I just want to get a lot of geodes and frankly the more I can skip past cutscenes and other content I have already experienced or read the better.
It was well done, but it isn’t something I want to repeat. Even going to the instances, you have to wait for the characters to jabber and walk and jabber etc. I wish we could avoid all that passive time waste and get to the part where I participate immediately on repeats.
Illuminati:
I disagree. I wish you could buy MORE on the gem store. . . but as an option.
I suppose I find this similar with TP. Let players play their way and trade their time in other game modes or their RL currency for the goods they would have to “work for” in game modes that would be more of a chore than an enjoyment.
“Make us craft. . . " makes me want to vomit. Crafting can be ok on rare occasions but when I decide to take a break, not because I have no other choice. Similarly, what if I just wanted to Spvp or just WvW? Or. . . just PvE?
Gem store should have MORE items (many which should also be in game) versus fewer.
John:
It is far simpler to explain (harder to fix).
It appears that the issue is simply defined by a couple factors:
1. What is the amount of effort (hours) to acquire an item? (If using TP, how much time did it take to get that cash)?
2. Did I do something enjoyable or unenjoyable representing that effort?
One of the key challenges right now is not the issue of there being too much money/too little money but of the enjoyment factor for many groups of customers on creating gold. If you WvW, for example, your acquisition of gold is noticeably lower than certain “gold farming” type activities.
This effectively makes the price of a good on TP feel like it is more and makes it feel like my effort/hours are being translated to profit for someone who already had too great of a benefit (the disparity between acquiring gold via PvE and WvW for example).
Thus, at the micro level it just feels wrong even if it looks good at a macro level.
In terms of communication, perhaps explaining the following would really help:
Is an hour of SpvP, an hour of WvW, an hour of crafting and an hour of PvE (open world or dungeons) equally profitable in terms of providing the gold necessary to acquire goods via trading?
If not, what is the difference?
Are certain playstyles then “double prejudiced” by initially having their “contributions” less recognized THEN having to transfer even more wealth to represent the profit of those styles of play they were hoping to avoid by the TP?
Assuming the hypothesis of the disparity of transferable reward (gold) being different per unit of effort (hour) across different playstyles is true, then. . . .
I would argue that there is a bit of an hour glass economy from what little I can gather. You have a segment that can acquire gold very quickly (and enjoys the tasks that do so). They also profit the most from TP. On the other hand, there is a group of players that wants to focus their efforts on the player v player aspect of the game and may be more casual at times. It looks at the prices on TP as being too high for the level of effort.
A key “fix” is to make the relative rewards (cash, items, components, etc) equal across the different playstyles then allow trading to transfer one playstyles primary to get cash (ideally in pvp and wvw) to another playstyle’s ability to “process common materials” (crafting) to another playstyle’s ability to acquire rare goods of high value (e.g. dungeons). Note: each playstyle should have some resource or service it does better than all other playstyles.
WvW: Gold
PvE: Rare Items and materials
Crafting: Conversion of Materials to Unique Items (often consumables)
PvP: ?
Right now you have 2 problems:
1. Not all playstyles have a dominant resource they can collect.
2. You can’t easily transfer your dominant resource to get the goods from another playstyle.
This is because:
1. Things like EOTM create more resources than WvW though it is in the same “category”
2. SPvP was designed to be a separate system versus having a dominant resource to contribute to the economy.
3. There are FAR too many restrictions on the transfer of effort from one playstyle to get the resources of items generated from another.
In simple terms, if I WvW and can only acquire random and rare ascended drops, I would find “fair effort” leading to my being able to spend time collecting gold to buy ascended armor and weapons off TP from a crafter. If I craft, I would like to think that the rewards for my effort could extend outside my account. The crafter, not making much gold on his own would have a set of WvW customers who simply outproduce gold (that being their dominant resource). The PvEr who “finds” lots of great rare drops might think they can get cash for those items that didn’t drop from the WvW player. BUT. . . that only happens if you essentially allow full trade with very few restrictions.
Solution:
More cash/gold rewards for fighting. (Make gold the dominant resource of WvW)
More upgrades for PvP (Tomes of Knowledge, scrolls, etc etc.) This one is a puzzle for me frankly.
Reduce gold for PvE but increase rare drops (tradeable items for gold)
Free up the ability to trade ALMOST anything that is “unused”
Make Gold the common standard of transfer of resources/items on TP.
Allow the acquisition of items to occur thru different currencies (e.g. dungeon tokens) but then allow the transfer of these items to occur in the common currency of gold via TP or frankly mailing, guild banks etc.
Only keep the newest and freshest items tied to a gameplay mode to promote trying something that is really cool when it is also “hot”. For example, you can start with ascended being craftable only so long as that lasts say for a Season only. You can have the new food account bound to get people into Dry Top, but with the next chapter, you could remove the restriction.
You can avoid taking a lot of damage to fear as an engineer, but will struggle with fear.
The issue is engineers facing terrormancers wanting to hold a point versus being a roamer.
In WvW, you simply use range against the terrormancer and can do just fine.
It really is only in a few situations such as pvp holding a point where the engineer’s condition removal is really bad.
Immob bombs are tough too, but we do have the abilities to stack a lot of minus immob time traits and foods etc. at a cost.
CC hits me harder than condition damage personally in most situations.
I get focused down a LOT in small roaming groups because I tend to add a lot to the group.
For example, I often will run a power/heal build and the last thing the enemy wants is for me to drop all the regen and bomb heals or fumigates for condition removal.
But, I don’t find myself getting spammed down so much as a free kill. In fact, it can take quite a bit of extra effort to kill me. This is not because I play well, per se, but the engineer has a few things to extend fights:
1. Big Blocks
2. Reflection
3. Rocket Boots
4. Multiple heal sources (if specced)
5. Stealth (with bombs and I seriously think bomb kit adds value just to stealth up quick)
Immob spam is a huge problem unless you spec full out against it with leg mods, -duration food etc. etc. You can get almost 100% reduction (at a cost).
The one reason my group does tend to focus on engineers first is because we never know how they are set up to be played and that poses a risk.
Engineers are more than adequate in dungeon runs but many of their kits were not designed for dungeon runs per se.
Frankly, dungeons represent the lowest skill in the game right now and many classes use the same exact sets of armor, same builds, few skills, etc.
The LAST thing ANET should do is balance around speed runs.
There is nothing that makes the engineer unable to do a dungeon as a group member.
I’m crafting to get the perfect stuff for WvW. I would rather be WvWing and buying it off TP.
I fully support the OP. This isn’t fun for crafters of WvWers.
What is the recipe for prickly pear pie? I suppose I could make some if I absolutely needed to.
Well I suppose then they should create items that you ONLY can get in WvW from slaughtering lots of people in EOTM that PvErs need to be competitive in their dungeon groups?
The whole thing about forcing every style of play on every player is just bad bad bad. . . .
It makes people who like to focus want to play something else when that something else arrives.
It was a bit too much listening to characters talk and jumping around figuring out mechanics versus fighting for me. The boss fight took entirely too long.
I suppose, I enjoy a good story (which this really was) so long as it isn’t a couple hour event. I would rather spend time in WvW personally.
Dear Lord, please tell me ANET isn’t forcing us to craft personally to get the best edge in WvW. Prickly Pear soup is that much better than Koi cake.
Seriously? sigh. It is bad enough that we have to craft ascended versus having it done for us (or better yet having decent drop rates so you don’t need to craft at all). Either way is better than imposing crafting on each and every person.
After all, IF you are in the minority that likes to craft, do you really want your only market to be “account bound”? Aren’t crafters typically people who want to make (and profit) for/from others?
I know update in a bit but this thread is a great place to put all those new shinies that can be crafted so us non-crafters can beg you to make more!
Hoping for healing food and more defensive armor combos!
The new crafting materials and new foods sound like they would help us quite a bit if we want a bit of healing and say power or condition. Not specific to engineer, but my power bomb-healer thinks this might be exciting and much needed.
Will have to see what can actually be made.
It was designed to be PvE and there is a very important indirect bonus of allowing gear with T,H,V to be crafted. That helps the engineer who has a LOT of build diversity and ability to play defensively.
I agree frand.
As a commodities trader, no.
As a conumerologist, BIG NO.
This would do little for but a handful of players and would cause John all sorts of modeling fits. Price volatility would be quite a bit higher and I might add doing it right would take quite a bit of computing power not needed to be wasted on this.
At best, it would make the “economy” (spits when using this term) far less predictable.
At worst, . . . .
Anyone know if glue bomb changed? It used to be quite a bit more effective holding people.
I suggest Yishis. He was one of the top engineers and his videos are long and have a commentary explaining step by step, second by second what he is doing and why.
They are the finest learning videos for an engineer.
Wolfineer is good but his are short, often a bit Heart of the Mist versus live action focused etc. But you will learn combinations etc.
Osterich eggs has some exceptional podcasts like on Sitting on a Couch.
While not the “main mechanic” perhaps, kits represent why the main mechanic is what it is. They were a far more significant time and effort event than other skills too to develop.
When I hear how “we lose” a utility slot with a kit, I am reminded of a number of classes that would kill to have 3 actually usable slots. Many classes have one “essential” utility for say speed which we get with a simple trait (either power shoes if you really want to be kitless or speedy kits). Thieves and rangers come to mind as classes that must dedicate one slot.
So losing A slot for A key utility (of which you have the option to take 1 of 6 and each has extra utility) doesn’t make us disadvantaged at all. If anything, we have the most flexible design in utilities.
As for condition removal, we have a lot of ways to make it work. None are particularly easy or passive and many come with disadvantages.
We can get to almost -100% immobilize, chill and cripple which are our big problems lacking stability but it costs us food, runes, and a spec that has leg mods.
On the other hand, you can work with E-gun which will do 1 plus several with projectile finishers (if you master that somewhat arcane way in which the removal is someone “near your target”). The combo part works very well in a roam situation though.
Elixir C on occasion is interesting (if facing say an engineer with lots of different conditions to dump on you). In that case, the ability to convert ALL the conditions into very predictable boons is nice. The duration is too short to make it worthwhile and getting enough conditions on you is hard.
As for the “toss” it could use a stun break or increase the number of conditions to two. Though again, certain conditions transform into certain boons. You can get 5 seconds of retailiation for the entire team. The trouble is that it picks a random condition if you have several. So you can’t really time its use to get a certain group benefit. Having it pick 2 random conditions would greatly increase the odds of your getting the boon you want. 5 secs retailiation or 5 secs protection or even 5 secs fury isn’t bad for a group.
It will never be an easy elixir to use, but it could have value. I just struggle not to take 3 kits as they have sooooooo much versatility.
1. You AE the area they are likely to be in and drop massive conditions on them (hence why they hate engineers with bomb kit).
2. If you have smoke or blinds, they hate it. If you can also stealth or easily leap away, that is very helpful too.
3. The ability to block their initial combination helps as well.
Overall, the key is anticipating the attack. If they surprise you, they do have the advantage (and should). On the other hand, if they miss, you should have a key advantage.
Even if they clear conditions in stealth, you should try to immobilize or cripple them and then AE those same conditions to limit the distance they can travel in stealth.
In towers, where they can stealth off a wall, it is harder (and I suppose should be).
Staying in stealth costs initiative and/or utilities. It makes them less effective IF you can slow them down or interrupt their flow (blind, smoke, stealth of your own, cripple or immob, pushback etc etc).
I find that surviving is less about gear shield (often not always) and more about having a way to reset the fight.
I typically will run grenades, bombs, and e-gun or rocket boots for havoc.
Antitoxin runes will help with survivorability.
You can switch between +cond duration food for damage and -cond food to shrug off many immobilizes.
Typically run 6/2/0/4/2 but if the fights are a bit too hot (outnumbered) move to 6/0/0/4/4 and pick up leg mods and remember you ALSO have all your toolbelt skills reset at 25% so use all the heals and regens!
In short, find a build you can quickly switch just a couple of things out as you start to realize what type of fights you will have for the night. Best advice for an engineer, I think.
The KEY reason I think an engineer is better in tPvP and I play with a less serious group, I should warn. . . .
When I first approach, you have absolutely no idea what I might be running.
With an elementalist, you have a very good idea what to do when you see one based on the weapons you see.
That surprise factor can make a big difference.
It happens even with a great rig and wide pipe.
Sometimes I get focused down. That usually sends me into a more survivor oriented bomb spec (melandru, leg mods etc etc) at which point all the effort they put on me is just making them easier for the rest of my team.
Being Asura and small frankly helps a lot ESPECIALLY with the engineer because the sacks are quite a bit harder to see.
Just mix up your gear and consider taking a “get away” utility like Elixir S or Rocket boots (or use your e-gun acid bomb well).
Finally, if I really am getting focused, I will almost always run the bomb kit and a quick blast finisher (shield, rocket boots etc) and stealth/leap reset.
This would be a totally different game and is not practical.
This would cause more problems than it would solve.
Imagine if you really did drop connection.
I’d much rather have it bias towards innocence than guilt.
I just want them to focus more on WvW than PvE.
Do you ever take stacking runes anymore for WvW?
I still think Corruption and Torment is the way to go. Thought about poison/doom, but it seems I get enough poison off with my pistol but that is a real debate.
Thoughts?
Idea:
All light fields have a red circle.
If thief enters a light field, he gets revealed after X seconds regardless of if he attacks.
Get in quick and attack.
Depends on what game mode.
Generally, the engineer is able to competently fill almost any role but will never have the extreme damage spikes of the ele.
You play an engineer because you want to be able to switch gear and a few traits and feel like you have a whole new tune. In WvW, I frequently change a trait or utility when in a keep or sieging or when I see a bigger or smaller group of enemies.
So much you can do that it takes serious time to learn to really use all of that ability.
Engie= variety of roles and playstyles in one tune.
Ele = greatest DPS but lacks some of the utility.
I agree that a player should drop greater loot in WvW than everything but a champion in theory.
The problem is that you kill a whole lot more players than you do guards, lords etc in any populated server. So would that lead to a huge gear inflation?
The only real answer would be to make each player drop loot as if they were either a guard, veteran or lord depending on their rank upon dead BUT ONLY once every X minutes. (Much like an RI timer but only for loot).
Refresh timers are a good idea, if you can choose to turn them on or off in options.
Devon:
I understand that creating a new WvW map takes quite a bit of time (which could I assume be somewhat mitigated with more staff).
How does the creation of a new WvW map compare in FTE hours to say the creation of a Season 2 of PvE or even just one chapter of that PvE event? Content on PvE comes out every 2 weeks (even if it takes quite a bit longer to have the inventory of content created).
What would happen if one Season of LW focused on WvW versus PvE? What then could be accomplished?
Is the ability to put out multiple part PvE Seasons in a year but not new WvW maps tied to staffing differences or is it something inherent about a WvW map?
Maybe Yams. The issue is when the groups get really big and laggy, it becomes less about your skill and more random than not.
Should the delay on bombs (not the BoB toolbelt kit) be reduced so that the engineer would perform better in a larger zerg v zerg situation in wvw?
Outside ascetics, would it really add to the power level of the engineer unfairly in any other mode of play?
With lag and the murderball of pvp often the enemy is not where you placed the bomb and given the radius of the bomb it isn’t like the grenade where you throw where you anticipate them going to be.
- Would it be unfair to increase the speed of the grenade flight? This again would greatly help an engineer in wvw where multiple enemies run in multiple directions and there tends to be lag issues so it is not a pure “throw where they will be” issue.
Given performance is a bit of an issue, why not speed the grenades up to improve predictability of the damage? Think Read the Wind only less dramatic.
Mace and allow it to be re-skinned with a “default” set of 3 hand held hammers. Some of the maces would look positively odd on an engineer.
But, I don’t think we want to go down the “need weapons” path (as that would really suck up developer time to do for each class) versus wanting improvements in WvW and specifically in gadgets and a few trait tweaks.
If anything tied to weapons, the engineer could use the ability to have a placeholder weapon for the purposes of having equal sigil opportunities.
Well warriors are annoying in WvW that is certainly true. Banner res is just a pain in the neck with Lords etc. Warriors running around the map quicker than a ranger really? That is a head scratcher. They probably need some WvW only tweaks.
I would definitely start with how banners work in WvW.
Thieves are also annoying in WvW if you are out roaming on in a small party. Otherwise, their utility is pretty marginal. Lesson take friends. Still, if you have to run alone to get to your friends, they are simply the most annoying thing to run into. But annoying is not necessarily OP.
Look, we can all say that the engineer is in a “fine place” and I would have generally little reason to disagree noting that all classes have this or that which could be improved upon. Same for ele.
But it is quite hard to actually say that ANET was not besieged by the issue of sigil parity when it moved from having 2 handed weapons only have 1 sigil to 2 sigils because people thought the one handers were “more powerful”. If you are going to cave to that type of parity, why not extend it to all classes? In short, you provided parity to all classes save 2 around the use of sigils.
I am well aware that I can take non-swapping sigils, but if I don’t take a kit as an engineer, I can’t take a swapping sigil so there is a bit of a parity problem.
Frankly, the OLD system of providing a benefit from taking 2 1 handed weapons versus 1 2 handed weapon was MUCH better. Think of the builds that are the most annoying in PvP and WvW. Too often they involve the AE and cleave of the 2 hander. I always thought there was supposed to be a penalty for taking the 2 hander in the customization of the weapon. But they caved. As such, it is now time to finish the job by allowing engineers and eles the same sigil access too.
You DO NOT need to provide them more than the same sigil access (e.g. more weapon skills). The 2cd set could be nothing more than a way to hold sigils and not actually usable or swappable.
To those who argue that stealth needs a counter and that AE is not a true counter. . .
Stealth by itself does no damage. Stealth does allow for a big hit.
That big hit is easily counterable IF you have any idea it is coming OR there are a lot of “recovery counters” thereafter.
AE most certainly is a counter not to stealth but to the idea of the thief being able to simply avoid damage in stealth or heal in stealth.
The thief has a lot of ability to disengage when a fight is going poorly. They can keep resetting a fight until you make a mistake and die. If anything, I would allow a ranger to “see feet” or know where the thief is heading generally even if the thief would not be revealed. That would allow you to focus some ae.
The only consistent way to keep the thief from disengaging is what I call CC overload. That is you simply throw so many conditions on them that the thief can’t clear them all while in stealth save SR which you can just push them out of. That works for classes like the engie that has a huge amount of AE delivered conditions and not so well for say a ranger.
Simple to keep this relatively balanced.
The engineer and elementalist should be allowed to have a “shadow” weapon which allows you to benefit from the additional sigils. Changing attunement should count as swapping weapons. Using a kit does for an engineer.
It should not allow for additional weapon skills (it is just a placeholder for sigils) except in the odd instance that an engineer runs without any kit in his/her utility bar. That might open up 3-5% of the total engineer population to a new set of specs.
In short, the game indeed is more balanced around weapon skills than it is around access to sigils which are increasingly important. I remind everyone, that the same issue existed between one handed and two handed weapon users and it was changed to keep everyone equal.
The toolbelt skills of Gadgets are not shall we say remarkable.
What if the gadgets became a “gadget kit”? You get access to all 4 of them plus one “auto gadget”. Very few are overwhelming given the recharge timers. There is some damage but essentially this is a utility kit.
The auto attack could be an electric shock (like a static discharge).
Pick one of the toolbelt skills to be the one you get (analyze seems the most reasonable fit).
Might need to tone down rocket boots to be more akin to the distance of Acid Elixir on the E-Gun.
Thoughts?
Plenty of our kits skills are OP underwater. Using speargun 1 is well. . . . . unnecessary.
I use a different build than you Aran but you have the right idea.
The engineer provides outstanding skills when you have “skill scarcity” in small to mid sized groups. It can do almost everything.
The larger the zerg or the closer you get to Tier 1, the engineer in wvw suffers from not being a pure specialist (there is far less skill scarcity).
At the same time, the noted weaknesses of the engineer are much greater in larger settings (prone to immob, lack of stability, condition overload). These weaknesses were designed to be countered a bit by the CC and active play boosts the engie has. Great for small groups. Not enough for a zerg.
There are tricks to the trade for a large zerg. You can be almost immune to cripp, immobilize etc thru armor, a trait and food. But it is a tradeoff of course. Generally, you simply scale down when the size of the zerg scales up.
Well, I think parts of the data are telling.
It does show that certain builds are just easier to master. Warrior being exceptionally simplistic to do exceptionally well.
On the other hand, I suspect that part of your not picking certain classes is going to come from the familiarity of the playstyle.
AE counters stealth nicely.
That is why most thieves are extra cautious around an engineer. Not saying they can’t kill one, but it is a bit trickier.
I love how people talk about engineers as if there is some secret code to being great and that most engineers just aren’t. Nonsense.
The engineer’s utility scales down not up. In other words, you really have more utility roaming and in small groups than in a zerg. That doesn’t mean you are useless or can’t overcome, but your “sweet spot” is not the zerg.
I play an engineer. I play all sorts of specs and have all sorts of different equipment sets.
Yes, the skill level is harder but not insurmountably so. It isn’t a lack of familiarity or skill that drives this, but a cold hard dispassionate look.
There are real problems with the engineer in a zerg that you can overcome but you should not deny.
1. At deep range, we simply have grenades that take too long to get on target. Given the movement of zergs, sure you CAN hit a lo of targets but often you don’t. We also suffer from having so many ranges.
2. Our melee range capability is fantastic with bombs but often is negated by having little stability and condition removal. In other words, we can get overloaded easily. In a perfect World, a bomb engineer moves differently than a guardian or a warrior but must rely on them to avoid “lockdown”.
3) Our utility similarly works much better where it is harder to spam lock us down. Our condition cleanse in fumigate is quite remarkable provided you can get that close without getting stuck in.
4. Much of our healing is “multi skill” (blasts etc) which are far easier to interrupt or lockdown mid combination in a bigger zerg.
5. Like a thief, much of our avoid damage capability came in the form of blinds (bomb, pistol etc). Blind works much better in small groups than AE centric large zergs.
There are ways to avoid being crippled, stunned etc. Once or maybe twice but the quick reapplication in a zerg setting is what really creates a problem.
Engineers play very very good situational roles. In a keep, I can swap quickly into traits and turrets to allow us to use siege without having general range destroy it.
Bombing a choke can create fairly good area denial.
My pull is quite fun too for runners, dolys etc.
A couple of things come to mind:
First, I am for allowing the kitless engineer to have access to a second weapon set. It is less for the skills and more for the sigils.
Before we go too far:
It only takes ONE utility slot to “make up” for not having a second weapon with skills.
But you CAN’T make up for the lack of sigils (at least not “in kind”),
Several classes lack mobility and their primary means is tying up a utility slot with a movement ability. So several classes wind up only having 2 offensive or defensive utilities.
Our kits arguably are far better than the typical weapon and they are very synergistic with skills/traits. For example, the bomb kit is an amazing kit in the melee range with very high damage (if power build) and very strong conditions. Grenades. . . well. . . enough said if you spec that line they are better than a typical weapon.
So, for the purpose of having “abilities” to use, it only takes ONE kit. Build diversity is just fine even if you want a couple of turrets or gadgets.
But. . . .
You still have fewer sigils. There is the real issue.
None. I play a lot of characters and a lot of equipment sets. For me, the best use was getting more ascended accessories that take a LOT of laurels otherwise.
Laurels take a lot of time to collect!
I’ll buy that XTD and yes, I did miss out on that.