Guild Wars 2

There are other ways to balance skills. Quickness skills, for example, have detriments in addition to lengthy cooldowns.

Archaon.6245:

shaolin.9716:

The problem with thieves and mesmers is their damage is way too high for professions which are built on escape mechanisms. These professions have the greatest strength in game while not having the greatest weaknesses. It’s actually pretty ridiculous logic. When you play these professions, if you wanna know if your skilled, you cannot judge your skill by your ability to kill anything other than another thief or mesmer. And when you play something else, never take it as you lacking skill when these profession kill you, it doesn’t reflect poorly on you, but on the balance of this game.

Well for a medium and light armored class you also want to give them no dmg? Then what? Make thieves perma-chilled and mesmer perma-dazed? wtf….

Engineers say hi.

(Hyperbolic: yes. Sadly close to the truth: also yes. Yea, there are one or two niche builds that can do decent burst or sustained, but they’re not fun to play at all)

Dhunis.9072:

People forget that asuras are ugly as hell…. thats why they need some kind of advantage.

Lies and slander!

OT: IF there were some sort of player-only cycle-targeting (a la target next player in WoW…and every other MMO in recent memory), then it wouldnt be an issue. However, an Asuran Necromancer, for example, can be completely obscured by their minions and be unclickable. They’re not just unclickable because you can’t see them, but also because you literally cannot click on them through the minions. Thankfully, minion masters are only an annoyance (for now…). The point stands, though.

Varani.9207:

Loco.4561:

Well I am tired of GETTING HIT FROM THIEVES THAT I CANNOT SEE, I think it kind of balances things out As long as you thieves can still hit me when I cannot see you, anything that ruins your day will make me smile. This post will probably get blocked/deleted +1 it while you can!!

^ This

^ This

Calae.1738:

Atlanis.6597:

Further, yea, you should lose a 1v2 against equally skilled opponents. That’s the same in any decently balanced game.

I disagree.

A highly skilled player should be able to mop the floor with 3 or 4 bad players or 2 equally skilled players.

Unfortunately this is not possible due to auto aim and the downed state.

Yes, a highly skilled player should be able to. A highly skilled player is able to. I’ve seen mesmers and warriors do just that. If a highly skilled player is against two other players who are of roughly the same skill level as him, he should lose. If he doesnt, then he’s above their skill level by quite a bit (or build wars).

Calae.1738:

ensoriki.5789

To be frank no one is supposed to beat two people in reality. 2v1 is inherently a disadvantage, winning it is primarily about the other two making significant mistakes, build wars or being vastly inferior.

Explain that to Bruce Lee if he was alive. This guy would mop the floor with 12 people each holding knives.

Those 12 people with knives were obviously vastly inferior to Bruce Lee. I mean, hell, he’s kittening Bruce Lee!

I think people are missing the fact that if you are in a downed state, you haven’t lost yet. Getting downed doesn’t mean you lost, it means that you’ve been put in a bad position by the enemy team. You’ve not lost til your dead.

@Nightside: Rangers have stability AND quickness, of which quickness is on a relatively short cooldown. There is no reason you should be unable to stomp a downed player in a 1v2.

Further, yea, you should lose a 1v2 against equally skilled opponents. That’s the same in any decently balanced game.

As for the balance of the downed state: some of them need love (Engineers cough) but by and large they are fairly equal. It is (usually) easy to identify the real mesmer to stomp and (usually) easy to force a thief to tele and then to hop back on him and quickstomp.

Get the flamethrower and you’ll never ever feel any class can compete with your level of awesome again

The biggest thing IMO is just to fix Engi scaling. The recent kit fix was nice, but what about giving us some real power scaling on our autos? They could blow the base to hell and I wouldn’t care if they’d give us, for example, the ranger’s longbow scaling on our rifle.

Volstag.6371:

I like gernades…underwater. My flamethrower dosn’t work down there.

This ^

I can’t stand nades on land because i have to manually press 1 for every. single. auto.

How do I keep enjoying my Engi?

I pull out my motherkittening flamethrower! That’s how!

(seriously, though, that is one of the most fun weapons in the game)

Sand Beagle.9867:

Atlanis.6597:

Sand Beagle.9867:

Macroing or scripting (semantic difference) will never be bannable, because there is nothing wrong with doing it. If any proficient scripter wanted they could just make a random number generator, and every sleep function could call to that generator and pick a number between x and y, which would make it virtually indistinguishable from human input.

Example i made in 10 seconds: (AutoIT)

hotkeyset(“{F1}”,“attack”)
func attack()
$pause1 = random(20,30,0) ;min 20|max30 (floating point)
$pause2 = random(245,255,0) ;min 245|max 255
send(“a”)
sleep($pause1) ;wait x milliseconds
send(“b”)
sleep($pause2)
send(“c”)
EndFunc

It could obviously be easily expanded.

Edit: What they need are internal/global cooldowns that prevent hitting certain skills together within a fraction of a second. Maybe add diminishing returns, or something like the re-stealth cooldown.

Macroing and scripting are actually both currently bannable in almost every online game in existence. Only a few MMOs allow scripting, and even then only in their built-in restricted environments. You’re absolutely wrong on all of your points.

As for GW2 specifically, using macros and scripts are both bannable, no matter what you use them for. This precedent was established way back in the days of MUDs and will not change anytime soon. People playing GW2 should be rewarded for their skill in playing GW2, not their skill in scripting or macroing.

Also, this game isn’t built for GCDs. That’s why most skills have cast times. If thieves are able to activate their abilities too quickly through the use of macros, ban the people using macros and increase the cast time on the abilities to make macroing no advantage over normal ability usage. (This has the problem that instant-cast abilities such as signets are instant-cast so that they can be reliably combo’d without breaking the cast of other abilities. It’d require discretion on ANet’s part to pick and choose how to deal with the situation, something that they’ve shown the capability of doing over the past decade.O

GW2 has no clear stance on macroing. They dont properly define it, and they cant detect it. They dont differentiate macroing from scripting (as most try and fail to do), and they cant tell what macros are from your hardware’s software (keyboard/mouse), and by macroing software. If they allow one, they allow the other. If they allow neither but cant actually detect it, its as good as legal.

Your second paragraph is all over the place and is allofmywat. This precedent? What? Established back in the days of MUDs, and thats why it is bannable in GW2? What? Plenty of games allow macroing, if not only because they cant do anything about it.

Your solution to increase delays only hampers everyone, as anyone can quickly hit keys. The simple fact is there is no way to prevent macroing and there is no reason to, as long as the game is properly designed. You cant ban the people using macros because you cant tell who is using them. You seem to just be making random claims and random arguments to try to prove a random point.

They cant even have a punkbuster type anticheat that scans for macro programs because they would end up kicking/banning anyone with razer/logitech hardware. They cant even scan for artificial keystrokes because they mimic the same action as human keystrokes.

There really is nothing they can do about macroing besides making macros useless in their game through things like a queue system, global/internal cooldowns etc.

No currently running games allow macroing. None. Zilch. Nada. There was one guy in WoW, for example, that were banned for leveling weapon skills on his priest using macros. Priests don’t even use their weapons! Where the macro originates doesn’t matter. Hardware v software macros are irrelevant. Macros are, by the way, scripts. They are synonymous.

As for GW2 specifically, here’s a gem straight from the Rules of Conduct:

You may not use any third-party program (such as a “bot”) in order to automate gameplay functions, including playing, chatting, interacting, or gathering gold or items within Guild Wars 2. You may not assist, relay, or store gold or items for other players who are using these processes.

All macro software, including software built into or packaged with hardware, qualifies as a ‘third party program’ that would ‘automate gameplay functions’ (ie the function of input). This says that I cannot, for example, use the macro software that came with my keyboard or mouse, nor the macroing capabilities built into my keyboard, nor use other software written specifically for macroing that is not packaged with hardware.

Katsumoto.9452:

Doesn’t really matter to be honest.

You could have this and zerging would still be the prevailing method of taking towers and keeps. A small group simply cannot lug the necessary supply for a keep assault, and if said small group is spotted, even with siege they haven’t the means to maintain their assault vs a zerg. Defenders still have AC’s and ballista’s, and a large number of people defending is dead small group.

Of course ninja’s happen but thats just PvDoor at the end of the day.

Even if I were to run a 5-10 man group, with 2 superior rams and a couple of these things, the damage of the siege you talk of simply isn’t enough to wipe the zerg, and if it was it’d be overpowered frankly.

In short, zerging would still dominate the offensives in WvW.

It isn’t supposed to wipe the zerg, it’s supposed to make some of them leave so that you’re not dealing with groups so large that nothing can be done on either side because of culling and graphics lag. The damage scales with the number of people in the vicinity. In an ideal situation, you’d have large groups (60+ people) taking about 10k damage each second from the dot 3-4 minutes after being hit, with the damage being negated if they spread out sufficiently that it can’t spread further. The thing is that they have 3-4 whole minutes to spread out. It’s not just going to demolish a group, it’s going to force them to spread out. For example, to siege two different towers or two different gates instead of having a massive zerg at one. The numbers I have atm may not hold up this ideal situation. The goal would be to have the disease ‘die off’ if the group size is below a certain threshold, at which point it’d deal only mediocre damage. You’d deal some (but not much) damage and would be better off with ACs unless they really had a huge, huge group.

As for the ‘so you want 1 person to be able to wipe a group’ argument: I’d love to see one person run enough supply for one of these, then put it in a position to use it without having (and himself) destroyed by AoEs. Even still, the zerg could easily kill this one person, spread out for a few seconds to let the dot drop, then resume their siege while this one person has to take a respawn on the other side of the map. This wouldn’t enable one person to do anything against a large group.

it is important to note that this siege weapon would maintain counterplay even for large zergs. If you had a large guild that could field and organized group of a size large enough to be severely affected by this, then they could set up a ‘quarantine’, where players who were hit directly would run in order to let the dot die without having it spread. This would take organization, however, which is something that most zergs lack.

Mif.3471:

I suggested something similar a while ago.
Asura-tech chain lightning gun FTW

Maybe we should combine our efforts?

As for the ‘anet-caters-to-majority-ergo-never-hurts-zerg’ mentality: no. Zerging isn’t fun. Being zerged isn’t fun. Most players like fun and progress. Zerging offers only progress. If they could provide a way to provide both, then they would because it would service the majority. I know many people who have stopping playing WvW because they don’t enjoy zerging around a map.

And, if you had bothered to finish reading my post, Gab Superstar.4059, you would see that the goal is not to prevent large groups. Waitwut? That’s right, it isn’t to prevent large groups, it’s to help disperse forces that are sufficiently large that they can’t even see all of the players. There is a point at which groups get so big that no gaming computer as of today can handle displaying them all without becoming a slideshow. Culling is in place to stop that, and it is a good idea to do some culling. However, there needs to be a way to discourage people from abusing culling as they currently are. That is the goal of this idea: prevent people from creating sufficiently large groups that they can abuse culling.

The weapon would be useless against small groups and mediocre against groups that aren’t large enough to cause culling, and would also only be useful in situations where there is a protracted conflict (ie a siege) because the damage would have to build up over a long period, ideally taking ~2 minutes to reach full effectiveness in order to give sufficient time for people to disperse before taking fatal damage.

The idea: a weapon that grows more powerful as it hits more people. It would deal tremendous damage against zergs, but be pitiful against small groups and pretty normal damage against medium sized groups.

How could this work? A simple modifier to targetkitten wouldn’t work because the players would just spread out, as they currently do to avoid AoEs. What about a ‘disease’ that could spread between players?

Imagine this: you use the weapon and it infects about half of the zerg. It continually spreads throughout the zerg. Over the course of a few minutes, it would spread out across the entire group and stack up high enough to outrun any healing given.

Against a small group, it wouldn’t get a chance to stack up because of the low number of players. Against a medium-sized group (aka one that is not massively culled) it would deal about the same amount of damage as the trebuchet. Only against a large group would it really be effective.

Numbers need tweaking. I haven’t finished calculating where the die-out would occur to get the proper stack rate for differently sized groups. Ideally groups of 5-10 would take minimal damage, and a normal siege group would take about as much as getting hit by a ballista or treb.

Darnis.4056:

@Atlanis
Are you talking about hotjoin?

Why would you put a punishment on hotjoin? It’s hotjoin for pete’s sake! will you punish everybody who leaves a game? What about tournament ques during hotjoin?

I think the initial idea was for tournaments, punishing anyone who leaves a hotjoin match would be even harder, how do you know when you can leave? :/ only at the beginning and the start of a game?

Poor choice of words. Obviously, tourney matches are ‘servers’. My bad. I’d meant that if you left a tourney, then you’d be unable to join any other spvp except rejoining the tourney match until it (or, even better, the tourney) ended.

Chi Malady.2015:

Khyras.8021:

Chi Malady.2015:

Khyras.8021:

Chi Malady.2015:

That would be a terrible idea. Sometimes people have to leave due to a real life emergency or their internet connection fails or their computer crashes. Not everyone is rage quitting.

I am sure number of people quitting on purpose far exceeds number of people quitting because computer crash or rl emergency. Also OP is not proposing to ban player who quits pvp match, deserter debuff lasting 15-20 mins is more than enough to discourage quitting the game whenever you want and causing other people to have a bad pvp experience. I cant even believe there are people who oppose introducing deserter debuff mechanic it should be obvious that its existence is necessary if you ever participated in a match where something like that happened.

I’ve had team members leave plenty of times when tourny pugging and I couldn’t care less. It’s a game. Few people leave when their team is winning unless they have to. If someone leaves when you’re team is losing, then who cares? You will have lost anyway.

You might think that people are leaving just to spite you, but some people have demanding family lives and they can’t guarantee that they will be available to play through an entire tournament.

Matches are so short in this game that it doesn’t even matter if someone leaves. How long does a map take to complete, 10 minutes?

Having even one less player in 5 vs 5 game especially spells loss for a team with less players i dare say in 99% of those games mostly because of lame downed mechanic and burst.You may not be upset to be pretty much free kill for the rest of the match and the fact that you will almost certainly losing the match but some people, including me, obviously are or this post would not be here.

But what you’re suggesting will never be implemented because it risks punishing people who have to leave for honest reasons.

This is a game. You have no obligation to play it through to the end. kitten happens and people have to leave the game sometimes. Just because some players leave maliciously, doesn’t mean that you can punish everyone.

Simple: if you leave, you may only join the server that you left until the current match ends. Crash? It’s k, you can rejoin. Emergency? By the time you get back the match will have ended. Ragequit? Have fun running around the mists for 10-15 minutes!

Tarn.1374:

It’s just horribly, horribly imbalanced on a 1 v 1 scale, or the like, at the moment. Very disappointing.

What MMO isn’t? Balancing for 1v1 is terrible, because it neglects the synergies that arise when multiple players are involved. The game is being balanced (in PvP) for 5v5 team play. This is their desired format and as such that is what it should be balanced towards. Have they gotten it balanced? Nope. Are they working on it? Yup. This game is already better-balanced (imo) than WoW. At the least, it is more fun because of the lack of infinite CC chains. (Don’t point at WoW’s DRs either, with a bit of coordination you can keep one person permanently CCd using certain classes such as Druid+Warlock using only one cast every few seconds)

Sand Beagle.9867:

Macroing or scripting (semantic difference) will never be bannable, because there is nothing wrong with doing it. If any proficient scripter wanted they could just make a random number generator, and every sleep function could call to that generator and pick a number between x and y, which would make it virtually indistinguishable from human input.

Example i made in 10 seconds: (AutoIT)

hotkeyset(“{F1}”,“attack”)
func attack()
$pause1 = random(20,30,0) ;min 20|max30 (floating point)
$pause2 = random(245,255,0) ;min 245|max 255
send(“a”)
sleep($pause1) ;wait x milliseconds
send(“b”)
sleep($pause2)
send(“c”)
EndFunc

It could obviously be easily expanded.

Edit: What they need are internal/global cooldowns that prevent hitting certain skills together within a fraction of a second. Maybe add diminishing returns, or something like the re-stealth cooldown.

Macroing and scripting are actually both currently bannable in almost every online game in existence. Only a few MMOs allow scripting, and even then only in their built-in restricted environments. You’re absolutely wrong on all of your points.

As for GW2 specifically, using macros and scripts are both bannable, no matter what you use them for. This precedent was established way back in the days of MUDs and will not change anytime soon. People playing GW2 should be rewarded for their skill in playing GW2, not their skill in scripting or macroing.

Also, this game isn’t built for GCDs. That’s why most skills have cast times. If thieves are able to activate their abilities too quickly through the use of macros, ban the people using macros and increase the cast time on the abilities to make macroing no advantage over normal ability usage. (This has the problem that instant-cast abilities such as signets are instant-cast so that they can be reliably combo’d without breaking the cast of other abilities. It’d require discretion on ANet’s part to pick and choose how to deal with the situation, something that they’ve shown the capability of doing over the past decade.O

Elixir C. The stun break on the boots is rarely worthwhile because of the long knockdown. While the toolbelt for it is very useful, I wouldn’t say that it justifies it over elixir C. I love my rocket boots, I just hate being knocked down for so long on something that is supposed to get me out of stuns!

1. I like that dedicated healers aren’t required. I can’t say that I don’t like not having them.

2. Sometimes, but usually that is followed by an epic save with some CC and a quick-stomp.

3. I feel like they made it more active. However, burst needs to be greatly toned down.

Also, don’t bother with SWTOR. The F2P conversion hasn’t much for it, especially in regards to PvP.

This is pretty cool. I thought I’d seen it happen before but I assumed it was just lag (of which I have too much) playing tricks on me. +1

There are always Karma trains running events in Orr on Gate of Madness. However, even if there aren’t it isn’t difficult to solo if you move carefully. Pull one, kill it, pull the next, kill it. Always stand on sharp geometry where mobs can’t spawn between pulls. Yea, its slower than just blitzing through everything, but it’s actually quite a bit of fun once you get into the rhythm of it.

For reference, I got most of the way to my Lifetime Survivor by spending a couple of hours with my gf completing Straits of Devastation. At 3.6k left I teleported out for a low-key finish only to find the teleport bug reset it. Anyway, my point is that it isn’t difficult to solo/duo the content. It is simply slower.

Nitro.4732:

As far as I was aware it reset upon changing zones. however its actually easy to get this achievement through crafting.

I’m doing it for fun, rather than simply to have it, so I’m pretty intent on doing it the ‘right’ way. I am, however, upset that my progress was reset for something that wasn’t even implied to reset it by the game.

hoschi.8693:

They can’t be on all maps all the time. So go where they are not, if it’s a problem. See how they play and what their style is, read their movements and counteract them. That’s how it works, that what makes this all fun.

The day before yesterday, in the morning, I went to the Eternal Battlegrounds. With a small band of compatriots, we took a supply camp. Then ten to twenty players from kaineng showed up and crashed our three-man party. So, we went to the GoM borderlands. This time, we didn’t even get to capture the supply camp before a sizable group (at least twenty) showed up and smashed us to bits. At this, the people I was with gave up. I attempted to move on alone but it was futile. About an hour later, Scarecrow Zz managed to rally enough people to take a couple of supply camps and even a tower, which we held for a whopping three hours with the aid of King Dreadnaught and more players that he rallied.

Keep in mind that this is during off-hours. It was 4-8 am eastern time. I didn’t venture onto the other realm’s bgs, but I know that I saw supply camps flipping back and forth on the HoD bg, so I assume that they were dealing with a similar situation. tl;dr Kaineng actually does have the manpower and/or organization to maintain a presence on all three maps. GoM flat-out doesn’t have the manpower.

As it stands right now, Kaineng has 227,804 points, followed by GoM with 18,466 points and HoD with 13,338 points. This is beyond being sad, and perhaps even beyond being pathetic. Those people who weren’t there during the opening minutes of the battle don’t understand exactly how severe the imbalance is. Kaineng took all four maps within an hour. GoM didn’t even have a supply camp left by the time they were done. This, unlike my previous anecdote, was not only during primetime, but also during a time when we had an unusually high number of players in WvW due to a close fight between GoM and HoD for who would control the greatest portion of the map at the finale.

We broke down the gate to Stonemist Castle only to have our forces begin dropping like flies within seconds. It took over thirty seconds before I could see anything due to culling, by which point I’d already been killed despite blowing every defensive cd I have (and I play a tanky engi, so I have a lot). We lost everything before the first hour of fighting was finished, as did HoD.

As for WvW queues, I’ve only ever played on GoM and I never knew that they existed prior to this series of events, if that says anything about the manpower possessed by this server.

tl;dr Kaineng can and does maintain presence on all three maps through raw manpower and/or organization, both of which the other realms in the fight do not possess.

EDIT: This isn’t to say WM or SoS or any other guilds aren’t great, the battle for the GoM keep on the GoM badlands was unbelievably awesome and easily the most fun that I’ve had in WvW to date, but the repetition of basic strategies to ‘counter’ Kaineng is getting frustrating, since they are obviously made without knowledge of the present situation.

Whelp, that sucks.

No, I didn’t die. I teleported from where I completed the Straits of Devastation map to the Rally Waypoint, and then to the Crossing Waypoint in Queensdale. I’d intended to get my last 3.5k xp from an easy heart there. However, none of the experience I gained there gave me visible credit towards completion. Upon porting back to the Straits, I confirmed that my Survivor achievement track had reset.

There were two explanations suggested to me for this, both of which are (in my opinion) absolute bullkitten.

1. I was hit by a cannon during my port to Rally Point. There is a cannon which burns you where I was prior to this. I was on an outcropping where no mobs could reach me (because you had to do some jumping to get there) when I ported, so this could have happened. Apparently this counts as a death?

2. It uses the same mechanic or similar mechanic as weapon sigils, which are reset every time you switch zones.

Regardless, I found other posts stating that logging out and changing zones reset it in addition to simply dying. (example: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/58613-experience-survivor-achievement-bug/)

I was hoping that there may be some way to restore my progress up to the point where it reset. It should be somewhat straightforward to check the logs for my character (Legault De Kol of Gate of Madness) and see whether I died. Legault is getting parked in Lion’s Arch until I get a response on this to prevent any accidental deaths.

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

You give good points, but one can’t assume that grenade kit will be left as-is. If I had to wager, I’d guess that grenade kit will be getting a damage nerf soon (hopefully a baseline buff and grenadier nerf instead of a flat nerf, but we will see). Those other ideas for blast finishers are good, hopefully they would manage to fix ft 2 first, however. I’m sick of it being obscured

Every single one of them is a ‘blast’. Even if they did something like 20% chance for a Blast Finisher (on spammable skills) similar to how projectiles work, it would be really nice to have. Hell, even just having the toolbelt skill as a blast finisher would be awesome.

You don’t have to choose the Order based on the mission, though. I chose the Whispers based on the fact that I like the Order of Whispers. The missions were of secondary importance. Really, I’d have preferred the Priory’s mission, but I didn’t want the Priory for my Engineer, so I didn’t take it.

Terrahero.9358:

Atlanis.6597:

Casia.4281:

Making good use of your toolbelt skills is important.

Grenades for example as noted, are pretty weak atm, until you get the 30 point trait at level 60. that said however, the grenade toolbelt skill, grenade barrage is INCREDIBLY powerful. the highest single damage skill we have. Especially when leveling, where you are killing a pack of npcs every 15s or so. you can basically then use barrage to nearly 1 shot ever other pack.

Toolkits Throw wrench is very good for this as well. you might run with that, just for throw wrench and never actually swap to the kit itself.

Rocket boots.
Rifle turret also both have really good toolbelt skills.

(Flamethower is pretty bad by itself, but the fact its toolbelt skill is SO bad, pretty much seals its fate. )

The flamethrower…bad? It’s tb skilll….‘SO bad’?

No, and no. The flamethrower does decent damage, but where it shines is once again control. The knockback and aoe blind are fantastic skills, as is the addition of burning to your autos. With a cond damage build, the toolbelt skill for flamethrower is worth over 10k damage by itself. The aoe knockback/blind will save you from many sticky situations

But thats not suppose to be the point. Its a weaponkit, it should pull its weigth as a weapon.
Its knockback is quite nice, and thats why most people use it. Not for its damage, which is bugged and pitiful. The blind is not very good considering its very lengthy cooldown.

I think Arenanet doesnt know what to do anymore. If a kit is adequate as a weapon, then why use utility skills? If they arent, then it becomes a rather bland profession with just 2 weapons and a bunch of contrived mechanics where you get several utility skills in 1 slot, but they are inferior.

As for the tb skill. Its not exactly amazing. From the top of my head, what are we looking at here? 1min cd for 6seconds of burning? Assuming the attacks actually hit, and assuming it wasnt in a terribly bugged state where it consumes charges without giving the burning. Its hardly good, even if it worked perfectly.

If you read my other posts, I’ve discussed how the weapon kits don’t live up to real weapons. They won’t ever live up to that. That said, they’re extremely powerful as utility skills. The toolbelt skill for ft only consumes the incorrect number of charges if you use a multi-shot ability a la pistol 2 or ft 1. Using rifle, pistol or eg 1 works fine.

The flamethrower isn’t bad. It’s got a lot of utility. It’s got a fire field, a good (if buggy and hard to land) nuke, good aoe, aoe knockback and blind. No, it doesn’t live up to some weapons. However, it outclasses most utility skills from other professions. It is exactly that: a utility skill. Nothing more.

Casia.4281:

Making good use of your toolbelt skills is important.

Grenades for example as noted, are pretty weak atm, until you get the 30 point trait at level 60. that said however, the grenade toolbelt skill, grenade barrage is INCREDIBLY powerful. the highest single damage skill we have. Especially when leveling, where you are killing a pack of npcs every 15s or so. you can basically then use barrage to nearly 1 shot ever other pack.

Toolkits Throw wrench is very good for this as well. you might run with that, just for throw wrench and never actually swap to the kit itself.

Rocket boots.
Rifle turret also both have really good toolbelt skills.

(Flamethower is pretty bad by itself, but the fact its toolbelt skill is SO bad, pretty much seals its fate. )

The flamethrower…bad? It’s tb skilll….‘SO bad’?

No, and no. The flamethrower does decent damage, but where it shines is once again control. The knockback and aoe blind are fantastic skills, as is the addition of burning to your autos. With a cond damage build, the toolbelt skill for flamethrower is worth over 10k damage by itself. The aoe knockback/blind will save you from many sticky situations

Travail.7390:

Atlanis.6597:

Kits taking up utility slots would be alright IF they used our weapons stats and weren’t buggy. Take, for example, Elixir Gun. By putting this in a utility slot, we get a disengage (4), an aoe cleanse + stacking hot (5), a conal cleanse + poison + vulnerability (3), a bouncing cripple + swiftness (2), and a way to permanently apply weakness (1). That is a LOT more than any other class gets for a single utility slot.

However, the wrench in the machine is that other classes get a second weapon in addition to the three utility slots, which puts us at a disadvantage running 1 kit + 2 other. When we run two or more kits, though, I would say that we have an advantage over everyone save Elementalists (who have four different sets of abilities per weapon).

The Elementalist has the equivalent of 3 kits + 1 primary weapon at all times, without losing access to any utility slots. Necromancers can equip 2 weapons plus Death Shroud (which is essentially a strong kit) again without losing access to any of their utilities. Warrior Banners grant 5 attacks to whoever picks them up, as well as passive AoE buffs. There are weapon summons which grant 5 attacks to the user. We aren’t the only class with access to kits or kit equivalents.

And then there’s the matter of our F mechanic. Look at the Toolbelt for a moment, and consider what it actually does. It gives each of our utilities a second activated effect. Well, that’s great, but it’s not “better” than what other classes have access to without even considering their main mechanic. Every other class in the game, bar none, receives utilities with secondary activated effects.

- Signets (available to every class but ours.)
- The aforementioned Warrior Banners.
- Ranger Spirits.
- Necromancer Minions.
- Guardian Spirit Weapons.
- Mesmer Mantras (multiple uses of a single utility before placing it on cooldown.)

All of these include secondary activated abilities, just like our utilities have Toolbelt skills associated with them. Having a second activated ability associated with utilities is not unique to the Engineer, not by a long shot.

When every other class has F abilities (adrenaline, pets, shatters, etc.) in addition to these double-effect utilities, our Toolbelt starts to look pretty lackluster, doesn’t it?

Make no mistake, this class is no more versatile than any other.

-Travail.

I didnt say that they were more than any other class could get, I said that they were more than any other class could get for a utility slot. Key difference, there.

Also the toolbelt is lackluster, no doubt. Some abilities are nice but some just suck. The toolbelt has a lot of potential, but it fails to live up to it.

Suggestion is simple: give us a keybind, similar to ‘Target Next Enemy’ but which only targets players and mesmer illusions which share the name of the player (ie not Illusionary Duelist, etc).

What would this do? It would allow fighting minion masters to be significantly less frustrating. Targetting an Asuran Necromancer among their plethora of minions is a daunting task no matter how you slice it. In WvW, targeting players among the mass of necro, mesmer and ranger minions, illusions, and pets can be extremely frustrating. This would help alleviate that.

Why would Mesmer illusions still be targeted? They’re part of mesmer’s defenses. Allowing players to effectively bypass them would be crippling to them.

Xae.7204:

I don’t think it will help.

The more I play other classes the more I realize the problem is with Blizzard, not Hunters.

Maybe after we get a new balance team, but right now I don’t see anything that can help.

Welcome to the Hunter forums, 2004 onwards.

That isn’t elixir X….

Kits taking up utility slots would be alright IF they used our weapons stats and weren’t buggy. Take, for example, Elixir Gun. By putting this in a utility slot, we get a disengage (4), an aoe cleanse + stacking hot (5), a conal cleanse + poison + vulnerability (3), a bouncing cripple + swiftness (2), and a way to permanently apply weakness (1). That is a LOT more than any other class gets for a single utility slot.

However, the wrench in the machine is that other classes get a second weapon in addition to the three utility slots, which puts us at a disadvantage running 1 kit + 2 other. When we run two or more kits, though, I would say that we have an advantage over everyone save Elementalists (who have four different sets of abilities per weapon).

tigirius.9014:

holska.4127:

Let those new players decide for themselves please?
Opinions differ and for some the way the class feels while playing and its mechanics are more important than being one of the best classes out there for whatever purpose or being the top damaging class.
The engineer is still effective and fun to play imo.
And saying you have to play flawlessly in most cases to beat other classes is just plain wrong as I also spend most my time in WvW, am far from flawless and don’t loose many 1v1’s to any class (incl. thieves and mesmers). Yes it takes longer to kill but isn’t hardly as much effort to get things done as say a staff ele.

We are but there is a need to inform the new players what the game is like end game. In this title, even loot suddenly and completely changes for players after they reach level 80. It’s like a punishment for reaching max level or something rather then a reward. So in order to let the new players know what’s happening these threads are necessary. When the OP posted this I’m sure he was talking about pve. All I see when people ask about the builds for this class are all pvp and that’s sad because this game is so much more then a pvp esport. If players want to play pvp only that’s great engis have hardly the issues people see in pve in pvp. But if they wish to play pve end game forget it. It’s either minmax to barely keep up, die constantly because of it, or go reroll anything else because anything else will literally be more fun then the way they’ve done this class right now. It really is that bad in the pve side right now. People can pretend but there’s far too much wrong with the class to play and enjoy yourself.

You are completely wrong IMO. I enjoy my Engineer more than any other class, and in fractals I’m a pretty invaluable asset with my ability to support while dealing decent damage and taking a beating. Are we the best? No. Are we fun? Absolutely. Maybe Engineer isn’t the class for you if power = fun. Power isn’t everything, and mechanically playing an Engineer is a blast (for me).

Almost everything wrong with engineers can be fixed with minor tweaks (example: rocket boots not keeping you on the ground for so long once you land), minor buffs (ex: turret hp/armor buffs; damage buffs) and bugfixes (no more flamethrower misses when the graphic is on them, for example).

The only gadget with a really ‘longish’ cooldown is slick shoes at 60s, the others are all 45s or less. Rocket Boots is only 30s.

My girlfriend is an ele and loves her fire summon, but when she uses it in caves it is simply deafening. This needs to be fixed.

Mugiwara Luffy.1087:

I think weaponskill slots should have different options. The autoattack should have 3 different skills to choose from, as well as skill slot 2 to 5. That gives so much more customizability.

That would also be a balancing nightmare. 243 different ability combinations for each weapon set.

What’s wrong with platforming? Some things are hassles for some players. For some, I’m sure that platforming is. Does that mean that platforming shouldn’t be required to get some achievements? The platforming sections are integrated into the map, and therefore to complete the map you have to do some of them.

If you relax, then jumping puzzles are significantly easier, Imarion. If you can’t relax for a puzzle or are nervous about it, skip it and come back when you can relax.

I’m running dual nVidia cards and the game runs perfectly. Only occasionally do I get framerate drops in LA. Everywhere else is smooth sailing.

I wouldn’t say that the WvW system lacks depth at all. Maybe its just not your thing? What do you mean when you say you expected it to have ‘some depth’?

Zeldain.5710:

Braggo.7819:

Although i have had GW2 since the first beta i haven’t played much as i have a WoW subscription. Im looking to cancel WoW and using GW2 as my MMO and playing alot of other single player games.

What is the end game like here? from what i can see it is mainly PvP based as i havent heard of raids other than the world boss style of things.

Do you Queue for instances or is it finding your own group? as finding your own group sounds difficult.

Is the “lack of players” i heard about troubling or just people talking crap?

Finally i am mainly a pve player so does this game suit me or do i need to be a pvper?

sorry the the wall of text and questions.

You will not find any form of satisfying PvE endgame here. What you do at level one is waht you do at level 80. The story doesn’t get better, the gear doens’t get better.

If you enjoy WoW, you will not enjoy his game. It delivers none of the satisfaction and fun.

You’re dead wrong. I enjoy WoW, but I enjoy GW2 much more. The combat is significantly more entertaining and while there is a lack of large raiding content, that is easily overlooked because of the entertainment value of fighting itself.

Asura for my engineer.
Human for my mesmer.
Norn for my guardian.
Charr for my warrior.

Dunno what else I’ll make.

It’s not. Grab Tarff’s leather coat off of a lowbie vendor in Metrica Province for ~80 karma and transmute to whatever you currently use. It’s the best coat I’ve found and covers most of your body, meaning that pants dont matter as much.