Guild Wars 2

Donari.5237:

How in the world is that a sylvari? He’s bearded, hairy, thickly muscled, caucasian flesh colored .. the pointy ear is the only vaguely sylvaran aspect.

I’d want to see the chest piece straight on, but for now I think it’s just an artistic interpretation and not necessarily anything in game.

The more I look at it, I think he IS a Sylvari actually. The colors look human range at first glance, but it could be an orangy-peach skin tone with blueish purple hair given the lighting. The beard and hairstyle is actually vaugely fern/leaf-like under close inspection, plus the pointed ears and the texture on his neck can be his actual skin rather than any kind of equipment.

Incidentally, the chest piece looks like Sylvari armor to me. It’s got thorns.

I don’t think that hair/beard is currently available though, so it’s either a pure concept or perhaps a future important NPC.

This definitely looks like an elite spec though. I was actually thinking the glint shield might be a legendary weapon in progress (Because a legendary with crystal themed passive effects would be cool) but the matching shoulder piece makes it look a lot more like a gear set for a spec now.

I’m kinda disappointed they have yet to show ANY of the medium classes yet though. Seriously, just one of them. All three light classes, two heavies, no mediums.

This is more of a story issue, but isn’t it kind of weird how our characters never get to do anything cool that requires our unique talents? Thieves never get to steal anything aside from simple pick-pocketing, engies never get to tinker in a workshop, etc. The personal story only takes race into account and not our class. Whenever a class skill is needed, an NPC usually steps in to do the thing, (and to add insult to injury they’re usually better at it than you.)

For example, if you’re a mesmer in the order of whispers, when Tybalt needs to disguise himself as a certain human noble, they bring in some OTHER Mesmer to cast an illusion on him while they send you off to stab things with a sword like some kind of common warrior! If stealth is needed, so what if the pact commander is a thief, bring in the Pale Reavers! While we’re at it, let’s ask this necro to stand here and watch this priest of Grenth to do the job instead! And then for other missions or heart quests and such, you just get bundled weapons like flamethrowers and such so an engineer’s unique equipment is never needed, and so on.

I’m not actually complaining, I like a lot of the story missions and the fact that you sometimes get new bundle equipment and partners to play with to mix things up, but I think it would be really cool if we DID get some class specific missions. Either as a part of the next living story chapter where you got a variable chapter based on your class just like we do with race, or just some optional side-quests that are specific to your character’s class and require their skills. Like an NPC that explicitly says they need a _______ to assist in a task rather than just anyone.

Thieves could get some heist or assassination missions where they could break into places and sneak their way to their target. (Very much like the stealth mission where you play as Caithe, but you get to be yourself)

Necromancers could perform rituals to various ends and prepping for and casting the ritual could be a specific mission. On the other end, perhaps guardians could do exorcisms instead.
Wariors could train troops or lead soldiers on missions.
Engineers could be tasked to repair or pilot some of the pact’s ships and war machines, or mix alchemic potions in a lab.
Mesmers can do spy missions or even something like entertaining a party.
Rangers could go on a hunt for some sort of legendary beasts.
Revenants could act as spirit mediums and travel to the mists to seek out information.

I think you get the idea.

Honestly, these are already somewhat things we do in story missions, but they’re designed in such a way that any class can do any of them. Which is largely a good thing for main story missions, but something designed to require a specific class’s actual skills would be a new kind of challenge to play though, and give people something interesting to experience on multiple alts of different classes.

These missions could perhaps reward class specific equipment that you can use to show off your mastery or dedication to a certain class. Like engineers having a unique gun skin that they “built” themselves by gathering parts on a special engie mission, or thieves having a special jeweled dagger they stole from a vault somewhere, or elementailists having a special focus they summoned through their arcane power in a complex ritual.

I doubt something like this would actually happen since making separate missions for every class would be a lot of work, but I wanted to share the idea and see what others thought of it.

Mirmil.5074:

How can you guys stay so positive? Is it something in the elixirs?

Quite literally it is. HGH is one of the best engie traits after the build changes and elixir builds are really good so if you’re constantly chugging elixirs it lessens the pain caused by some of our current issues.

We still have some problems and even bugs with some traits, and some things like bombs and medkit are in serious need of some buffing, but there’s still enough viable stuff to work with.

I think a lot of people who are down on engies are mostly the min-maxing type with a “Anything that isn’t 100% optimized for maximum DPS is completely worthless” type of attitude. The fact that I still see so many “Zerk heavy/thief/ele only” PUGs in the group finder is pretty much a testament to that. I was kind of tempted to counter that and start making “Sinister Guard/Engie only new burning meta get your zerk kitten outta here” groups just because, but even as a joke I didn’t feel right playing the elitism game. (though it still sounds kind of fun to try such a group and watch things literally melt to 60 stacks of burning, even though burning got dialed back down a notch since then)

Anyway, Engie doesn’t have the best outright DPS against trash mobs, but have some of the best sustained DPS in longer fights, with much better survivability than an ele, so they’re often amazing to have in boss fights. Engies still fit well in just about any group composition, and even with the people that might look “down” upon the class, we don’t get it nearly as bad as rangers and necros do.

NineLives.8725:

Ah, I spoke as a 100% pvp engineer.
Btw, we now know how there is still some happy guys here : pve is ok !

Yeah. Pvp is problematic. We don’t quite have the burst OR the tankiness against most matchups. I used to be able to bunker 3v1 in cele gear, and I just can’t get anywhere near my old tankyness now. Thieves are actually a threat now which takes some getting used to.

I just can’t find a pvp build I really like now. I settled on HGH Juggernaut, but I still don’t like it as much as my old builds for PvP. My PvE builds were pretty much buffed down the line though since my main kits there are grenades and E-gun.

Anyone find any good tanky bunker builds they like?

I’m not sure if it’s because of the engie changes or just because bunkering in general was heavily nerfed, but I can’t put together anything that comes anywhere close to my old Cleric elixir bomb build in terms of tankyness. I was able to regularly handle 2v1s or even 3v1s with it.

So far, the best overall survivability I’ve gotten is out of Juggernaught, Bunker Down, HGH with a Barbarian Amulet and Melandru runes. It still melts to bursts but gives you sustain in between them and some decent tools for escaping those bursts. It works well in 1v1 vs most classes, but doesn’t hold up well at all if you’re getting focused by multiple attackers.

I feel like I might be able to make a more condi oriented tank attrition build if there were some more amulets available. There are only a few choices with condi damage so the inability to mix stats hurts a bit more now. A few of those 4 stat amulets with condition damage as one of the stats would help.

Arewn.2368:

There shouldn’t be a melee combat staff stance for the same reason GW2 shouldn’t feature its clearly magic oriented staves as melee combat weapons: because it’s ridiculous.

Sorry, could you repeat that? I couldn’t quite hear you over the sound of my Mesmer’s sword lasers.

Snark aside, I do see your point, but as long as some good melee staff skins are added in, that shouldn’t be too bad. We already have similar issues on some weapon/class combos, like engineer shields. The shield throwing animation is extraordinarily awkward with all but a handful of shield skins because there are way more bulky tower shields than small rounded shields and bucklers.

If someone wants to bash people with an awkward looking magic staff, that’s pretty much their choice, just like the engineers that somehow transmute their guild tower shields or dredge barricades into electrified throwing discuses. As long as there’s a solid selection of fitting skins, it’s a problem that can be worked around.

That said, a martial staff pose sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t think the current one would be too terrible on Revenant, since the staff is a Ventari-inspired support thing the mage pose is kinda passable, but if staff thief turns out to be true (Or melee staff warior) then a Bo-Staff pose will be sorely needed. In which case, it’d look better on the revenant as well.

If they actually allow Sylvari players to join Mordremoth, it’s likely possible they’d do the same for all the other races.

I mean, there’s other dragons and factions to join/be corrupted by. Other races could become branded or overcome by Jormag’s corrupted ice, or whatever it is that the next dragons to awaken will be able to do. Or maybe players could gain the ability to sign up with the Inquest, Sons of Svanir, Flame Legion, Atherblades, etc.

Or maybe once mordremoth gets powerful enough it’d be able to corrupt non-plants and warp the minds of any race. (It’s two dominions are Plant, AND Mind. Not mind of plants, minds in general) So any kind of Mordremoth corruption or “Evil player faction” mechanic is easily extendable to all races.

There’s also the fact that there was an obtainable “buff” that let other players attack you in PvE (While making certain enemies friendly) seems like a potential beta test of just this type of feature. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bandit_Boon

For what it’s worth, I’m actually generally against the idea of your race forcibly putting you on an enemy faction. It’s what I don’t like about so many MMOs like WoW, Aion, Wildstar, etc where just because you want your character to look a certain way, it determines who you can and cannot play with. But if “falling to Mordremoth” becomes a totally optional choice opted into by certain players it’s something that makes sense in the current game lore and may or may not have interesting implications. Not really in support of the idea, but I’m not dead-set against it either.

I don’t really get why you’re running Kinetic Battery with this. Are you just trying to max out condi clenses as much as possible?

Given that you only have about 12% crit rate with this (Maybe a bit more, you neglected to mention what your sigils are) You’d also have questionable benefit from Bunker Down.

If you’re going to be using flamethrower in what’s supposed to be a bunker build, why not swap tools for firearms, and take high caliber, no scope and juggernaut? You’ll have a higher uptime of might, stability and fury to squeeze some more use out of Iron Blooded, and you’ll have an effective 30-50% crit with the flamethrower AA for getting reliable procs of bunker down. Plus it’ll be harder to knock you off point.

Otherwise, if you’re going to insist on tools, I think you’d be better served taking Tool Kit over flamethrower.The three second block on a 16-20 second cooldown alone should be better for bunkering than an untraited flamethrower. You lose some burning, but if you have zero condi damage it’s not much of a loss. Granted, that’s less hits, so if you were depending on the 10 hit flamethower AA just for bunker down, you might need to run intelligence sigils to make that work.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

It looked like he was bare-handed, if that’s possible.

Some toolbelt skills have you stow or drop your weapon while in use. Basically the ones with their own animations.

Also, an alternate answer to your situation might be Rampage. Since you play warrior, I would think you’d recognize a rampage when you see one. But in case you didn’t know, engies also have access to the skill, so if he proc’d it on you you’d have a perma-stability barehanded engie on your hands.

I personally think it wouldn’t be that interesting on elixer S. It doesn’t need the buff, and the condi damage is somewhat the counterplay to it, If you’re low on health and have some stacked conditions you need to be careful about your timing on elixir S. (That said, S should have a cancel skill)

I would much rather see resistance on Elixer H or C. On C it would make elixir C still more relevant on an elixir build, since C is a little less appealing when all elixirs have cleanses, and H could probably use a little bit more of a boost. It’s supposed to be more of a selfish heal than the turret but it’s still not as good as a burst heal because of the water field, and it’s a longer cast time which is easier to interrupt, so giving a few seconds of resistance would give it that little needed push to make it a more worthwhile choice over the turret for more solo-oriented builds.

Calling it now: Underwater Revs get trident, but it will still be more physical than magical to match how they use staves. A melee auto, but with some mist abilities on 2-5.

Maybe both trident and spear, but I doubt they’ll get spear guns if they have neither pistols or rifles, or even bows for that matter.

An underwater legend would be cool, but I doubt that will happen. If it DID however, it would solve the potential problem of the skills of existing legends not working underwater. Unless all Revenant utilities are useable underwater (which I seriously doubt) they may end up being nearly useless underwater if half their utilities just plain don’t work underwater like most of the other classes.

Even if no new underwater content is being added, Revenants are still going to need viable underwater skills for the existing content and open world exploration.

If you’re gonna chuck in exotic weapons, use dungeon exotics. It’s profitable either way because it’s a way to turn Dungeon tokens (Or PvP reward tracks) into gold since you get sellable exotics out of it. And if you get a precursor in the process, all the better. If you enjoy dungeon running or PvP thats a good way to have a chance at a pre without actually spending gold on gambling.

(And for what it’s worth, I did happen to get Dawn from doing so. Pure dumb luck though)

Despite the name, elixir F isn’t actually an elixir. (It’s not tagged as one, and they should call it something else really)

As for the logic, I believe the old HGH tooltip actually stipulated “Thrown or Drunk Elixirs” (or maybe that was Acidic Elixirs?) And as a projectile, F has neither of those behaviors. But either way, that seems to be the logic here, the might comes with either drinking or getting soaked by an elixir. Elixir Mortar, Acid Bomb and Super Elixer are all thrown elixirs for all intents and purposes; it’s the healing mist toolbelt skill that’s throwing me off, but I guess it’s being considered a “thrown” elixir being sprayed.

The problem with Iron blooded, is that it competes with HGH.

HGH is a much better choice with any elixers in your skillset since it has the CD reduction built into it, but elixirs give you the most boons so the trait would be best with elixirs.

If you could take both HGH AND Iron-Blooded it’d be amazing, but you can’t.

Perhaps it’s meant to work with medkits and experimental turrets, but you’d still have a fairly lackluster boon upkeep without camping the medkit.

But it’s probably balanced for team play rather than soloing. If you have allies buffing you with shouts and such then you CAN have a consistent 5-ish boons on you for that steady damage decrease.

Slalom.3174:

@Arioso.8519, you said, "When you cast an elite skill” rune.
Which one are you looking at?

1. Rune of the Mad King - summon ravens
2. Rune Of Lyssa - converts conditions to boons
3. Rune of the Krait - aoe bleed, torment and poison
4. Rune of the Sunless - aoe fear and poison

Currently running Lyssa runes, but after playing with them a bit I feel like they’re very situational to have in PvE since few NPC types use more than 1-2 conditions. It’s nice to have as a back-up condi clear in builds with very little of it, but since I’m using an HGH Elixir gun it’s not needed as much as a crutch. It could be an option for certain PvP builds though, I think. It’s basically like giving yourself a free elixir C if you can’t give up a utility slot to use the actual elixir C.

I’d love to try Sunless in PvP to have access to fear on an engie, but it seems it’s not available to PvP builds. It might be interesting situationally in WvW since you could probably catch someone off guard, but it doesn’t seem worth it there over other rune choices. It might be worth it on the new maps, so we’ll see.

Mad King runes might work in a condi grenadier explosives/firearms build since you’d be applying a lot of bleeds. (It extends bleed duration as it’s passive bonus) The Ravens might actually complement the mortar since you can apply a bit of close range damage if you’re just using the mortar to drop a quick field in melee range.

Krait Runes would also probably complement a similar condi build. (again, because bleed extensions) I’m actually using a Sigil of Torment so, the extra applications of the same 3 main damaging conditions I’m already constantly applying is a little less exiting, but still handy for upping condition damage.

Honestly, the idea of using “On elite” runes with the new Mortar was pretty interesting, but the actual available options are a bit underwhelming.

For Runes, if you want survivability, Melandru or Hoelbrak runes will reduce incoming condition duration, which is very good for offsetting the inherent condition weakness of engineers. The former is more defensive (Gives toughness, and also reduces stuns) and the latter is more offensive (Extends might, which is really good with sigil of Strength or Battle)

Both are nice, but a bit pricey for a full set. But that’s my general recommendation if you can afford it. (Better options for purely offensive builds if that’s your thing, though)

Personally, I’m experimenting with the effects of “When you cast an elite skill” rune perks with the Mortar Kit, but it’s more of a gimmick than anything. They’re dirt cheap though.

As others have noted Fantasy does not necessarily equate to the medieval Europe inspired Tolkien-esqe setting.

And even if it DID, guess what? Medieval Europe had guns! Not very good ones, mind you, but I went to a museum once where there were suits of armor with damage from bullets and the person giving the tour mentioned that sometimes blacksmiths selling armor would show how good their armor was by firing a pistol at it.

Granted, yeah, that’s at the tail end of the time period when guns were first invented, but yeah. It took a while for guns to get good enough to render bows and swords completely obsolete, (Mainly once they stopped having a 2 minute per bullet reload time since you had to manually stuff gunpowder into the barell) so they did in fact co-exist for a while. Guns are a fair bit older than we really give them credit for. As soon as the tech for making cannons, fireworks, and black powder bombs comes along, handheld guns won’t be too far behind.

In fact, Gw2 guns are more or less balanced in line with medieval guns, because they’re actually pretty much the worst weapons in the game.

For EVERY class that can actually use a gun, it tends to be one of the worst weapon choices. (Including engineers, because Kits>Guns)

In terms of their actual functionality, of course they’re way better than their time-period appropriate counterparts, but so are the other weapons.

Gern.2978:

Arioso.8519:

Gern.2978:

If that is true, that is bad, but I never encountered getting extra grenades.

Faster grenades= More DPS (damage Per Second)

Faster grenades is NOT equal to more DPS.

The projectile velocity is increased, but not your actual attack speed.

You still get 2 throws in per second. You get the first hit in faster, yes, which is a DPS increase strictly speaking, but it should be a nearly unnoticeable DPS difference if you’re using it at closer ranges and are good at reliably hitting targets.

If you need the speed to hit things reliably, it would seem like a massive DPS increase though.

DPS stands for “damage per second.” Faster grenades = more DPS

Also, maybe I do need the trait to more reliably hit targets, why is that bad? Obviously that has always been an issue, since the made this trait in the first place.

Did I say it was bad?

Grenades being harder to land at longer distances was always their weakpoint.

What I’m saying is, If grenadier was working properly, it would not be a DPS increase at short ranges, because it does not actually increase the number of grenades you can throw per second. At point blank it wouldn’t matter, so if you’re using grenades at short ranges, grenadier isn’t strictly necessary anymore.

Grenadier could mean more DPS at the max ranges, but it’s not strictly a pure DPS increase anymore like the whole 3rd grenade was.

Gern.2978:

If that is true, that is bad, but I never encountered getting extra grenades.

Faster grenades= More DPS (damage Per Second)

Faster grenades is NOT equal to more DPS.

The projectile velocity is increased, but not your actual attack speed.

You still get 2 throws in per second. You get the first hit in faster, yes, which is a DPS increase strictly speaking, but it should be a nearly unnoticeable DPS difference if you’re using it at closer ranges and are good at reliably hitting targets.

If you need the speed to hit things reliably, it would seem like a massive DPS increase though.

Of course, that assumes it’s working properly. As explained, Grenadier was a potential damage multiplier so of course it was a DPS boost. It just wasn’t supposed to be.

Other than the fact that I deal plenty of damage using grenades without grenadier; if I were to agree with you, this indicates a much bigger problem.

If a trait to buff grenades is the one thing keeping engies viable, that means we only have one worthwhile skill. Which means, rather than complain about the nerf to grenadier, perhaps we should be asking for buffs to the alternatives. If grenades are the backbone of every good build, that’s a serious design flaw, and the other kits should be brought up to par. (I’m looking at you, bomb kit. Get some buffs already!)

The New grenadier wasn’t supposed to be a DPS increase at all, just something to make it easier to land them. They made the 50% increase that comes with the extra grenade baseline, so you don’t even need the trait for grenade DPS. That’s why it was downgraded from Grandmaster to Adept.

Anyway, since you asked, the bug was causing grenades to MULTIPLY when piercing a target. Effectively, doubling the amount of hits you got with a throw at the proper angle. 14 explosions out of grenade barrage. Normal throws got extra hits too though.

As was mentioned, currently only half of orr is accessible. Maybe later on when a new expansion or living story opens up the backside of orr there may be less evidence of corruption.

Or MORE since you might see Palwa Joko’s minions crop up as Zhaitan’s start to thin out the closer you get to Elona.

If you want to just give them money, that’s called “Buying Gems.”

If you want to give money to them without a product purchase, that’s called “Being an investor.” buy stocks or whatever.

They can’t just take your money, otherwise. that’s a legal issue for a company. And if they could, it would do nothing to “expedite” the dev process. The game will be “ready when it’s ready” as they like to say.

Redenaz.8631:

I don’t know if they’d even accept it, because of all the potential complications, but maybe you could ask to sponsor their internship program or something?

You’ll need to convince whoever you talk to that you’re serious, and not just a fan with an idea of doing a Kickstarter/fundraiser to donate money to a business. (Which is what Anet is.)

Huh, sponsoring an internship program is actually an interesting thought. That is, if the OP is in fact rich enough to throw around enough money to do that.

It’d actually help people advance their careers (the interns), and said interns might be able to contribute something to the game, so it could potentially be a somewhat ‘worthy’ cause that still gets the OP’s personal goals met. A few thousand bucks is enough for a paid intern or two for a summer, so the dev team gets and extra pair of hands and anet gets a free employee.

I don’t know what sort of internship program they already have in place though. But if that’s something you’d seriously be interested in trying to work out, yeah, you’d need to talk to them directly. Though that said, some of the staff on the forms, like Gaile Gray, might be able to put you in touch with someone who can do that. Try PMing her.

Byakhee.8652:

Oh it seems to.
Conditions heavy characters seem to have less loot capability than Zerker heavy characters.

That’s because you’re tagging less mobs.

If they die before you get enough damage in, you get less drops.

Zerk is better for taging, and AOE cleave are better for tagging as well.

Classes that have lots of AOE cleave tend to do better in zerk as well.

So if you have neither of those things, like say a condi staff mesmer, you get few tags and little loot.

Sliverwastes. Do a round of the events (Including VW) to get you MF buffs and such up, and then start a chest train.

That’s probably the most efficient thing without doing dungeon speed runs.

Silverkey.2078:

I would have guessed they didn’t allow crit to reduce server pressure.

If that is the case, then that is STILL a dead reason.

They figured out how to allow 1500 condi stacks, so the same fix probably allows them to run all the crit calculations too.

Now that we’re out of reasons to handicap players against bosses, we shouldn’t. If the only problem is that they die too fast, we’ll just have to start buffing the bosses instead to make them truely world boss worthy, rather than put shackles back on our builds.

This is the right direction to be going in.

Woah, really?

/Runs off to read patch notes

YESSSS! And they laughed at me for running rampager gear!

WHO’S LAUGHING NOW!? MUAHAHAHAAAAA!

Er… I mean…
Even if it’s not an instant fix for the speed at which things die, this is the way it should be. Every type of build is now a valid choice. The only reason to keep these bosses un-crit-able was to keep Zerk from being the only thing that was worth using against them. Now that group conditions are viable, we don’t need to handicap Zerker gear either.

Everyone gets to deal thier build’s full damage potential now. That’s great.

Once the dust settles on this change, then we can look at further tweaks to improve the bosses’ survival, but they’re not gonna fix it ALL at once. one change at a time, and this is a good one.

I actually see your point, It is very dangerous PR for Gw2 to dip into social topics.

But this is actually kinda appropriate to Gw2.

There are several prominent gay couples in the game’s story and an ENTIRE race that seems to be bisexual by default. Though Sylvari have no sexual organs, so the “sexual” part of that is kind of a misnomer. Their genders are purely aesthetic.

Also that Transwoman NPC. And to top it off, Tybalt was quite the crossdresser. God tier drag queen right there.

But if anyone’s worried about a “Gay Agenda” Gw2 has been on the gay agenda train for quite a while now.

Oh, I can drag this out even further. No trinity, every class has heal skills.

Universal health care, yo.
Engies even hand out free Medical Insurance!
(It’s a trait)

JustTrogdor.7892:

The tip jar is an interesting idea and one I have seen posted before. But to once again be a downer, Anet might then have to reconsider their policy that allows people to use macros to play musical insturments. This might give those people a perceived advantage while “competing” for tips as they simply stand there and push one key to play music all day. Of course people can already tip players via mail if they so choose, but I thought I would bring the issue up anyway.

Yeah, that’s a solid point.

Personally, I don’t even feel macros are cheating because it’s awkward to play instruments in a skillbar to begin with. And this is coming from an actual musician; if gw2 instruments worked with my midi keyboard I’d be able to crank out some serious tunage. Even if you’re very good at working the system for in game instruments you’re limited to simple playing.

And lag makes it near impossible to try to do an in-game ensemble.

I actually wouldn’t mind a playstyle where instead of playing “live” you can cue notes ahead of time and they’re forced to play with their set timing/tempo. (You’d have to add keys for rests, somehow though)
I wouldn’t mind a “Conductor’s baton” type instrument that instead allowed you to set a timing for other players to sync with you which would let players play in a group even with online lag issues.

Is it completely pointless to Gw2 as a whole? oh yeah. But it might be an interesting guild activity or something. I’d totally start a band/orchestra guild just for fun.

Why not let players be literal street performers?

I could work exactly the way it does in real life:

you have a tip jar item you can plop down in cities, and play an instrument next to, and players can interact with it which gives them the option to drop some coins in.

Or you can tell jokes in /say or whatever else you can think of to entertain people.

Gw2 is kinda lacking in systems to give players random fun non-combat ways to interact with each other. The introduction of the Chapel seems to indicate that they would actually like to start working on changing this.

It’s voluntary, so only people that are actually playing or being entertaining will get tips from other players (spamming noise would get you nothing)

If there ARE NPC tippers, maybe it could be an activity along the lines of the wintersday bells where it gives you a song you actually have to play correctly?

I would love to have some more interactive events and activities IN the cities outside of holidays.

SindeeCyanide.9687:

How about a section (or sections) of LA where there’s an NPC band playing on the gem store instruments? That way we don’t get people spamming one note on that bell and the music can be tuned out for those who don’t care to hear it.

That is a really good idea, and if I were Anet’s marketing team, I’d set the designers right on that. If absolutely nothing else, that is a good way to let players know what the cash shop instruments sound like, and if people like what they hear it will encourage them to buy their own to play. Maybe once a day you can give THEM a tip and maybe get a small karma return or achievement or something. (Like wintersday donations)

ellesee.8297:

Med Kit should just self buff!

Woah, that’s a really good idea, and honestly, that sounds like that would be fantastic even with thrown packs.
It’d be kind of like Ele conjured weapons in a way. One for you, and one for a friend.

The healing can stay in the pack. So for example, when you throw a stimulant, you get the fury, and whoever picks it up gets a heal and fury. The instant boons alone would help offset the clunkiness a tad.

If packs are staying thrown, they definitely need to last longer. 12 seconds is a joke. they need to stick around so that they can actually be saved for when they’re needed, if they’re not going to be like elixirs.

Channeling #1 could give give you a clense or a second of resistance (with no self healing) so you could still use it to boost self-survival.

The #1 skill needs to scale extraordinarily high with healing power. An engineer that is fully invested in healing power as their sole primary stat using a medkit and focusing on a single ally should be able to heal up their target so well that the do not need to touch their own healing skill.

A full cleric engie with a medkit basically needs to be able to dish out enough healing to fake being a trinity mmo type healer, since they’re doing zero damage in a medkit, so they should be able to HPS nearly on par with the DPS they’re giving up. (especially if very little of that healing is useable on yourself)

If that sounds OP to the designers, then that means the potential support role the medkit presents does not need to exist in Gw2, making the whole kit just a failed experiment.

Alternate idea:
Put ALL the skills as sprays. Or each skill can be an alternate med cartridge that changes what #1 does.

Buff self, buff&heal allies. It’d be like a variety pack of fumigate variations.

4. I’m leaning on a Firearms/Alchemy/Inventions specialization set up. Rampager, Sinister or Cele stats. Pistol/Shield, Heal Turret, Grenades, E-gun, situational elixir (actually liking U a lot now without the drawbacks, R is still really nice for certain bosses or helping newbie pug members) and Mortar for PvE and Crate in PvP. Staple traits are Bunker Down, HGH, Mecha Legs and Heavy Armor Exploit.

Still running my on-crit might and torment sigils, testing Lyssa runes for now. I’m finding this general build to be very good on support and healing while still dishing out solid damage numbers. Way less vuln than I’d have with explosives, but Heavy Armor Exploit still lets me hand some of it out on grenades so as long as I’m not the sole source of it the party still keeps decent stacks of vuln up. Crits and on-crit procs for days.

5. I want to like the medkit. I want to LOVE the medkit. I always have. Medic/healer classes tend to be my favorite ones in most games, even. But the water bom- er… heal turret is still just BETTER at both group AND self healing.

I get three clenses off the heal turret and extra regen with my traits, and the bonus healing power right off the bat before a boosted overcharge. And the water fields and blast finisher. Plus the heal turret is just harder to interrupt. (Really hard to use bandage or Elixer H in a pinch in PvP) I actually don’t mind throwing the bandages (Used to grenades, and I use a gaming mouse) but even with the cleanses the healing is just weak in practice.

The reward just doesn’t feel worth the time it takes to bother. Even having resistance feels lame with how little it lasts for the skill’s cooldown. Medkit just lacks the utility of the heal turret, despite the fact it’s a KIT. Needs better boons, or even a field or finisher, maybe even an offensive capability like the heal spray dazing or poisoning enemies in range, or just more sheer healing power, but it’s just not enough. If it’s going to be a team support kind of thing, it should be healing and supporting enough that my party actually notices the difference. Solo it takes too much time to use, and in groups other classes are better at giving those same boons just by using shouts.

7. I haven’t even tried the trait yet. The tools line in general isn’t really my style. That said, a trait that requires you to build up charges by eating hits is just bad design.

Most of the other on-struck traits or runes are damage mitigation or countermeasures (like the smokebomb or blinding birds) so it’s more of an anti-burst defense. The way it is, it useless to non-tanky builds and doesn’t encourage good habits. (I need to stand in this attack so I can use my overcharged gadget)

It needs another charging method. Like if you go a certain amount of time without using a gadget you save up the excess energy and it’s overcharged. Somewhere between 5-10 seconds, I think. Or it charges from walking a certain distance (Leg generators).

8. Bonus answer to the question you haven’t asked:
RIFLED BARRELS NOW.
I’m cool with reducing grenade range, but did every single gun (and turret) have to go down with them? Come on.

My wall of text responses are so long they cannot be contained in a single post.

Here’s part one:

1. Grenades are just fine at 900. I’ve actually been using grenades in a build WITHOUT grenadier since they’re actually viable without it now, (More on that on the build question) so they’re still good without the godmode grenade glitch. When I AM running explosives I do much prefer the speed over the range, now that the third grenade isn’t a factor.

Mortar however, is a bit lacking as a long range artillery weapon, though it’s great for field support. I’ve suggested before the idea of possibly making it scale to do more damage at a distance like Long Range shot or the Mesmer Greatsword AA. (forgot the name of it) Honestly, one of the bigger issues for me isn’t the lack of damage against players, (Yeah, the DPS isn’t as good as ranger, but that’s single target and this is AOE) but against objects.

Old grenadier was handy for taking out traps and things like the artillery in the Ascalon fractal, and the mortar lacks a bit in that task. If the AA DPS can’t be un-nerfed, bonus object damage would make up for it, for me at least.

2. Still playing with the mortar and supply crate. Crate is like having a whole second heal skill now, but Mortar has some handy support options and has some healing of it’s own and the #5 working with HGH makes it a bit more worth it when you give up the extra cleanses from the now overcharge-able supply crate turrets.

Elixir X is easily the worst elite.
Truthfully, I actually used to run it in PvP while everyone else was still sticking with crates. It had a much lower cooldown than crates, and was really useful for reversing bad match-ups. Getting rampage was awesome for turning the tables on Mesmers and Necros, and tornado was generally handy for decaping in general. Getting the wrong transformation in a bad situation wasn’t that big a deal because it’s cancel-able with a low-ish cooldown.

It no longer has much of a cooldown advantage because of the no-cooldown mortar and the lower cooldown crate/bandage split. The main problem with Elixer X is you have no healing or cleansing while transformed, and with stacking burning, poison, passive damage confusion, etc, not having cleanses is a death sentence. Transforming into a form with no heals or cleanses is a suicide button now. Moa would be useful for resetting other’s transformations, but then, as mentioned, it’s suicide to use them so you’re better off bursting condis while they don’t have a clense themselves.

3. I’ve always had Elixir gun in both my Pve and PvP builds. That hasn’t changed. It’s my go-to PvE stunbreak and skills 3-5 are very useful in both modes.

I was never that big on the flamethower to begin with, to be honest.
I was looking forward to trying it out again with the stability from juggernaut, but it really isn’t that good in practice in PvP. I still get knocked around really easily and having to camp the flamethower (since the stability has a delay) really messes up my ability to rotate other kits or gun skills. I tried a one kit-flamethrower HGH build and I still wasn’t feeling it. Might be a personal taste thing though.

I used to run Elixir-Infused bombs in PvP, and without it I don’t really have a reason to use bombs in PvP anymore. Bunker down is the replacement, and it works better with grenades. If you have BOTH the mortar and grenades, you don’t really need bombs. Short fuse is meh. (Bigger bomb range would be better) Bomb kit needs a unique advantage over the other explosives besides just a smoke field. (and I still use it for stealthing at least, but I swap it back out as soon as I start running)

The Marriage Equality thing is almost a self derail.

I mean, that might be your reason for wanting it, but as a general request it might be an interesting dye.

Why stop at rainbows? Multicolor, gradated, color-changing, iridescent, and patterned dyes might be really cool.

Take the idea of enameled dyes a bit further.

Perhaps turrets would be more interesting if they were astoundingly tanky instead of glassy like now, but only had limited ammo. So you’d have to manually babysit them to restock their ammunition. Stocking ammo could have a one second channel time. (and thus be interuptable) Too much trouble to think of numbers for all turrets, but for example, I’m thinking around 8-10 rockets in the rocket turret might be a good number. You’d have to return to the turret every 16-20 seconds to keep it stocked.

It’d help against the PvP complaint about AI builds, because managing a full set of turrets is dependent on the engineer being able to micromanage their ammo supply, (A full turreteer would have to rotate on a loop) and introduces counter play by locking the engineer with immobilization, slow, chill, fear, and knockback to keep them away from restocking the turrets.

It then makes placing the turrets in hard to reach locations more of a trade off. Either place it where you can stock it more easily (and your opponents can also kill it off more easily) or out of the way, but then you have to break away from the fight or leave capture points to do so.

It’d make the turrets both more balanced for PvP (for the listed reasons) and also for PvE (so they won’t just get one-shot by pretty much everything like they are now)

Well grenadier is fine where it is, and the fall damage trait has to go SOMEWHERE (Even though I think they should all be baseline anyway. I suppose the only reason it’s a trait you need to trade-off for is WvW to give you more shortcuts you can take, but even then unless you’re already in combat you just switch it on and off when you actually need to jump)

So the problem here is that Glass Cannon is a really, really boring and underwhelming trait. They just slapped it in there for the min-maxers who want a second Scholar’s rune, basically. If they replaced it, I would not miss it.

If the devs really want to keep glass cannon, honestly, they can probably roll grenadier into the fall damage trait without it being overpowered. Some of the other fall damage traits have side effects now too. So, you throw grenades faster AND drop grenades when you fall.

That’d make room for a third trait more friendly to other weapons sets.

So I’ve been running bunker down in PvP.

And I 1v1ed a fellow bunker down engie…

And it was bandage chaos.

Telling the difference between my team’s bandages and the other team’s bandages was always kind of annoying but I could deal with it since sources of bandages were rare enough that is was really only an issue if two engies dropped their supply crates on the same point. Now there’s more supply drops so this happens more often.

This is also going to be a massive issue once Revenants start throwing healing orbs everywhere. Banners and conjured weapons could also use more differentiation.

I suggest we simply have a bright red/orange ring showing under enemy support drops like bandages, weapons, banners and heal orbs so we can more easily tell them apart from our own. And brighten up the blue ones under our own for higher visibility. (Maybe even turrets too, while we’re at it? They don’t get red names like Pets and Minions do, so I have to target them to check for hostiles)

But you CAN play as a kodan, technically, if you go to Edge of The Mists.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the new wings look like floppy cloth because they ARE floppy cloth? I mean, what if they really are just cosplay decorations? Literally in game lore, I mean. They are backpieces after all.

Maybe the crazy fashion designer at the Black Lion trading co. foresaw fake wings as a hot new fashion trend and started sewing some up?

Elixer U becomes Haste or Frenzy randomly when you drink it.
when thrown it makes wall of reflection or smokescreen randomly.

Elixer X is Rampager or Tordando form on random, plauge or whirlpool underwater.
When thrown it makes an AOE moa transformation for 3 seconds, So that one is actually diferent than the mesmer skill, but does borrow from it.

Also, in general, engineers have access to almost every field and condition in the game. And some of the exceptions like Fear or Torment can be added through sigils and runes. So we can pull off some tricks that are normally associated with other classes, like group stealth and even chaos armor now that we’ve got an ethereal field.

Here’s an idea, what if we gave the mortar the same treatment Mesmers and Rangers get: Damage increase at max range?

So the point blank mortar would do around 60% it’s current damage at point blank (So it’d ONLY be useful for fields at that range, but it’s still handy to blast those within range of yourself) and around its previous damage if you max the range out? (Which would further be balanced by the fact that it’s easy to avoid at that range)

Bam, Engineers have an effective longrange tool, it’s enforced as a long range tool and doesn’t step on bombs or grenades as the shorter range options.

Abnaxis.4593:

How about this, for a bleed-alternate: Get rid of bleed entirely. Add a new condition called Curse.

The way curse works, is it does massive damage, more than burning even. However, every time the curse victim lands an attack, they are healed for every stack of curse on them. It’s like the opposite of confusion, except you have to actually connect with a skill use, not just use skills.

It doesn’t make sense to replace all bleeds with curse, but ANet should be able to distribute all the other damaging condis in where bleed is to make them make sense.

Obviously, necro would be very curse-heavy, but it wouldn’t be exclusive to them. If Plague self-inflicted curse, it would be really interesting—it’s a suicide button, unless you are actively enveloping your opponents.

Removing bleeds from the game is a really bad idea. Plus bleeds thematically make sense for conditions on classes like warriors, so removing it messes with those classes. you gonna make swords cause burning? No thanks.

But your idea for a curse curse condition sounds potentially very interesting.

It’d be really tough to balance though, because if the heal is just per connected hit like a backwards retaliation, then attacks like rapid fire or the engie flamethower would basically give some classes a free heal.

An alternate idea for something that’s thematically a curse might be a delayed burst condi. Once curse expires, it deals all it’s stacks worth of damage at once. Cleansing it could either let you get off free, or maybe it can still pull off around 1/4 its full damage when cleansed off. So if you’re cursed at low health, you might need to heal a little bit first before pulling the curse off.

A curse might last around 5 seconds, so that gives the victim about 5 seconds to get rid of it or suffer the full damage.

It’d be a pretty interesting tool for necros that fits the theme of the class. And it could possibly be limited to them like alacrity is to chronomancers. The only other class I could see throwing curses are Revenants, or maybe a new elite specialization on thief or mesmer.

I’m… okay with this.

Let’s face it, as we’re now learning, stacking burning doing significantly more damage than bleed is kinda broken.

It used to do more damage because it was duration rather than intensity stacking.

Burning is now literally just a better bleed.

To balance burning, we’re either going to have to limit the stacks again somehow, which defeats the point of the change, unless we can make burning stacking duration PER PLAYER to multiple players can intensity stack burns but a single player can only maintain a single stack (on the old damage numbers) and extend it; or normalize it’s damage with other conditions.

If the latter is done, a new feature of burning should be added to give it more of a reason to exist alongside bleeds, like all the other conditions with side-effects. Damage spreading is a potential good one (and a way to discourage PvE stacking) but it does fight the design of Guild Wars 2 as a game, in that you could potentially have troll players or just really bad ones sticking to other players and putting burn damage AOEs on them. The game seems designed to mostly prevent things like that from happening.

A common suggestion I like is making it an inverse torment where it does more per tick against stationary targets.

Yamsandjams.3267:

That’s at the core of my issue though. Why does the buff to elixir builds involve slotting less elixirs and taking a kit? If I’m supposed to run kits, why can’t it be build into the profession inherently? Why should I even be allowed to select no kits on my utility bar if it’s not the proper way to play the game?

Overall, I think a compromise on our positions here, would be to give the elixir gun less “Elixirs” so that it’s not blatantly better than a normal elixir in HGH, (Either taking it away from healing mist, or only giving it to Super Elixir, which is then in line with what the mortar kit does)

I too would like a no kit engie to be a worthwhile thing, but without a normal weapon swap, being an engineer with NO kits is literally handicapping yourself with less to work with than any other class, and you seal yourself off from tools like weapon swap sigils. So you should get a heavy benefit to doing so that makes up for the lack of weapons. (Maybe traits that buff us WITHOUT kits, like backpack regenerator should be flipped to only work with a kit OFF, for example)

Overall, the solution to making elixirs and gadgets more attractive than kits should be to buff them, rather than nerfing the kits.

The thing is, I would also like to see ONE kit engie builds, so that the most viable option isn’t to take 3+ kits and always have a huge chain rotation, and the Elixir gun is kind of weak as an offensive weapon, so HGH synergy is what makes it viable as a sole kit choice. I don’t want to see that yanked away already.

I disagree wholeheartedly.

Each traitline should have a synergistic kit.
Explosives has THREE,
Firearms has flamethrower
Inventions should be medkit, but that’s kinda wonky to be honest
Alchemy has elixer gun
and tools has the tool kit.

The fact that Elixir gun was not synergistic with the alchemy line in the old system was just stupid.

Especially given that the 4 and 5 skills have been defined as Elixirs this whole time without benefiting from any such traits, and they are basically equivalent to toolbelt thrown elixers. (despite the name, Elixer F does not, so I think it should stay unsynergized with the traits)

If you think that the Elixer gun is making Elixer H less relevent, I think that’s more a problem with Elixer H than the E-gun. (I vote we give it resistance)

That said, Healing Mist toolbelt procing HGH is a bit too much (Plus it’s not an “elixer”)
Acid Bomb and Super Elixir should stay synergistic, and getting two elixers for the price of one with the elixer gun then lets it work in an HGH build while being no better or worse than any other elixer for benefiting from HGH traits.

And Double Dipping on Kit and Elixer traits isn’t a problem at all. Kits aren’t even really a skill type so much as a mechanic. And Engineer isn’t the only class to get that sort of thing. You can Triple dip mesmer trait benifits using “Affects Illusions” “Affects Phantasms” and the trait for the weapon producing the phantasm. (Double cooldown reduction on a weapon’s phantasm skill, with buffs to that phantasm)

Elixir Gun benefiting from HGH, is just a benefit to engineers who want to run an elixer build and still be able to have ONE kit so they can weapon swap and have more options, yet still want to use the thematically relvant kit. Otherwise you’ll just have more HGH builds leaning towards Grenades or Mortar or something else.

You’re a bit late to this party my friend.

Anet has made it very clear they expect at least $50 from everyone playing HoT at launch. The slot is the most concessions they’re offering.

Only other choice is to wait. Either until HoT goes on sale (and it WILL go on sale sooner or later, especially if it’s not meeting their sales goals) or if you’re REALLY patient, buy expansion #2 which will include HoT for free.

Here’s the trick with grenades. They have ALWAYS been reflect-able and destroy-able by “destroys projectiles” moves.

But that only applies to the actual grenades themselves, not their explosions. If someone’s using a projectile block, and you can land your grenades near them rather than right on them, then they’ll get hit by the AOE of the grenades. That’s probably what you did to land them before.

If you aim really carefully, you can ignore several “blocks projectiles” moves and still deal damage. Reflects on the other hand, are pretty risky since grenades land erratically, and you can bounce some of them back in your face. (Reflected grenades will damage you, despite the fact that you can drop them on your own feet harmlessly)

For what it’s worth, mortar is the same way. The shell itself is a blockable projectile, but the AOE explosion it makes on impact isn’t. That’s also why the projectile finisher is currently a bit wonky, most likely.

I think I found one that hasn’t been mentioned, (I haven’t seen it in any of these lists cropping up that I’ve noticed)

Detonate Mine field, (The second command on the mine’s toolbelt after you’ve already dropped a minfield) has an incorrect tooltip.

It displays a single large hit of power damage to a single target. Around 6k damage with my stats. The actual numbers act as they should though. All the mines blow up for about 600 damage each with 5 separate explosions on multiple targets.

It’s probably too late for this if you’re already looking to just launch with two guild halls,

But I would REALLY like to see a third one: A very small hideout style guild hall that would be undesirable to a guild that has more than say… 15-20 people.

The giant map guild halls are AWESOME, but a smaller place to chill would have a nice cozy feeling for tiny guilds. I’m almost picturing something along the lines of Batman’s batcave.

Yakslapper, anyone?

Though to be fair, it’s a gambling thing, so if you have the means to do many rolls on the top tier bundle, it should even out enough that the actual cost shouldn’t be nearly that much. You’re either be on the decline or even come out ahead if you’re really lucky.

25,000 ecto and 10,000 gold is an absolute worst case scenario akin to dumping 400 rares in the forge and not getting a single exotic out of all 100 rolls.

On average you should get enough back that the cost isn’t nearly that high, but you would still average a loss. (House always wins in the end, after all)

Curious, what class are you playing when you have engie trouble?

If it’s thief, that’s just more or less the natural order of things. The common engie builds tend to hard-counter the common thief builds.

I’ll give you that Gear Sheild is a tad on the overpowered side, it was before and still is. It still would still be good on around a 25 sec cooldown.

And engineer has insane burn burst now, but it’s not so much than Engie needs that nerf as burning might need it. Other classes are seeing similar insane condi spikes right now.

Most of your other potential issues are open to counterplay though. Elixer S is an escape tool used to run away or stall for time, so they can’t be hit, but they can’t use ANY skills aside from a stomp in it, so if someone pops it instead of keeping attacking you want to make use of the time yourself to heal/buff yourself. As soon as it wears off you can hit with a gap closer or disable and resume pressure.

And “Absurd rotations” IS the engineer’s strength, being able to take 3+ weapon sets and chain their skills into well synergised combos, so that’s not going away as long as kits are a thing.

Actually, what I’d like to know, is do those unstable ectos drop anything OTHER than junk and ecto?

They’re a lot like the New Years Lucky Envelopes, so I was wondering if they had a chance at dropping special items aside from the ectos. Someone linked a mystic forge conduit in /say near the vendor when I was checking it out, but they dissapeared before I could confirm if they actually got it from the ecto or if they just had an old one and were messing around.

If it’s purely an ecto/gold slot machine, I couldn’t care less, but if there’s a few special drops sprinkled in, I might be tempted to gamble for those.

So, get anything interesting on those 59 rolls?