Guild Wars 2

Advanced tips and tactics is always a winner whether skills, combos, or how to use pets.

If they make the ascended cooking “organic” I will never make another food item. On the other hand, bacon could easily be an ascended food item

Wouldn’t it be better for crafters if you could actually sell ascended weapons and gear to those of us who abhor the very idea that we have to waste time grinding materials and crafting?

What would it do to crafters to remove a whole lot more “account bound” tags?

Well, you are right I want an option to do something I consider fun to get gear versus having to engage in all aspects of the game.

I think you will find most gamers and customers similarly enjoy parts of the GW2 experience in differing weight.

No one is saying free, just available in multiple major areas of the game (pvp, wvw, open PvE, dungeons) just makes for a better game. In fact, I’m delighted if they would let you go get them for me and I could just buy them off TP from you.

And don’t get me started on crafting. I don’t mind that ascended gear is craft only but what is the sense in all this soulbound and account bound items? If I have no interest in crafting, why shouldn’t everyone who likes crafting not be delighted to sell weapons and armor in TP? I can’t think of another major title where you are forced to craft.

What some of you are saying is “do all parts of the game whether you want to or not”. Well, if this game were billed as a 5 major function game (craft, pve, dungeons, pvp and wvw) maybe that makes sense. But the fact is there is a customer base that simply is fragmented in what parts of the game they like that wants to remain at the cutting edge. The choice is lose them overtime with gear creep tied to content they have no interest in or oblige them with another way to stay on par.

This game won’t do well going into a hardcore do everything mode. What about folks with limited time like the mass casual players that really financially support everyone who is hard core? They want to spend limited time doing what they enjoy. Casual friendly is financially sound.

Agree Ellesee in pvp you see plenty of engineers and they do well. That leaves me thinking that the issue of the engineer is not so much how the class plays (e.g. relative value of the class) but more how it feels to play it.

Ok, so what would draw a few more to playing the engineer? Is there a simple set of fixes? (e.g. Ability to hide a hobo sack is quite easy but hiding a kit swap might be much harder).

I tend to think of the Sylvari engineers as the ones most likely to have elixirs (herbal of course and all natural with no artificial flavors, colors or you know the good stuff).

Typically, when something is mandatory you want to nerf it OR look at why there are no other options (e.g. rangers and empathic bond tied to having few condition removals).

The biggest question is which for each one.

Yeah but some of us travel for work and that means the high end alienware it is except weekends

I got help from ANet but I will be darned if it wasn’t one of the most frustrating processes. It was as if you would get one email with one idea that was extremely simple (most people would do that). Then, it doesn’t work. So you get ticket #2 with the next idea. Try it. Nope. Next.

That goes on for days. Eventually, they do help you find the source but geez, why not give me one email with lots of sequenced steps to take and try!?!

Now this could be profound ignorance on my part of IT, but it certainly appears that each set of suggestions was more or less canned.

Absolutely they care about WvW. It provides some of the greatest “stickiness” to the game. In fact, I think they were quite pleasantly surprised by how well it did.

In fact, I would say WvW has become more important to ANet than PvP given that more people are playing it and it naturally leads to more gem purchases.

Why crit nerf? It does have WvW implications too. It is the most efficient stat to trait and that impacts every part of the game. I’m sure they are looking at other ways to create power based toons.

I tend to by scrolls of knowledge for alts. Nothing worse than having to redo PvE! (IMHO)

When PTR is private you get better data BUT you get less of a feeling of ownership in creating a better game with the community. As a result, there is less patience with waiting for patches and improvements. On whole, the consumer scientist in me would argue that inclusiveness in a PTR with a few quiet private events for data collection will create a sense that we are together trying to improve the game.

Maybe. I do tend to find that to make pvp more fun as a team activity it needs to promote better ability to just pick up team play. Almost as if it should designate the highest ranking member the team captain. But that is for another thread

I see PvP actually becoming something casuals do as a bit of a diversion or when they have a little bit of free time.

Great comments folks! Overall, the focus has been a bit PvE. Anyone want to comment on WvW?

I tend to find that a well played WvW engineer is a great asset to a group (small or large).

I would also say that we are the best at being relevant in the most situations. In other words, my engineer can add value from healing, fields, might, escape, debuffing (vulnerability), damage, ccc etc. Maybe someone can do better in one area or another, but I don’t think there is a class that is our equal in terms of the variety of things we can do that add value. Maybe that is because I don’t have one of each class.

This is so much simpler.

The game attracted far more causal players than hardcore.
The player v player mode that attracted the most attention was WvW because it was a bit more casual friendly and community building oriented.
Casuals feel more comfortable in a large group situation for pvp then the fast fight style of spvp.

Think about it. The game really got quite a number more PvErs than expected.

The rise of the casual player is a wonderful thing for ANet given how Gem Stores work. They work better on aspects of the game that require gear or with players who enjoy appearance/crafting etc. So, only a foolish company wouldn’t try to increase the casual base with this monetization model.

What started as the primary purpose of the game changed because the player base chose other aspects as more important. Like most MMOs, the majority of players are far more casual than most companies expect. And they are getting more casual versus more serious. FPS are about all that attracts hardcore really anymore.

This led to there being far fewer numbers in pvp. And when you have fewer customers in on aisle than the next (especially if that larger number is also in a more profitable aisle), what SHOULD you do?

The key is that PvP can be a good CASUAL diversion during downtime. It is unique and it takes very little commitment of time or energy done right. It is the fast fix mode for a casual player done right.

The key fix is to make pvp far more enjoyable and integrated to the casual player.
You need to start to improve pvp by improving the number of people who pvp and the frequency. This begins with rewards that are totally unlike what the OP is proposing. The casual cares little about being ranked. They will join pvp initially because it gives something shiny or powerful to their main type of play (PvE or WvW).
Embrace that.

Now to not enrage those reading this. The casual player becomes more competitive in pvp the more they pvp. That is true in all games. As you get better and comfortable, you too want to win.

But the key is win for what purpose? For the joy of competitive play? That won’t happen for most players. Just saying. The reward of competition has to go back to their more casual playstyle and main focus.

If you could get dragonite ore or ascended weapon/armor materials faster in pvp than pve, you would see a flood of new people. You have to get them to play to get them hooked or make them want to progress to competitive play.

Then you just have to make it fun. Too often, pvp even in a hot join is way too serious for a casual player. No one likes to be dominated from day 1. The skill level is unbalanced between hardcore and casual. You can’t really expect randoms to want to play against an organized team. So you break up guild members except in tournaments. You shouldn’t face 3 guildies in an 8v8 when you are just hot joining as an individual.

Don’t let players join as a team in hot join. Make it really random and people will feel much better about it. Ok if you have a rank 60 against you if you have a couple rank 40s with you.

Use tournaments for hard core players but create a reason for hard core players to want to hot join and introduce people. I think one of the most important features would be a pvp commander tag. That would help causal joiners know who is leading the team OR create the leader tag for free based on who is the highest rank.

Create more communication. That will help the casual stick in pvp.

The problem is deciding which way to balance. . . . competitive v casual.

For a casual player, the last thing they want is to wait to play. So the idea of being in queue until there were two is bad policy unless the time in queue is almost always short. OR, if the wait was an up to 1 minute wait then we allow them in solo.

But, on the other hand, no one wants their team to get clobbered. A penalty in pvp makes sense for leaving. In other words, your account shouldn’t be able to enter a new pvp game until the old one is done.

You have to balance that there can be a lot of reasons for quitting (real life to I screwed up a spec to I finished my daily). You just don’t want the same person doing it again and again.

PvP needs more people playing so you almost need to skew all decisions to the most casual of players right now for hotjoins.

Boo Hiss to 5v5 vs 8v8. That would be better for tournament play but for a hot join you want a bit of mindless slaughter and speed in getting dailies etc (especially if you just want to get back to wvw).

For a lot of people, pvp is a fun diversion and something you do with a little bit of extra time on your hands or during downtime. 5v5 creates really boring fights if you are not organized. Most hot joins are not organized.

For competitive pvp, I love basically group v group dynamics. But, it just won’t work on a hot join for the average bear.

Engineer. What is not to like about a lil toon dropping a big old bomb?
It is like a cute little bratty, I’m smarter than you now go take a blast of lead to the face type of cuteness.

So, people don’t play engineer because it is a harder class to play?
People don’t request engineers because a poorly played engineer is worse than a poorly played other class?

Makes sense. Other ideas?

Does this mean the engineer should be dumbed down a bit? For example, would it be better if the engineer’s grenade skill targeted automatically as it does underwater?

For pvp and wvw, I am increasingly wondering if taking an offhand shield is better than a second pistol.

I do get the value of the blocks and blast. However, when running groups. . . .

1) Do you find there are enough blast finishers? I do.
2) Is a block for 1 second better than a glue shot to trap runners?
3) Is a projectile block that won’t allow movement as valuable as a long burn?

I go back and forth (use shield now more) and would like other people’s opinions.

What are the situations in which you say “I sure am glad I had that shield” and what are the situations for those taking an offhand pistol that you say the same?

It is important to know the difference between fluff language and game language.
You want the skills to read like they flow together. An elixir gun, for example, fires elixirs.

But, you want balance too. If an elixir gun’s elixirs are treated as elixirs for trait and skill purposes, you would have some real balance issues. You wouldn’t have to trade a kit for a single purpose utility slot. You would have so many more elixirs for might stacking. Etc.

I do think it helps to have it clearer what language matters in terms of game mechanics.

Come on let’s be serious.

They nerfed supply crate which was having way more immobilize than it really should (oh sure you can stun break, cleanse etc but we could say that of almost EVERY broken skill).

They happened to nerf supply crate by nerfing net turret, but it really had less to do with the turret.

Turrets need help. So do pets and suffer from similar “stupidity”. They just act up.
But that is a whole different issue to solve for.

I’d gladly take this nerf and get ANet starting to come up with an answer for the greater AI problem that hits engineers, rangers etc.

I would say a ranger. Seriously, it is a hard class to play well!
And, the developers seem to have plans for it, so now might be the perfect time.

Tattoo:

I disagree that winning is the only thing that matters. Having fun is.
So say that you could win more pvp matches by just sitting on a point, seeing very few fights, and “taking one for the team”.

Sure sometimes you would do that, but that is why I see a lot of folks gather in the middle of a pvp battlefield and just go for slaughter v objectives. Sure it irritates some players, but there is a sense to it too. It just is more fun getting into fights!

I mean this as a serious topic.

The engineer is a very balanced and useful class in almost all situations, but there seem to be far too few people playing it.

Why?

Is this because there is something inherently uninteresting about the lore, style, look, etc.? (Yes I know hobo sacks annoy people but is that the root cause, really?)

Likewise, there seems to be so little understanding of engineers. For example, I have commanders amazed that an engineer can provide water fields or can quickly provide a quick group stealth to get folks inside a gate etc.

There is no anti-engineer sentiment, just a lack of people playing the class and a lack of folks understanding what those that do play can do.

Any ideas why engineer could be uninteresting? Difficulty to learn? Just not “fantasy” enough? Doesn’t fit prototypes players coming from other MMOs already know and therefore worry they will pick a class that doesn’t match their playstyle?

Reading comments, I don’t think this is an isolated server experience. It seems to be an underpopulated class without any real class mechanic problem.

The changes were necessary. We should not have to over rely on buggy skills to be effective (and they really decrease build diversity). The issue is that we need a real buff not to keep these wonky skills. EB obviously was supposed to be only when the pet was alive.

But that means we need OTHER ways to remove conditions. Etc.

Let’s be reasonable.

Supply crate immobilized and crippled too long. That is all that really happened.

Condi is worth more soon so that helps engies.

I haven’t seen anything like a real nerf.

Me too. That is why I will never have Superior Runes of Noble until I can pay for them with gold

I have a simple question. Was there a point in time that you ANet noticed an unusual spike in skill lag issues. For me, and those I have talked to, it was about a week ago. It was sudden and brutal. Any working theories on what change caused the issue?

Superior Runes of Noble should be obtainable without having to ever step foot in a dungeon and should be available on TP etc.

There are good options certainly but if you are just looking at net increase in condition damage which is the perplex v undead debate, you simply get more damage having another condition that you do with a 5% of a stat increase in condition damage.

Noble are always a good choice to as they really do help with might stacking. If I could only tolerate PvE!

Dolt: Why not get stacks and then swap weapons?

You will find me swapping a whole lot more into and out of pistol/shield and rifle.

I still think conditions generally do better that physical damage.

My latest debate has been between pistol shield and pistol/pistol. When running in a larger group, I just am not getting the benefit from the defense that I do using blowtorch and glue shot.

For sigils, I think the most exciting thing is that you can take 2 with a cool down. That is going to mix up what sigils I take no matter which weapon set!

Remember they are nerfing damage by 10% across the board too so the impact isn’t quite as great.

As for me, I am thinking that condition damage 6% and bleed on swap might be the best combo for a condi engie.

Warrior is in no way harder to play than an engineer or worse for the wear.
Healing turret is fairly easy to destroy.
Nades force you to guess where the player is moving to and take quite sometime at range.

Your build is so built for having a 2cd pistol. That blow torch at 12 seconds would be pretty amazing.

Ellesee, that is more or less (runes and a bit of eq) my playstyle on a condition oriented build. But if you want to be as OP’s guildies put it “impossible to kill” I think you go the elixir infused bomb route.

You can easily change out grenades for toolkit to pull/pry/bomb. I like nades even without grenadier for the conditions they add. But I agree, the one utility slot to play around with in the build is grenades. My question is what would be better? E gun and bombs are a given in a “impossible to kill” heal based build.

Ummm. I think context is key. They talked about things that were broken and needed fixed more than anything. Classes that really only needed a minor tweak here or there you got a sense of what was being buffed.

Where they had bigger plans but just were not ready to commit to the details yet, they didn’t talk. They did say that there were a lot of buffs coming that would help rangers and made it quite clear that they felt rangers needed help.

Med kit is reaaaaaaly simple. Your F1 is your primary heal and when you or a groupie needs a small heal, you drop a kit and run over it.

But the key is that you can swap into med kit and then grenades or bombs very very quickly. That counts as a “proc on heal” ability. So outside internal refresh timers, you can maximize the number of stacks of might you get in combat from:
1) swapping kits (sigil of battle)
2) proc on heal (altruism and enhanced power)

Lots of might there!

Condition damage quickly gets to about 1500 with a few might stacks and you heal really well.

I agree it should be a simple blanket increase and be done with it.

I think I will just wait and see what happens before getting worked up.
I do think there are some questions (previously posted) that would be interesting to get a sense of how they think about balance in general and as it currently is in the game.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQJAqel0piY3zyuF17ISoHS49pWiUgZW2HFy1DC-jUCBIOChk0A0HIkIgppFRjtIsIas6GYqVER1uEFRrWKAYmDA-w

You can tweak whether you want that extra might and damage in explosions or go all the way with alchemy to get immunity to conditions when 25% health.

Overall, your goal is to stack conditions and might for damage. You do this when you swap into and out of your heal kit. Note, the runes of altruism/enhance performance and your sigil of battle all have very long durations so you should have enough stacks to make up for the relative tankiness.

As group support you provide group strength, big heals (including bomb spam), and if you wish you can change the adapt traits to provide group vigor. Lots of support there. And shield helps you have some very nice active defense.

You can also swap out med kit for healing turret. You won’t get quite as easy might stacks but the group help is better with healing turret.

Absolutely. I run it all the time. Grenades/Bombs/Elixir Gun. Perhaps the most versatile build. 30/10/0/20/10. Some of the adapt traits you can mix up easily enough.

Typically, these are condition builds and while you have decent direct damage with rampager gear, you are using bombs for the burn/condition/blind and immobilize as much as the direct damage.

Rotation maters as do blast finishers with this combination. BoB is an incredible skill to have. Use it often.

Perplexity. You have plenty of interrupts in almost every engineer build.
Even if you only got a couple of stacks, it would be the right option.

I would simply like to get a developer to give some perspective on their view of the state of ranger balance.

In particular, at this point, are they looking at fixing pets (now or down road) or working around the current pet mechanism for balance?

Are they comfortable with the current builds many of which are not mixing bows/melee?

Do they feel that the ranger being good in some aspects of the game is balanced even if other aspects of the game the class is relatively weak?

1) In order of importance, which classes do you believe:
a. Need most balance adjustment upwards
b. Need most balance adjustment downwards?

2) Are there any classes where build diversity (or the builds you expected players to use) is the core problem?
a. Can you give examples?
b. How, from a high level perspective, are you thinking about improving them?

3) When you focus on balance, what is the relative weight of each of the major components of the game: PvP, WvW, and PvE?

4) Do you consider a class balanced if it does very well in some aspects of the game but is otherwise quite weak in others? Or is the goal that each class should have a valuable role in each major aspect of the game?

5) Any mechanics which are not working well which are impacting balance? (e.g. ranger pet)? If yes, from a high level perspective, do you fix around the problem or fix the problem?

I agree that I hardly consider an archer someone who picks two bows too. But I certainly, didn’t expect the meta to be NO bow.

My point is that I always considered the ranger to have at least one bow and these days, that isn’t really the source of strength of the character. It is often much better to run your ranger with axe/sword and 2 off hand weapons.

I suggest that there be a way to save key bind profiles for each character. When you log into that character, you automatically get the saved keybinds.

Why?

Well, I play an engineer with completely different key binds than a ranger than a guardian. I suspect many others do too.
Now, it takes a lot of time to change classes which I would much rather play fighting.

We are laughed at when we take two bows (and perhaps there is a bit of reason tied to DPS, certainly).

But how many rangers picked the class because it had bows?

In short, ANET has it where playing the class “as the player wanted to” results in others hating your playing the class. Talk about missed expectations.

Sure, some folks wanted a melee ranger but I am guessing the vast majority thought ranger-archer or ranger-pets and a few ranger-traps. In both cases, that would be ranger-worth less (not per se worthless). Fairly sure, the expectation wasn’t ranger-lots of eye candy spirits.

Now let’s talk pets. Ranger seems “woodsman” in the stereotype I brought to choosing the class. What are our best pets? Would you find them or a bear in the woods?

The whole class just feels odd like it shouldn’t even be called a ranger.
Can you have fun with it? Sure. Is it what you expected? I seriously doubt it.

Can we still have fun, I suppose. But ultimately, the ranger

I followed the sticky and made an NSOFT Game Advisor file. But, I see no place to attach the file on my ticket.

The NSOFT site you took me to has Lineage and Aion game drop downs only. The GW2 site doesn’t seem to have an option for the file.

Trying to get help. About this time, I just wish there was a phone number to call