Guild Wars 2

PWNcakesAndROFLs.8263:

Not sure if it goes the ToS, but this can be achieved with 3rd party peripheral software, such as the key-binding software that comes with gaming mice.

Anyone know the specifics if it would violate it or not?

This could be considered as something that would give a player an advantage, and thus would probably be disallowed. It seems possible that a case could be made for medical reasons, though, as many players have medical issues such as carpal tunnel or worse.

…This is definitely the best idea for that situation that I’ve seen yet.
Autoattacking, after all, carries the issue of ‘and then the ground-targeted, autoattacking spell fires constantly,’ while removing the ground-target kind of kills the Grenade Kit’s ability to do…well, what it does, especially given transit times.

Nobody’s mentioned Hobosacks yet? Guess that means I might as well.

First, some background for the people who don’t know:

• Engineers have Kits, which replace their Weapon Skill bar.
• Kits include a back item component, sometimes referred to as a Hobosack.
• This Hobosack item overrides your equipped back item.
• When a Kit Weapon skill is used, the equipped back item clips through the Hobosack.

This is widely considered hideous and causes Engineers to miss out on, or get very little enjoyment from, a lot of the metarewards, many of which are back items. The last time Anet bothered to comment on the issue was about a year ago, with a comment about possibly making it about like Elementalists have it – a ‘boon’ indicator marking what kind of Kit is equipped.
Apparently, people are supposed to be looking at the back item, often obscured by your character or nearly identical to other Hobosacks, for a hint as to what you’ll be able to do…despite the most effective Engineers switching madly from Kit to Kit at even higher rates than Elementalists and Attunements, as Kit-swapping doesn’t have a cooldown.

So: My proposed Super Easy Fix/Change?
A bit of code that checks whether the Back Item is visible, and only spawns a Kit on the player’s back if it is not visible. The kits themselves are pretty much no tell at all, especially given the highly visual nature of GW2 combat and the frenetic pace of swapping.
This is the most concise method I’ve yet come up with to fix the situation; even unskinned back items have a visibility checkbox, so it could perhaps fix the situation entirely.

Make that eight, I guess – do they really only look at suggestions with 1k replies? That’s silly, but somehow I have trouble properly doubting it.

There was a video I saw recently where an Engineer using Healing Turret, Rifle Turret, Throw Mine, and Utility Goggles was bursting people down; they had a Static Discharge build, of course, and enough Precision to get a ton of crits.

I still won’t use Elixir X – I can’t stand how unreliable it is. The only thing I use it for is cheesing jumping puzzles with knockaround gimmicks.

Adamantium.3682:

Let’s not go down the road of “oh Basalt spent more time on these than the Devs! Omg they don’t care! They spent probably 30 minutes!”. It makes this whole thread lose credibility when we say things like that. Making a static 3d model is one thing, putting it into a game with animations, different character models, and attached to the use of other skills is another thing entirely.

He certainly appears to be more interested in making a quality model than they were. There’s not even ‘they were trying to optimize performance with a low poly count’ to fall back on, given the massive amount of flashy, flashy things that actually do bog down performance.
Given that, implementation is pretty much ‘if [kit equip] then [create asset at this point with these dimensions, make child of user object],’ unless Anet uses some incredibly bizarre system (given their lengthy inability to do anything about Turret issues, I wouldn’t be particularly surprised, but still). Animations even seem to ignore the hobosack part of the kit, aside from things like ‘this one belt reacts when you jump,’ which is pretty much just ‘this part is affected by the physics engine.’ Nobody reaches into them for anything, they don’t collide with anything, nothing happens to them, as far as I can tell, except gravity, maybe. Oh, and that incredibly annoying, stupid issue where back items clip through them on skill use, that nobody’s fixed, or even seems to care about
.
Replacing the old hobosacks with Basalt’s models would likely consist of importing the relevant assets, and then adjusting the code so that it looks for the new assets instead of the old ones, spawning them with the proper dimensions and location.

In short: Basalt’s definitely making better, more distinct and interesting models than the devs did, and they were getting paid for it.

Eliteseraph.4970:

Larger wrench for Tool Kit, with gear shield on off-hand.

Dual-wield bomb casks for Bomb Kit; possibly with a fun little ‘lit fuse’ animation in combat.

Two-handed, big grenade launcher for Grenade Kit; also makes it less ‘why can I throw those farther than I can shoot.’

Carried bandages and stimulants for Med Kit.

Flamethrower and Elixir Gun both have distinct weapons already.

I like Wrench + Gear shield for Toolkit. Would need to add maybe a slight tell for when the block was actually active?

Stick of dynamite + lighter for bomb kit? Isn’t there already a legendary torch or something that looks like a lighter?

Grenade launcher for nades seems perfect!

Medkit is the only one where I feel the backpack is kind of appropriate. But I would still prefer an option without it.

I think the Toolkit could probably just not be changed at all in animations, really; the current animation for the Gear Shield move is perfectly clear.

Torch and bundle of TNT would work fine for Bomb Kit.

Yeah, Medkit does seem…packish. Maybe have the character shove a First Aid Kit under their arm or something.

Eliteseraph.4970:

Ok…so I can understand that the devs want there to be some kind of visual representation for what toolkit your engineer is currently using. That makes a kind of sense. What I don’t understand is why that necessitates giant hobo-packs.

The flamethrower and elixir-gun could both easily work exactly as they are with just the rifle. Remove the backpack entirely from the kit, and allow engineers to display their normal back graphic. Why is this a problem? Why can’t this be arranged as a checkbox display in the equipment page?

Mines, nades, toolkit, and bombs could easily also be represented with hand-held items. The game already supports carrying various items in either one or both hands, including giant bombs, chickens, sticks, rocks, and any number of other items. Engineers could be seen carrying a giant bomb in both hands, stick grenades ala world war 2 style, wrenches, bandages, or maybe a giant syringe for the medkit(some people might not care for it).

I really don’t understand why it’s such a huge issue to give players such a simple graphical option when they’ve been clamoring for it since launch!

In addition, some of the sacks are nearly identical, to the point that the only thing distinguishing Bombkit (I think, it’s been a while) and Toolkit is the wrench.

I think it’d be nice if they’d A ) improve the sacks to begin with (maybe they should hire Basaltface for the project) and B ) provide the option to not have the sacks, such as by giving more distinct ‘weapon’ objects.

My suggestions for distinct weapon objects:
Larger wrench for Tool Kit, with gear shield on off-hand.
Dual-wield bomb casks for Bomb Kit; possibly with a fun little ‘lit fuse’ animation in combat.
Two-handed, big grenade launcher for Grenade Kit; also makes it less ‘why can I throw those farther than I can shoot.’
Carried bandages and stimulants for Med Kit.
Flamethrower and Elixir Gun both have distinct weapons already.

I’ve been running a full Gadget build for a while, in PvE. I’ve dealt with the lack of condition removal by getting a Sigil of Purity, in order to passively cleanse conditions. Throw Mine gives damage, knockback and boon stripping on a short cooldown, and Aegis when traited, which can allow a moment to react and Rocket Boot into the distance – it’s actually, in my opinion, one of the best standalone skills the Engineer has. Minefield also provides a pretty good spike (with a ton of boonstripping, too).

Build’s been using a Rifle, has Celestial stats (though Zealot or a similarly Power/Precision-focused set of gear would probably work better), and has: 4/4/0/0/6 for trait spread.

That said, a Gadget build really isn’t as good as Elixirs, but I think that’s got a lot to do with the dearth of Gadget traits compared to Elixirs – two Gadget traits (boons and cooldown), versus five (AoE damage/boonstrip, Might stacking, condition cleanse, duration and cooldown). There’s simply so much more for Elixirs, even if only four Elixir traits can be taken at once due to most of them being in the Alchemy tree.
I’m not even counting ‘oh, and you can get a trait so that you automatically use this one elixir when you’re at 25% HP,’ or the ’you’ll use a different elixir when you’re at 75% HP’ in this list.

Or if it could be guided a bit better in transit…or at least not have that stupid, stupid unpredictable roll at the end.

mzt.3270:

snip

So, uh, I can’t help but point out that the Ready-Up changes haven’t happened yet. You can’t test the 33% extra damage, because it doesn’t exist at this point in time, and Rockets won’t home because they don’t yet.

The changes haven’t been implemented.

Eastcorn.5901:

We represent the smallest portion of active players. So screw us, right?

And Charr.

The Baws.5164:

I agree… this whole Hobo-sack thing is to an extent quite against what most of GW seems to be about.

There is a huge emphasis on aesthetics at end-game, and I mean huge, with Legendaries only offering small amounts of convenience and mainly aesthetic upgrades. And then you go sticking ugly hobo-sacks on Engineer’s backs? Surely it can’t be that difficult to put in a setting that allows you to simply hide them.

You could come up with the argument that that makes the Engineer’s skills less read-able, but aside from predicting the kit in use, the Flamethrower looks very unique, as well as the tool kit being un-mistakable and the same story with the Elixir Gun.

I really like the idea of the little buff-type thing which allows you to see what kit they’re using, and I think the simpler the better – a picture of a grenade for the grenade kit and so on…

Plz ANet

I actually did sort of an informal survey in the Balance boards about whether the backpack helps when fighting an Engineer at all, given Bill’s implied balance concerns.
The response was just about unanimous in saying “Hahah, what? No.” Most people, it seemed, went by the skills rather than the sack, which is really quite convenient, given that at least two of our sacks are identical, with a third nearly so.

At this point, I’m pretty certain that Anet just doesn’t care. It wouldn’t take much to give a choice, just ‘if this box is clicked, this set of assets is disabled,’ but they just will not bother to give one programmer a half-hour to throw it together. They could probably do it on their lunch break, if they wanted, but they’re theoretically busy with Living Story. I say ‘theoretically’ because the majority of the last Episode was composed of events that existed at launch, in locations that existed at launch, with only one or two really ‘new’ things.

They’re not ‘leaked,’ they’re from the last Ready-Up.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2bpy0i/ready_up_upcoming_engineer_ranger_changes/

It might be interesting for there to be a trait that gives passive bonuses based on slotted, unused gadgets or Toolbelt skills; as every non-Elite skill the Engineer possesses is really two skills slotted simultaneously, it seems like a bad idea to take the Signet approach to any Engineer skillset. Warriors, though, do have a trait that gives a bonus based on unused, slotted Signets, which obviously shows that the code exists to do such a thing.

So: How about something like Gadgeteer or Experimental Turrets, except it works for unused Toolbelt Skills or unused, slotted Gadgets?

Everybody’s going to get patched at the same time, and they likely want to do a Skill Bar for every class before the release, so probably not for another month or two.

Ohoni.6057:

Since I didn’t quote you, then I never said you said that.

I’m just saying, I’ve heard complaints that certain common drops did not have any practical use so they keep piling up (the solution being to give them more useful, repeatable purposes), but I’ve never once heard ANYONE complain that anything should be dropping less than it is.

I remember when butter was popping out of trees. Pretty sure I heard people being annoyed/confused/amused by the sheer amount of butter, including “Why is this dropping so much!?”

They seem to be looking mostly at threads that’ve not been posted in for thirty days or more…and this thread’s never been dormant for that long, as far as I can recall.

titanlectro.5029:

Come on Anet. Vanity is the endgame. Fix this!

And now there’s even a back item that requires some Ascended-level crafting to make, with several missions of build-up and, overall, quite a lot of effort involved…that our kits will cover.

Seriously, can we maybe get some kind of ETA or general indication that this is even something that matters to the staff?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Anymras.5729:

1 Discovered that the Sylvari are the only ones who aren’t ‘We have bigger problems than an actively aggressive plant monster that’s seeking out our waypoints.’ Of course. Apparently, salad people are the steak of the writing staff. I eat my vegetables in real life – having them shoved down my throat episode after episode is tiresome. Pick a different race to fall in love with for next season.

They do have bigger problems, being incredibly susceptible to Mordremoth if they’re not being shielded by the Pale Tree.

Not that we couldn’t use a couple more crazy weed engineers out there. We could replace all the crazy asura engineers.

That’s a fair point, but it’s still really annoying to have both the reps with actual events associated with them (so far) be ‘oh, we have bigger problems, it’s not like there’s literally a group of people who made their name fighting the Elder Dragons hanging around.’
It’s especially aggravating when it’s these very people who’re going “Yeah, that’s not going to happen unless you go run an errand that you’ve probably run at least a couple times already.”

As for the crazy weed engineers: Sure, have some more of those. But it’s really starting to be annoying that Sylvari are seemingly the most important race in the game, going by number of things actually done. Scarlet was behind much of Living Story Season 1, which also included Canach as a villain, and followed on the heels of Trahearne. Now there’s been Aerin bringing down the Zephyrites, and the Pale Tree being the only one that’s not “Oh, let’s just ignore that whole dragon thing.” Just saying, it’d be nice to see the writing staff give another race a chance to actually matter without being ‘and then they were stupid.’

On the one hand, congratulations to the crew responsible for this episode; their budget for this episode, in terms of just about everything, has to be impressively efficient.
On the other hand, this efficiency is at the cost of the episode being actually interesting, or including much original content besides people talking.

I’ll warn readers now that there are spoilers. I’ll keep them to a minimum, but there will be some. Sorry about that, but it’s not like it’s anything particularly stunning, unless it’s somehow startling that Sylvari are super important and once again the wisest, the only ones who don’t go “Oh, we have bigger problems than the only actively aggressive, waypoint-seeking Elder Dragon with the ability to reach halfway across Tyria and destroy fortresses.”

At the point I stopped, after collecting Crown Shard #1, I’d:
1 Discovered that the Sylvari are the only ones who aren’t ‘We have bigger problems than an actively aggressive plant monster that’s seeking out our waypoints.’ Of course. Apparently, salad people are the steak of the writing staff. I eat my vegetables in real life – having them shoved down my throat episode after episode is tiresome. Pick a different race to fall in love with for next season.

2a Been frustrated by poorly-implemented (in the face of a zerg) events required for progression. Totally couldn’t have been foreseen that a zerg would form and steamroll the four-veterans-at-best mission objectives.

2b Run in a great big circle from what felt like one end of the first major zone to the other.

3a Been irritated by an intentionally unlikable kitten of a character, who feels more like a dig at demanding forumites than anything else (“It’s done now, right?” “This takes time!” “MAKE IT FASTER WAAAH.”)

3b Been talked down to (seriously, couldn’t even be bothered to technobabble some dialogue for other Asura?) by an increasingly annoying pipsqueak who then asked me to babysit their fancy golem while I went and did things that she could, frankly speaking, have done herself in said golem without my ever appearing. Said golem tagged along while I killed everything because apparently it just wouldn’t do to give it so much as minion AI, instead opting for ‘How about the player open up a dialogue and tell it to fight when they get ambushed?’ Couldn’t even be bothered to know how to disassemble a power generator, not that it was difficult.

4 Helped demolish…something I’d already helped demolish several bloody times over the past year. Well, ‘helped’ is an overstatement – I ran in and pressed the Demolish button, because everything was already done by the time I got there.

5 Helped set up the same machines I’d helped set up several bloody times over the past year. At least, I assume I was helping, I was shooting at things. You’d think he’d make those devices way more durable. Or effective. Porque no las dos?

2a and 2b both occurred in the first major zone, 3a and 3b both happened in the same instance. Just about all of the new action content (the bits in Iron Marches) felt like padding (no, really, taking great long walks/waypointing only to return to the starting point isn’t particularly engrossing), the conversational bits come in such great numbers that it gets me /threatening and [Throw Mine]ing DE2.0 to pass the time, and the action content after the conversations is old.
Going back and doing these events for the Living Story just feels like the antithesis of it. Not saying there’s anything wrong with old content, but when the Living Story feels like it’s comprised mostly of new conversations and old events, I think ‘Living’ is probably not the right word.

I would definitely have preferred the Iron Marches stuff to be instanced – repeating a boring battle because I had no idea it was required for progression was annoying, and hunting the wolf was frustrating because, well, zergs have this tendency to overwhelm foes. I didn’t get contribution on the wolf, and thus permission to progress, until I finally just went all the way down to where I thought it would spawn and threw myself face-first into it, for the simple reason of ’there’s a lot of other people doing this very same event, and a lot of them are in a wad.’ By the time I was done, it felt more like I’d had to outposition, or outwait, the zerg than outfight the wolf.

Wolf.5816:

Bunker down does need attention.

It needs to either be brought down in its trait teir, for a Grandmaster Trait it is hardly worth an investment.

If it remains a Grandmaster trait it will need a buff. For example one of the following:

-Increased Damage
-Multiple Mines
-Allow the trait Elixir-Infused Bombs to effect mines in addition to bombs.
-Allow it to remove boons
-increase cooldown but allow these mines to inflict a 3/4 second daze.

I think it’d also be really nice for it to not be spawned under the user’s feet, and instead for it to spawn, say, 150 away in the direction of the triggering target.

One Note Chord.5031:

Anymras.5729:

What’s so terrible about allowing people to give it or trade it to somebody who does want it?

Then it goes on the tp, like nearly every other skin the game. People will disagree about whether that’s a bad thing, and I’m not convinced there’s one right answer. Personally, though, I like having some skins in the game that you can’t just buy with gold (and there aren’t many, at least for weapons! fractals, mistforged, and now ambrite are the only ones I can think of, though I’m sure I’m forgetting something). I’d rather they make fossils available for some large amount of geodes, like the 2600/2000 suggestion. Turning unwanted fossils into geodes also sounds nice.

With these particular skins, I have two fossils and no desire for them, at the same time as there’s threads about people wanting to find the things and being incapable of doing so. There’s no skill involved in obtaining the fossil, and, to my mind, no reason for them to be account-bound aside from ‘prestige,’ as a result of their being a random drop from chests that only need to be found.
If something isn’t going to be available on the Trading Post, it should have a reliable, skill-based means by which it can be gained, in my opinion.

As for trading them in for Geodes: this would still feel like a waste, what with the demand for them, but it’d give an option besides ‘you don’t want this? Welp, might as well throw that rare, in-demand object required for unlocking some very interesting skins in the dirt, or let it sit in your inventory gathering dust and taking up space.’

vincecontix.1264:

How do you kill my engi? bring 2 friends xd but seriously you shouldn’t be engaging a turret engi solo.

Oh, yeah, definitely a good point. 1v1.5 isn’t quite in your favor. 2v1.5 is.

Agreed.

They’ve apparently decided they’re going to do a Ready-Up about Engineers and Rangers, as a balance preview…they probably won’t mention Hobosacks, despite them being, given Bill’s last, long-ago comment, a balance concern.

Against Turrets, specifically, I’d recommend ranged AoE – Turrets can’t move, they don’t take conditions, they’ve got a reputation for fragility and will either be underwhelming (if not traited) or most of the skillbar (if traited, as they are a heavy investment). Some Engineers might place Turrets far apart, to prevent them from being destroyed by a ranged AoE barrage; this means that the Turrets will not be able to cover each other perfectly, which should allow them to be picked off somewhat easier.
Add to this whole situation the long cooldowns of said Turrets and most of their associated Toolbelts, and…well, a Turret Engineer without their Turrets is far less of a foe.
It’s also worth noting that, depending on the ‘breed’ of the Turret Engineer, they are most likely to either have high-damage, boon-dispensing Turrets, or explosive Turrets with short-term reflective domes. The former category is tanky, as a result of the traits required being Grandmasters in survivability-stat trees, and from the sound of it, that’s what you’ve been fighting. This also makes Healing Turret’s drop-and-pop AoE heal more powerful, which can greatly contribute to the survivability of the build, although it’s a fairly common heal for the Engineer in general.

Don’t try to burst the Engineer themselves; think of it like a staged boss fight.
Stage 1: Destroy the Turrets while avoiding the boss’ attacks.
Stage 2: Beat on the boss while they’re vulnerable. Try to inflict as many Conditions as possible, along with Poison. You want to clog their Healing Turret’s overcharge cleanse and reduce how much healing they get when the cooldown finishes.
Stage X: Repeat.

Against Engineers in general: Engineers have limited condition removal, and are vulnerable to CC. Use these to your advantage – just because we’re good at condition blasting or CCing, don’t assume we’re good at dealing with the same.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Ready-Up-Episode-18-7-25-Noon-PDT/first#post4231196

Yeah, staff straight-up say they’re doing a balance preview for Engineers and Rangers. Probably won’t mention hobosacks, despite them being a ‘balance’ issue according to the staff (and just the staff).

Wait, what? Ready Up’s going to have a balance preview for Engineers? I feel so out-of-the-loop. Where do we find this stuff out?

…That said, I really like at least two of these proposed changes (Gadgeteer and Coated Bullets).

Zaxares.5419:

I’d rather they just make the Unid Fossils be tradable. I’ve got two Fossils now and since I don’t want the Ambrite weapons, they’re completely useless to me.

Agreed. I only have one, but I have no interest in Ambrite or Nomad gear, so I simply have no use for them. I also don’t want to destroy mine, because it feels so wasteful due to the rarity of the item itself.

What’s so terrible about allowing people to give it or trade it to somebody who does want it?

Yamsandjams.3267:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Since it is a newer trait, the probably made sure to not allow the detonate skill didnt trigger it. Thanks for testing it and letting everyone know though.

My intuition says they actually never considered the detonation half of the skill, but the way they designed it simply happened to only trigger on the toss and not the detonation.

Oddly enough, this behaviour is not consistent. For turrets, the tool belt skills as well as the turret detonations both trigger something like SD, so it is a bit odd that the minefield wouldn’t proc SD on both deploy and detonation.

It’s actually not that inconsistent. Both act exactly as they say they do.

Text of Static Discharge (according to the wiki):
“Discharge a bolt of lightning whenever you use a tool belt skill.”
Turret Detonation is triggered by using Toolbelt skills – the location of the Detonate Turret skill is, after all, on F1, F2, F3 or F4, and Detonate Turret overrides the Turret Toolbelt skills otherwise available.

Text of Gadgeteer (according to the wiki):
“Gadgets grant additional boons upon use.”
Throw Mine’s Detonate isn’t classified as a Gadget, as opposed to Throw Mine itself. It’s just a sequential effect that can’t be accessed without Throw Mine.

Design-wise, they probably didn’t think about the detonation, but that’s probably because it’s not something that would trigger the trait to begin with, as it’s not Gadget-flagged, just like Speedy Gadgets doesn’t affect Elixirs or Turrets.

coglin.1867:

I have not tested it, but the gadgeteer trait could offer more benefit if you get aegis on both the planting of the mine and the self destruction of it. Similarly to how static discharge works with mine field on the tool belt.

Just tested this a moment ago. Unless there’s a hidden ICD, it only activates on Throw Mine.

I’d mostly want to ask about Gadgeteers and Condition Damage mitigation, really.
Every other skillset of the Engineer has a way (albeit sometimes quite limited) of clearing damaging conditions, but the nearest Gadgets get to that is AED’s heal burst or Rocket Boots’ ability to clear Immobilize, Chill and Cripple. This creates an obvious, major weakness for a Gadget-centric build, which leads to some incredibly irritating, tedious and sometimes fatal situations.
Fighting enemies who deal conditions besides Immobilize, Cripple, or Chill leads to having to ‘wait out’ the conditions, even if the enemy is defeated, and damaging conditions can only be dealt with by hoping your heal skill will be sufficient to keep your HP above 0…or getting used to getting Downed after battles. During battles, there’s simply nothing to be done besides trying to heal through the effects, which has…limited effectiveness, to say the least, especially when dealing with Poison, which renders AED’s big heal less effective, and other sources of incoming damage.

Arantheal.7396:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-December-10-2013
There you go.
It says:
Firearms XI—Modified Ammunition: This trait now works regardless of the equipped weapon.

Unless that is one point on our long buglist, the trait SHOULD work properly with every equipped weapon.

There’s also a trait actually named Rifle Mod. It’s Firearms IX, and boosts Rifle damage by 10%.

skullmount.1758:

EgonVenkman.1907:

There are 2 flaws with the new ambrite weapons.

1. Fossils locked behind RNG.
2. Requires T4/T5 Dry Top. May not be a problem today, but what happens after Season 2 goes away or people loose interest?

The receipes should have been available at every level, with increasing cost to incentivize you to get T4/T5.

Locking the fossils behind RNG is just more trashy behavior by Anet. No way to work your way towards it, but a roll of the luck dice everytime. As usual, the shady RNG has some people with nothing getting mad after 100 attempts, and the blessed few who get 5 within 7 tries.

Basically my thoughts. They look cool, but the kitten kittening RNG aspect of the fossils kills it. They could have at least made it so the unid fossils were tradeable. While the Geode cost is kinda fine (just a bit too high cost, maybe 300/250 would have been better?), but why the kitten did they have to increase the geode cost for lockpicks? They should have stayed the same costs (and decreased another 10/20 for t5), since we (well at least some of us) have to spend hundreds of them just to get one/two of the fossils.

guardian.6489:

Luck doesn’t add to the prestige of a weapon, all it does is add a tiny bit of resentment that the person with one is luckier then you.

So I’m not alone in that aspect.
Every time I see the jetpack that’s all I can think/feel towards that person.

At least with the Jetpack, it can be bought – I bought my own, after all. Cost me as much as a Commander tag, but I bought it.
On the other hand, I’ve got an Unidentified Insect Fossil and absolutely no desire for the weapons, with nothing I can do except for destroying the Fossil to avoid it clogging up my inventory or bank. I didn’t want it to begin with, I don’t want it now, it’d be really nice to be able to sell it, trade it, or otherwise get it to people who actually want it.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Twigifire.8379:

Hey Zardul, I run a slight modification for my recent static discharge build

This combination works so well for me as well, I run slightly different traits and skills to you though. I use rocket boots, throw mine and toolkit. As throw mine provides great damage and a 14 second knockback, and rocketboots give you HEAPS of mobility which I find keep me alive very well. However, I didn’t trait into alchemy and instead went with increased mine explosion size, and didn’t grab speedy kits taking gadget cooldown instead

Le build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdIQFAUlUUpvrdZxkLseNichM6yVfC6HZu8pAA-TFCFABIp0zJlBOcBAKZ/h20Bko6PA8AAuSJIA-w

Interesting thing about toss mine…

If you slot gadgeteer, this gives you aegis every time you use your toss mine utility. Since your cooldown for your toss mine is 14.5 seconds, this effectively works exactly like the armor mods trait, except that you also get extra vigor from using rocket boots.

The caveat, of course, is that you need to be actively using your mine to proc the aegis, but it does give you more control over when it pops. Thus you could use it to counter the enemies opener, or use it when you predict a particular attack is coming (unlike armor mods that can easily proc off and block auto-attacks).

But if you find yourself tossing your mine frequently, you might consider using gadgeteer instead of armor mods. Of course, you could always slot both armor mods and gadgeteer if you drop static discharge if you want a particularly defensive configuration.

Except that Armor Mods is a Grandmaster, just like Gadgeteer.

Penguin.5197:

Add in acidic coating for extra annoyance :P

I was just about to point this out. Could make a really annoying dueltroll build by combining the three. Maybe pick up some Sigils or Runes of particular types just to get really bad – maybe Sigils for lifesteal/healing, and…Dolyak Runes? I’m not sure if those’d be the best choices.

DDoS attacks, to my understanding, aren’t something that poses much threat to information on servers – it’s less “Let’s get in and break stuff” than it is “Let’s just bombard it with requests until it can’t react.”

The whole cave will turn out to be Mordemoth’s belly, with Omadd’s machine in his skull or something.

Exactly as the title says, I feel that some of the new events are just way too long, especially Chickenado and the Sand Giant (so far, they’re the only ones that are really jumping out as problematic).

While I understand that the Sand Giant, in particular, is supposed to be challenging, and theoretically epic, I just…he’s got too much HP to be fun or even rewarding to contribute to during the sandstorm window. Just a little while ago, I tried to help bring him down for…I can’t quite recall, but I do know I had two moments where I was just going to leave, five minutes apart, during which time his HP dropped maybe 20%. The second time, I actually did leave, because he wasn’t even going to die before the sandstorm stopped.
I don’t know if there was some kind of dissonance in the Favor Tier compared to the number of people fighting him, or what might have been the cause, as I certainly recall helping take him down before, but it still seemed to take most of the storm. Wasn’t particularly fun then, either, to be honest; the knockaway and fear effects simply make it more tedious than anything. Getting sent straight to Downed by hard-to-see projectiles (especially as I keep my camera angled so that I can see incoming boulders, which also seem to send me just about straight to Downed) is more aggravating than interesting, too.
And, of course, the reward for hanging around and more-or-less mindlessly beating on this damage-sponging moron is…pretty much exactly what I can get for a lot less effort, with a little luck or cooperation, by finding a Buried Locked Chest.
All this adds up to “Man, this is just a waste of time.”
Compare to: Three-Toed Tootsie, who actually had reasons for you to bother paying attention besides “I’ll have to run back to him again,” and required some manner of strategy (however rudimentary) to beat, as well as actually dying in a somewhat timely manner so other events can be gotten to or chests sought.

The Chickenado, on the other hand…I’m not even sure if it’s supposed to be challenging or just a joke event, especially given the obvious Sharknado reference. All I’m sure of is that trying to take care of it took something like fifteen minutes of chasing down chickens, whereupon the reward is…rocks and sand, unless I tragically missed a chest which likely would simply have had the same things as a Buried Locked Chest. I’m pretty sure I was more rewarded by accidentally killing Dust Mites than I was by completing the event.

I’ve just started using this trait in a 6/6/0/0/2 build with it, Modified Ammunition, Static Discharge and so bloody many conditions. I can confirm that it does, indeed, activate without needing the enemy to actually get knocked back – but I’m still not super happy with it, to be honest, mostly taking it because I just don’t see a lot of other choices at GM Explosives. I think I’d probably like it better if it also gave Swiftness.

This has actually been going on for quite some time, but I’m still having trouble quite…describing it. Or getting a video of it, as it only occurs some of the time, though often enough that it occurs at least once per play session.

I’ll just go ahead and list steps to reproduce it:

1. Slot a knockback, such as the Engineer’s Overcharged Shot or Guardian’s Banish.
2. Find a mob.
3. Knock the mob back.
4. See what happens when the mob recovers.

When the mob recovers from knockback, sometimes it snaps back into melee range without having to cross the newly intervening distance, rendering the knockback moot and oftentimes wasting follow-up attacks.
If it is Immobilized after being knocked back, it does not snap back, at least not so far.

They really aren’t difficult to counter.
Use ranged attacks or AoE; they can’t move, and depending on traits, will have either 1,000 or 1,500 range. Combined with turning time to target, there’s a fair chance that they won’t even fire if an attack such as Meteor Storm, or the Engineer’s very own Grenade Kit, is hit-and-run fired from maximum range.
As long as the ranged assault does at least 5% of the Turret’s HP per 3 seconds, or around 600 for Thumper Turret (the sturdiest Turret, which gets the most benefit from AuIn), Autotool Installation won’t keep the Turret up for long. Metal Plating brings the amount of damage necessary to break even to about 800/3 seconds against Thumper Turret, which can’t move out of AoE circles or in any way defend itself from a sustained AoE.
Could they pick up their Turrets to protect them? Sure, and then they eat a cooldown of 16 to 38 seconds, depending on Turret, leaving them with just their Toolbelts.
In addition, a Turret’s attacks are ultimately predictable; they will always occur the same interval apart, aside from the Rifle Turret’s overcharge barrage and perhaps Rocket Turret’s arc shot, so they’re relatively easy to dodge.

If that doesn’t work? Don’t run at them alone. An Engineer’s Turrets will attack their last-damaged target, even if that means ‘the last person hit by their AoE autoattacks,’ and require turning time to focus on a new target. Combine that with a Turret build’s fairly decent sustained damage to single targets, and it’s really not a good idea to roll into a nest without help if you can’t kill the Turrets from far enough away. If even this fails, find a different point – it’s not a good plan for them to take their stuff and just come running across the map.

Turrets are only borderline overpowered against people who don’t know how to handle them – which is common, especially at lower tiers, mostly because they weren’t always so commonly used. Several crippling bugs left the skillset firing much slower than it should’ve, with much larger hitboxes rendering survivability traiting null, for example, which kept people from considering them viable at all.
Destroy the Turrets, and the Engineer who placed them has nothing but their Toolbelt and weapon to fall back on.

It’s also partially the fault of the super-limited game mode, in my opinion – when holding a stationary point for ten seconds is worth just as much as getting a kill, skills intended to make being in an area unpleasant or impossible are going to be emphasized. Turrets, being immobile, are obviously unsuited to mobile combat, but there’s very little reason for a Turret Engineer to worry about that much in sPvP due to knowing that an enemy must come to them.

Zach.3264:

Wrench actually does pretty good damage in power builds, but yeah.. it’s much easier just to use Rifle and you get better slots on it also.

ikiturso.4026:

I would like Anet to see do something! We are so out of current meta! Some hamsters make decent builds but we are way off! Our auto attacks need serious buffs.

Engineer’s have several kits, our auto-attacks aren’t meant to be on par with other classes.

Nope, they aren’t, even if the Engineer doesn’t even have a Kit slotted to begin with, but that’s okay, right? It’s not like it punishes people for deciding to not take an optional utility skill or anything. </sarcasm>

I…actually don’t know.
I think a pretty simple way to check it would be to target a neutral mob or critter, and see what happens to your crit chance if you back away past 600 range.

Edit: Upon testing, I’ve not noticed any change on my Hero Screen, at the very least. It might be that it just isn’t reflected there.

It would probably really help if there were more mobile objectives, rather than just “Hold this point for ten seconds to earn the point-equivalent of a kill.”
And if Turret users had any kind of reason to spec out of tanky traitlines, rather than the most natural decision being ‘go for maximum durability.’

Other than that? I feel that turrets shouldn’t be nerfed; people don’t know how to deal with them, after all, given that, for a quarter of the game’s lifespan so far, they were afflicted with at least two crippling bugs. One made every single one of them fire at a much slower rate, and the other made their hitbox disproportionately huge, for those unaware.
Nerfing them because people didn’t realize what they could do, in a game mode where what they do is great for points, would be moronic. Far better, in my opinion, to expand the PvP system to include goals that aren’t so perfectly suited to the Turret skillset.

I’m using Bunker Down in my current build; the greatest issues I’ve found are mostly ‘I kill small mobs too quickly for it to be useful, and for big mobs it’s almost nothing.’

If you’re staying out of the line of fire, I’d probably suggest something a bit more full-on offensive, like Berzerker gear. Given that zergs reputedly involve a lot of Retaliation being passed around, it’s probably a good idea to minimize how many attacks you need to do an appreciable amount of damage in order to minimize the amount of Retaliation eaten.