Guild Wars 2

Fantasy is not elves and dwarves in medieval Europe.

It’s the nature of pve to get easier the more you play it. Even if the levelling process was ‘difficult’, any time after the first will not be difficult because you already know how to do it.

It’s like the difference between deriving an equation and using it. Most important equations were derived over countless hours of difficult and tedious work by brilliant innovators, but the result is something so easy to use that even someone completely unfamiliar with the subject could get the right answer.

My experiences with open world ‘pvp’ from WoW:

1. Level 85 player one shots my non 85 and there’s no possible way for me to do anything.

2. Same level as me player tries to attack me and spends the next half hour being corpse camped because the only people that gank are scrubs that can’t handle actual pvp.

ITT:
‘I like warhorns!’
‘I like swords!’
‘I like warhorns!’
‘I like swords!’
‘I like warhorns!’
‘I like swords!’

@Prism before they got removed, the datamined sword skills were just standard melee hack and slash.

Linnael.1069:

Fresh air S/F is one of the strongest dueling specs out there. This is not a deniable fact.

That’s the one trick pony aspect I was talking about, and as you say, it’s mostly playable only because of the focus. The only thing that the scepter is really contributing is phoenix and lightning strike for the burst. If it wasn’t for those it would just be inferior in absolutely every way to D/F.

Furthermore, I don’t consider its viability in dueling to be relevant. GW2’s pvp modes are team games, so everything should be judged on its ability to contribute to a team. S/F fresh air contributes a burst and some moderate support, but is severely outclassed by medi guard and D/P thief which have much better support and much better control and mobility respectively, while both have much better sustained damage as well. There is nothing the scepter can do that isn’t outclassed either by another class using a similar build or the other weapons ele can use.

I wonder why they’re so uncommon. Could it possibly be because anyone playing to win wants to use weapons that aren’t worthless one trick ponies?

Anet always forgets gates when they make a new lifesteal.

The ele scepter has always been a rather weak weapon. Between slow, awkward cast times and low damage, it’s just not particularly good at anything. I decided to take a look at each one of its skills and come up with ideas that I think would increase the viability of scepter builds.

Flamestrike
Reduce cycle time to 1 second
Increase power coefficient to 0.45
3 target aoe with radius of 180
Base 3 second burning, increased by 1 second for each target that already has burning

It’s extremely telling that I can more than double the power and condi dps of this skill without it looking overly powerful. The idea here is to give the ‘aoe and burning’ attunement some sustained aoe and burning.

Dragon’s Tooth
Ground targetting
Reduce cast time, leave the time between completing the cast and the impact the same

Nothing much to say about this. Gives the player slightly more control.

Phoenix
No changes

Ice Shards
New effect: deals 33% more damage to foes with less than 50% endurance

A simple change to make the skill slightly more dangerous.

Shatterstone
Increase recharge to 8 seconds
Increase power coefficient to 1.2
New effect: foes struck lose a large amount of endurance

Increased damage makes the skill worth hitting with and the ability to strip endurance synergises with my ice shards change. I’m not sure how much endurance it should strip, though.

Water Trident
No changes

Arc Lightning
Normalise all strikes to 0.25 power coefficient

Currrently arc lightning does bad damage even if you complete the channel and with such a long channel time that’s not likely to happen.

Lightning Strike
No changes

Blinding Flash
No changes

Stone Shards
Reduce the gap between each projectile launching to decrease the cycle time to 1.5 seconds

This skill feels a bit slow and unwieldy currently. This would make it a bit nicer to use.

Rock Barrier/Hurl
No changes

Dust Devil
No changes

So what do we think? A drop in the ocean? OP plz nerf? Any other suggestions for improving the scepter?

All pve can be solved, therefore no pve can be challenging. You just follow the solution and you win.

Neither of those swords look ele themed in the slightest and the shield is for rev’s elite glint spec.

If you aren’t a tournament winner then nothing you’ve done is even a millionth of what deserves an exclusive reward.

Stormbolt.7293:

Don’t preorder any game, for any reason, ever.

This is the only correct answer.

To be fair, I would certainly prefer to have customers that don’t think and just obediently hand me money. :D:D:D

In a business setting, buyer and seller are enemies. It’s not at all unreasonable for us to pit our own greed against Anet’s.

Warrior and guardian are so much better at frontlining than every other class that it’s meaningless to rate anything else. If you aren’t using warr or guard then the only thing you contribute to your team is a dorito.

Would you say that Anet wanting people to fork out 800 gems (remember that even if you buy them with gold, someone paid real money for them) to unlock a character slot so that they can use the new class they already paid for by buying the expansion is them wanting something for nothing? I would.

I used to not thing much about guild halls but…

GVG GVG GVG

People need to not act like the difference between exotic and ascended is small. I just did some quick math-hammer on the expected stat changes for both exotic and ascended using a full soldier’s guardian as the base and got these results:

Exotic
Effective power: 2775.36
Effective HP: 33640.30

Ascended
Effective power: 3213.06 (15.8% higher)
Effective HP: 37505.86 (11.5% higher)

That’s a massive difference. The overall performance boost is around 30% from upgrading from full exotic to full ascended. That performance only considers a straight dps race. Anything else I could possibly include would only tip things even further in favour of ascended.

To use some practical examples: if you are using full exotic and at any point your enemy falls below 13% HP, you would’ve just downed them if you were using full ascended. If you are using full ascended and fall below 10% HP at any point, you would’ve just been downed if you were using full exotic.

If you cripple, chill, immobilise, stun, knockback, knockdown, launch or fear me I can just escape as usual with a teleport. Funny that I don’t seem to be seeing much hate for a far more powerful mechanic that hasn’t changed since launch but I do see hate for a still weaker mechanic that’s changing.

I used to be able to be proud of the results that I could get on my own through intelligent use of static field and unsteady ground. Those 1-2 second stab uptime advantages that get us the win from dropping static at the exact right time and place. The one-push wins from surprising an enemy group at the edge of our threat range.

Using lines to ruin everyone’s day was the best source of ‘just as planned’ moments I’ve had in recent memory, but now anyone can do it by just smashing buttons if they have the numbers. Why even play a pvp mode if I don’t have to read my enemies’ tendencies to win? It’s no better than pve scrubbery at this point.

People who enjoy watching salty, kneejerk reactions are benefiting quite a lot. :D:D:D

I don’t want wvw to get any more button mashy than it already is.

Grimreaper.5370:

(…) design classes that take years to master. THIS IS HOW YOU ESPORT!

That’s how pve imitates skill. Pvp is able to be skillful because you have human opponents. Creating a system where the players themselves are the most important factor is how you esport.

I don’t understand why people are against less grind in what’s supposed to be a pvp mode. Fight players, not the clock.

Zintl isn’t the ‘wrong’ religion. All of the hylek in vanilla, including all the allied hylek are Zintl worshippers. We also aren’t attacking them unprovoked. These extremists are using terror tactics and threats to try and force the jungle hylek into joining them.

Arioso.8519:

Old stability is pretty OP, objectively speaking.

Try again. The gvg guild I used to play in while I was active in wvw wiped zergs with a setup that had 40% stability uptime. As a staff ele, one of my jobs was to screw the enemy over with statics so I learned the weaknesses of common frontline setups pretty quickly.

morrolan.9608:

Coldtart.4785:

I complained when world ranks were added and now the only complaint I will ever have about changes to that system is that they didn’t remove it entirely. Get your pve trash out of wvw.

Progression isn’t PvE, the grand daddy of WvW, DAOC, had Realm v Realm ranks and progression.

Grinding for advantage is the epitome of pve, or did you not see all the other rage posts about ascended gear and food still existing in this topic?

I complained when world ranks were added and now the only complaint I will ever have about changes to that system is that they didn’t remove it entirely. Get your pve trash out of wvw.

Meta is short for ‘metagame standard’.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Link packet of salt for every response.

[&AgF5LwAAAA==] Link code for packet of salt. You’re welcome.

World ranks in general are pve as far as I’m concerned and should never have been added.

Do teefs not realise that they are not the only class where bad things happen if you get hit by rapid fire? Or that they aren’t even close to the most vulnerable to taking a full rapid fire to the face?

I haven’t read all the posts here and I doubt I’m the only one who would say this. It seems bizarre to me that mandatory pick traits and traits combos all over the game are being made baseline or merged to create meaningful choices, even some in the ele itself, yet we’re forced to choose between 1 of 2 out of a currently available mandatory trait combo in arcana.

This change does nothing to address the reason why elemental attunement and evasive arcana are mandatory, which is that ele is bad without them. To make things worse, the master tier where elemental attunement used to live is now stuck with 3 bad traits. So where everyone else’s trait choices would be ‘what do I want here?’, ele’s choice in arcana will instead be ‘which of these is the least bad and which EA could I give up for the other?’.

This isn’t even mentioning the third grandmaster arcana trait, which I don’t even remember the name and effect of because there’s no way it could possibly compete with elemental attunement or evasive arcana.

Baktwerel.9108:

Correct me if I am wrong but as far as I know, the Reaper only has the epic scythe in the new Death Shroud mode and only if a specific trait is active for it…

It’s a minor trait so you always have it if you take reaper, also you’ll be puking up life force everywhere when you play reaper so you’ll be in shroud quite a lot.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Match manipulation is a no-no.

Match manipulation is contingent on the match itself being competitive. How exactly do you define match manipulation when there’s no competition?

Every piece of pve content that will ever be made in any game will always have exactly 1 provably best way to play it. You can change its shape but in the end it’s all the same.

Glitches are a part of the game. Just because they weren’t intended to exist doesn’t make them not exist. Calling something an exploit is just saying you don’t like how people play the game. It’s not up to players to decide what should and shouldn’t be possible; it’s up to Anet to decide to ‘ascend’ the glitch or remove it.

Test of faith hits when crossing its boundary like the stun lines that have no aoe limits. Get enough guards to spread them around strategic locations in a wvw fight then enjoy watching the enemy team have to choose between standing still and getting shot up or walking through the trap spam and instantly dying.

The situation when you should use most of the 25 point heals is never so I’d say they’re weak.

It’s a longbow trait. Of course it’s made to primarily benefit the longbow…

Spammy tactics like immob wells vs condi clear spam are a symptom of the real problem, which is that condi vs condi clear is an arms race. If you have more condi than your enemy has clears then you counter their clears and if you have more clears than your enemy has condis you counter their condis. There’s no room for skill or strategy in a mechanic like that and any buffs or nerfs won’t address this problem.

Atrociously bad map design basically. The reason why people karma train it is because if everyone played it to win you’d just get 4 hours of staring each other down not doing anything.

The original post was about being told to use his warrior instead of his engi. Comparing professions is absolutely relevant.

How good a class is at anything is a purely qualitative measure. It’s absolutely meaningless to present a class in a vacuum because they don’t exist in a vacuum. Engi can only be called good or bad at anything relative to the other classes.

I’m pretty sure that if you popped signet during split, then when you reset with shift you’ll also reset signet’s reset, so your shatters will return to their previous cooldown and split will go on full cooldown.

Daily log in metrics are equivalent to subscription numbers for Anet. That’s the only reason for daily locked content and crafting.

coglin.1867:

Coldtart.4785:

coglin.1867:

Coldtart.4785:

There’s a lot more to support than blasting fields that eles are better at placing in the first place. Virtually everything a warrior, guard or ele can do is aoe and eles can do it from 1200 away.

That’s nice. Make a thread about it. This thread isn’t about comparing professions, or even comparing engineer to other profession. It is about the engineer in a large force.

McWolfy.5924:

coglin.1867:

McWolfy.5924:

Emgis have a nice pull skill but thats all.

And blocks, and lots of protection, and AoE blinds, and and plenty of vigor, and-73 damage when CCed. But ya, your right. That’s just about it.

And are they share it with the party? Necros have pulsing blind field, guas have party might, prot, regen, stability, retal, warrs have party vigor and kittenload of blasts, haste.

Yes, yes they can share it with their Parties. I use Fumigate to remove more conditions in my allies then any other profession can do. I run bomb kit and keep an AoE 300 heal on my party with it, as well as 12 stacks of might from blasting my fire field. As well as the heal from super elixir. The list goes on and on and on and on.

If you really have to ask if engineers can share buff with their party, then your likely not familiar enough with the profession to attempt to have a discussion about their capabilities.

If engineer is inferior to other classes you shouldn’t use it if you want to win.

Then you shouldn’t play it if you cannot win with it. Personally I thrive with it as a T1 server commander.

Simply because you and how you build or play it gives you limitations, does not mean others have that problem. I enjoy the profession. So I think outside the box and run unique builds and thrive, both having fun on a personal level and winning.

T1 blobmanding is supposed to impress me? When they weren’t WPing away from us t1 blobs were hilariously easy kills for our 15 man gvg team during seasons. Just because you can ‘thrive’ with it doesn’t mean it isn’t worse.

coglin.1867:

Coldtart.4785:

There’s a lot more to support than blasting fields that eles are better at placing in the first place. Virtually everything a warrior, guard or ele can do is aoe and eles can do it from 1200 away.

That’s nice. Make a thread about it. This thread isn’t about comparing professions, or even comparing engineer to other profession. It is about the engineer in a large force.

McWolfy.5924:

coglin.1867:

McWolfy.5924:

Emgis have a nice pull skill but thats all.

And blocks, and lots of protection, and AoE blinds, and and plenty of vigor, and-73 damage when CCed. But ya, your right. That’s just about it.

And are they share it with the party? Necros have pulsing blind field, guas have party might, prot, regen, stability, retal, warrs have party vigor and kittenload of blasts, haste.

Yes, yes they can share it with their Parties. I use Fumigate to remove more conditions in my allies then any other profession can do. I run bomb kit and keep an AoE 300 heal on my party with it, as well as 12 stacks of might from blasting my fire field. As well as the heal from super elixir. The list goes on and on and on and on.

If you really have to ask if engineers can share buff with their party, then your likely not familiar enough with the profession to attempt to have a discussion about their capabilities.

If engineer is inferior to other classes you shouldn’t use it if you want to win.

Fighting in EotM is for scrubs. GB2 real wvw.

There’s a lot more to support than blasting fields that eles are better at placing in the first place. Virtually everything a warrior, guard or ele can do is aoe and eles can do it from 1200 away.

Faereilos.5106:

Too bad it’s a trenchcoat I want to see some sexy male butts darn it.

Quick swapping has you covered.

Like all classes in the pirate ship meta engi suffers from the crippling disadvantage of not being ele.