Guild Wars 2

Randulf.7614:

Is that a large pet or a weird shaped rock in the background?

It’s not a rock and doesn’t look like any pet we know. Looks more like a nature spirit or mordrem-like creature of some sort.

Yes, of course people will abuse the system. That’s why you display the score that’s relative to the average player score.

Good, helpful players will get bad scores from bitter trolls, but they’ll also get good scores from legitimate players.

Bitter trolls, on the other hand, will only get negative scores aside from a few from their troll friends. =P

The end result may have the end result as an average of a 25% positive, but when you set that as the baseline, a player with a 40% positive will then be shown with something like an 80% positive, whereas a player with a 10% positive will have a 20% rating. That may not be the exact math used, but you get the idea.

And yea, I work at a call center and work directly with the survey data customers submit. You will always get a very low score because the people who are most likely to speak up are the ones who are upset about something. Happy people generally don’t feel as much need to give feedback. However, once you adjust your baseline, you get useable data.

I would honestly love to see a karma system that allows us to rate players, similar to what other games have done. Here’s how I imagine it:

At the end of a PvP match, you can right click a player’s name and give them a positive or negative rating. Once a player has been rated enough times for their rating to really matter, they can then be given a publicly viewable rating that averages their score against other players.

Then, hopefully, that score can also be used in matchmaking.

Jebro, just wanna say that you do an awesome job in shoutcasting. I didn’t have half as much interest in watching GW2 PvP until I started watching games you shoutcasted (sorry Blu, lol).

And yea, I really hope to see more maps that utilize mechanics like that for some great PvP matches. Hopefully Stronghold will capture this well with high level organized play.

Ok, let’s assume that thief is the least played profession, even though I wouldn’t believe that from your post:

I don’t think it’s underplayed because it’s under powered because we’ve seen that when played right in organized PvP, it’s an MVP.

However, there’s two things that make it unpopular:
1) Build Diversity. Since S/D was nerfed, there’s only one really strong build. This makes player burnout on the profession a LOT more likely.

2) Performance in unorganized/lower tier environments. Even though you can get wins by utilizing mobility and +1 burst, players still want to jump into 1 on 1s and even when players want to play to the thief strengths, it’s hard to do in an unorganized game. This leaves the experience and range of roles for a thief to play very narrow, which also can lead to burnout.

They already confirmed that druids will still have pets. As much as I’d like to see them go back on that, I doubt we’ll see it since that would invalidate the entire BM trait specialization for any druid.

Problem with Rifle scrapper is that the utilities for Scrapper are currently pretty terrible, meaning that you benefit from Function Gyro and the non-hammer, non-gyro traits. Not sure if that’s enough to make it worthwhile, even if a stab stomp gyro is awesome.

If they adjust the cd, I could see it as being a viable alternative to healing turret if you’d rather have protection than condi cleanse…

@ Ocirne: Thank you for your contribution here. Sad to see so many people who are taking their frustration of the meta out on you.

I’m glad to see that the scrapper will be worth using in a DPS-focused build. Too bad the auto attack doesn’t fit in, but that’s probably to be expected considering how good the non-AA skills are.

I almost wish we didn’t have vuln and might on the weapon though. I have a feeling there will be plenty of this in a group setting to be capped even without this, making those a bit of a waste.

Very good point. I doubt a full gyro build would be viable, even with a stunbreaker, but it’s still definitely needed.

Guardian still has better reflect uptime (and can cover more area with it), group aegis, and better group stability among other things. Scrapper is good, but guards won’t lose a spot to them, at least in PvE.

Hmm, no, don’t think so. Burn’s too easy to cleanse and for once guardians get a condi build. I’d hate to see that go away, even though I don’t play guard. More diverse builds for every prof is good for the game.

Rampage is fine. It was nerfed enough.

D/D ele definitely needs a nerf.

Mesmer could stand to be toned down, but could use some help to get more diverse strong builds.

Necro downed state is fine. Without the damage, they really have one of the weakest downed state in the game. Just don’t stand in the big Capt Obvious circle.

Pact fleet hammer skin looks pretty awesome for an engi theme, but the best hammer for your char may depend on the rest of how your armor.

TheScryingGame.3875:

As someone who has been playing the Engi and has utterly fallen in love with the class, I find the spec pretty lame. If I wanted to be a warrior, I’d be one. if I wanted to be and ELE I’d be one. Seems a little lazy. However to those that say the lightening strike is totally out place that’s not exactly true. The orbital strike is a tool belt skill equipped with the mortar kit. its kind of like a called down thunder attack. So the precedent is there. but yeah the parallels between Thor and this new class are obvious and not very creative. kind of disappointed…

How your mind accepts an engineer using orbital strikes indoors in a universe that’s never mentioned satellites while not being able to believe that an engineer can channel static electricity to shock an enemy with their big metal hammer, I will never understand…

Super speed could be a good, unique raid utility to bring…but considering that you generally won’t grant this instantly due to cast times of combo finishers and such, I’m not sure if it will be that great for helping members avoid red circles.

Tyaen.5148:

They are really turning us into somewhat of an anti-stealth specialist.

Careful…people thought that about Sic ’Em and Lockdown. =P

I’m really wondering how this is supposed to work…I mean, I can see the value of running stealth with several people so that the enemy only knows about you from your gyro…

But here are the potential issues:

- Will this really be useful outside of running with an organized team in PvP? Not sure how often you’ll have teammates coordinated enough to make good use of this in solo q.

- Will the cooldown/duration be good enough to offset the fact that you’re really not very stealthy with a gyro giving away your location every step of the way?

- Will the gryo aggro mobs? If so, I can’t see this as having any use in PvE.

tobascodagama.2961:

Dahkeus.8243:

And it looks more like these bots will be something that you activate for a specific purpose, rather than have them as something you just drop once and rely on for something as basic as dps.

They really seem more like utility-based phantasms on mesmer than ranger pets.

Yeah, except a bit better because Utility Phantasms need to be targeted on an enemy and disappear if that enemy dies. It appears Gyros can be targeted to allies or else just launched from the Engy to do whatever. So they seem more like Spirit Weapons or Elementals that can have ally-targeted skills?

If that’s the comparison you like?

Point is, they’re different from what we’ve seen so far, so cynical assumptions based on ranger pet mechanics don’t necessarily apply.

Nilix.2170:

Dahkeus.8243:

Jerus.4350:

What bugs me is I can’t help but feel that while it seems cool for PVP it seems like that’s 100% it’s focus. I don’t know but I’m a bit apprehensive towards it right now, curious how it’ll work out. Sounds like you’re locked out of toolbelt skills, so what about other utilities? will they be useable just without the toolbelt skill? The gyros sound decent but just not really all that practical for regular PVE use. Wish I liked PVP more in this game but I’ll save the rant… I hate it. So I’m just a bit worried that we’re getting a new toy that simply has no use for me /shrug.

So, 1 skill isn’t 100% useful to you (stomp likely not used, but rez is still useful in PvE) because you only like 1 of the 3 game modes in GW2…

To say that you’re being short-sighted may be an understatement.

Friendly reminder that abilities get nerfed and changed in all game modes because of how people feel in a single game mode.

Yup, and irrelevant as that may be to the point I made, those balance changes are not always based on PvP either.

I’d imagine being a casual player with hardcore goals is very frustrating, lol.

Yea, it sucks missing out on these, but I’d rather have the devs put the effort into the expansion itself rather than the advertising.

eduardo.1436:

Let’s ignore the fact of what the drones will be. Would you guys like if the drones followed you permanently with the option to stow/destroy them? (I would) or who here prefers if the drones poofed/exploded after a certain amount of time? I have an open mind cuz lets face it: if you are in LA with uhhhh 4 drones 24/7 people will find it annoying. Thoughts?

No. I don’t want passive, mindless drones. I want the drones to be something that are specifically activated for a specific purpose with a cooldown that requires planning to utilize.

If drones are something that you strategically use for a specific type of utility, then it’s brilliant. This looks to be the case, such as with the function gyro, which will allow you to CC/dps/etc. one target while send your drone to rez a friend or stomp an enemy.

If drones are just some glorified buff with a robot skin that you summon whenever you want for something like extra damage, then it’s a really dull mechanic that just adds to passive gameplay.

Bryzy.2719:

If indeed your gyros (I kek as I write this because in the UK a ‘gyro’ is another word for a welfare cheque coming through the post from the government lol)… anyway if indeed your gyros are AI-based in the same way the Ranger’s pet is, you guys are going to have to be absolutely savage with your feedback after the BWE because otherwise you’ll not be listened to for 3 years and will be stuck with a broken profession mechanic, especially seeing as, judging by the written reveal, you will have even more limited control over gyros than the current Ranger has over its pet.

On a brighter note… totes jelly that hammer basically makes you guys Thor tho.

When I read ‘gyro’, this is what I thought of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_

And it looks more like these bots will be something that you activate for a specific purpose, rather than have them as something you just drop once and rely on for something as basic as dps.

They really seem more like utility-based phantasms on mesmer than ranger pets.

Jerus.4350:

What bugs me is I can’t help but feel that while it seems cool for PVP it seems like that’s 100% it’s focus. I don’t know but I’m a bit apprehensive towards it right now, curious how it’ll work out. Sounds like you’re locked out of toolbelt skills, so what about other utilities? will they be useable just without the toolbelt skill? The gyros sound decent but just not really all that practical for regular PVE use. Wish I liked PVP more in this game but I’ll save the rant… I hate it. So I’m just a bit worried that we’re getting a new toy that simply has no use for me /shrug.

So, 1 skill isn’t 100% useful to you (stomp likely not used, but rez is still useful in PvE) because you only like 1 of the 3 game modes in GW2…

To say that you’re being short-sighted may be an understatement.

I’m looking at mesmer or engi.

Chronomancer specialization is solid and looks to be a strong class with unique utility that will be valuable in both PvE and PvP.

Engineer is already very versatile and fun. Scrapper has some big potential, but will have to see the POI and/or play in the next beta to see for sure.

Daendur.2357:

Rangers have 3s block on 15s CD….
Why ?

Yup and their block doesn’t stunbreak. The stunbreak on a skill like this is huge since stuns are almost always followed up with a big burst skill, so a 15 second cd is totally fair.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Thanks for the info, I was not singling out engis, or stealth. Once again stealth is not the issue counters are, so the engi has two now. Ranger has one.
Are there any others I am missing?

Mesmers…and MI is the only ‘unfun’ part of wvw right now. I can handle server imbalance, the ever present blobs, and ACs through walls, but if classes aren’t going to get more counters (and they won’t) please bump stealth traps up to an hour lol.

Yea, you are missing something. Sic’ Em. Oh, but that just doesn’t count because you said so. Well, let’s skip that for a second:

- Wolf howl can be used to fear out of Shadow Refuge.
– Rapid fire follows targets, even when they stealth halfway through.
– All AoE still counters stealth. Traps, Barrage, etc. all apply here.
– Counterattack still protects you from stealthed targets.

It’s actually kinda amusing that you cited a class that’s probably one of the best hard counters to a thief in a 1 v 1 scenario.

Rebound.3409:

Dahkeus.8243:

So…a class specialization that is all about creating and using electronic robots has an electric theme to the weapon…

and this is shocking to you?

Yea, that pun was bad, but the arguments here are worse.

Yes…because the lightning effect/skill in that screenshot is 10x more impressive then what an ele could ever dream of doing..and that’s a pure elemental magic type. Like the OP stated he can barely do a spark…but the engie? He’s kitteng Gandalf and Sauron in 1 character.

As others said…completely out of place. The animation/effect itself.

You do realize that the lightning effect in that screenshot is really just a copy an existing ele spell animation, right? It’s pretty much the exact thing that happens every time a fresh air ele goes to air attunement. The only difference is that this is a high resolution, polished screenshot of it.

Also, where were all these complaints when engi got orbital strike on mortar?

I think people are just getting all ruffled up because someone at MMORPG mentioned an electricity theme that clearly wasn’t even fully intended. Feel free to read the full quote from the article:

MMORPG: The Hammer skills seem to deal a lot with electricity. Is there a reason behind this? Flamethrower covers the fire, obviously, other kits have poisons, is this the “electric” option?
ICH: I hadn’t considered it in terms of other kits, but yes, the hammer and Scrapper specialization do cover the electric theme.

Dadnir.5038:

Dahkeus.8243:

Dahkeus.8243:

Rate them based on what? o.O

Personal preference? Effectiveness? In specific game types or for the game overall?

…eh, w/e. Here’s my random rating based on my personal preference:

1) Chronomancer
2) Reaper
3) Scrapper
4) Herald
5) Dragonhunter
6) Berserker
7) Tempest
8) Daredevil

Daredevil is at the bottom because of how much of a disappointment it was. I main a thief and actually looking forward to DD…until I saw just how much the spec was built from re-used animations/clunky mechanics and just overall looks nothing like what I would expect a melee staff wielding martial artist to look like.

I probably shouldn’t have expected that much though…doing DD right would have required a lot of really new character animations and would require the staff to bend in certain animations as well.

The changes to DD may bring it up a bit, but I’ll probably still be disappointed since I don’t anticipate changes to stuff like the hadouken-like animation in the autoattack where the staff just twirls magically in mid air. =/

For now, it’s very possible, I’ll just switch mains when HoT comes out.

After reading the scrapper stuff, I think I can definitely see it moving to the 2 or maybe even the 1 spot. The next POI and/or beta weekend will probably be what determines that for sure, but the potential is definitely there.

Well, from my point of view, I can see it moving to the bottom. A Drone with search and rescue and a drone that cast guard on us. I’m sure every ranger out there can say how effective it will be. Further more a drone is a kind of jagged horror (necro stuff that die super fast)… It think there will be a lot of disappointment at the BWE3.

Yea, it could potentially be that way, but there’s a few factors that could make these viable even though the ranger skills are in a bad spot:

1) Search and Rescue is a long cooldown that takes up a utility spot. The cooldown on this along with stability could make this viable. Also, if the hammer does enough DPS on its own, we may not need to juggle 3 kits to do viable damage in PvE, which could free up the utility spot to take this. Finally, the ability to spike opponents could make this viable in PvP, even if it doesn’t take off in PvE.

2) The sneak gyro is very different than guard. It’s more of a combination of a mobile Shadow Refuge with Sic’ Em. However, having the gyro itself revealed could kill this. Same goes for the cooldown.

Kodama.6453:

Another question: it seems like gyroscope will be AI, but they don’t have an overcharge skill? Can this be a thing? I hope Anet remembers the past, some AI in game used to don’t have overcharge skills. But they added them FOR EVERY SINGLE ONE later. Pls Anet, don’t repeat old mistakes. Let gyroscopes have an overcharge.

It honestly sounds like the toolbelt skill is similar to the overcharge effect of turrets, while it sounds like these can also be detonated. They may have just swapped the detonate and overcharge spots so that the utility skill detonates after they’re cast…hard to say, but check out the quote below from the article:

Each gyro model has a limited amount of fuel before it detonates or is destroyed in a hail of dazing sparks. If traited, they’ll explode in a larger area while stunning foes.

It’s a little vague and maybe they’re only talking about when they’re destroyed by someone else, but I’d be surprised if that’s the case.

Also, speaking of AI stuff, I just wanna say that I’m impressed at how driven these seem to be by active use of skills rather than just making these passive pets. I think that addresses a lot of my concerns that this would just be the turret afk build 2.0 and instead this may be a specialization that requires more active multi-tasking, which could be quite the opposite of low-skill minion/turret builds.

Dahkeus.8243:

Rate them based on what? o.O

Personal preference? Effectiveness? In specific game types or for the game overall?

…eh, w/e. Here’s my random rating based on my personal preference:

1) Chronomancer
2) Reaper
3) Scrapper
4) Herald
5) Dragonhunter
6) Berserker
7) Tempest
8) Daredevil

Daredevil is at the bottom because of how much of a disappointment it was. I main a thief and actually looking forward to DD…until I saw just how much the spec was built from re-used animations/clunky mechanics and just overall looks nothing like what I would expect a melee staff wielding martial artist to look like.

I probably shouldn’t have expected that much though…doing DD right would have required a lot of really new character animations and would require the staff to bend in certain animations as well.

The changes to DD may bring it up a bit, but I’ll probably still be disappointed since I don’t anticipate changes to stuff like the hadouken-like animation in the autoattack where the staff just twirls magically in mid air. =/

For now, it’s very possible, I’ll just switch mains when HoT comes out.

After reading the scrapper stuff, I think I can definitely see it moving to the 2 or maybe even the 1 spot. The next POI and/or beta weekend will probably be what determines that for sure, but the potential is definitely there.

So…a class specialization that is all about creating and using electronic robots has an electric theme to the weapon…

and this is shocking to you?

Yea, that pun was bad, but the arguments here are worse.

And just to drive the final nail in the flawed argument posted by the OP: The newest thief specialization gives them no new stealth skills unless you count a leap finisher on dodge that will just as easily reveal them due to the damage it does.

Does ANet hear engis? Evidence says yes. Things like the change to kits as back pieces are prime examples of this. Also, did you notice how we’re getting better condi cleanse with Scrapper?

Do things get changed as quickly as the community wants them to? No. But they’re programming an MMO. There’s a million and one things the community as a whole wants and changes take time/resources.

Does the community need to speak up to be heard? Of course. That doesn’t mean you need to cry like a kid who trash talks their parents for giving them a black iPhone instead of a white iPhone for Xmas, but it does mean that if there’s an issue important to you, then you should speak up about it in a constructive manner on the forums. There are a LOT of people playing this game and ANet can’t address everyone’s concerns right when they want them, so the volume of feedback can point the direction to what is most important to address first.

Oh, you’re complaining about the new stealth ability that actually shows you right where the engineer is because the drone stays unstealthed, even though engis have been able to group stealth with smoke field combos and Elixir S since launch, lol.

P.s. Maybe you stopped reading, but if you would have read one line further down, you would have seen this:

“Tool Belt Skill—Detection Pulse:

Remove stealth from enemies in a large area.
On a short recharge, this toolbelt skill helps ensure that you are the one getting the drop on foes and not vice versa."

Umm…what? Engineers have been able to group stealth since the game launched.

brannigan.9831:

Im fine with it mainly because it will teach a lot of you people that the merged queues is not really whats driving your w-l record. You will all find something else to cry about when your win loss record hardly budges when solo queue comes back. I do think solo queue allows for more competitive matches on average but I stick to my guns that you wont necessarily win more.

It probably would…but this community tends to have a short memory, as this has been done before.

Good Tofu.9376:

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, and while we’re at it, let’s write a letter to all our past employers and ask them to send us more money because of the effect inflation has had on the dollar. =P

Not the best analogy. In this case, I am not an employee. Anet is certainly not an employer.

If anything, Anet is the service and I am the customer. If you want to get real world here, the dev team is literally paid to make balance changes and allocate rewards to the user base. I pay for my own experience, and my money goes to ANET.

I have 2 full champ titles plus nearly double the requisite amount in terms of actual arena wins. The fact that the game documents that I somehow only have “90 total arena wins” in my PvP profile is just an example of poor scripting.

As a paying customer, I would naturally expect some form of compensation in cases like this. If you want to get “real world” on me here, most reputable real-world consulting services will offer clients compensation or reworks of projects in cases of faulty work delivery or poor service quality with respect to what other clients receive.

What I’m asking for in this thread is no different.

What you’re asking for here is very unrealistic and very short-sighted. Just because ANet is paid, doesn’t mean they can wave a magical wand to meet every demand the customer has. They have a limited budget and even from a purely economic perspective, it just doesn’t make sense to do a full audit of what was potentially earned by going through every historical record of every early player and then calculating a payout to players now.

Just because you spent $60 3 years ago doesn’t mean that your every whim is suddenly ANet’s command. Your request comes at the expense of the use of dev time and technological infrastructure which could be dedicated to new content/changes that benefit all players and not just the veterans, who may or may not even be playing anymore.

And even beyond this, if ANet were to now hold themselves of retroactively paying out any perceived opportunity cost in all currencies of the game, they would have massive amounts of work ahead of them for things like glory boosters, login bonuses, etc. and would be even further hindered in what they could do in future releases since they wouldn’t be able to increase the rewards to anything without having to consider the ramifications of how they would pay the difference for all historical potentially lost rewards.

Of course people who don’t have full visibility to the back end of PvP will ask for solo q.

Asking “Would you rather queue up solo only against other solo queue people or mostly against other solo queue people” is a no brainer…

But there’s a couple missing pieces to this assumption:

1) Players often don’t accurately recognize “premades” and often assume that the other team has people who queued together while their team is all randoms. The psychological effect of negativity bias plays into this too where people are more likely to remember being paired against a strong premade than the times when they had a strong premade on their team.

2) We don’t know exactly how many people are queueing for PvP at one time.

3) We don’t know the full mechanics of the MMR system.

Because of 2 and 3, we don’t know exactly how good the queue times and matches would be in a solo Q world.

And finally, maybe a lot of people here are new or simply have forgotten, but there were a lot of problems with the reward balancing of solo Q and team Q. Before they were merged, people would often just queue for Team Q even while solo because the rewards were better.

Randulf.7614:

Dahkeus.8243:

Randulf.7614:

I shall make a new engineer called Shatner. Because he will be a ROCKET MAN!

Don’t you mean Elton John? =P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LX7WrHCaUA

As for the scrapper, I like the name and it really makes sense for engineers out in the middle of the maguuma after all the fleet crashes and such. The AI stuff is a bit worrisome, but hammer still is really appealing.

I most certainly do not!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lul-Y8vSr0I
Elton John might be the original, Shatner though ….nailed it

Touche…that’s right up there with Pat Boone’s cover of Crazy Train, lol.

Randulf.7614:

I shall make a new engineer called Shatner. Because he will be a ROCKET MAN!

Don’t you mean Elton John? =P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LX7WrHCaUA

As for the scrapper, I like the name and it really makes sense for engineers out in the middle of the maguuma after all the fleet crashes and such. The AI stuff is a bit worrisome, but hammer still is really appealing.

Rate them based on what? o.O

Personal preference? Effectiveness? In specific game types or for the game overall?

…eh, w/e. Here’s my random rating based on my personal preference:

1) Chronomancer
2) Reaper
3) Scrapper
4) Herald
5) Dragonhunter
6) Berserker
7) Tempest
8) Daredevil

Daredevil is at the bottom because of how much of a disappointment it was. I main a thief and actually looking forward to DD…until I saw just how much the spec was built from re-used animations/clunky mechanics and just overall looks nothing like what I would expect a melee staff wielding martial artist to look like.

I probably shouldn’t have expected that much though…doing DD right would have required a lot of really new character animations and would require the staff to bend in certain animations as well.

The changes to DD may bring it up a bit, but I’ll probably still be disappointed since I don’t anticipate changes to stuff like the hadouken-like animation in the autoattack where the staff just twirls magically in mid air. =/

For now, it’s very possible, I’ll just switch mains when HoT comes out.

Yea, and while we’re at it, let’s write a letter to all our past employers and ask them to send us more money because of the effect inflation has had on the dollar. =P

ReaperJr.5967:

Please stop using that as an excuse. Yes, we get it, it is not entirely about 1v1s. Rotations, good team compositions etc are all major elements that matter in pvp, but so are 1v1s.

1v1s happen more often than not, especially when contesting a node, and there has been numerous times I had to +1 a team mate because he couldn’t win a mirror matchup (or even a favourable one) on the side nodes.

I think we can all agree that a role model of having good rotations and being strong mechanically in 1v1s would be The Abjured. Which was also how they won wts (rotated to force 1v1s in their favour as orng’s lineup was heavily dependant on combo strat).

Thank you.

TLDR; 1v1s matter so if you want to improve your pvp games make sure to practice 1v1 and not just rotations. (Rotations are still very important however)

Yes, 1 v 1s matter, but every class doesn’t need to be perfectly balanced to win them to be good at PvP. The best example of this would be the thief, such as Toker in your Abjured example. He won MVP in the WTS, not by winning 1 v 1s, but by rotating to the right places and +1 at all the right times.

So let’s break down this false polarization:
– 1v1s are not the be all and end all determination for whether a class is OP or underpowered.

But at the same time

- 1v1s matter for PvP and are still important to winning games.

Ryou, here’s my take as someone who was in a very similar place as you are:

The feel of mesmer will change drastically when you get to a higher level. Shatters overall feel much different when you can get the clone on dodge, which allows you to shatter more often with a full 3 clones and until you get to max level, you won’t really feel the full impact of how much damage a shatter can be.

However, you really don’t have to play a shatter-focused mesmer, particularly in PvE. The current ‘meta’ PvE build is actually more focused on keeping up phantasm type illusions, which deal heavy damage, so that you only really shatter when your enemy is about to die or if your clones are about to die from something else anyways.

Here’s the big question I would pose to you that I think will help you determine if mesmer fits your playstyle:
Are you ok with losing dps on fights as a result of your AI-based clones dying for reasons often beyond your control?

This can be one of the more frustrating aspects of mesmer since so much of your damage is tied to having clones alive when you need them to be and sometimes a simple boss cleave can set you back a lot. However, if you can live with this, there is some really great utility that puts mesmers in a unique place in groups, which can be very rewarding. Being the person that pulls your group through a difficult part of a dungeon because of your projectile reflects, stealth, or even just helping to skip past frustrating stuff with a portal can be something that offsets this frustration for many players.

guildabd.6529:

Can you kill gyros or not???

Almost certainly (although not confirmed) since they did say that you can apply boons to them.

I’ll be curious to see how this does in PvP. Kinda sounds like a hambow-like focus with all the CC.

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

Exactly. If you, for example, choose a 30 sec threshold, then the engineer will see the cooldown for Hidden Flask, which is pretty inconsequential, but they won’t be able to see Kinetic Charge.

If you set it to 20 seconds, then you can see Kinetic Charge, but what if the engineer wants to run Thermobaric Detonation for tracking their blast finisher? That requires them to watch the 10 second ICD of Evasive Powder Keg.

And that’s only the engineer…you can find countless examples of stuff like this if you look at other professions.

Thats why i was not totally agreeing to the only rule of “longer than 30s cd”, but theres some traits (like TD), that you can personally track cause 10s mental countdown are affordable imo. Also , unless you spam a Toolbelt skill right after a dodge, you can easily track it (I get the example, but this trait actually ahs a good UI track).

I think you are a bit too assumptive that everyone sees what ICDs are manageable and which ones are important as much as you do…

Painbow.6059:

Necromancer and engineer are the funnest classes. Elementalist is the best but pugs are too stupid to play ranger/necro and engineer so they are not welcome in pug groups, best stick to the meta

Necro being fun is your opinion, but necros providing less utility to groups and being less accepted by groups is a fact.

Not saying they should avoid playing necro, but I’d say that there’s a very high chance of regret for anyone who decides to roll one…

Same could be said of ranger. For some people, it’s so fun to play that nothing else matters, but if you’re looking to play a class that will easily be a top contributor to a group and/or will be readily accepted into groups, then that may not be the case.

Ranger was my first character when I started the game, but after realizing how frustrating it is to micromanage a pet that can easily die in encounters on top of how little utility they can provide compared to other classes, I eventually rerolled.

Computers are complex. That’s pretty much what it boils down to.

Salamander.2504:

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

I think just an option as the simplified party UI, so you enable/disable tracking passive traits/procs, is enough

Yea, but if you do that, then you potentially have a lot of passive traits/procs that will show up which could cause a lot of clutter.

For example, let’s say you run a standard elixir variant soldier engi. You’ll have these ICDs to track:

- Evasive Powder Keg (10s)
– Aim-Assisted Rocket (10s)
– Hidden Flask (40s)
– Protection Injection (5s)
– Transmute (15s)
– Self-Regulating Defenses (60s)
– Stimulant Supplier (10s)
– Reactive Lenses (40s)
– Lock On (20s)
– Kinetic Charge (20s)

And that’s just from traits. Add runes/sigils and you have:

- Sigil of Intelligence (9s)
– Sigil of Energy (9s)
– Strength Runes might when struck (5s)

That’s a lot of crap to have on your UI when you may only really care about just Kinetic Charge or Self-Regulating Defenses…

I was not talking about all traits, someone suggested before something like lets say traits with 30s cd, or stuff liek this… Imo everybody know which traits are game-changing and which no, so this traits are the ones that need to be tracked, for example Plague Sending proc, Armor of Earth, etc, so unless you run with full passive proc traits, you are not going to have more than 2/3 extra icons

But where do you draw the line? As someone mentioned above, the guard’s Radiant Fire is a really important one, but its only on a 10 s CD. That’s one reason the option to select which ones you want is really appealing.

Exactly. If you, for example, choose a 30 sec threshold, then the engineer will see the cooldown for Hidden Flask, which is pretty inconsequential, but they won’t be able to see Kinetic Charge.

If you set it to 20 seconds, then you can see Kinetic Charge, but what if the engineer wants to run Thermobaric Detonation for tracking their blast finisher? That requires them to watch the 10 second ICD of Evasive Powder Keg.

And that’s only the engineer…you can find countless examples of stuff like this if you look at other professions.