. Most classes seem to be receiving a roughly equal share of attention, once talking-shop is pruned out; the exceptions are still Ranger (I think Hrouda had 36+ posts on that board, but I’m not sure, including a thread where he recommended pets for different situations), Necromancer (very little talking shop about the class that I can recall, but a lot of addressing of issues/investigating of bug reports, making this the clear leader in devposts-in-lifetime.), and Guardian (with ten whole responses.). Warrior also has the most recent responses, largely in threads with the [BUG] tag. Having gone through all of these things, and reading a fairly large portion of them…I think the reason they’re not talking to us about the Kits is because they don’t need to investigate it.

I think, if we want to draw attention to the particular issues that seem to contribute most to us feeling ignored, then after this next patch (on the off-chance they actually do something about them), we get as many screenshots and videos demonstrating the bugs as we can into one or two threads here and on the Game Bugs boards, with, hopefully, any Engineer reading clicking +1 to help bring it to the attention of the staff.
Hell, Report the posts to make sure some poor sap has to look. Request the threads be stickied, if you want.

What I mean by ‘one or two threads:’ One thread for Kits, Legendaries and Back Items, one thread for Turrets and their issues.

Maybe that’ll get them to actually say/do a kitten thing about it besides “sneak stuff in.” If not, then we can always try something more raucous.

It will affect them when they’re made able to use shields, then.

Posting about the issues of Turrets has gotten no response from any dev at all, to boot – I posted a video of the issue with World Bosses in action on the Game Bugs forum, and a thread about the flute got a response first. A thread where a Ranger may or may not have mistaken not leaving combat mode for a bugged trait got a response within four hours, and a video of a bug in action didn’t so much as warrant “Well, thanks for that.”

I think, therefore, that Kits and Turrets are both part of why at least some Engineers feel ignored – I even would’ve expected us to have almost no dev responses, before I went and counted.

The problem is, primarily, Kits. Well, not Kits, exactly. But the way that they override Legendaries and Back Items, and have the entire time the game’s been out. That is the problem. Now, they’ve said:

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s something we’re absolutely aware of and want to address in the future, one of my main characters is an engineer so I feel ya on this one. My poor quaggan backpack is visible like 2% of the time I play as I kit swap, never mind my weapon skins.

We’re currently focusing our engineering (programmers, not guys with net guns) resources that could work on solutions to issues like kits/skins on major systems that address issues higher priority and wider reaching like lag in large battles, LFG, custom arenas, spectator mode and so on but this issue is absolutely on our radar.

As always, please post your ideas of what you’d like to see solution wise, we love to see the fun ideas y’all come up with too!

…and…

BillFreist.1527:

Some pretty interesting ideas here. I was actually spit-balling some ideas on how to address this today. This has always been something that has bothered me, too.

For example:

• Have kits respect the existing back item flag. If you have a back item and you want to show it, hide the kit. If you don’t have a back item or choose to hide it, always show the kit. Obviously this makes it a little harder than usual to tell what kit you are using, so:
  • A nameplate icon similar to Elemental Attunements would be a good addition (I may add this regardless if we can get the art )
  • Move the kit somewhere else on your body. I know, crazy right? For example, who doesn’t like a sweet fanny-pack?

Hopefully this finally gets resolved soon, and I’ll do what I can to see that happen. Keep in mind, as Colin mentioned before, that there are some pretty beefy projects going on that are consuming our engineering time. But that doesn’t exactly mean we can’t sneak stuff in here and there .

-Bill

…but I don’t think these posts really do much to address the feeling of being ignored. Especially not with Living Story being pumped out, and more skins besides.

At this moment, as far as I am aware, there are two skillsets of the engineer with some fairly glaring difficulties:
Kits override the appearance of both Back Items and Legendaries – both of which can require exorbitant amounts of time and effort to acquire, and both of which are sought largely, if not specifically, for their appearance. (Shields override back items as well, but that at least affects every class instead of one.)
Turrets don’t attack world bosses (and some quest object targets besides), overcharges don’t work properly, hitboxes may or may not still be bollocked, and I’m sure there’s some I haven’t noticed.

Not counting moderators and community coordinator staff moving/closing threads, I’ve gone through and counted up all dev posts on each profession, and will list the times of posting as close as the forum shows. It’s entirely possible (in fact, likely) that I’ve missed some; if you’d like to prove me wrong on the count, you’re welcome to go paging through hundreds of pages of threads.

Elementalist: 17 dev responses in 128 pages (two ‘about a month ago’, one October 1st, 17:14, one June 26th, 15:47, one ‘3 months ago (bonus points: dev responding to a “Question (to Devs)” thread),’ three ‘7 months ago,’ seven ‘8 months ago (two in one thread, two in another),’ two ‘10 months ago’)

Engineer: 25 dev responses in 146 pages (one ‘about a day ago’, nine ‘3 months ago (two in one thread, six in another (turns out Tyler Bearce actually plays the Engineer)),’ one ‘15 days ago,’ three ‘about a month ago,’ four ‘2 months ago (two in one thread, two in another)’ two ‘8 months ago (two in one thread),’ one ‘4 months ago,’ one ‘5 months ago,’ one ‘7 months ago,’ two ‘10 months ago’)
[Discounting Tyler talking shop and the CC staff who commented on somebody soloing a tower, that’s still 18]

Guardian: 10 dev responses in 109 pages (one ‘11 days ago,’ three ‘10 months ago,’ one ‘about a month ago,’ three ‘3 months ago (three in the same thread),’ two ‘7 months ago’)

Mesmer: 19 dev responses in 139 pages (eight ‘8 months ago (four in one thread, three in another),’ three ‘7 months ago,’ one ‘9 months ago, two ’10 months ago,’ three ‘3 months ago,’ one ‘about a month ago,’ four ‘5 months ago (two in one thread)’)

Necromancer: 38 dev responses in 155 pages (one ‘about a day ago,’ one ‘10 days ago,’ fourteen ‘9 months ago (six in one thread, two in another, three in another, two in another),’ six ‘2 months ago (three in one thread, two in another),’ three ‘about a month ago (two in one thread),’ two ‘3 months ago,’ two ‘10 months ago,’ seven ‘7 months ago (three in one thread, two in another),’ two ‘8 months ago’)

Ranger: 66 dev responses in 171 pages (two ‘11 days ago,’ two ‘about a month ago,’ twenty-three ‘4 months ago (three in one thread, three in another, eleven in a thread host to thirteen 5-months-ago posts,),’ two ‘10 months ago,’ ten ‘3 months ago (two in one thread, three in one thread, one in a thread also host to one of the 4-months-ago posts, two in another),’ two ‘3 days ago,’ one ‘10 days ago,’ five ‘9 months ago (three in one thread, two in one thread),’ thirteen ‘5 months ago (thirteen in one thread),’ six ‘7 months ago, (three in one thread),’ two ‘8 months ago’)
[An incredible amount of the Ranger posts were from Robert Hrouda; though he’s not on the balance team, he certainly enjoyed talking shop with Rangers four months ago; I think he had around twenty to thirty posts overall on this subforum]

Thief: 16 dev responses in 170 pages (two ‘about a month ago,’ four ‘3 months ago (four in one thread [note: Hrouda]),’ one ‘4 months ago,’ one ‘6 months ago,’ one ‘7 months ago,’ five ‘9 months ago,’ one ‘8 days ago,’ one ‘10 months ago’)

Warrior: 19 dev responses in 142 pages (two ‘11 days ago,’ one ‘17 days ago,’ one ‘25 days ago,’ one ‘3 months ago,’ two ‘about a month ago,’ one ‘2 months ago,’ six ‘4 months ago (Bonus points for the first two sentences of the thread being ’Please don’t delete my thread again. Anet, please tell me and others will you do something with warriors NOW?’ – and five other posts in this thread besides),’ two ‘7 months ago,’ two ‘8 months ago,’ one ‘10 months ago’)

As can be plainly seen, we aren’t being ignored.

However, I think I know why we feel that way.

As pointed out by another poster (Arkham Creed), the remark about ‘Engineer plus Hammer’ is not attributed to any staff-member of Anet.

Still, though, I’m sure we’ll get it and I’m happy about that.

What level is your armor, by the way? If your armor is underleveled, you’ll be a lot weaker than you might expect.

Having glanced over the subforums of other professions, I’m not so sure their subforums get much attention, either.

As I have lots of time on my hands, I may well end up going through pages and pages of threads just counting the number of “A Dev Talked Here” tags at some point tonight or tomorrow.

Until then, I wonder what would happen if the Engineers threadbombed the Bug forum with videos and pictures of Turrets not functioning, of kits clipping through back items, etcetera, with each making their own thread to call attention to it? I know that this would lead to the threads being merged, but how likely does it seem to get attention?

No non-Engineer player? What non-Engineer player do you think I would possibly be trying to appeal to? I posted this on the Engineer boards.

It also seems to happen when you hold W while using the skill.

Aberrant: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7597/Guild-Wars-2-ArenaNets-Master-Plan-for-2013.html

Arkham: Likewise. On the other hand…at this point, I’m not really concerned if I get banned from the forums. I’m not even really all that worried about getting banned from the game, considering that I haven’t spent any money in the Gem Store specifically because of the feeling that this class’s bugs are being ignored. Or deprioritized. Or set aside in favor of the skin factory and the ‘Living Story.’ I’m pretty sure I’d have the same sort of attitude if I mained a Necromancer, too, come to think of it.

What kind of movement would you get going if you were going to get one going? Video evidence of all bugs? Boycotting the gem store? In-game sit-ins?

Here’s the rules I see as potentially important in this thought, at least as far as concerns the forums:

• Do not post petitions, “I demand an answer” threads, conspiracy threads, or comments about circumventing the rules.
• Do not post about locked, deleted, or otherwise moderated threads or posts.
• Do not engage in staff call-outs. Using the words “ArenaNet” or any staff member’s name will not expedite the answer to your query.
• Be respectful. Be pleasant to forum members, staff members, and moderators.

We can turn this thread into a thought experiment – in the end, that’s all it’ll end up being anyway, more than likely, or we can make a new one for it. All up to anybody interested in hashing this out; I’m tired of this class feeling ignored, to put it perfectly frankly, and I want to see if we can make a difference. At the very least, a thought-thread will give us somewhere to dump the vitriol.

The classification of classes as ‘Soldier,’ ‘Adventurer,’ and ‘Scholar’ is entirely determined by what weight of armor they wear, as far as I can tell. Suggesting a class be changed from Medium armor to Heavy is the same as suggesting they be changed from Adventurer to Soldier, if you want to muck around with the idiosyncratic names.

What about Medium armor fits the Engineer better than Heavy, from a roleplay standpoint, though?

They specifically went “Engineers with Hammers? Check.” Though I suppose that’s not a direct quote from an Anet staffer, it’s an awfully specific thing to say when mentioning a general increase in weapon choices. Still, fair point; it’s not directly stated by an Anet staffer.

As for the rest? Yeah, I know.

I know the Kit and Back Item thing has been an issue since Beta – and that Colin Johanson has apparently mentioned a couple times that this is known of, and we’ve not heard anything regarding it from the staff since he mentioned his 8-Bit Backpack (I think that post was after the post in the Legendaries thread, though it’s apparently vanished). I even check, sometimes, when there’s not a thread about it on the front page, and always find that it’s still there.

I know there were threads upon threads talking about how Scope didn’t work – and that no staff member seemed to know that it wasn’t working until somebody posted on the sPvP boards and was informed by a staffer that it was working…or at least that the script looked good (only for the Engineers to start doing 10,000 shot tests to prove them wrong).

I know the various bugs regarding Turrets have been reiterated a thousand times, and rarely, if ever, received a staff response – I even posted a video demonstrating them ignoring Claw of Jormag, Tequatl the Sunless, and The Shatterer, on the Game Bugs forum, and received no response…while a Ranger talking about how one trait wasn’t working properly with one skill got a response thanking them for reporting it, and a report about the Flute having issues after the recent change to how notes are handled got a response, too. I’ll make a video of turrets failing to attack every single world boss, and of Overcharges not working properly, and I doubt they’ll respond to that, either.

I also remember that Rocket Boots was once ‘temporarily disabled’ because it had a particular glitch it would occasionally cause, and I’m still waiting for it to be re-enabled, particularly now that the Rocket Boot skill does something different.

I’m pretty sure you’re right, that they don’t care; if they do, they’re certainly not showing it. Bit depressing, really.

I can respect that. Thank you for sharing your reasons.

If it’s comforting at all, I wouldn’t call this a vocal minority – a minority, certainly, but not so vocal; compare to Engineer Hammer threads, for example, which earned enough attention that the Engineer having a Hammer was the one specific “Yes, that will happen.” mentioned in the interview where Anet revealed their intent to give every class every weapon.

The opinions have been mixed, even if many have gone largely unexplained, and I’d wager that the amount of support this idea has received is about equal with the amount of resistance – and the support has generally been “Huh, well, I guess that’d be pretty okay.” after having various bits pointed out and explained in more detail (i.e.: Lukewarm). This thread will probably die again in the next few days, anyway, and maybe be necro’d once more in three or four months.

In short: I don’t actually think that the Engineer will ever end up in Heavy Armor, and I’m the guy who proposed it.

Turrets also don’t:

• Target World Bosses such as Dragons or the Fire Elemental
• Target Research Pods in the Funhouse during the event involving destroying them
• Contribute toward Skill Interrupter achievement
• Contribute toward Condition Cleanser achievements
• Calculate downleveling properly, leading to a shot fired immediately after placement dealing massive damage in areas where the user is downleveled, while all shots thereafter will have the proper damage.

and probably more stuff I just don’t remember or haven’t run into yet.

I think the dearth of comments is likely due to the Turret skillset being one of the biggest bugpiles the Engineer has, thus leading to “They’re broken, what else is new?” and a general feeling of apathy.

I posted a video documenting Turrets ignoring dragons on the Game Bugs boards, and I might take some videos regarding the ineffectiveness of the Overcharge functions as well, but I honestly doubt that the staff is ever going to acknowledge these bugs. They might fix them, but we’re never going to hear a word of anything about reporting them.

Edit: Remembered another issue.

Arkham: It hadn’t occurred to me, actually, because very few people arguing against it on the grounds of aesthetics actually bother to make a point besides “But I like the look of Medium armor,” which leads to me going “Did you even read the first post?”
If you’ll recall, you didn’t even read it before posting at first; I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if you weren’t the only one who went “Heavy armor? No! I like my Medium!”

Moving on to the points you’ve made:

I’ve attempted to address that they’ve stated they wouldn’t do it, and in fact the last couple sentences of the post were intended to address the reasons people have mentioned for it to not happen – misidentification of class and/or misestimation of armor values, as far as I can recall, were the big things – and if the method isn’t satisfactory, then I don’t have a way to make it so. I am uncertain as to why, precisely, the method is not satisfactory, however, at least in non-PvP areas, besides the development time.

I can’t deny that it would take a lot of development time, but I also don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. After all, part of the idea for how to implement it was “announce it months in advance” so people can get used to the idea and prepare for it, even people who don’t have a lot of time on their hands.

I hadn’t considered s/tPvP (I think that’s what’s being referred to in the eSport comment?), I’ll admit; lack of familiarity led to lack of consideration. I’m not certain how this idea would best be modified to adjust to it; any ideas, beyond either scrapping the whole thing or skipping trying to minimize the outcry of “But I liked my leather looks?”

Currently, the only thing coming to me is “Both sides will see the Heavy armor,” but that, of course, just leads to “And then people will be unfamiliar with their own looks.”

Alternately, I suppose an option could be “Check whether a given Engineer has gemstore/dungeon/temple armors bound to them, refund them the gems/dungeon tokens/karma points, transfer Leatherworker ranks to Armorsmith (along with attendant recipes), give a Black Lion Salvage Kit (to retrieve upgrade components such as runes and gems) and sufficient money to buy the crafting materials for the most expensive set of Heavy armor available to be worn by that character, while still replacing their Medium armor with a Heavy version, including transfer of runes” and skip any attempt to keep the looks. I imagine that’d require much less development time, and would also prevent any illusions from being undone (by never bothering with them in the first place). Sound more to your liking?

Also, you still haven’t said why this is such an alarming idea that you’ve deigned to waste your time responding to a pointless thread. I’m still curious.

Rocket Boots is especially handy as it stealths after the flying, so after you’ve dealt damage.

The guy who started that thread here.

I’m kind of amazed, to be honest. You guys actually address the idea of the change as opposed to going “This would ruin the class” without explanation, or “We’re going to throw a fit…because we never finished reading the first post before we went and threw our fit.”

So…Bravo.

Aberrant: Hahah, wow. That’s an amusing thread. It’s also interesting to see the thief response to it actually addressing the thought of the change itself, as opposed to the method; perhaps I shouldn’t have brought up the method at all, if I wanted people to actually discuss the idea.

Kuess: I don’t feel like going back to Page #1 to quote this, but aesthetics were accounted for in the original idea specifically because I knew some people would dislike the aesthetics of the Heavy armor and/or have bought special skins.

Seras.5702:

Anymras.5729:

I’m working on getting a full set of Celestial gear together, but this is what I’ve got for a build right now (kind of; I’ve set this up with the runeset I intend to get, as well as a full set of Celestial everything):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqyUX8y3F17IxIFcm0hekYDv4PKYLdB-jAzAo+ASEApCAJ/ioxW1KiGrqGQ3HZVDmuNpWdAPAmnfR1A-e

No idea if this is quirky at all, but it’s at least interesting to use. Thinking of switching the Rifle Turret and PBR out for something else, but not sure what just yet.

With 3 traits dedicated to turrets, I feel like you should have more than 1 turret. Especially if you’re running Static Discharge and have your Rifle Turret just for the toolbelt skill, which won’t be available if your turret is placed.

Edit: ah, I just noticed the Healing Turret. Does Rifled Turret Barrels increase the range of HT?

I have no idea whether it affects the Healing Turret, to be perfectly honest. I might throw a Thumper in, in place of the PBR.

I think this is intentional. A silly thing to do for one of the only two main-hand weapons currently available to the Engineer, but intentional.

It seems to function more reliably while moving, oddly enough, or while manually aiming.

I’m working on getting a full set of Celestial gear together, but this is what I’ve got for a build right now (kind of; I’ve set this up with the runeset I intend to get, as well as a full set of Celestial everything):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqyUX8y3F17IxIFcm0hekYDv4PKYLdB-jAzAo+ASEApCAJ/ioxW1KiGrqGQ3HZVDmuNpWdAPAmnfR1A-e

No idea if this is quirky at all, but it’s at least interesting to use. Thinking of switching the Rifle Turret and PBR out for something else, but not sure what just yet.