What if, you would get delayed “footsteps” (2 seconds or so) showing the general direction the thief went?
It would be delayed so they might not still be headed in that direction. You wouldn’t be able to target the. In stealth etc. But it would help the frustration of “loosing” the thief too easily.
Or really, you could just make sick em track the footprints of the thief in real time (but not I stealth them).
Med kit bandages could remove a condition. Antidote could be moved to short term reduction in condition duration or damage.
You would have 3 conditions removed every 15 secs which is a lot but you have to drop the heals and run over them (and not have allies do so). Antidote reducing condition damage by say 25% would be interesting or it could just be a stun break really.
EPIC is epic fun. There are members of just about every age with a good female population as well and while US focused (timezones and all) we have a good contingent of international members as well.
Char is one of the best teaching commanders without much of the demand that you play a certain way (versus just listen and try to help). The guild does extremely well in open WvW both in a havoc and a larger group mentality.
We do have a number of players who PvE, PvP and engage in other activities so there is no lack of ability to find help. . . but the focus is indeed WvW.
There won’t be a night that you are not laughing in this guild. Fun. Down to Earth. Sometimes a bit mature conversationally but always respectful of people.
Try it out. You just might like it and learn what a Filipino Filing Cabinet move really is. Note: Char would excommunicate me for explaining in forums!
P.S. We need more engineers. Everyone needs more engineers!
A great deal of grenade damage comes from burning given this trait.
Burning is not otherwise available easily at range. You would probably need to add burning to one of the grenades if you did this. It is why engineer conditions on the actual weapon skills are a bit more toned down than the necros.
I see conditions as being our strength (applying) and our weakness (taking).
If anything, I would argue we need more ability to move and break stuns(Love to see the e-gun’s acid bomb) move us forwards not backwards for example.
As for condition removal, we have a very good turret for that. 2 every 15 seconds.
You get another from e-gun super elixir that is very fast (but only 1 condition) and tend to have a trait to remove one condition every 15 seconds as well but that is out of your control. We also have a lot of passive regeneration and healing to counter minor conditions. The problem is we can’t clear A LOT of conditions placed on us very quickly.
You can always take elixir c instead of say the e-gun if running solo or in a small group. It is very effective and the long recharge timer is ok given the other condition removals at our disposal.
If I were to make changes to add just a little help.
1) Regenerating Mist (F1 skill on heal turret) would remove a single condition (AE) or maybe two (but engineer only).
2) Fumigate would clear 1 condition every other tick for the engineer (you could call it “drift” and
3) Increase drop antidote to 2 or 3 conditions. Two mirrors HT. Three would reflect it is single person use.
This would make the game a lot more fun for me and all those who don’t really enjoy PvE that much.
I don’t think it would make the game less fun for anyone else as it won’t really siphon players from PvE or create Ghostyards (you can level easily on your own).
I suspect it would result in greater gem purchases (as you really don’t purchase gems while leveling up a character I find).
How is this not a win-win-win scenario?
Well, I play SoS too mostly as an Engineer and Ranger. Given that, I made a thief that is d/d and d/p which is full glass just because that is such a different playstyle. Yep, it is the regen ones when full glass that use lots of evades that mess me up so far.
Reasoning:
Patch notes will be long and will lead to intense reading, reviewing and theorycrafting.
That means that after the patch, there will be a lag between patching and playing which isn’t as much fun.
Releasing the notes today gives just enough time to really digest them, design your new builds and then play play play when you first patch.
Hope you read this!
Let there be an Arrow in the Knee, A Bomb at Your Feet and Blinding Powder in Your Face.
I would wait to see what rune sets there are on the 15th.
Balance is when a player has a reasonable chance of having a pretty good time in most all game modes. It includes areas of excellence (especially against other classes) and areas of weakness (especially against certain other classes).
Balance isn’t really skill v skill based, it is more of a role and utility feel.
The ranger really needs one or more of these traits to be class inherent.
I have always thought that range should be what makes a ranger’s bows unique.
A thief gets a bounce.
A warrior shoots a pair.
Ranger should shoot farther!
I think it is time to simply put SB at 1100 (a little farther than thief and warrior) and LB at 1500 without a trait.
Combine the 5% damage on LB with Spotter. There ya go.
It isn’t unbalanced given it is a short stealth. Rangers (I main one with my engineer and the thief is my third toon) has any number of ways to counter a thief in general especially with such high evades.
In fact, as a thief I really hate playing against rangers and engineers.
I would more agree if you limited it TO pets and avoided things like walls or turrets.
That seems odd to say the least.
Engineers can be a lot of fun but sometimes it is hard to see why.
First, consider all the fields and finishers you can bring. There is nothing more fun than being able to stealth a small team, might stack with the best, and create water fields you self blast and cause mass area retaliation with that e-gun. A few good Yishis videos or Wolfineer ones will show you some really fun things.
Engies are a one man field and finisher machine.
As for range, I love grenades ONCE you decide to not require 2 clicks to throw them (it is in options). E-Gun is great fun too.
A traditional condition build might be grenades, e-gun, bomb kit then pistol and shield.
Shield takes some getting used to but it is great fun to reflect all projectiles for 4 seconds and bouncing a blind and confusion is wonderful with the pistol. You really shouldn’t be in rifle unless you are a power build.
The other quite enjoyable build is very much based on the rifle for range and then bomb kit’s ability to heal (elixir infused bombs). It is one of the best group healing specs out there with HT, E-Gun, bombs, the F2 abilities becoming very high regen and then all your passive healing and damage reduction skills. Damage comes from just dropping bombs all over the place when running with melee or big hard rifle shots.
Wait on turrets. They are getting some really interesting changes on the 15th.
Once you get the hang of the class, you will find it quite enjoyable.
Going to be dueling soon and need whatever pro tips you have on beating a hambow warrior with a 3 kit (bomb, nade, e-gun) condi engineer.
It is a strong heal.
As a turret,
You can overcharge it still pretty quickly for fast condition cleaning.
It has a large radius
As use and pickup,
It is a bit slower to do all the healing BUT
It is a water field that can be blasted on a very short refresh timer
Remember, we have options for a fast heal (as does every class I ever played). This skill is about more healing.
The turret typically shouldn’t be down long enough to be blown up. It DOES happen on occasion but not often. Drop, water field, blast, pickup. F1, Drop, water field, blast.
Keep working with it. You will get used to it.
The biggest problem is that there is too much of a barrier on your moving off a low population server coupled with too little incentive for people to move onto those servers.
The smartest thing to do is to allow easy transfers to any server you want when you want. Just delay how frequently you can do that to ensure people don’t take advantage of a short term (e.g. season of WvW) scenario.
While this is a damage centric game, has there been any consideration for rewards for healing?
What are the pros/cons?
On the pro side, it would open up more diversity in builds.
I always liked the idea of a “recently dead” debuff that just takes time to clear. No way in the game to clear it faster save maybe gem purchased tonics (this is a for profit game).
Overall effect, is that you are not kept from game play or penalized in terms of gold, achievements or gear but your effectiveness goes down the more you are killed in say a 10 minute period.
I would have the debuff stack.
An alternative would be that there is a healer at the farthest waypoint who you can clean rez sickness from for a cost.
Let people play on the server they want to.
If they want to move, make it easier to move.
Let folks decide the size of the queue and the length of the wait they desire by transfers.
I/d have to see how much real revenue comes in from transfers, but I would guess that without the fee, you might make a gem purchase anyway to “boost up” for the new server.
Let people be as FOTM as they wish.
Ranger utility falls apart sadly in larger group settings.
In smaller groups, the ranger brings fewer group utilities (cleanses, fields, finishers)
The ranger is a fine roamer.
One thing that will really help the ranger is faster changing of builds. This is because the build that covers say a larger fight in a keep is quite different than a roaming build.
Sigils that are “on swap” are fairly amazing because each kit is a weapon swap.
Come April 15th, you will want one sigil to be corruption though. 25 stacks is > than what you typically get from superior rune of battle.
Bursting seems powerful until you run the math. It actually just provides 6% more condition damage. 6% of say 1700 condition damage is only 85. 3 might stacks is 105.
I may go Battle/Corruption come the 15th.
I think right now we should be focusing on how to nerf the warrior.
GS is certainly not underpowered.
Engineers have huge build diversity. One of the things that makes them annoying is there are few tells on what build the engineer is carrying until you engage. You would have little clue as to whether I am a tanky/healing/power bomb build or a grenade spamming condi build.
Likewise, engineers have the very weaknesses to the very damage they do. We really hate condition damage (very few cleanses) and CC me and life is miserable (I have previous few stun breakers). We hate AE (especially siege) because of our limited mobility.
Now think about all the things we are really good at. I can clean YOUR conditions. I am fantastic at AE and at knocking down your siege and killing your casters. I really apply a lot of different conditions quickly (if you don’t transfer them back on me we are great), etc.
An engineer certainly has skills that can mitigate some of these weaknesses, (e.g. rocket boots) but they open up greater vulnerability to others.
Engineer is a well balanced class with the exception being that we really can decap small areas (which is ONLY a problem in PvP).
This is easier than people make it out to be. Just count all the builds that are run and highlight when/where.
Engineer: 6-8 easily.
Tends to variations on 3 themes.
Conditions (2 or 3 kit)
Healing/Tanking (Bomb Kit, Elixir Based)
Power Rifle Builds (variations on utilities)
Thief: 4+ builds
Backstab high stealth (several variations on trait choices if not where points are spent)
P/P Condition based
Pistol Whip S/D based (PvP mostly)
Weapon choice changes of 2 (S/P etc)
Ranger: 4-6 builds
Spirit Support Build w/ shout
Spirit Attack Build
Longbow/GS Build w/ Signets
Evade Melee Build
BM build
I play all the medium armor classes. Thieves hate fighting engineers because it is so unforgiving if you make a mistake or miss a backstab. The engineer, played well, can get into stealth himself and really throw off your timing. Plus the AE could care less about your blinds. And thieves hate to get immobilized.
The ranger can do well against a thief. . . depending on the build of the ranger, where the engineer generally will have the tools to beat a thief.
The hardest issue is, of course, actually killing a thief 1 v 1 who wants to get away. But that makes sense for a class designed to scout.
For the following builds:
1. 3-kit Condition Based (Nade, Bomb, E-Gun) w P/S.
I am using Koi Cake but wondering if I should go defensive.
How much real benefit do you find stacking condition duration?
Elixir Infused Bomb Power Rifle Build
2. I am increasing healing power with Mango Ice Cream.
Should I just try to reduce conditions instead?
I think it is pretty simple calculus.
You will make improvements focusing on other game modes.
With dueling you create a new game mode, even if a minor one.
That creates more buzz and stickiness to the game.
It also integrates with getting to know other classes better and certainly helps progress casual players to competitive games. What is better than dueling the same class and getting advice on what you are doing right or wrong to improve your play so you feel a bit more confident delving into pvp for example?
There are more good ripple effects that come from this being a priority than many other changes (in my analysis at least).
Healing Power
Vitality
Toughness
Give us more of a healer option.
Well it is a bit of a stretch to say we are the best roamer in wvw.
We are incredibly useful in most situations. The playstyle often differs quite a bit by each game mode and the learning curve is high.
I think a commander on SOS put it well last night. A good engineer brings incredible value to a group, any group, but most engineers are good only occasionally.
Some of what you say would be acceptable.
For example, just missing a strike wouldn’t be a bad reason to come out of stealth.
Likewise, some of the attacks that target ground not breaking stealth could be changed.
But overall, the idea of stealth as implemented in the game is actually pretty darn fair. AE is remarkably good against thieves in stealth. You just have to guess where they might have moved. The big stealth comes with a giant “bomb me here” circle.
Thieves are quite squishy. Blinds work vs direct target damage but not against AE.
Seems about right with some minor tweaks. . . maybe.
Pretty sure engineers ruin the day for most thieves.
10% crit chance is all I lose for over 2k health. Not sure I am missing much. . . .
The real issue is really not conditions nor power. It is having to stack and run together because that is the only effective way to get good defense.
Conditions would be far less of a problem for most classes, if they could add some distance (e.g. if backlines offered similar protection). Conditions would then be more focused on whittling down melee. Makes sense.
But this game really supports close proximity of EVERYONE melee and caster. That is when conditions, condition removal and stability get wonky.
To fix the game, fix the “Stack on Me” nature of it.
Buff Me Excessively
Buff My Friends Just Enough So They Continue to Play (and can marvel at how powerful I am)
Nerf The Heck Out of Everyone Else (they are farm food only)
It isn’t doable or practical though it often seems tempting.
The trouble is the game does not just rely on balance between classes but also between other PvE elements (mobs as a classic example). As you buff classes, you reduce the balance you wanted for classes fighting environmental features.
You would have to rebalance the entire game not the classes.
So, you tend to design based on a median amount of damage, healing, buffing etc you want on a class relative to an environment (which plays the same each time) and then do a little buffing and nerfing to skills on the PvP side to balance that mode while not shifting too much from the PvE balance that is needed.
Nerfing is absolutely essential. So is buffing. Players are far happier with buffs in the short term because we tend to play a class or two.
Here is the trouble. If players constantly complain about nerfs, you avoid nerfing. Ok, but the way you do that is to be VERY slow and VERY meticulous about balance updates. So, the downside of not accepting frequent nerfs is not getting frequent balance patches. In other words, when you balance, mistakes will be made (you will overcompensate). If you can’t claw back some of that gain, you will do far less balancing.
The real problem is that it is so casual unfriendly and unintuitive.
Who would guess not knowing that a cloth necromancer would have higher HPs than a heavy armored guardian?
The reason it makes sense to balance HPs is more about simplifying the experience for new players making initial characters.
Too often a class is just not what you expect in several cases if you played other MMOs. That is absolutely FINE if you spell out clearly what those differences are. HPs are not spelled out well for character creation.
Most players love customization.
Competitive Play is becoming far more niche than core to ANET. Just look at how they restructured their web page around the explanation of the game, or any of the recent Twitch messages.
Sure, they want people to get a bit “serious” in time, but acknowledge that the player base seems far more casual, more PvE, more achievement and reward focused, etc.
The changes in PvP really are to draw in the majority of players who are not competitive.
So, your idea, if it worked would benefit one of the smallest segments of the GW2 population and even then it is risky. Wrong idea for this game frankly.
It is not like you have to do a certain amount of damage (typically) or a target to get loot. You just need to do something.
So, my support engineer who uses healing bombs is not really disadvantaged versus my condition grenade spec engineer save the range and number of targets hit.
Look, every class has some other class or build that is tough for it (save warrior but don’t get me started on warrior).
I have zero problem with the fact that a condition based necromancer is tough for an engineer, anymore than I have a problem treating thieves as easy kills.
Our condition cleansing is meh. Though, in fairness, it isn’t horrible. HT, E-Gun. light field projectile finishers (shield really) etc. The problem tends to be that each has a timing element. There is no fast removal and we have too few projectile finishers really to use that light field effectively.
The engineer does VERY well removing other people’s conditions with light fields and fumigate but it’s our weakness.
Don’t blow your condition removal on things which you can regenerate out of.
I play thief and engineer. I too find it ironic Carboy.
As a thief, the engineer that scares me is the one that uses bombs.
The reason is simple. I take damage while in stealth and I can’t easily avoid the bombs and reach you.
HOWEVER, if you drop a single bomb and move, I can often get the timing right to get in and backstab you. The key is often.
So the thief playing an engineer has to carefully time a very quick strike attack.
The engineer, theoretically, will have the tools to reduce that impact. But very little of those tools are passive (save protection injection) so timing versus my fooling you with stealth is the key factor.
But if you don’t go down, I am at a severe disadvantage. Thieves HATE being blinded.
A good thief would NEVER EVER want to be in refuge around an engineer. When that happens bomb the hell out of it then the logical path they might take grenade it
Remember, even a p/s engineer will have the ability to knock me back when I am about to get my backstab off or block. It just is timing OR you can hold off and use them right after then cc bomb me.
Thief is a good matchup for an engineer IF you don’t get totally surprised and panic. You have a very short window to make the right decisions after a steal-cnd-backstab combo.
Don’t you mean the standard 30/10/0/20/10?
I thought you pretty much would get server identity and definitely guild identity in the megaserver given how they match you on a weighted formula.
With all due respect, having played an engineer (note name) as main, the PP build is perhaps the one I fear the least.
Your damage will be eaten by you thru retaliation and projectile blockers. If you still have initiative, it will be blocking time. Your damage per initiative on ranged damage isn’t great. I have plenty of ways to solve for the bleed from the autoattack. I don’t fear A condition. Engineers only worry about getting lots of different conditions on them.
I out range you. Your blinds are somewhat meaningless as both condition and power rangers take area attacks. I suppose if you find one without grenades or bombs you would be doing better.
I’m really good at immobilizing and crippling so I can keep you out of range if you don’t stealth often.
A good BS thief can take an engineer down. P/P would be hard to imagine. I suppose skill could obviously make a difference, but this is a tough one to see as really doing much EXCEPT for the unfamiliarity of it to the engineer.
The number of conditions really isn’t the problem considering those who have a number of conditions tend not to have enormous damage associated with each condition (e.g. really are you going to fear an engineer’s bleed?)
They are designed to make a mess of your condition removals unless you are very careful.
The issue is that there is too much defense in the game frankly. When you run condition damage you often get very tanky. That is where the fix should come in, on the ability to be tanky.
Rocket boots are much easier to use than the acid bomb (which requires learning to turn and blast) and you go farther.
Acid bomb has a faster cool down and the elixir gun has all sorts of additional utility.
First of all, they seem per their REDDIT post to be fixing the kits scaling with ascended.
Secondly, we are fine with sigils given the strength of the kits themselves.
Engie is in a very solid place!
Now the fun really begins. What if the Engineer is a healer? A good healing spec engineer will have over 3.3k power and can passively heal between bombs and backpack regenerator 1000/hps. That is before any active heal or regeneration. Regen which will go up upon getting attacked will add another 400-500/hps. For main heals they have a 7k self heal on a 20 second timer and 3 2k heals worth of bandages every 15 seconds (or more precisely every 5 seconds they can drop one). And their elite skill supply crate carries 6 more bundles of bandages.
They still have every condition in the book, just less damage per pulse. However, bombs stack with power better than any other skill in the game.
With ZERO healing stacks or might they drop 2 bombs a second that are rated 987 each (of course their crit chance sucks but hey you can’t have it all). Still, that is significant damage. Not to mention the 1500 blunderbuss attack to the face. So, quickly, I can pump out damage.
In this case, you simply can’t backstab, retreat, backstab as the engineer will too quickly recover the damage. Remember, most all of the healing comes from active play versus passive. So you need to stun, daze etc. If I can’t heal, I’m in trouble. If I can’t run over the bandages, I am in trouble.
ONE FINAL POINT: I see a lot of thieves on my engineer try to blind me. Why? I don’t target you. I target a piece of ground. Sure, it helps v my pistol shots but seriously, I am the last class that blind really works on.
The healing/power engineer is much harder for a thief to handle imho.
4) Engineers are very good against being burst by single target ranged damage.
Sure the sustained pressure of a ranger can be a bit much if I were to sit and take it, but seriously, don’t try to take me on your pistols/SB vs my grenades/pistol/e-gun. I have too much healing. I can easily add retaliation and weakness (and keep it up on you) and I have more blinds than you do in a ranged fight. Plus, if I really get in trouble, I have 3 seconds of full projectile reflection. And I will start immobilizing and crippling you or otherwise limiting your movement. That is the last thing you want.
Thief Counter: Note, for an engineer to really counter a thief’s ranged damage, they have to play with skills that are not really in the normal rotation. Most people forget to blast the light field, use the shield, etc.
5) An Engineer will have at least one solid block to “bust” your melee burst. The shield has a long cool down but it will block and then daze/stun you. IF, I get the timing right. You have even more trouble if the engineer is using a tool kit as now they have 2 blocks and the tool kit provides a 3 second one which means they really can screw up the timing of your strike and still block the backstab.
Thief Counter: Don’t let me predict when you are going to attack. I see way too many thieves stealth up then rush in at full speed. I can figure that out! If you wait 2 seconds, I tend to misapply.
Engineer Counter: If you are going to hide, so will I. Engineers stealth off blasting smoke fields. It just takes a couple of seconds (which I usually have if I see you stealth). But you should be able to stay in stealth longer. Be patient.
Also, an engineer should be able to take your backstab and punish you for it with a daze/stun/immobilize combo ESPECIALLY if you stay around to long.
6) Shadow Refuge is a BIG Mistake with an Engineer. It is a giant sign for me to just bomb the living snot out of the area or grenade it. You will likely die or I will just push you out with Big old Bomb and reveal you to burst you down.
Thief Counter: Blinding Powder utility gives me that extra stealth that I often need to get the multiple backstab, retreat, backstabs I need to kill and engineer as well as to clear the conditions. DON’T forget Shadowstep too. If you get loaded with conditions it is soooo great.
So the basic idea for the condition engineer is to simply get in, backstab and maybe HS quickly and get out. QUICKLY, go back to backstabbing again, getting out and rinse and repeat. You can take a bomb or two and you can remove the main conditions in stealth fairly well (I will try hard as I can to drop as many conditions on you as I can when you are revealed). So, I love D/D and CND with engineer fights. Shadow stepping, stealth on steal etc all are good traits. The more I can attack from hiding the better this fight will go. As my thief can quickly retrait before a fight, I tend to win more than I lose on engineers.
IN AND OUT beats the condition engineer. Next up, the real problem. . . the power/heal engineer.
As I main an engineer (and just now creating a thief as my second passion) let me try to assist everyone. Some of the ideas here are pretty good. Some simply won’t work. No offense as it is hard to really know another class.
Engineers are a class that you simply have to know upfront can be just about anything from a tank/healer to a condition grenadier. The harder issue is that there are very few upfront tells on what build the engineer is. In addition, while you see certain weapons on other classes and know pretty much what utilities are being used, you will have far less luck with an engineer. As a class, engineers run a wider variety of utilities and this is CRITICAL for a thief because so many of the utilities act like weapons (e.g. kits) .
There are metas so lets talk about two.
1) The Condition Engineer.
This engineer is typically going to by 30 in grenades (will explain that importance) and will have 20 in alchemy. Weapons will be pistol/shield almost certainly. They will tend to use at least 2-3 kits but you can only count on grenades being one of them. The other two tend to be bombs and elixir gun in that order of priority.
INCREASINGLY, you are seeing players skip bomb kit which is a mistake but bombs are hard to play well.
Headaches:
1) The engineer with bomb kit has the best area denial in the game.
Counter: The bombs have delays both casting and the fuse/timer. Properly timed, a thief can get quite used to getting in fast for a backstab then shadow stepping back or dodging out. Rinse and repeat. Stealing and shadow stepping and dodging away really make it quite possible to counter bombs. Do damage then get away. Don’t finish the fight on the first burst of damage. That is where the bombs will chew you up.
Engineer’s Counter: This works on newer engineers who make the mistake of dropping a bomb, moving and dropping another bomb. Since I can’t see you, I’m guessing where you are and when you will strike. A good engineer will drop 2 bombs, move, drop 2 bombs. The differences in the timers will make it very likely you will get hit as you move in. Also, while the thief can time the bomb’s detonation, the engineer has the advantage that you really don’t know what bomb I just dropped until it explodes. I have often “caught” a thief in a glue bomb then rained hell on him.
2) The engineer will have passive healing in Backpack Generator. While only a few hundred health/second, it really prevents a lot of whittling me down with your SB or P/P. I WILL outlast and out condition you.
Counter: Most condition engineers run Healing Turret which is the best heal in the game really but makes them VERY susceptible to thieves. You need to encourage me to bring my turret out and then attack it quickly. CND is a LOT of fun with turrets out. You just nail the turret, backstab the engineer and have oh so much fun rinse and repeat.
Engineer Counter. A good engineer wants only the healing turret overcharge and will drop, overcharge and pick the turret right back up when thieves are around.
3) Engineers have VERY long duration conditions especially burning and confusion that can cause a LOT of damage. They will be applied quickly. Burning comes from each and every critical strike on this build. You will get it no matter how the engineer opens up on you. Confusion can be stacked beautifully with the pistol with additional adds from bomb kit and tool kit if they are using it.
Counter: Thieves don’t die from a condition quickly and in stealth can clear them quickly. You simply don’t want to continue fighting after the initial stealth combo (plus one or two other fast attacks) before re-entering stealth.
Engineer Counter: Thieves worst nightmare is losing mobility to an engineer. I have more and more types of area attacks on shorter cooldowns than any other class. If I can determine where you are, you lose given your low health. Instead of spamming damage initially, a good engineer will do everything he can to immobilize you and/or cripple you so that where you are is limited and the bombs, grenades or even FT can chew you up.
Just because someone has a tag doesn’t mean they are a commander you have to follow or should follow.
It isn’t an honorary title. it is a convenience. Treat it as such and determine which commanders you want to really follow.