Guild Wars 2

I personally don’t like wells as a damage route, I feel like they don’t do enough damage to justify using them for just that. Instead I just use well of darkness defensively and fill the rest of my utilities with non-wells like spectral walk and consume conditions. If I need well of power to condition remove or something I’ll use it but I’ll never take a well with the plan to deal damage with it.

Ayanavi.1904:

Picking from various responses here..
<Damage rebuttal>

I admit, I don’t go on the forums that much, but you bring up good points about shatter reliability and phantasms.

When it comes to clones being killed I see no problem. After all if the enemy attacks your clones isn’t that the whole point? It becomes a lose-lose for them as they either don’t attack you or take shatter damage. As for the AOE it might be small but it is still usefull, look at warrior and thief burst, a thief BS-burst only hits one person and a warrior bull rush is also single target (though 100b is still aoe it doesn’t give blur like ours)

Phantasms are currently broken but if we look at them from before they are far from weak, its just sustained damage vs. burst damage. A phantasm will actually out dps shatters per clone spot. If you consider that mind wrack will takes 10 seconds to use in a shatter build a phantasm can attack 2~3 times in that period (it seems to take about 4 seconds between attacks but I never timed them). Assuming shatters hit for like 2k non-crit with 3 illusions and phantasms do about 1k each depending on what you use you can easily over take a shatter build, you just don’t see it all at once.

I still wouldn’t mind a buff when they fix them though, more power to mesmers.

Ayanavi.1904:

<Support rebuttal>

When it comes to mesmers vs gaurdians in projectile defence I think mesmers are superior. Feedback and wall of reflection have the same cooldown and can both be reduced by the same amounts but feedback trades duration for range and size (it also looks better :P) When it comes to secondary defenses gaurdians have only the shield bubble (and sanctuary which really should be saved). Mesmers on the other hand still have focus that can trait to reflect projectiles and pwarden both of which are on a lower cd than shield bubble. Gaurdians and mesmers also both get a field on revive trait but mesmer’s reflects while gaurdian’s only absorbs.

As for conditions cleanse necro’s are the main condition profession so it makes sense that they would be better at it. That being said null field makes mesmer and good contender for second since it gets rid of all conditions in an area and keeps them off. It also doubles as a boon remover.

I know mesmers might not be the best class but I don’t see how anyone can say we are weak. We can just do so many things and unlike many versatile classes from other games still be the “best” in some areas.

No need for a legendary, just make the scythe animation appear on staff when unsheathed instead of only when casting.

I confess its hard to play mesmer pve wise after playing engineer with perma swiftness, we are just so slow.

Are you kiding me? Do you guys seriously think we are the WEAKEST CLASS? There are tons of ways we outperform the other classes. Heck, we get almost as much rage as thiefs when it comes to pvp.

Damage? We have plenty. Look at that new shattercat build on these forums, our burst is high AND its aoe. We are also very range flexible and highly survivable even when full burst spec. Between clones and distortion its hard to hit a mesmer no matter what spec they are.

Support? Some of the best. You know all that drama about mesmer being neccassary to WvW? You just can’t beat portal, null field, feedback, and time warp.

Control? In the interupt department we don’t have much (though magic bullet is super strong) but we can manipulate enemies in a way no other class can, with our clones. Before you say a good player will find you remember “You can fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” ~ Abraham Lincoln (I can’t believe I got to use this)

Melee will always do more damage than ranged and since dagger is our only melee option its only natural its our best source of damage.

Necro can do well in tpvp but not so much in spvp. The thing is in spvp the teams are bigger and less organized and we simply don’t have the tools to deal with it. We lack the stability and mobility required to avoid getting ganked by 3-5 people at once like a thief or mesmer can.

As far as damage goes spvp is all about the burst, which we also lack. If we can get people by themselves conditions can wreck but they are a lot rarer than in tpvp.

I use Blood Fiend (the buff to them is noticeable), Bone Minions, and Flesh Golem. I find that its more effective to focus more on killing your minions for death nova than keeping them alive to do meager dps.

By not filling out your utilities with all minions you can take other utilities like Well of Darkness or Spectral Walk, both of which will help you fight.

KirinDave.6451:

Don’t lose heart. Just remember it could be worse!

You could be engineers in PvP.

That hurt ;-;

Imo that’s a bad idea. Part of the balance is that wells are stationary.

What about Well of Blood? If it followed you then you would get the secondary heals guaranteed. Part of the reason the heal is so strong is because it forces you to wait in a set area.

What about Well of Darkness? Aoe blind centered around yourself conflicts with Plague Form. Heck, its the reason people even use Plague Form. Running around with wells centered on you means they need to be nerfed to compensate for the HUGE buff.

Anyone using toolkit after the buffs? Personally I feel like magnet is useful for once and makes the kit much more viable.

6s potential fear on the warrior? Ummm, I like the fear concept but that potential is just absurd, the 3 second fears from warrior and thief should be lowered to 2 seconds if they use your idea imo. Also, the conditional might is a tad weak don’t you think? 2 stacks would be better because I doubt you’ll have more than 3 conditions on you in most fights.

Aside from that I love your ideas, especially the fear does damage and signet ones. I feel like having a utility fear option as well as letting both condition damage and power necros use the same trait is great.

Gaurdian and Warrior are very forgiving professions thanks to high base armor(and vitatilty for warrior). When it comes to dungeons they are both good but more so for the Gaurdian who are probably one of the best at support.

What about condition damage, toughness, vitality? Or condition damage in general w/o power or precision attached

Well the Asura can be in Char territory studying their technology so they probably consider them to be pretty smart. After all Char and Asura can make machines while Humans, Norns, and Sylvari can’t or at least haven’t.

IIRC Iron Legion has elementalists

Knote.2904:

If I may, I’d like to expand on this idea, somewhat, in a way that could work in tandem with Death Shroud.

I was thinking about our pets, and the pet system Age of Conan Necro’s Had. I think they could implement that here, where basically you have 10 pet slots (in the form of dots), you can fill them up with an assortment of pets:

Mild melee pets being 1 point.
Mild ranged pets being 2 points.
Beefy melee pet with aoe ability being 3 points.
Ranged pet with cc being 4 points.
Strong ranged nuker pet being 5 points.

Etc. So you fill out your arsenal of minions using this point system. 2 strong nuker pets, or 10 weak melee pets, or 5 weak melee pets 1 strong nuker pet, etc.

NOW, if you don’t want to use pets, you could increase fill these slots with buffs/passive/procs using your Pact system. In a way, it could work similar to how trait trees do now. Each point commited to a Pact type would give a passive buff/effect per point, and each point benchmark (every 3/5/7/10 or w/e) of the same Pact type could change how Death Shroud or its skills work.

Using that you could modify Death Shroud completely to fit your playstyle, or use the standard death shroud to be a Minion Master, where as Death Shroud is there for survivability and to support your pets instead of being a standalone powerhouse.

They would have to completely create a new UI from scratch for this, similar to the Ranger Pet Menu. But my god if this ever happened it would be incredible.

That…..that sounds amazing

Epidemic can easily spread conditions faster than they can be cleansed you just need to use it on the people being focused so you can spread 8~9 different conditions at once. Most aoe cleanses get rid of 1 or 3 conditions and are on longer cooldowns than epidemic. Mabye your first epidemic gets cleansed quickly but you just need to keep hitting them.

If you don’t have a lot of condition based people in your group epidemic can be used to spread the stronger conditions like high bleed stacks or imoblize. Necro has a lot of strong but single target chills, use epidemic on those to change the tide of battle when rolling in un-orgainized zergs.

It once happened to me when I was a thief, it got me and my warrior friend and we both walked calmly away from keep and into the wall for 20 seconds.

So thats what happened when I got hit by a 20s fear, kitten bugs

I’d rather use net turret and a stun breaker than rocket and rifle turrets. I mean using both damage turrets with elixir B just doesn’t make sense to me, you can’t move so you probably sit on a point but you have no defensive utilities or traits to stay there for long.

I would also like the warhorn to have fear instead daze, in fact because the skill is close range it would be an excuse to have a fear longer than one second for once.

Mhaer.7368:

Scope: Gain 10% critical hit chance while standing still.
Utility Goggles Passive: Engineer Projectile finishers gain +80% combo chance

Oh god yes, this would make me take utility goggles every time so I can combo with hip shot like a mad man.

I would love to see support turrets added to give engineer a base-building feel. Like you could get maybe 2-3 engineers in WvW and set up a mock-base with turrets that acts as a quick resupply in the form of healing and boons.

Another idea for turrets would be the ability to create walls similar to the guardian. It could be a skill in which you place two turrets and they connect to make a wall of reflection or line of warding. That, or a trait that connects all your turrets to create lines of combo fields (randomly chosen but remain as long as the turrets perhaps)

There is a big difference between knockBACK and knockDOWN

KnockDOWN is the long lasting one (2 seconds always) and the shortess cooldown of a knockdown is 45 seconds on backbreaker.

KnockBACKs last only one second and the distance varys depending on the skill. Compared to fear some do indead create more distance but depending on what knockback skill is used or if the enemy is affected by cripple or swiftness fear could create more distance. The cooldowns on knockbacks tend to be shorter and classes tend to have knockbacks over knockdowns but they don’t go under 15 second cooldowns (enginneer overcharged shot I believe, plus that skill also knocks back the engineer)

Well I’m sorry to say you’re out of luck then.

Want ranged? Nades are best long ranged weapon but you don’t like those

What about mid-range? Pick people off the edge of the zerg, kill people who get to close. For that you need burst and our best burst build is toolbelt discharge, but wait, you don’t like that either

All you’re left with is close-range but, again, you don’t like that…

Really if you don’t use nades, toolbelt burst, close-ranged bomb builds, or elixer gun support you really can’t fight in a zerg fest. It sounds to me like you’d be best roaming with small (1 to 3 people) groups where you can use something that isn’t cookie-cutter. Open up your possibilites by avoiding the zerg.

@Eviator I agree that for defense it is better to focus on preventing enemy damage than to heal it out. You don’t even need to be traited for it because as an engineer all you need is bomb kit. Right there you have an aoe smoke field that basically negates all enemies in the field, a glue bomb that stops melee enemies in their tracks, and BoB is an aoe knock-back that allows a team to use their self-heals or focus down an enemy all on a relatively short cooldown for what it does.

I feel like having all those pseudo-melee options is nice but I wouldn’t mind having some of them taken away to be turned into a long range skill set. I mean grenades are nice but not really practical for long range and rifle would be the perfect candidate for a long range make over.

As mentioned before a real melee weapon would also be nice because there is a big difference between operating in melee range vs being melee (namely the reduced damage from actually being ranged albeit short). Allowing engineers to use hammers or just buffing the tool kit would easily fill that gap and with a real melee option you open up a spot for that ranged set.

I think gadgets acting like signets would be the best fit because gadgets aren’t all that powerful, not kit powerful anyway, and have long cooldowns so acting like a signet would be easy.

Signets trade a passive for a weaker activation effect so we really don’t lose much. Sure, it kinda sucks to not be able to make a passive effect build but we aren’t losing out on effectiveness. Also signets would be broken with our tool belt, does the tool belt skill also provide a passive? Or will the tool belt allow us to “use” the signet without losing its passive? Both defeat the point of a signet.

Oh and for the engineer to be able to set up more stuff like walls or things team-mate use, think mesmer portals but do something else.

As far as tool belt skills go I think Char have some of the better ones with hidden pistol being a thief unload and battle roar allowing you to also give aoe vigor (a boon you otherwise can’t give to others)

We already have stimulants and antidote so possible options could be:

Painkillers (protection or stability)
Poison (like drop a poison field but that might make our heal to offensive)
Supplements/steroids (might or vigor)
Medicine (regeneration)
Elixir (allow us to do something that isn’t a normal boon like stealth or a random effect)

I’m sure there are many more options that deal with medicine that could relate to boons

I just want our current moves to feel stronger, like not be stronger but have more visual appeal.

For example, the overcharged shot doesn’t really feel like the huge knock-away blast it is and maybe a flashier animation and deeper, louder sound. Something that tells the opponent they were hit with an attack so strong it cc-ed the user. Currently its like the normal rifle shot with a larger smoke cloud, meh.

The other skills could use more visual flare too, like the utility goggles could have like light flash from your eyes for a second or rocket boots having a special flying backwards animation instead of just looking like you got hit by any normal knock-back. I just feel like the engineer would be more fun with cool animations.

In spvp yes, in WvW it could work if you are in a small fight but melee in general (bombs are basically melee come on) usually doesn’t last long in a zerg fest. That being said smoke bomb could buy you some time to gtfo after diving into the enemy.