Guild Wars 2

delmarqo.5038:

Anyone who played a Bard in EQ, DAoC, SB, and LoTRO can tell you just how much variability there is to “class expectation”. As to this not fitting with fantasy archetype, perhaps that’s why they didn’t call it Wizard or Mage?

I wouldn’t mind fast weapon switch out of combat, but only as an improved UI, not to change the class. In combat I think it would unbalance things. We’re forced to switch out of combat as we assess what kind of combat we’re headed into at the moment. Other classes have different types of compromises (e.g. Mesmer can only switch between two sets though have access to eight, each of which only have five abilities, though of course there’s a good deal more complexity to it…).

Lack of in-combat weapon switching is ours.

And of course, the bugs and balance stuff, but that’ll come…

You can make this claim all you wish, as have others. Non-stance dance builds will never be viable under the system as it is, no amount of balance changes or tweaks will change that. It is a flaw in the design of the system, not a matter of balance. You cannot give one build a breadth of 20 abilities and another a breadth of 5 and expect them to be equal. You will either have to balance each ability against the possible use in conjunction with 15 others, or balance it as if only the five exist. Either way, you end up with a narrow and lopsided class, lacking in versatility and favoring one part of the playerbase over the other.

And most importantly, as I have said to the others, this will not affect your ability to play the elementalist as you currently do! It will only allow others to play differently. If you’re the type that would begrudge people the ability to have differing preferences from yours out of some sense of superiority, well then I feel sorry for you, and we are never going to see eye to eye, so there is no reason to continue this conversation.

And frankly, ‘they should have called it a mage then’ is a childish statement, it doesn’t matter what they call it, it matters what it does. A rose by any name would smell as sweet, they could have called the it the Piddlemancer if they liked, so long as it does what it currently does (no matter how ineffectively it does that) most players will still want to play a geomancer or aeromancer

yertle.5837:

alternate design of this mechanic:

- add OOC weapon swap
- add an arcane major trait that both swaps the OOC requirement from weapon swap to attunements and also makes the arcane trait line cooldown reduction apply to weapon swap instead of attunements.

Probably a bit complex and unlikely to be implemented.

Sorry to be blunt but the absolute LAST thing we need right now is ANOTHER reason to force everybody in to the arcane tree, it’s already one of our biggest problems.

I’ve killed many a mesmer that has moa morphed me, even in 1v1, so apparently not. Now granted, most of those times I was playing a mesmer myself, but I always run Time Warp, never Moa Morph.

People are still feeding this troll? It’s been days, let him die.

Overall, love the elementalist, the awesome spell effects add visual weight to every move. Playing one just looks awesome.

But, there is no diversity in this class, there are currently 2-3 PvP builds that allow an elementalist to survive, even then still barely contributing anything to the team. In PvE it doesn’t even matter what you build, as soon as you pull a mob you’ll know whether you can kite it or whether you’re completely boned. In WvW we are pretty much delegated to sitting on walls and spamming AoEs into a barely discernible mob. For the class with the most skills available at any point and time, those sets of skills are applicable in a disturbingly small amount of situations.

ThiBash.5634:

You get the attunements and that’s what you’ll have to work with. If you’re not up to it, then please do not go to the forums asking for a buff.

There’s no ‘switching strategy’ with swapping weapons. Don’t confuse range with strategy. You can switch strategy by switching attunement. For staves, this means setting up a different combo (with ice field instead of lava font) or using your water auto attack to gain it’s heals when your opponent’s at a shorter range.

Use your skills creatively. The different strategies are already available. Even the daggers have longer ranged skills that can help you close the fight (or use your utility slots to compensate).

Conncept.7638:

Nice idea, I could see either helping to fix the Ele’s lack of diversity.

Lack of diversity? Between the 4 attunements which all do completely different things and the combos they can make, hoe more diverse do you wanna get?

1. The only way to deal semi-decent damage as an elementalist is to stance dance through the full four attunements at all times. You admit this, and if you like playing that way, good for you. But please, stop being a child and refusing to let other people play in any other way.

2. In order to maximize the effectiveness of the stance dance, you are FORCED to fully spec in to the arcane tree. That is practically the singular playstyle available to elementalists in PvP. And yet you claim that this narrow singular playstyle forced on the entire playerbase is, in fact, diverse. Diversity is not mere numbers, having a massive amount of skills available at a single time is not diverse if all of those skills have the same range, deal the same damage, and have the same utility.

Which is more diverse, a can of 100 mixed nuts, or a bag of 1000 peanuts? By your logic, the giant bag of peanuts, however in the real world the mixed nuts is in spite of it’s lower numbers.

3. This is NOT what most of the playerbase expected of the elementalist when it was previewed, it does not fulfill fantasy archetypes desired by players, or expectations of diversity of style.

And if you look in the traits it IS intended, or was at some point, to have non-stance dance playstyles available. There are dozens of traits and abilities which reward you for staying in the same attunement for a significant amount of time, however these traits are currently useless because the damage and utility output of every single elementalist ability is currently balanced against its possible use in conjunction with all other available abilities. As they should be, because the stance dance should be a viable playstyle, and still would be with this change, if you like playing the elementalist as is, this doesn’t hurt you. But, with this addition, singular or dual attunement builds would now have sufficient skills to make use of the traits and abilities which encourage you to cater to a certain attunement, and as a result will potentially open up dozens of builds which are and will always be useless under the current system.

I only shortly played GW1, and never outright purchased it. But every time I picked up another game at the store, the awesome cover art of the ritualist nearly convinced me to buy it. I have no idea how it played, but from an aesthetic point, the class just looked amazing, and I would love to see it in GW2.

I think it’s a good idea, especially since some classes do not have a single elite that is useful for PvE.

MaXi.3642:

maybe this limit is a payoff for more skills then other characters have, i dont think ele needs a weapon swap… and if you go to dungeon/wvw/party you can swap it in inventory

But that still doesn’t solve a great deal of our problems in WvW or dungeons. I assume you’ve done AC, and as such fought the Ranger Lieutenant (can’t remember his name at the moment). Have you ever tried to fight him with daggers? He switches between meleeing you, and attacking you from range on an isolated platform. Every other class can swap between melee and ranged and fight him seamlessly. But if you’re an elementalist who has slotted daggers, you will be lucky to pull off half of your normal DPS while he is in ranged mode because you have to wast time chasing him up on to his platform, while everyone else just swaps weapons without missing out on a single point of DPS.

The game is riddled with such situations in every mode from PvP to WvW and even in to PvE; and in my opinion, it should not be. I should be able to adjust my strategy in combat like every other class can.

Kreit.4709:

If you want to survive, stop gearing in glass cannon. Hybrid gear/spec with toughness (knight gear at 60 lvl) and you can kill pack of 5-6 mobs with AoE and D/D (even in Orr). No need in full tank, damage will be terrible.
We all know ,that warrior have good survivability in DPS spec and can kill everything with 3 buttons. Just live with it…
P.S. Solo play in Orr is not fun for any class. Fast mobs with tons of CC.

Yeah, then you can spend an hour on each and every mob group, but you’ll never die…

Antiriad
You didn’t even read my post did you? The whole point is that you won’t be able to switch both attunements and weapons because they share the same CD, please read before responding next time. And… frankly… try to make at least some sense when you respond, I’m still not entirely sure I’m reading your post correctly.

BishopX
So, because the class builds and plays the way you like it, and ONLY the way you like, alienating a huge amount of players (as evidenced by the 1-2 pages of changes suggested each and every day), everyone else should be forced to play like you or not at all? That’s childish, selfish, and if you think that way, you’re hopeless and not worth any more of my time. Take your self-important imperialistic will and attempt enforce it someplace else, because it’ll be neither heeded nor welcomed here.

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnope

Bsquared.3421:

slightly less useless

I’m not sure how anyone can feel this way about the whip now in it’s current form. The thing can hit multiple targets now and doesn’t miss all the time (like before), it’s probably the best auto-attack in the D/D arsenal.

/boggle

You don’t rotate the camera with your mouse do you? There is a bug, which this didn’t fix, that makes it so most of the lightning whips attacks miss while rotating the camera with the mouse. So it’s still useless for a lot of us.

Carrioncrow.6872:

I made a suggestion about nearly the same thing here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Where-is-my-Geomancer-Hydromancer-Pyro-ect-ect/first#post356375

But basicly yeah.

Make it a 30 point Grandmaster trait called “Pyromancer, hydromancer, ect ect” that you have to get, then you unlock a 2nd weapon set but available only in that aspects you have unlocked it for.

Nice idea, I could see either helping to fix the Ele’s lack of diversity. Thanks.

Updated the OP with some extended info, have a look-see.

If they do it RIGHT

For an example of the bard done completely wrong, see D&D, which mistakenly refers to minstrels as bards.

Bards were Poet Warriors, they basically waded in to battle spinning a poem about how they were going rip off your limbs and use your stump of a body as a shield, despoil your land and loved ones, and build a monument to your failure with the corpses of your own men.

Then they would proceed to do so, singlehandedly.

Bards were BAs, not lute carrying sissies. If they want to add a minstrel class, fine, but call it a minstrel, quit defaming bards.

…is really out of the question, it would push us beyond overpowered, not to mention the most convoluted class in the history of convoluted classes. Even if our current full 20-skill burst is underwhelming in damage, a 40-skill burst would be ridiculous.

And out-of-combat weapons switch doesn’t fix our WvW problems. You can be in combat for a solid hour or more in WvW, and during that time the situation can completely change, making your current weapons set inapplicable. And the only way you can switch is by fleeing the battle and returning, cheating yourself out of fun and experience you rightfully deserve to participate in.

HOWEVER… I have a suggestion that will allow us to have an in-combat weapon swap, without breaking our class.

Give us a second weapon set, but make the CD tied in to our attunement system.

• Each time you switch attunements, the CD of your weapon swap will go up by 30 seconds, maxing out at 90 seconds. Likewise, when you swap weapons, each of the attunements will have a 20 second CD added to it, maxing out at 60. Neither of these CDs will work with the Arcane tree, so the arcane tree will be maintained as it is. Additionally, the standard CDs for weapon swapping and attunement swapping will be unaltered, except wherein they are altered by equipment or traits.

This will:

1. Allow you to open with one weapon and one attunement, and switch to a second on the secondary weapon, effectively allowing for ‘initiator’ strategies other classes have that the elementalist lacks.
2. Those traits which only help you in one attunement will actually be useful. If you really like earth, and are fully specced with traits that only work while attuned to earth, by weapon swapping you will now be able to stay in earth for long enough to feel like those traits actually do something.
3. If your current weapon set puts you at a disadvantage of range, you will be able to switch weapons so long as you don’t fully commit to the battle before figuring that out.
4. Allow you to adapt to the current situation in WvW. Never again will you turn from defending your keep to offense against the enemy and be forced in to a supportive roll because your staff AoE’s do nothing versus a fleeing enemy.
5. The stance dance system will be unaffected. If a player likes playing the elementalist as it is currently, (taking arcane talents and swapping attunements like a kindergartner on speed) he or she will still be able to do that. But if a player imagines playing a Geomancer, or a Hydromancer, or specializing in one or two of the attunements, that playstyle will now be available. This really doesn’t add anything more than build versatility, something the elementalist greatly lacks in PvP and PvE.

Magnetic surge>Armor of earth>Magnetic shield>Churning earth.

The closer people are to the epicenter of churning earth, the more often it applies the cripple. The shield makes for a perfect, nigh inescapable setup.

Working as intended.

Pets which are tied to a class mechanic scale with your stats, this being the ranger companion and mesmer illusions. Pets which are the result of a skill only scale with level, this includes the necromancer pets, engineer turrets, ranger nature spirits, guardian spirit weapons, and elementalist elementals.

I’ve done this lots of times by accident, it looks cool but isn’t it just a graphics glitch?

Jay wilson.1702:

hm no replys on whats wrong withit, that is okay I don’t want it to be nerfed

I can tell you what’s wrong with it, it was made by someone who can’t even string an intelligible sentence together, let alone design a real build. Have fun bursting warriors, rangers, guardians, and even engineers only to have them hit their heal and one-shot you.

Being able to regen is nothing special, does not make you tanky, and does not make this build viable, in case you haven’t noticed, every class in the game has a heal equipped at all times, not to mention the many classes that can slot off-heals or proc regen.

Umm… maybe because warriors are one of the best classes in sPvP right now? Seriously, I don’t understand how any warrior/ranger/thief can complain right now, try playing a necromancer or an elementalist.

Could be fun

• My Little Army
  Evade attacks, create 9 miniature clones, continue to evade attack until the miniature clones are destroyed or shattered.

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/mesmer#6|20|2681|8134|4091|4085|8987|30|1751|2299|2300|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|10|2316|0|0|30|2310|2312|2411|2|2|1|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Been going with this build since beta.

Still playing, still having fun, just never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever entering structured PvP.

Poplik.8697:

Conncept.7638:

…
Traited right, you can get 21 stacks of confusion (if I remember correctly) with five blinds, two dodges, and 6 evasions to rotate through on your bar.

EDIT: My mistakes 20 stacks of illusion, just checked Potentially more, since whenever they pass through a glamour field they get two more stacks of confusion and blind.

care to post this build? I was toying with the idea of confusion mesmer, I know it’s less powerful than bleeding but I like the idea of enemy killing himself

Sure.

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/mesmer#6|20|2681|8134|4091|4085|8987|30|1751|2299|2300|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|10|2316|0|0|30|2310|2312|2411|2|2|1|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Those are the basics, but this is a pretty maleable build.

1. You can switch out the off-hand sword for an off hand pistol. Get in melee with your opponent, cast Phantasmal Duelist then cast Feedback on top of your opponent and the duelist, followed by casting null field in the same manner. This gets a guaranteed 4 stacks of confusion and two blinds on him, and from two to eight confusion stacks from the phantasmal duelist.

2. You can switch out Portal for Signet of Midnight, which I frequently do depending on the situation. Signet of midnight has a much lower cooldown, but gives 1 less stack of confusion, and it is more reliable. While portal gives another stack of blind and confusion, it persists for longer than any other Glamour (giving another stack of blind and confusion every time the enemy enters), and allows you to kite very very well.

3. You can take ten points out of Domination and put them in inspiration to get either Temporal Enchanter or malicious sorcery. Temporal enchanter is better if you go with the sword/pistol combo, otherwise I like malicious feedback more. But if you do so, you’re going to have to drop Cleansing Conflagration.

EDIT: Whoops, had the traits wrong, fixed.

Just tested them, mine lasted 60 seconds each. And I didn’t even cast them in combat.

DesertRose.2031:

Elementalist is a durable, versatile profession with good utility, decent DPS but low burst.
Some people expected it to be a squishy, one-dimensional burst profession.

Those people are now disappointed.

Durable? You must be joking, we have to invest more in defense than any other class in the game, and we still get the least returns. We’re about as durable as wet tissue paper. Versatile how exactly? None of our weapon give us more than two possible combination procs, and lock us in to a single (easily exploited) range with every single skill. And pardon me but what utility? Even with 20 weapon skills available we STILL have the same or less amount of utility skills as any profession sporting 10, and those utility skills we have are at the weaker of the spectrum.

Sorry, I’m not a suck-up like the OP, and I’m not going to praise you for your prideful delusions.

LoreChief.8391:

In regards to healing turrets, here’s the thing. Right now, the only one that heals the turret is Smack. If you hit a turret with Smack, it won’t turn into Whack or Thwack. This means every hit heals the turret as it is, BUT it also means that we lose fluidity of motion. It actually takes longer to do 3 smacks than it does to do a S/W/T. EVEN MORE SO – even with Power Wrench the healing is pretty kitten kitteny. If a player can’t outdamage the healing you’re doing to a turret, than you need to reroll. Just tested it myself to verify, and per smack hit (traited) I literally only recover about 7% of a thumper turrets HP per hit. So unless we’re already immune to melee combat as we are, this will not be what makes us immune.

My last point on this subject, is that it’s a weapon kit. If you have one on your utility bar right now in the first place, you’re kittened. It overlays your weapon, robs you of stats – provides a tool belt skill (which by the way the tool belt skill ALSO emphasizes turret use) and putting it as a healing skill (which you can do because you DO GET HEALED, with tool belt skill just like Med Kit) only makes up for the fact that having wrench and 2 turrets as your utility skills is jacked up in the first place.

Can you explain what you mean by potential for abuse of this skill? Turrets aren’t mobile, and when you lay Thumper down, you’re merely hoping the enemy will either catch it’s aggro, or that the enemies will at least fight near it so it can do something. Being able to pull it towards you means you are pretty much guaranteed to see some use out of it.

The med kit heals everyone, last I checked, everyone includes you, and it still doesn’t deal damage either way. And what are you talking about? Read your own post, it states under the #1 skill that each hit now hits three enemies:

LoreChief.8391:

-Skill 1: Smack, Whack and Thwack all heal turrets (not just smack). Hits 3 targets now instead of 1.

Which I admit, now that I think about it, it already did. Sorry, I got pretty far with the engineer in beta, but I haven’t really leveled one up since release. Either way, we really need to avoid becoming the type of anti-fun bunker class that the guardian is starting to become in PvP. I have seriously seen one keep a point neutralized against a five-team for three minutes without support. Bunkering should be a legitimate strategy, but not such a pithy or dominant one, and the reason turrets are in their current state is because, of any group of skills, they have the most potential to become the ultimate bunker tool.

And concerning the potential for abuse, i’m not sure. But depending on the CD of this pull skill, casting time, range, and who know what other factors, you could potentially have all the benefits of turrets, without the primary drawback- the immobility. Honestly I can’t find combos for abuse when we are theorycrafting, I would need more tactile testing than that. But the immoblity is there to be a conscious drawback, weighed and measured as a player makes build decisions in his playstyle.

Mist form in to Tornado

Situation = breaking up groups of enemies in PvE or PvP

Explanation = Tornado is a great control spell, but it is difficult to work with because, ideally, you want to set it off in the middle of the enemy formation, allowing your team to pick off the enemies you have separated from their team. However wading in to the middle of a group will, almost always, result in your death. Mist form however makes you intangible and invulnerable, so you can enter the enemy formation and channel the skill without being harmed. Yes, that’s correct, you can channel any utility, heal, or elite skill while in mist form.

LoreChief.8391:

Conncept.7638:

Umm… these are extreme buffs to every ability across the board. This would push a tool kit+turrets build so far beyond broken OP it’s ridiculous to even consider. Both the tool kit and turrets need help, but this is not as much a solution or a fix, this is breaking it in the other direction. I would recommend toning it back… a lot.

Not that it’s functioning properly, but I’m going to use flamethrower as an example.

1. damage + burn
2. single target nuke (it’s buggy, but it’s intended to be nukish) w/ low CD
3. pushback/control skill
4. burning + damage + combo field
5. AoE blind on low CD

Our suggested changes thus far

1. Heals turrets
2. Only fixes handicapped AI so we can use turrets properly
3. Confusion, and reduces overcharge cooldown
4. 3 second block with pushback (this is par for the course with this kind of skill)
5. Turret-puller

3 of these skills (5, 3, 1) have only been modified to help us manipulate our turrets better, which is arguably a necessity right now. The only change to 3 otherwise was that it hits 3 targets instead of 1 – perhaps a damage redux is required for that, but so be it. 1 hits 3 targets, as it rightfully should anyways. 4 only got a slight buff.

How are these OP exactly?

1. Do you see any healing skill in the game that give you heavy damage and doesn’t actually heal you? The answer is no, and arenanet will never make such a skill, because it will encourage the devolution of the game back to the unholy trinity if every class can’t handle it’s own healing.
Furthermore, healing on all three hits to three turrets at a time will essentially make us immune to melee combat, nobody is going to stand a chance meleeing an engineer standing by his turrets. And it will hardly help us against ranged at all, which is a bigger problem than melee in the first place.

2. This shouldn’t even be an ability, the turret AI should just be fixed.

3. Three of the overcharge skills are hard CCs- Net turret, Thumper Turret, Flame Turret. Such CCs have a carefully calculated output to cooldown ratio to prevent excessive CC stacking, an on-command CD reduction that can be further traited to have a reduced CD itself is beyond broken.

4. Probably okay, but also the mirror copy of another engineer skill, seems like if anything this is due for replacement with a new skill.

5. Possibly okay, depending on errata, but if this just works that simply, I see a whole lot of potential for abuse.

Umm, how exactly does this prove anything? I’ve seen warrior solo svanir with an enemy player hassling them and still kill him without going down. This proves, if anything, that the elementalist class is underpowered. Yes, we can do just as much damage as most classes, but if two characters face each other and deal exactly the same amount of damage, the tankier one wins, and we are the least tanky class in the game. On equal footing, we always lose.

The Asuran racial gear is all engineer themed, but yeah, other than that, all leather armor seems to be geared towards rangers and thieves.

Umm… these are extreme buffs to every ability across the board. This would push a tool kit+turrets build so far beyond broken OP it’s ridiculous to even consider. Both the tool kit and turrets need help, but this is not as much a solution or a fix, this is breaking it in the other direction. I would recommend toning it back… a lot.

AppleHack.7340:

Conncept.7638:

AppleHack.7340:

I’m not sure if i made my self clear in the first message but my question is only this: Is this intended or is this exploiting a bug in an (broken?)ability? This should not be discussion of if it’s fair to have that spell there or not.

Okay then, it was brought up during beta, the devs stated that it was a good high skill-ceiling use of the ability and allowable. It is not a bug or exploit. Whether they always intended for it to work that way or players discovered this additional use is unknown, but either way, it is in the game by design, they could have changed it and chose not to.

Can you find source for this? I’d like to read it. I do agree that it’s quite a nice trick just doesn’t really seem intended and i don’t want my account to be banned for doing it. Maybe it indeed is a bug but they just decided to keep it in there.

Unfortunately that isn’t possible, it was on the forums, and the forums were wiped after each beta event. Sorry if you don’t believe me, but there’s really no way I can prove it.

AppleHack.7340:

I’m not sure if i made my self clear in the first message but my question is only this: Is this intended or is this exploiting a bug in an (broken?)ability? This should not be discussion of if it’s fair to have that spell there or not.

Okay then, it was brought up during beta, the devs stated that it was a good high skill-ceiling use of the ability and allowable. It is not a bug or exploit. Whether they always intended for it to work that way or players discovered this additional use is unknown, but either way, it is in the game by design, they could have changed it and chose not to.

VakarisJ.5619:

Elementalists can’t swap weapons as well. This is to account for their attunements, same as for Engineers’ weapon kits.

Except elementalists always have a full four attunements, and engineers often have no kits whatsoever, giving them 14 skills, the least of any class.

It really isnt fair, or well thought out, I don’t see the necromancer getting ‘docked’ HP because he can potentially have 5 meat shields on his skill bar, I don’t see why we get docked the complete use of a game mechanic because we can potentially run five kits.

AppleHack.7340:

Yes, but why aren’t spells like Necromancers Signet of undeath, Guardians Revive signet, Mesmers revive spell or Elementalists revive spell(these for example) allowed to have a chance to revive yourself? They too are giving a “valueable” skill slot (i’m assuming you meant to say that) for that spell.

Actually the Ele can self revive if you cast it in the fire attunemet. But good luck getting it off, it’s one of the longest channels in the game and only gives you a window of a few seconds to die in for the self-revive to trigger, you pretty much have to see the future to know when to use it. I have a level 60 Ele, and haven’t been able to pull it off even once, I’d say the engineer has it easy in comparison.

And it’s ‘valuable’. No ‘e’. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

I disagree, if someone really loves a certain kit, why can’t he or she use that kit exclusively? On the warrior, I absolutely love the hammer, and I almost never switch weapons, because I rarely have to. If I trait for it, the hammer brings enough on its own. Why can’t the engineer kits actually be good enough to operate the same way?

Karast.1927:

I think the thing about tool kit dps is more about “why not just use rifle, grenade, or bomb”

The do more damage and have better range with just as good if not better utility.

But back to the OP I am really starting to like the idea of tieing turrets into kits and traits more.

Having the turrets actually be an ability on the tool kit rather than as a separate utility could be really nice.

Or having a new kit made of turrets. 5 abilities 3 of them turrets, 1 turret heal / repair ability / 1 turret move / reposition ability.

1. ability Rifle Turret
2. ability Flame Turret
3. ability Net Turret
4. ability Turret Healing Ability
5. Call all your turrets to redeploy at your current location.

We can still have turrets as utilities as well. Opening up the ability to have a small army of turrets for limited amounts of time. Similar to mesmers and necros but with a different, and more unique flare.

Well, for me personally, it isn’t all about power and mechanics. I want to play a melee engineer because I think it sounds awesome. Fantasy comes in to play, a lot of players imagine a big buff John Henry or Frank Reade-esque character. Optimally, I would love to see my engineer wading in to battle with a hammer alongside his turrets, but unfortunately, Arenanet has pretty much stated that isn’t going to happen. So I, and those who have a similar minds eye, have to settle for the wrench.

But, if we’re going to settle for that, we’d like it to at least feel like a real weapon, actually contributing to the fight in a meaningful way, and be able to choose which way we like best to use it, rather than choosing the least worst way to use it.

But as an additional result, this could speed up a turret build in PvE to a somewhat decent level, and make a full turret build actually viable in PvP for more than just defending the clocktower in Kyhlo. Bonus points.

I’ve done really well in sPvP with confusion actually, the trick is to combine it with a lot of blinds. Confusing an enemy without blinding them and they will probably to tear through you like rice paper long before the confusion does any damage. Confuse an enemy with blind and you can let them swing at you, deal craploads of damage to themselves, and deal no damage to you.

Traited right, you can get 21 stacks of confusion (if I remember correctly) with five blinds, two dodges, and 6 evasions to rotate through on your bar.

EDIT: My mistakes 20 stacks of confusion, just checked Potentially more, since whenever they pass through a glamour field they get two more stacks of confusion and blind.

Whoa, lots of great input guys, thanks. And no, I have no problems with anybody posting, selling, or hocking their own ideas. Hijack my thread at your leisure.

SiNoS.2147:

They have also said all along that dungeons are not ment for everyone. They said that they were ment for well rounded groups of players. They said that everyone had to carry there own weight. They never once said anyone could just go into a dungeon and complete it. People who have/had this expectation the fault rests entirely with them.

Would you like to try again?

I’ve read every single piece of GW2 news pre and post release, and Arenanet has not stated, anywhere, that any dungeon would not be playable by the entire playerbase.

If they have stated that anywhere, prove it, link it, show evidence. You may find that difficult though, as no such statement has ever been made.

robot.9134:

You spelled concept wrong.

Nope, my real name is Conn.

I was there when WoW released. It had just as many bugs, and Blizzard was just as slow at fixing them as Arenanet is now. They weren’t expecting such huge success, they were understaffed, and unprepared.

People said the game was going to fail because of the bugs, the game was dying because it was too casual, Blizzard couldn’t handle such a large project, or whatever other reason they could think of. It became the premier MMO for the next eight years, not saying GW2 will follow suit, but it isn’t failing.

Stop whining, you’re wrong.

That is all.

New idea in the OP, just came up with it while playing my asura engineer.

Fishbait.6723:

Would give enemy players a heads up of your attunement etc.
No thanks.

The giant element-themed explosions and glowing particle effects around your weapons don’t already do that?

Cool idea, maybe some day, but for now I think they need work on making the elementalist… work.

Grakor.3450:

Not a huge fan of this idea personally, though I do think the toolkit needs…something to present more incentive to using it. Right now it’s just awkward, and if it’s intended to work with turret builds…well, it does cost you a turret to use.

I’m not sure what the best option would be.

I appreciate the input either way. It needs something, right now slotting the wrench kit feels like you’re missing a turret, not slotting it feels like you’re missing support your turrets desperately need. The slot/trait system is supposed to give you choices, but when it comes to turrets and the wrench it only seems to give you bad ones.

No input whatsoever? C’mon guys it can’t be that bad of a suggestion…

Not by a longshot, that would have to go to Elementalists right now. But that doesn’t mean that engineers are perfect, tons of abilities have usage problems that need to be fixed, and certain builds/playstyles (turrets mainly) have no use in too many situations to be viable.

Sporadicus.1028:

I’m not sure if that is considered a copyrighted ability by another game. I think ANet probably mulled that idea over before deciding they didn’t want to be sued by Valve.

It does sound like a good idea, though.

Uh, definitely not, that isn’t even how copyrights work. And even if you could, Valve did not invent the concept of leveling up structures.

Ride the lightning, Updraft, Magnetic Grasp, Earthquake
Gap-closer, CC, Gap-closer, CC
:D