Guild Wars 2

Jasmine.8195:

So as my eyes start to wander towards upcoming MMOs and what they have to offer I’ve asked myself what would make GW2 the perfect MMO to keep me luvin long time. Not that I don’t think it’s an already wonderful MMO, but we all have our wish list that we feel would make it better. I’m curious, what would be your top wish list items to make the game better?

For me (in order)…

1) Player (and Guild) Housing, I’m talking SWG quality housing… why can’t MMOs capture this feature? The HOURS of added gameplay for the OCD player (like me) and GEM STORE potential here for Anet is literally limitless…

2) End game guild level content, aka 10/20/40 man raids… though how well this would work out in a game that doesn’t have a holy trinity… hmmm

3) Yes we have WPs, but movement speed enhancements for PvE… especially for repeated world exploration for my alts, but also as eye candy. This could include, but not limited to: Mounts (duh) or a limited sprint on button push

4) Double jump…. why do so few games offer this.

I definitely respect that this would make the game more fun for you. It would kill it for me thought not each point equally. I enjoy PvE in moderation not as a main activity. That is the devil with this game. It has so many quality modes and that pulls different clusters of gamers in so many directions. Really, these days what is the primary mode (the anchor mode) for GW2? Historically, you would say sPvP. Would you today?

1) I like this but I would want guild houses and personal houses to be actually useful. DAOC did a great job balancing appearance with functionality.

2) This is what would kill it for me. Raids just are great when you have tons of guildies and are really serious. But for a casual, a raid tends to be too much time, wrong time, too hard to put together. And then there is the issue that raid quality PvE should have epic loot. I personally, think the more casual Tower of Madness was perfect. Raids would send me running for an exit faster than almost anything they could do. Pick up open raids are fine so long as they don’t last for hours and the mechanics are not so challenging that a PUG can’t do them.

Hard PvE is for another game IMHO.

3) Mounts are fine so long as they never see the light of day in PvP and WvW. It would be too fast to respond and would make the maps feel small. Small groups do well when you have to hunt them down and go off the focus zerg objective to do so.

4) That would annoy me. This game is already twitchy enough with dodging.

As you can tell, I bought the game for pvp and wvw. I prefer non-MMO PvE frankly.

On a personal note, and just a personal note, I find that TP takes a lot of the joy of killing that big boss and seeing what shiny you got today. There is too little waiting for Santa and seeing what the Christmas loot bag has for you and your class. So TP comes across as too easy to just one day hit 80 and the next day get the gear you always wanted. PvE then becomes more grind and less epic (see below why) or completely irrelevant.

To balance the instant purchase on TP effect, ANet creates ascended gear and armor that forces you into crafting or a PvE grind versus epic encounters. Or it is so time boxed (laurel based) that it is like waiting your turn for a promotion. But that isn’t epic. There is no great story to tell of how you killed the dragon and got the rifle.

What I wished for:

1. Glory could be coverted to ascended gear (and the primary way of getting it) to reintroduce the population to what really was the game defining mode. Something needs to pull the player base to PvP by tying it back to other mode benefit.

2. Epic Encounters would create epic loot (if it can’t be a drop because of randomization then a ticket or currency we can trade at a vendor for that epic piece).

3. TP would not be the main vehicle for getting a new set of best or near best equipment because it leaves no aspiration that I can’t just whip out my wallet and satisfy in a few keystrokes.

That is my point of looking too seriously at TP as an economy. The real question is do you have enough ways to meet player need? Do you really want a trade system to be the primary way of equipping an end game character? Is TP the root cause of needing ascended and other gear that is causing horrid grinding and crafting (which is neither epic nor really fun in my humble opinion)?

In short, is TP providing so much of our need that the only way to introduce aspiration winds up being a huge grind?

The last thing this game needs is more crafting especially if it becomes like other ascended crafting where everything becomes account bound.

Consumables need nerfing overall not increasing. The whole idea of -40% condition damage and +40% condition damage foods is just not smart. There just are soo many stacks and stacks of temporary buffs (from holding runes, from killing guards, from food and consumables etc). It really needs toned down.

This is a step in the wrong direction.

I thought what Royale was saying is that we should have the ability to take e-gun or flamethrower as a unique weapon and still have 3 utility slots.

Considering you are giving up the rifle or giving up a pistol/shield combo that might not be OP at all.

What nerf would you propose drkn and thanks for your honesty?

My hypothesis is that warriors have about the right amount of damage (they are supposed to be near the top, with lots of sources, etc) but have too little weakness in defense or others have too little ability to CC and lock them down to keep them at range. I surmise that much of the passive healing and armor was designed to allow a warrior to get into a fight versus getting owned before melee began. Stun locking warriors wouldn’t be fun for anyone for example.

Proposed ideas:

1. As adrenaline goes up, there should be a reduction in defense. You should take more damage. How and what type is open for discussion.

2. When certain big hit melee skills are on cool down (pick by weapon), the warrior’s passive skills (say healing signet for example) should have reduced effectiveness.

The theory is that a warrior should have good defense up until they get into a melee fight. In a melee fight, their defense should be their offense. Somehow, if there was a way to make a warrior lose a lot of their defensive capability in the thick of a facesmash that would make the class more interesting (and perhaps so for warriors too).

You just wouldn’t have all the passive armor, heal etc all the time. It would be there to get you into a fight not while you are in melee.

I don’t code. Those who do, is there anyway that could work?

I want to say that I appreciate all the warriors commenting who do so in more than a knee jerk reaction. You all have to play the class 100% (well you get the idea) where I have to fight against it just a fraction of the time.

It is good to see some acknowledge that while the class is not massively OP, there are issues with being near the top in most offense and not near the bottom in any real defensive situation.

I would like to hear from warriors, IF you were to get adjusted downward, what would be the fairest place to start.

I agree warriors do not bring the best damage but they are near the top of damage. The issue is those that DO bring better damage have a whole lot more weaknesses in defense. Those that DO bring better damage tend to do so in one category only (e.g. condition) and very much not in others.

But the key is that the warrior has too many things offense (and people always seem to forget to talk about defense for some reason) that are well above average versus other classes.

It lacks a real weakness.
God knows, making every class lack a real weakness would be bad design so you can’t just “improve other classes”. That would be a huge power creep.

Improving race skills is a dangerous thing to do. It will start to have players gravitate to one race over others. They are supposed to be fun and very situational. In general, they are supposed to be far less powerful than non-race skills. Otherwise, because every race can play every class, you would start to see everyone play the best racial skill race. That would be a disaster.

Watched lots of videos and been playing this class as a main for a couple of months.
But I have gotten to a plateau.

I’m running a classic 30 (forceful, incendiary, grenadier) 10 (switch it up for range or pistol duration), 0, 20 (vigor and BR) and 10 (speedy kits) build.

Using pistol and shield mostly but on occasion an offhand pistol.
Also using rabid gear. Food is +cond and +cond damage
Sigils are torment and bursting (swap out for stacks).

Ok, winning as many as I lose if not winning a few more. Effective yes but not as good as I want to be.

Issues:

1) In a lull on what I might change and when. The build is solid but I run it non-stop. Small changes are better than big ones.

2) Struggling with grenades when I have to move and the opponent is moving. I land half. If I am lucky 2/3rds. I bought a new gaming mouse with buttons galore, practiced and practiced more and still stuck at about 1/2. So I move to bombs and pistols far more than I think I would like to.

3) I get rotations but struggle to maximize which to use first on classes I am less familiar with.

4) I’m not burning down enemies quickly with conditions but if I live long enough I generally win because of conditions.

5) My healing is great up to the point the fight goes long. Then I start to be on all cooldowns and that is when I find myself getting hurt with immobilizes and damage spikes and go down.

6) Can I get more burst upfront or do I even need it?

7) How do you deal with condition transfer from necromancers? They eat me up.

8) I have a good sense of combos but getting the long duration ones is a lot harder to do in a battle than preparing for a battle. I still don’t seem to get how to maximize stealth when I am in an “holy smokes” situation and really could use it to get away.

9) Shield looks amazing in videos but my experience has been very meh. The block is short. The retaliation requires I sit and wait. The blast is about all I seem to be able to count on being really useful. Seems the off hand pistol just gives me more of what I have but a bit better (longer burn and glue at range).

10) I need to keep players stuck better. E gun bouncing glue isn’t locking them up. Supply crate does amazing things if the stupid net turrets don’t fire off at a pet. And I wonder if I should start taking more traits to cripple and immobilize like sitting duck.

11) When I play shrapenal in pvp I certainly see bigger bleed stacks but then I wonder if bombs are even worth it at 180. I just can’t quite tell practically how valuable forceful explosions is. It seems critical but then you see it is only 60 units. I wonder if anyone makes bombs work well without it.

So, I just need a bit of good old fashion advice on these topics and any other advice you all had when you started to plateau with your condi engineer.

Thanks in advance.

I get it is no fun to have folks thinking maybe your class got buffed a bit too much.
But I think the poster who explains that warriors are top 3 in all major utility and damage categories has a point.
That wouldn’t be so horrible if the warrior was basically very vulnerable (to cc, to condition, to immobilize etc).

But they are not bottom 3 in defense by any stretch.
Sorry, but it really is time for warriors to be toned down.
You can’t just buff up other classes in a game that also has PvE or you get power creep.

So for warriors willing to accept that the pendulum may have swung too far, what is the right way to bring warriors back in line (give them a weakness or two) that won’t make the class miserable to play?

I like that idea Royale a lot.
Trouble with having your weapons modify is what tell would there be for an opponent in terms of which rifle you were packing?

Is that chicken organic? If so, I’ll pass

Maybe I am ignorant. Maybe it is the server I play on.
I have yet to see something so obviously a hack that I can confidently say “there was no way that was a video/lag/tech issue”.
I’m sure they are there, but I would say their impact is minimal in my experience at least.

Very good point. Take a fraction of your glory and buy items you can sell easily on TP. You will have plenty of gold and plenty of glory.

You miss the point of the greater good.

I want YOU to behave honorably while I don’t. That would be my greater good

Thieves are more annoying than OP.
A couple thieves working together can be OP and in some odd WvW situations a thief hanging around after you take a keep can be OP. So the stealth trap really was a way to deal with some of that.

But in all situations a thief is more of a self class versus a group help class (save venoms but that is relatively new in being effective). Sort of hard in a dungeon to find value in something that is more self centric than group centric unless it is the highest dps in the game (thieves normally are right up there in most MMOs). A thief is not bad but it doesn’t make the other players better. That is the root problem with dungeons.

I feel like the OP is poking fun at me for being old. I didn’t know that the hammer was not a walking cane too.

Plenty of classes and playstyles requiring very active play. Try an engineer or elementalist. You do want some classes being new to MMO player friendly.

Thanks guys. This has indeed been helpful. Mesmer is a class a bit harder to mess around with in sPvP and get the hang of how to beat.

Yep. It is the reacquisition which gets me too often and I do love my AE which does help quite a bit.

Mesmers really mess with me when the fight is not 1 v 1 and I have to pay attention not just to who is the Mesmer but say a thief trying to knife my back. I get that is part of the whole point of the Mesmer but these tips do help!

Nerfing is a critically important part of game design.

Warriors were in a very bad spot. The decision was to buff them quickly (not talking about how long it took to get to that point guys). The other choice would have been very incremental skill by skill adjusting upwards a wee bit each time until months later you had it right.

But. . . .

When you make big changes, you often need to claw back a bit once it goes live and you see all the unintended consequences.

Then. . . .

You have a community that screams “don’t nerf”.

OK. . . .

Would it have been better to have made the warrior changes over say 6 months + so that they wouldn’t need a bit of toning down?

Want to ask a ranger if they would rather ANet move quickly to buff them knowing there is a good chance of an adjustment later OR have lots of little adjustments over the next 6 months?

In short, Warrior is sitting pretty on offense (makes sense) and defense. You can’t put both on the same class with no really obvious area they are very weak in. Where is the across all classes (or most) kitten in the warrior armor which is the way to beat them? It used to be condition them to dust. In other games it is make them pay before they get into melee range. But it always is something.

But the key point of the post is do you want ANet to buff classes all at once and then adjust or buff classes in baby steps to avoid the anger of having to claw back anything? I pick the former every day plus a day.

Where is the warriors defensive weakness to make up for its offensive prowness?

Typically, melee takes the brunt of crowd control OR if not it takes the brunt of ranged damage OR magical damage OR can’t heal OR has mediocre damage and skills that make it vulnerable to damage when used OR struggles to get into melee range because of movement speed etc OR has problems cleansing conditions OR . . . . .

So which of the ORs is it? Now I am not sure it should be lack of stability but it DOES need to be something.

No one doubts that warriors needed a big buff (much like rangers do now). But that tends to swing the pendulum a bit too far the other way. Then you have to claw back a bit (which is where everyone who is now used to the skills gets upset). Well, the other choice would have been to make the warrior changes EXTREMELY gradually and that would be worst than now saying, it is a bit too much offense on a bit too much defense.

I would take the counter bet that there will be more than one bullet point for the rangers. In fact, I would probably bet that it will be in the top 3 classes that get the most attention (not all positive of course).

Rangers may be a bit more complex to fix, but all vibes point to the fact ANet knows they need help.

What help. Enough help. Right help. Help you wanted. None of those things will I dare touch on a bet, but to bet that the patch notes will address more than a bullet point of change for the ranger. . . count me in!!!!

Skill is manageable and avoidable.
However, it is relatively more powerful than other elite abilities or certainly very top tier.
Mortar on the other hand. . . . (you may have to go look it up as infrequently as you will see it).

Commanders who don’t command usually have plenty of peer pressure to turn off the tag. Not really worried about that as much.

Allowing tags to have different colors indicating different things the commander is doing is absolutely brilliant.

Private tags (those you can make visible to some but not all) deserves consideration but may be a bit rough on the causal player if too many commanders go “invis tag”.
Of course, you can always run without the tag so really does it change anything?

I would probably couple the idea of “hidden tags” with some new benefit that encourages putting on your tag. Look it is frustrating to command. It is really a service. And it soo helps casual players get into the mode of play. Create more benefit.

I would make it a whole lot easier (and more profitable).

You want PvP to remain neutral play for a day 1 player versus a day 365 player.
That is the “schtick” and a mighty fine one at that.

Of course, that would appear to make it hard to monetize with a gem store.

However, player versus player combat is broken into Spvp and WvW. There is likely a high level of overlap between the playing communities (have no way of verifying that but my gut would bet a steak dinner to Justin it overlaps nicely).

So, why not have a character’s performance in Spvp impact their success in WvW by allowing glory to be a currency that converts to PvE gear? For example, you could drive population into Spvp quickly by having glory be a means to acquire ascended for those who don’t want to craft. You would want to monitor the conversion ratio carefully but you get the picture. And you would drive population that might not Spvp into the genre who probably would like it a whole lot better if it had more tangible “other game” benefit.

Now the gem store wouldn’t make you more powerful in Spvp but it could sell you glory boosters so the relative time/number of matches is lower. Profit.

Glory wouldn’t just have to convert to gear. It could convert to World Experience. Now the gem store could sell you a conversion token so you could exchange glory for world experience at some meaningful rate (or it could be a booster to that conversion rate). Lots of things you could do to almost immediately drive numbers to spvp and really start to monetize off Spvp. Just think of glory as convertible and a currency.

What about that concept Justin? Getting closer? Or am I going to have to buy you a steak dinner for making the wrong assumption that your Spvp base and WvW base have a fair amount of overlap that could be jointly appealed to?

I look at it more like this.

How much defense should one of the highest damage dealing classes have?
What is their defensive weakness? Healing? Condition removal? Escape? CC?

I am an engineer too (go figure with a name like Bombsaway).
I agree something needs done.
This is a very PvP problem. In other modes, the engineer still has very little health and there are multiple sources of physical damage in a group to burn him.
But in PvP where the teams are smaller and you have capping, it can be annoying.
The only balance is that the engineer is a bit easy to knock off point having little stability.

I wouldn’t take it out of the game. I would make it more of a percentage (say 40%) and I would even think of increasing the trigger point from 25% damage to 33% damage. I think the idea was to make it slower to kill an engineer, but it is getting a bit too “really hard” for some builds to kill that engineer.

Lower the percentage of mitigation. Increase the trigger point.

@Seras Wouldn’t that lead to a lot of power creep? In PvP and WvW, another classes’ buff is effectively a nerf to the others. But in PvE, buffing classes would really force you to rebalance mob AI. Right?

That is why you need nerfs sometimes. It just beats the alternatives.

So, on another thread I laid out general ideas. The idea was that the warrior has some exceptional damage skills that could be made more risky. Take Hundred Blades, Whirlwind, Staggering Blow etc. While in use, they could debuff your defense. Now you just have to time them better. Other classes have something sort of similar. For example, a ranger has a great AE barrage. . . but you stand still for it.

The problem I think I have with the Warrior (very interested in other opinions) is that you have some of the highest offense on some of the best defense.

Typically, you have a bit more of an Achilles’ Heel. For example, the highest melee dps might be put in medium armor and very susceptible to getting beat up if not careful.

So onto land speed. This is a real problem. The idea was to create an ability to close a gap. Makes sense (especially if that warrior had some glaring weakness like lower armor or lack of ability to cleanse conditions etc). But when it is used to escape look at what that does for the idea that the offensive damage dealer should have a defensive weakness.

The trouble is the solution of having a target etc (proposed on other threads) has all sorts of unintended consequences. For example, many leap finishers you would use if in trouble without necessarily having a target (the armors for example).

At this point, I think the answer may be in dropping down a warriors defense. That can be passive healing,. That could be debuffing their armor rate to place it between heavy and medium (not changing the armor). That could be making them have less stability or less ability to cleanse. That could be increasing the base effectiveness of conditions against warriors or even adding a bonus to condition damage to warriors. That could be providing a serious defensive penalty to key warrior offensive abilities (say hundred blades makes you take a lot more damage on the theory you just aren’t looking carefully at the enemy while spinning around). Lots of things you could do.
Best for warrior class to come up with ideas frankly.

The trouble is you have to take the skins of the weapons as they are. They won’t get redesigned really. You will just get access.

The dagger just looks like a “poke you in the back in the middle of the night” weapon.
The torch actually works very well. The whole idea of an engineer being at the forge melding crafting with a bit of new technology wouldn’t make the skins look silly.

So I could see axe, torch, hammer. We all would love a one handed hammer, but it doesn’t exist and the mace would be a weird looking round peg for a square hole.
Trying to add a weapon into the game is a huge task as you need skins, new loot charts, items for all sorts of levels etc.

Actually, axe/torch seems far more sensible than a 2 handed hammer but I could go either way on the later.

Buttercup. That is a fascinating find and fascinating idea.

Cassocaster: Would you be better off with what you got from the chests or taking the same number of gems, converting them to gold and buying what you want on TP?
In order for keys to have value, you would have to value (and that is very subjective to the player) what you get from a chest (random) versus what you could get that you pick TP. Given the randomness there would be a pretty compelling case for the chest to be quite a bit better.

Bingo Essence. The economy is just a tool to build loyalty.
MtPellion: I just reframe it this way, an “economy” in a game allows you to balance the need for players having aspirations (gear, items, power etc) with the need to not create undue frustration (I can’t get that. Do you know how much time that would take for me to get that gear myself. . . .). The subtle difference is one way of viewing the issue is more perception than data based.

I agree with the problem. The encounters are just too hard with an open field team and too many of the other problems (e.g. over flow) occur.

I disagree with the solution seeming to be proposed by many that you make it instanced and people “pick their raid teams”. Trouble is that leaves out so many casual players who frankly are the reason you have 2 week updates to try to anchor them in the game.

The trouble is having such difficult content on what is really a more casual PvE game.
The Tower of madness was great because pickups could work together and get thru it. Sure it took a time or two for each player to get what the mechanics were. That is different.

Fractals are really different because you have the difficulty scale with experience running them. They are very accessible upfront to casuals then as the casual gets experience, they get harder. Ok, that works for everyone.

A permanent World boss that is in a raid instance works ok because people learn how to do it, share it, and you can learn on the fly a bit as a casual.

But, when the content is very temporary, and instanced raid favors those who are extremely well organized and can figure it out quickly. It would just never really get done by a pickup group before the content was replaced. That is bad bad bad bad.

Question: (and really not sure what the answer is) Let’s imagine that ANet wound up with an amazing generation of servers that let everyone in queue in without performance issues. Would that make WvW better or worse?

The class is a dodgers dream.
Good discussion.
Will have to try that GS4 more!

Well it wasn’t meant to be a smug remark just an honest one. It was more a mea culpa on not writing it elegantly. Oh well, forums can be hard to imagine intent. There is a confirmation bias of wanting to dislike the person coming on and saying “hey is your class balanced or not”. I get it.

Harper: the trouble I have with your list is that it is tied to damage roles only versus mitigation roles (defense). Just looking at damage, I don’t see the warrior as OP. You are good at everything, best at some things and that sort of makes sense. You still would be arguably in the positive territory of being at the top of some of the damage elements of the game to be fair. That is to be expected.

The problem is that you have so much more defensive ability than I would expect given the high damage and more access to more types of damage mitigation (stability, passive healing, armor, range closers that can be used to open up range and escape, etc).

Just look at the cues from other games. Lots of times the high damage dealer winds up being in the middle range of armor or having very poor healing or poor condition removal or being a bit more subject to CC.

You are supposed to be offensively strong. Got it.
Where is the defensive weakness? Please advise.

Warriors seem to have a bit more defense than I was expecting given their offensive strength. Agree? Disagree? Sort of on the fence?

I do play full condition as one spec and healing/support as the other.

My trouble is keeping my eye on you. Sure, I can figure out which Mesmer is the “real deal” by seeing who has buffs or who dodges. But, it just takes time. During that time, I find that a good Mesmer is confusing me and making me chuck conditions at anything but them.

So even though I have the condition damage to beat up a Mesmer (well some of them at least), it is really hard to land it fast enough on the right one!

Tried target selection (marking) but you all stealth on me then I get to tab thru to reacquire.

Maybe I am just an old man, but anyway to speed up the process of figuring out “Where’s Waldo”?

I am torn. How many of you posters play a melee damage class?
One of the key problems of the game has been that ranged damage can’t whittle anyone down very much before they are in “smashface” mode.
The immobilize buff helped.
But it would be pretty boring to just sit.
On the other hand, it is pretty frustrating to be ranged damage with melee in your face in seconds.

If it is toned down, there needs to be something done to make melee’s ability to close range far less effective.

I think the key with ranger is to do a lot and then tweak it back down (much like you did and should be doing with Warrior).

This class needs some major tweaks. You run far more of a risk doing too little over too much time.

If there is an area where the ranger has a broken set of abilities this would be it.
That being said, the idea that a ranger should get any worse than it is now is well. . . not what I would be advocating for.

Fix the ranger first. Then, I would agree, that a ranger can stack a LOT of immobilize. But don’t do the later until the former is done. Yes, I play ranger as one of two mains.

Wait. Did I miss that there is no 9 second cool down on sigil of geomancy? I thought “can’t be what he meant”. Went to Wiki and no comment on cooldown.

If so, oh my, that is amazing.

Anyone know?

Agreed with ukuni. I find that for PvE you can live without forceful explosions but it is really hard to get your bombs to land damage in fast moving pvp and wvw without that extra radius.

On the other hand, forceful explosions do zilch for the grenades. It is one of those tradeoffs that can go either way. I prefer the consistency of getting off many types of conditions on the enemy and the certainty of getting the blind and somewhat certainty of getting off the cripple (when running away) that forceful gives me when I am in trouble. But, definitely worthy of consideration!

I think the real issue is that I just can’t see there putting new weapons in the game (that would be huge work). A new kit would be easier.

BUT. . . you could get access to a current weapon (and they just need to make skills for the weapon). So which one? I’m left thinking only hammer and axe really fit. Again, the skills could be quite unlike they are for the current classes who use the weapons.

Absolutely viable but perhaps differently than you expect.

Effectively it is like getting 3 stacks of might almost permanently (and 1 stack for other allies too). You only need one elixir. The 25 pt minor trait synergizes well with this GM trait. So if you are going 20 in alchemy anyway for BR, it often is the best option even if you don’t take more than one elixir.

Dojo.1867:

1. Automated Response
This is either useless or broken. Very good example on how to not design traits.

+ I am assuming you feel this because it seems overpowered. Not sure it really is. It doesn’t really kick in at 25% because the “magic hit” that gets you under 25% probably gets you quite a bit under 25%. At that point you are pretty easy to burn with the direct damage component of most skills (even if the opponent took conditions). It more seems to help me survive splash AE damage than a 1v1. Powerful yes but not as much so as it reads +

2. Napalm Specialist
We have enough burning already to never take this as a GM in this line. Maybe would work as secondary effect with something else.

+ I don’t know. I think there is too little reason to go to 30 in firearms BUT if you did, Napalm wouldn’t be a bad trait. We often don’t have much burning (sometimes only the bomb) and it can give an extra tick. Not sure it really is poorly designed versus situational.+

3. Grenadier
Incredible strong but again a good example for bad design. Nobody ever runs grenades without it. The efficiency gap is just huge (+50%) so it is basically limiting build variety making every grenade build must have 30 power.

+ Absolutely. You have range. You have extra damage 50%. Some of that needs to go on the grenade baseline OR it is OP. One or the other. Having said that, I have been known to run grenades without grenadier when I want an extra set of conditions. Think a second set of bombs. Didn’t have the points for grenadier but the grenades were useful for the blind, chill etc. +
4. Armor Mods
While the effect itself is not random I wonder why we got this here. This has nearly 0 interaction with anything else engineer has (beside maybe frustrating the enemy to death together with blinds). Also it basically has the same niche as Adrenal Implants.

Yep. Aegis is a bit weird for the engineer. And blocking one attack every 15 seconds would be far more useful if I had any control over which attack that would be for a GM trait

5. Adrenal Implants
This is basically poor mans Vigor (which we get as adept trait with kit swapping). Very random to have this that deep into tools but well, allows GC builds to dodge more I guess.

Now this one I just disagree with. It is in an odd line for getting used but the idea of 50% endurance regeneration gives you quite a bit of extra dodging. Remember, you don’t have perma vigor so this improves the “downtime”. Take them together and it is quite impressive (just who wants 30pts in tools right now

6. Autodefense Bomb Dispenser
While smokebomb is good the cooldown is still a bit too high. Also will never see the light due to Grenadier.

+Pretty powerful effect which is situational. I agree that grenadier is quite a bit “must have” if taking grenades but this is exactly the type of GM that is well designed. In outnumbered fights in roaming this is great. +

7. Modified Ammunition
This atleast has a place when fighting the lord in stonemist castle or some huge PvE/dungeon mobs. Beside that just a kittenty +%dmg trait which most classes have as adept trait.

Amazing trait. There are 12 conditions. An engineer has access to 11 (torment on sigil). The ability to lay down a series of different conditions is a specialty of an engineer. You can get a MUCH higher damage increase than a traditional adapt trait. BUT, your opponent can wipe it forcing you to reapply etc. Well done

8. Rifled Turret Barrels
Maybe if turrets ever would be relevant.

The trait is designed well enough. The turrets are lacking.

9. Elixir-Infused Bombs
Has a place in some bunker/pve dungeon builds.

This is arguably over powered. You can create a great group healer with this skill. One problem with healing abilities in general is the cap on how many they affect. With EIB, you just run around with all your great passive regens and heal over times and drop bombs in different spots quickly healing large numbers of players. Probably too effective

10. HGH
A nice trait that unfortunately lost viability since every engi build has to run atleast 2 kits.

Plenty of ways to keep a HGH build effective. You don’t need to run 3 elixirs to get its value either. Even if you ran only one elixir and could get only 4 stacks of might for 20 seconds (tool belt included) that is for 20 seconds and a well designed trait.

You can throw around an engineer like a wet doll given our lack of stability that is our real bunker point capping weakness.

Now, an engineer can spec to throw you around a little more as well as keep you blinded etc. But since you can do that right back at them. . . .fairly balanced.

It would seem for an engineer sigil of earth would be obvious.
You get a bleed stack every 2 seconds that lasts a base of 5 seconds (longer with normal +duration I believe).

Isn’t that a lot of stacks to give up on another sigil?
How many stacks do you see this typically providing?

I have run and run all sorts of tests and it just doesn’t seem as effective as my number crunching suggests but I have no idea why.

Thoughts?

Simple. As the base damage of weapons increases per set you increase the base factor for the kits. If a kit used exotic weapon factor and now there is ascended, then upon a certain threshold of folks having ascended OR upon a certain date after the release of ascended you bump up the kit’s damage. Doesn’t have to be immediate, but for weapons it is now time.

Warriors were underpowered for a long time and screaming for balance.
Is it really a surprise to the warriors that ANet went a bit too far.

You are top tier (top 2 classes) in:
Passive Healing
Armor/Toughness
CC
Escape and Evade (Landspeed issue)
Melee Damage
Condition Cleansing
Top Stats

Name the 5 counterbalance areas where the class is the weakest?
Note: Not having minions or deathshroud goes to broader issues of condition damage, range, healing etc.

It used to be that warriors were VERY susceptible to condition damage. Not anymore.

It is very simple actually. People want the best not second best.
Right or wrong numerically in terms of actual impact, there is a perception that you have to craft to “be your best”.

That perception (more right than wrong) leads to a lot of folks grumbling because (like me) the idea of crafting is just a giant waste of a good night I could be bashing a live person’s avatar in. That is why I game. I like PvE stories sometimes (but not if I have to repeat them again and again). But I NEVER enjoy crafting. It is akin to having to do the dishes. I don’t spend fun time on chores if I can avoid it.

So you are naturally going to have a lot of people beg for ways to not have to craft personally the best gear in the game. Ignore them and you face a very serious risk of “gear gap”. People who hate crafting tend to be extremely committed to the “heck no I won’t do it” mentality. So, if in time they feel they can’t compete, they quit.

Given how large the anti-craft cluster/segment seems to be, it seems silly to not quickly find other ways of dealing with this.

I am ALL for the ascended you buy looking tame compared to the ascended someone crafts. aesthetics should always match effort and weigh in for crafters.