Guild Wars 2

I’m not as dissapointed by the new Engie elite spec itself, as by the fact the devs choose not to answer the pleas form the engie players, giving us a DPS focused new spec (which only accentuates what we already have covered) instead of the Support focused spec the profession needs to gain diversity.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I come from the group of players that vastly enjoyed HoT and it’s verticality. It had issues, sure but these were more content-creation pace and sales related then game itself.

That being said I was bored outta my skull with the demo. Firstly things i do appreciate:

1. giving my character sets of armor and trinkets to cater to my own preferred build (more or less).
2. giving me a shot to experience PoF first map first hand.
3. That sous chef mastery point – most ppl complain but whiners will wine. Put my back to it, tried couple of times and got it, was fun Especially the crying of sous-chef applicants, i could swear that was tongue in cheek to all those players whining about it being too hard

Ok enough buttering up. Now the bad parts:

1. Hardly any verticality.
Sorry but it feels like i went back in time to GW2 launch and core Tyria. I do not appreciate that. GW2 is about innovation, not taking steps back. HoT innovated, and as usual when you change something you will make enemies. But it’s worth it. Now i feel like instead of pushing for innovation you run back to core Tyria with tail between your legs.

2. No outposts.
Outposts in HoT are awesome – you get several ways to do map meta, each telling a story and guiding you through jungle’s density. Here it’s just “hearts v 2.0”.
I’m not feeling it.

3. No glider love.
Gliders are extremely popular among players, we love’em. There’s a huge gap between “you can glide in this map” and “this map has gliding sections”. The latter including gliding puzzles and places to just soar above whole map and be uncontended king of skies! Well, not in PoF sadly:/

4. Who’s Kiel’s she-dog? You are!
Excuse me, am I a freaking Pact Commander, or some lionguard janitor? Why is “Kiel said so” used as explanation why i’m landing here and now without any of my say in it? What’s next, some Vigil recruit telling me to go clear up 3 undead near a pond before i can board my own kitten ship?

Ps. Proud i voted Evon Gnashblade in election, knew i made a right choice, but majority is Kiel’s she dogs!

5. Too castrated
You blocked to much stuff, and it’s biting you in the kitten How do I know any HoT map is vertical and has lots of hidden places? Because there’s stuff in there teasing you constantly to find it! Especially Hero Points! You search up, below, around and inside, eventually discovering a kittenton of stuff!

And in demo? My new elite specs aren’t enabled, so why should i care? “Moving on.” (with who knows how much stuff undiscovered).

6. You didn’t watch your Hitchkitten
When i entered VB i got greeted by scene from jungle nightmare, then a huge vine appears threatening nearby pact camp and things only wind up from there. Plus you begin with grabbing a sniper rifle and scoring some mordrem headshots!

PoF – after your lord and master Kiel tells you what you can and cannot do via “your” subordinates, you face a normal fight with Balthazar’s herald, run around a village putting out fires and ressing ppl. Then you accidently click on Kasmeer and wish she’d shut up 5 seconds later, while Rytlock who’s supposed to actually have interesting stuff to say doesn’t care to talk longer then said 5 seconds.

And then you land in queensdale 2.0…oh the tension!

7. No elite specs!
So i run around “Queensdale 2.0 The desert strikes!” using my….core or HoT build. So feels old on the map mechanic side, feels old on the combat side….yeah, great way to get my adrenaline pumping.

8. The mounts.
So PoF’s “innovation” is basically feature of every kitten mmorpg out there. That’s the “new” that’s supposed to replace the glider. Not seeing it. GW2 = glider. That’s a strong sales point.
Mounts? That’s generally a single tick on a check-list of your standard boring WoW clone features.

9, Where’s the BIG & NEW?
Asides questionable novelty of mounts and bounties (which aren’t that strong a feature) rest of “new” seem to be item system polish (items for easier salvage and inventory stacking)….and that’s it. Rest as said something of a mix-up between core Tyria and LS3. Where’s the distinctive feature that you only get in GW2 Path of Fire?
HoT had mastery system for the first time, along with gliders and amazing vertical maps. That was fresh, that was…hot.
Here – you tell me, i can’t find a kitten thing.

10. Why am I getting less?

No matter how I look at it, demo shows me that in PoF instead of getting more as advertised i get less then in HoT.

Less masteries, less adventures (2/3 of map i saw 1 adventure, in HoT there were more), less event density, no outposts, no glider sections (updrafts, ley lines for gliding etc), less innovation, taking a huge step back to core GW2 map style.
Nothing truly new that doesn’t make you say “been there, done that” unlike vertical maps and gliders at time of HoT’s launch.

Overall i’m very underwhelmed by this demo. I don’t feel sense of purpose, encouragement to explore, feeling of GW2 only innovation waiting to pull me in and show me once again that this game dares to go where no others did!

That is my opinion from playing the demo. Dunno how full xpac will look like so can’t say. But this definitely did not get me hyped.

Your post is so salty, Zef… yet it got everything right. I’m using this quote as my own feedback now, just imagine it a lot more bland and boring.

The demo showed the typical great art quality from Anet, but it also showed a lot of “pleasing to the lesser common factor” choices on their part, boring, easy, railroading designs that IMO are a step back from HoT.

The main problem is with the mount:

The mount itself is very well done, beautifully animated, and answer a lot of the fears I had about it:
- It moves really fast, but can’t strafe, insta turn or evade, so It doesn’t make swiftness and other speed/exploring abilities obsolete.
- Since it doesn’t have combat abilities except for the engage one, it doesn’t impose yet another meta build to use it.
- Since we can’t interact with people, nodes or other activable things while mounted, it avoids the horrendous visual cluttering that is so typical of normal mount-happy games.

However, the big problem is Anet made the mount not a nice mechanic you can use to enhance your experience of the game, but a mandatory ability you have to use all the time, which also DEFINES EVERYTHING ELSE.

- The map is flat, forcefully enlarged, and incredibly boring to navegate. Like a common mmorpg from decades ago, awful.

- There is NO challenge to get anywhere, and no alternative to do it on a mount. The only problem you have to solve is linear distance, and the mount is the pre-defined fool-proof answer.

- Mission locations and terrain gaps are arbitrarily distributed along the map with the sole purpose of forcing you to travel a long distance tens of times, artificially making the mounts feel “useful”.

- Where gliding felt like a natural way to explore maps (not only HoT or LS3, but any map!), here the map, story, npc and challenge locations, and no doubt, even the mobs routines and balance have to rigidly adapt so the mount have any resemblance of purpose. Its way too forced and artificial.

I find HoT open world fun and challenging, yet absolutely approachable with my simple playstyle. Most of Central Tyria is boringly easy for me. On the other hand, I can’t even enter into raids without going SPLAT. Am I casual or hardcore?

IMO, Casual and Harcore are terrible concepts because they doesn’t really mean anything. Trying to “take the lead” of an hypotethic group of people by wielding such kind of a word is just a cheap strategy to create a false backup for a highly subjective point of view. Bad form.

TLDR: Speak for yourself, not for some imaginary group of people you represent.

killermanjaro.5670:

The map does seem quite big to me, but in my opinion it matches the concern I had, that these maps are just big to accommodate mounts. I know it’s a desert and all, but it just feels like a big open map of nothing, I know it’s personal preference, but to me the map just seems really boring and not interesting. It just feels like the empty spaces have been stretched out make more area/distance to justify using a mount.

WOW style maps, as I feared. Horrible.

Yakez.7561:

Just imagine galloping strafing horse with a char in a saddle… First thing coming to my mind is rolling TIE-Fighters sounds with some blaster shots.

Love it!

The UI is not bad at all.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be improved, and it is absolutely true some elements of it are badly implemented to a point it requires serious reworking, first of all the map and minimap in multilevel zones. And don’t we forget, the ever present curse of the DISSAPEARING CURSOR…

Backpack dyeable needs to happen..

I find most of the new content very well done but fairly NOT directed to me. Right now the most attractive thing in the game for me is the improved rocket boots skill… which doesn’t require PoF to be used.

However. There IS something really amazing this new expansion brings to me: playing new stuff with friends again. That is invaluable, and GW2 is the best game for doing that.

jief.2509:

Ardid.7203:

Running behind the meta no matter how repetitive, boring or bad looking it is for you is a terrible mindset to have. (Specially if you convince yourself that is what it means to do the best you can).

Why would I play a video game if I’m not having fun?

Beats me, really. But there are a lot of people playing games with a “must win at ANY cost” mentality, clearly don’t having much fun, and worse, trying to impose that way to play to others.

I still like more my idea of “enhancing lenses” for a ranged spec for engie. The engie with tis spec can mount “lenses” in the ground that give extra effects for himself and his allies, like extra damage, adding conditions to the attacks, dividing or multiplying projectiles, etc. Since the lenses would be inmobile and directional, the spec would benefit ranged combat the most.

Technically, the game “should” run only on secondary stats, to stop obscuring things. In fact, I wouldn’t mind it if that were the case.

I think they changed a “reward” for people really, really, really specific intheir way to use endurance, for a boost destined to people who actually dodge. It may not be specially good at demonstrating “oh! how skillful you are!”, but it is more useful instead, and lets you get closer to the fight, where you can skillfully dodge, instad of skillfully wait.

In other words: if you are already good at protecting yourself, this lets you get even better, by using all the defensive tools AND your dodges in the heat of the combat.

Running behind the meta no matter how repetitive, boring or bad looking it is for you is a terrible mindset to have. (Specially if you convince yourself that is what it means to do the best you can).

It seems there were some noticeable changes in the way graphics work in the game. Some people are reporting better fps and more frames with old graphic cards, and others are reporting “updated” visuals on different skills, like Rev rotating hammers.

IMO is possible this faces are the same, just with a graphic change altering the deeps and brights of the shapes.

jief.2509:

Is there a power build that would work in high lvl fractals that doesn’t involve camping the bomb kit? I’m new to engi and I just can’t stand that the main attack animation I see is squatting down and placing a big bomb lol.

Welcome to the club of anti bombers. We are few, but with the changes to bombs aa well be more… I can’t really help you with the build, fisrt because I’m not playing high lvl fractals yet, second because the balance patch from yesterday really changed a lot.

Better to wait a little to see what good builds appear from here to a week. There will be a couple new and good ones, I’m sure.

Engie’s Rocket Boots is not a projectile or a melee attack, really. Yet it has now 2 “ammo” for use. It has become an excellent movement skill thanks to that.

Terrible but unstoppable idea in my mind: Legendary mounts are some sort of creature that can do all the special movement options without needing changing mount.

It hovers, long jumps, high jumps and teleports. Very legendary, IMO.

I’m realizing just now that Engie DO need another mainhand weapon OUTSIDE elite specs.

Blood Red Arachnid, good analytic post. Thanks for the work.

Are.1326:

Personally, I really liked the flavor of how thief and engineer were different in this regard. Thief got rewarded for spamming dodges, and engineers got rewarded for being conservative with their endurance. Engineers are not supose to be all agile like thief so it made very much sense to incentivise engineers to avoid damage by other means, like blocks or positioning. Both methods have resonable interesting gameplay implications.

Now, this trait is just a copy of what thief gets, a bit of Engineer identity died this day.
However, the rest of the patch is totally worth it.

I disagree totally. My engineer ALWAYS dodge, always move and is always repositioning. If I wanted to block all day I would have choosen warrior or guardian.

Beautiful. That’s all I can say about this.

Yep, I also noticed that great addition to the sound control in the game. It was discussed a lot, and most ideas were indeed taken on account. Great, great job!

Shocking news about mounts!

kurtosis.9526:

So, Super Adventure Box is not very Asura-like?

Not really. While it IS asura without any doubt, it is particularly Moto style of asura, not general asura. It doesn’t resemble anything from the resto of asura culture and tradition, it is very unique, and certainly not what many of us asura players would like to see.

Compare SAB aesthetics with the crafting machines in rata sum, or with Ellie’s holograms, or with anything in an asura lab. They have a few things in common, but SAB is definitely SAB.

At least we’ll be seeing new builds for a time. That itself is good. Also, a little nerf to bombs and nades autoattacks may be a blessing for some carpal tunnels out there, IMO.

You know what? I think I know why they seems so obsessed with the coats and butcapes.

I was playing dying in Dark Souls with a bunch of friends last week, when we switched the fighting style from a very armored, though and slow guy, to the fast, almost naked hobo one. One of my friends said he would like the model to be a female, even if it is a disgusting undead.

“If I’m going to see my ass kicked by a monster every two minutes, at least it could be a cute one to look at.”

Then it ocurred to me: Maybe people DO prefer to look at female rears too much. Maybe giving the option to see such anatomic references closely DO impact the player selection too much. Maybe Anet DO want to maintain some balance between male and female player characters, so not everyone is a female. Maybe they DO think it is relevant to obscure butts from our view to avoid “only female rears syndrome” or something like that.

I know it sounds stupid. But the world tend to be that way so much…

WvW and PvP legendary armors are the same as the exclusive for the mode, now plus the stat change feature.

Agree. But my fingers have limits! Between 111 and condi rotation must be some gradient! XD

Just buy the gem cards in dollars from an authorized seller. Youll be paying the same as any other dollar buyer.

We don’t need a hero. We need a dev.

Chaith.8256:

I call core engineer a condition & power damage specialist whether it’s PvP or PvE- hard to understand why it’s referred to as a Jack of all trades with no se support build

Agree. But it also isn’t that good as a “specialist”, because absurd rotations. And other “specialists” do the same work while being more party friendly.

Frightlight.3796:

Doomsayers please try not to make too much of a ruckus before you get your hands on the spec or even before the coming balance changes. Things may turn out very very different and you might regret hating on something you havent tried yet.

I think I would regret more NOT doing a ruckus now, and accepting all that seems wrong and leting hope grow, only to confront the sad reality later.

Better to be corrected by a positive development than surprised by an obvious disaster.

Nate.8146:

LilBiM.3581:

The faster we get on this ball hopefully the less likely we are to repeat what happened to the Engineer in HoT.

The scrapper was actually good on release day.

I disagree with you in this part. Scrapper was poorly balanced on release day, OP in PvP and barely sufferable in PvE, with an elite mechanic that was noticeably niche since the beggining, full Hammer centered and lacking decent synergies with the rest of the profession. Today it has a few better synergies, and the rest is still extremely unbalanced and PvP only.

Nate.8146:

The only skills topic worth its weight in gold is the new barrier combat mechanic, something holosmiths don’t have access to. This is something I can see most players are going to want to have in party comps. It is one feature I think Anet will buff instead of nerf in the coming months to add more interesting gameplay mechanics. So kudos to Necormancers this round. Like what alacrity did to Mesmer popularity in HoT, I think Barrier will do for Necros in PoF (this is their expansion). As for holosmiths, meh. Enjoy your new toy

I agree with you on this part: no new party support mechanic = no real value for the spec.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zone

There are 22 non-80 zones. There are eleven 80-only zones. There are 2 zones with ranges from 70 to 80.

That means between a 31% and a 37% (depending on how you take the hybrid zones) of the maps work around top level content, while the remaining has to absorb all the other tiers. This disparity will grow when the expac hits, and evolve even further with season 4.

Don’t get me wrong: I love 80 content. But the ways to obtain lower tier mats and stuff are certainly weird, given the end level focused nature of the whole game.

So we are now standard warrior. yay.

I disagree.

The probervial “Jack of all trades” NEEDS to be second or at least third choice for any activity. Engie is the LAST choice for many duties. That makes him a “Jack of some trades, crap for others”.

+ 1000000000000

guildabd.6529:

It should be able to mine ores, chop trees and gather plants.

At least.

Its for people who has many alts, or never do any of those “spamy” tracks that fill your inventory with tomes. I’m quite in the middle: I have tomes for uplevel 1 and a half character, and soon will have a lvl 80 booster… and I will not use them on any new character because I don’t want more alts.

However, this still seems fun, in an “ironman challenge” sort of way.

Gliding is the biggest one, IMO. But all the rest are very relevant too. I truly don’t think anyone should buy PoF alone.

Plase add this for the old elits too!
AND FOR GLIDING!!!!!!
Please…

The question is the reverse:
Why do Balthazar fights humans that were aligned with him?

For my part, I’ve always been oriented towards the Dynamic aspect of the Ethernal Alchemy. For me is very logical to fight against silly over the magical standard humans.

I concurr with the lore point.

Several of the other professions seem to be linked to a well informed aspect of the new area history or at least to some rcognized lore aspect from tyria.

Holosmith “uses light in interesting ways”. No Scarlet mentioned, no reference to Ellie, no connection with Moto, no relation to Elona, the Dragons, the Gods or… anything.

“Yay, in the desert the sun hits stronger, lets make the new elite about that!”
Come on…

Engie can run without problem. You just need to build for that (like any other profession). In fact we have kind of a good set of alternatives to do this, with more or less uptime.

You also can wait for the new expac. Anet seems to be decided to destroy all travelling speed builds by making Mount speed boon mandatory. (I don’t know how soon they will began to work in WvW, though).

What activity in the game Engie CAN do decently at the moment?
What thing Engie is REALLY BAD at right now?

Answer these questions and you’ll see engie is not really a Jack of all Trades at this time.

I’m going to be a bit of a jerk this time… but I think is ok if they nerf Bombs and Nades. It would be better if they truly balance them instead… but anyway, they are so boring that I’ll be happy so see them out of the meta.

This fail of the scrapper was pointed multiple, multiple, multiple times. Even before they released HoT, it was said by the players that the function gyro needed something to do in PvE.

When they still replyed in this forum, Irenio Calmon Huang said they will give it a look.

Here we are today, NOTHING has happened.

Super Adventure Box is asuran too. After all, Moto is asura in every aspect.
But IMO is true that the visuals of the spec seems closer to Moto than Ellie’s or Scarlet’s holograms, which I would have preferred.

Don’t make it. Not for Holo, at least. Engie has never truly enjoyed using legendaries, because normaly kits take the major part of the playing time. So, unless you know for sure you’ll be using a kitless build with little use of the Holo Mode, don’t make a legendary sword for Engie.

Anet is NOT going to add major work to Holo Mode or other kits for legendaries only. And you will NOT get a dev answer here.

(Yes, its only my opinion. But really. Given anet-engie-legendaries history, its almost a fact.)

So like a built in Speed Boost mushroom? That’s awful, it takes the opportunity cost off designing any build around exploration vs designing it around combat. Mounts will be mandatory now, and build diversity will become even narrower than before.