Guild Wars 2

They are ok in dungeons for certain situations. But you gotta hope they dont bug out. I think they work great. if the buggy ai was fixed, they would be a huge contender.

EverythingEnds.4261:

Bri.8354:

[…] these skills rewards and encourages poor group etiquette, [..]

The only poor thing is, that GW2 pve allows teamstacking in 1 point and fighting melee to be that efficient.

It is not that Greatsword or Longbow enourage poor group etiquette, it is the bad design, which allows your whole group (inclduing “glassy” DDs) to stand togther on one point in melee range of the enemy.

Not Mesmer GS or Ranger LB should be changed, the dungeon design should be changed into no allowing melee cuddleing.

So being close to your team is now bad? I did runs last night with my usual group, I ran turrets being lazy we had a guardian, a theif, and two eles. one ele used scepter, but stayed near us cause he knew if I laid down turrets, he was gonna put down a fire field, and we would get 18/21 stacks of might. which make the fight MUCH faster. I find it funny that playing as a team to you is counter intiutive.

You can range a fight without being 1200 units away. Those weapons reward you for being miles away from a fight, if you get downed, harder to rez. you dont get buffs/healing circles/turret buffs all the way over there.

Simple fact of the matter is, the game even before the “stacking” meta because a thing, clearly rewarded you being near friends.

I came back to game after maybe year or little lekittenus, and the “meta” then didnt really might stack in dungeons, it was the Warrior/Guard/Mes meta, and those three classes were the most wanted for dungeons etc. I shelved my ranger during this time and started on an Engineer and immidiate fell in love with the sheer number of options.

I think there is a huge number of them because of their recent lime light in pvp where turrets are getting a bunch of hate. Ive seen quite a few turrets in meta events popping up in pve too. its kinda silly.

I think engie still needs some buffs personally so would suck for this huge increase to get them nerfed.

I want tornado to have a trait in air magic that gives it a pull instead of blowback… Similar to elite supplies in engie, I think it needs a trait that lowers its CD/pull instead of blowout, just so it has a use in pve, but this would also allow best of both worlds, want its CC/pvp prowess? dont trait that, want a “kitten up this mob right now” button? trait it.

it depends on how cordinated your group is, and how much you value staying alive. My dungeon group runs with a few zerkers, and a few “Tanky” specs, and even some pure boon bots sometimes. And being able to keep weakness on enemies helps you just plain FACE tank enemies honestly. A boss with weakness on it AND your hammer guardian with full up time protection, and Frost aura(im wishing more and more engi had frost fields…..) you are pretty much unkillable, its pretty sweet. is it worth all the effort? no, but it does show case the millions of ways to play this game.

WTB more zerker nerfs tbh.

Can I have swords on my back then without equiping them too? : ^)

im not against cosmetics, but its kinda silly sounding.

“kitten” the thread. “i was there you werent, im better and get a special toy you dont”

Great impression there!

Your multiplayer experience is wrong. in dungeons you DO need to work togther and think about more then personal dps. Look at the flavor of the month dungeon ranger build, it generally brings redmoa/spotter/frost spirit to work together with other popular meta builds, it brings aoe buffs that are important to improving party dps and scale exponentially the more people you have.

I play an engi, and nothing is more satisfing then blasting 18 might stacks onto my party for 30 seconds and watching bosses melt. I think the multiplayer is AMAZING, you just are prolly zerging over world content which is as you said, mindless and not really meaningful, get in a dungeon and its a diffrent world where you need diffrent ideas and gameplay to win.

You can honestly even stack Healing power and use EiB and face tank even dungeon champs as long as you dodge their big gimmicks. Im actually building a givers set myself for boonturret build. so really, you can do ANYTHING with engineer.

lunyboy.8672:

15 personal might stacks, sure, if you built specifically for that. But not party-wide. And for 25 stacks of vulnerability, you will need to run the condi food, and that doesn’t allow you to run damage food, and trait into it, not in the boon trait line. Unless you have 2 engineers in party, which I have done, and 25 stacks is easy to maintain.

But that’s not game-breaking, not in the party-wide 25 stacks of might, banners, FGS rush, etc. kind of way. Heck, a properly specced party WITHOUT engineers can hit 25 stacks of vulnerability pretty easy running Skale venom and certain traits and skills.

It’s good that someone is paying attention to the advantages of having an engineer in a party, they are a great profession, but they suffer from having too much of everything, and not enough of any one thing in a specific build to make them really worth bringing OVER an Ele, a Warrior, or a Guard, and depending on the situation, a Thief or a Mesmer.

tbh this what I love about this proffesion,
“We need stealth but we got no theif….”
Blasts smoke field

“We could use some might…”
gives 12 might to everyone

“omg im dying pls send help”
light fields and heals

Healing turret/Bombkit/EG/* with pistol/shield

6->f1 1 blast.
f2-> 2 blast
7->4 3 blast
~-> 44 4 blast.

if in asterick you run elixer S you get 5 more stealth, another stun break and i-frames.

Are you the best at being “omg carry noobs” no,
Are you the best at speed runs? no.
Can you do the middle ground the best? kitten yeah.

Everytime I play engie in a dungeon run, I feel amazingly useful.

Hell, with traits being reset whenever now, you can just go “what do we need for this fight?” and offer it.

Anymras.5729:

It should probably be noted that they’ve intentionally made Engineer main-hand weapons weak.

I dunno by his math rifle isnt to bad, and today I was running zerker rifle SD in dungeons and was surprised at how fast we could down bosses. Im sure nades are better, but I just find it odd, cause pistol 1 is extremely weak, where as its other skills on main are pretty dang good, 2 does alot of damage and peirces with the right traits, and 3 is a SOLID skill adding some confusion and a nice blind. Its really just 1 that is weak, its damage is weak, but thats a not problem but the fact that its BLEED is also just plain awful is terrible. I think its duration should double imo. allowing you to maintain 6 bleeds. might be a bit to strong in pvp tho…. Rifle feels solid, and hell p/p or p/s to swap to on kit cds is WONDERFUL cause of the utilies there, but the 1s in p main and p main alone are sooooo bad.

Learn to take it in stride, As an engineer you do lots of stuff even if you dont mean to. Enemies hate diffrent things, I can tell you though, dont be the first one to fight them. As that seems to be a HUGE factor as for who they wanna fight. If you are running a dps build, let the tankiest dude smack them first so he can keep aggro. If running turrets, bosses just kill those cause they hate them. And if you are running EiB/Elixer gun, take it in stride and tank like a boss.

this is assuming you are running dungeons in a non stacking manner, I dont stack sooooo, I dont know what to do in that kinda situation, from waht I know it shouldnt matter if you down when stacked anyways.

I find power based FT builds to work fine. 2 scales with power kittenedly. And when you have 25 stacks of might you do hella damage regardless of what you use. And getting that might on FT is really easy. I have yet to try a jug→kit swap build but im sure it works quite well tbh. Sit in FT while waiting on bomb/toolkit cds and get free might, seems cool to me.

I run triple kit EIB bombkit/toolkit/elixergun in dungeons alot, Tool kit is invaluable in regards to the protection and burst it adds to your line up.

The main problem with toolkit is its never really “Must have” Ghostbuster path of AC for example, kitten the stupid ghostbusters guns, magnet pulls them to traps and a friend presses yellow and its done. Its a minor time saver.

Super strong nuke incoming that the boss is telegraphing? Block it with toolkit.(once again, you could just evade roll, block aint needed at all.)

Box of nails is pretty useful I guess I just spam it inside of my bomb rotations. Fire bomb, Concussion bomb→Box of nails→pry bar→Acid bomb(Cancel so I dont go flying)

Magnet can also cheese some aggro, and let you 1v1 enemies. Is useful.

But, in most cases, toolkit is just that, Random tools to mesh inbetween other kits cds or for special situations. Also, it has no traits that make it better other then the turret healing gimmick which is bad.(the cripple on wrench throw is ok….) And its auto does not even cleave on the last hit, which is like why. If they gave toolkit Evade on land like in water, and made the last hit cleave, I can see it being built around for a melee engi, But until then… Its only on my bar for throw wrench, shield magnet and pry bar.

As for elixer gun, that thing is op, Acid bomb is strong and destroys objects/stationary enemies. Elixer gun is prolly a kit you can run on any bar and it will find a use in its blast finisher, light field heals and stunbreak toolbelt.

Sdric.8526:

Please come back after hit level 80 and did a few dungeons or sPvP.

This is the problem, Rangers are infact in my opinion, op on overworld pve, outside of dungeons/pvp where you can brute force litterally everything, a ranger can solo soooo many things that they shouldnt be able to.

But then you get to dungeons, and pets are just flat BAD unless you do very specific set ups.

So why is ranger so UNSTABLE in power? on overland pve, I die kittenloads on my other proffesions if I accidently try and solo group events, but on my ranger, my pets will just not give 2 craps and slap it around.

I think the pet system needs some kinda rework or something lol.

nofo.8469:

Hipfiring that thing pushes the boundaries of silly wayyyy too far.

Agreed haha.

“Hip firing a shotgun or rifle irl is extremely rare and would hardly call it a tactic. It is extremely rare because it is innacurate and will likely hurt you, especially if you do it repeatedly.”

Not exactly, you just have to be trained properly and be used to using the firearm in such a manner, Is it regular and ordinary? not at all, and very few people would actually find vaule in the skill, but engineer is all about using odd tactics hence the rifle moves. lol

@barrel comment, this is true, but I guess its cause we just shoot .22 LR when I shoot, and so shotguns always seem larger, but then again, there are plenty of rifles like that too.

I play GW2 to escape the rage that is LoL and Dota 2, I wouldnt touch GW2 the moba. Lol

I agree with lifelike.

Hipfiring looks stupid? Hip firing is a tactic used in real life when in less optimal situations, which the engineer is always in. The engineer may seem “comical” but thats because he is a nade chuckin, flamethrowerin shotgun using Combat engineer, The engineer is more at home in trenchs then open warfare, Because he is in the back lines using artillery such as morters, rather then upfront damage like the warrior.

if you guys wanna do direct damage at 1200 range, please, play a warrior. I LOVE the way the rifle works for engineer, and shotguns/rifles are not much diffrent from weapons perspectives. A shotgun is not a rifle for one simple fact. The barrel of a shotgun does not contain rifling, so its for the most part, just a rifle with a larger barrel, and no rifling. To make an entirely diffrent kit just so you guys can play soldier is silly.

@the 5 comparison, yeah, jumpshot is lacking animation wise, that sucks, if they fixed the animation it would be SO GOOD. and I dont think you understand the power that is flamethrower 5, it can be used at anytime since it has no frames….

Lyuben.2613:

Another thing I’ve noticed. Look at some stun breakers. We have 4, quite a lot for a class. Why do we need 4? Elixir S gives 3s of invuln. That’s fine. Elixir R gives two guaranteed dodges, that’s pretty much 3s of evade right there. Rocket boots creates huge distance.

look at the toss versions of these skills, S can give stability and other things, its much more then a simple stun break. R can up downed allies, much more then a stun breaker.

Rocket boots also cures movement hindering things letting you not only remove stun, but remove chill, cripple etc. this skills are strong because they are MORE then stun breakers by a large margin.

I suppose that their toolbelt skills are quite different, but do we really need 4 stun breakers?

As mentioned above, kinda yeah. Lol

In turrets too.

Flame turret gives burning in an AoE fashion. Trouble is, rocket turret also burns in an AoE fashion, with more DD damage.

Why do we need two turrets that do AoE burning? Ideally, they should make the rocket turret do some other condition and have some other effect.

There isn’t really much reason to take a flame turret currently. If you want a smoke combo field, bomb kit is much better.

But what ive im a turret spec not a bomb spec? I can now access a smoke field without bomb kit, and can deto my turrets for aoe stealth if im in a pickle.

I do concede that its damage is lacking on flame turret though, rocket turret is hands down, the best turret.

My answers in bold in above quote.

Lyuben.2613:

I’ll be blunt.

Avoid turrets.
Avoid gadgets.

As good as they can be in extreme niché builds, the potential of elixirs in utility and support, is just so much better.

Same with kits. A single kit can offer a lot more than any turret or gadget.

That should be your basis for an engineer.

In terms of damage, your options are either elixir gun and pistol/shield and pistol/pistol, for conditions.

And for direct damage, go with rifle and grenade kit/flamethrower.

That’s the general tips I can give.

Gadgets have good toolbelt skills.

Rocket kick(rocketboots)→Good damage and a 5 second burn on a 20second base CD, which can be lowered with tools.

Anylzye(goggles)→10% more damage is pretty dang good imo.

Launch PBR→This skill has such a low CD and decent damage its a surprise its never used tbh.

Mine field(mines)→AoE bombs waiting to be set off.

You can run a rifle/gadget set up, that with Static shock, that can let you really destroy mobs.

Sadly, Grenades are op as heck. And Gadgets while being pretty cool under certain set ups, are really niche.

Alchemy isnt magic persay. Its “Psuedo” magic at best. And the shield uses Science to power its abilties. so I wouldnt call it magic either.

I wouldnt say engineers dont have access to magic, just that they dont use it.

Elixer gun is great in dungeons imo. I really wanna see a build that uses the toolkit in pve though. Haha.

gwawer.9805:

@the last two responses: obviously we wouldn’t just rely on whispers and would observe the players behavior over days weeks

on tarnished coast we have a team of 40man dedicated players growing bigger that go around snooping for bots and report them as a guild when we are sure they are bots

we dont just go for the obvious bots either we will monitor a player for weeks and spy on them its really fun like playing detective

if you were doing this to me, id report you for harrasment, just saying.

ive seen people who seem to be botting, I was almost certain they were a bot, but out of no where, they talked, and I was like “WUT”

So no, this might seem fun, but imo, its like the people irl who play “Block watch” but really are just more a nuicence then helpful.

Normally im not fond of this term… but you guys are being carebears.

Hungry bears that impede humans in real life get wrecked, why would it be diffrent in a game?

“My sylvari say all things have a right to grow” ok, enjoy being level 1, because you can not kill ANYTHING. PERIOD. Harvesting onions? eating veggies? thats all against your so called code. So really, what? not all humans are nice, just like not all skritt are nice, not all ogres are nice, and not all Grawl are nice.

Breaking grawl totems? Have you paid attention to the DE in that area? in the norn starting area, you break grawl paintings and totems. Why? Cause the grawl in that area summon a demon, which is dangerous to EVERYONE. So you ARE a hero by shutting down the things which will cause harm to everyone. its an evil forthe greater good.

Make it optional, cause I currently actually hit the key again to go to my weapon, its more in place for me then hitting the “drop bundle” button, if that makes sense.

Uh, they look pretty similar to minions in gw1 imo, a little more goofy, but for the most part, not that odd.

Sorry, this aint diablo man

Anyone else remember minion factory and the time before limit on undead in gw1? having 50 minions was wayyyyy to broken, and made the game a cake walk.

Even when they reworked it into having up to 10, minions were still really strong and pretty much one of the best necro specs in pve.

I think they nerfed minions to hard in gw2, but I can understand why they wanted to tone them down more.

Kozai.8269:

Terrahero, any idea how well Condition damage compares to direct damage vs the rather tough mobs in dungeons? There you have a max of 4 teammates, so less condition stacking, burst doesn’t matter as much, but I’m not sure whether dungeon mobs have an equivalent to players Toughness and Vitality.

Well a good example on overworld, which does not matter much, since loloverworld, but in theory is intreasting.

is rock dogs. Rockdogs take little direct damage, but have about the same HP as other mobs, but they have huge armor. which means conditionsreally melt rock dogs, where as trying to overpower them wont work.

Dunno if there is dungeon mobs like this though.

AlexanderFaust.4518:

What does League offer? ::
1. PvP balance via Profile levels and Elo.
2. Player Progression utilizing the IP/Runes.
3. Potential “challenge” of pwning teh nubs!.. or getting your own face melted.
4. Options in available champion pool, summoner spells and character builds.

Please stay on topic ~ thx

As someone who has played League since Season 1, and played GW1, AND played dota, Casual =/= good for esport Scene. Dota is an Esport as well you know, And had world championships as well.

1. This system allows for customization, but Elo? Elo is basicly a luckshoot because you can not balance a single player around a number in a TEAM game. This rating is not based on your individual skill, but rather your ability to function with randoms, this is not a good way to base your skill. Dota2 profiling has a list that shows you your skill related to other players of your skill level with the given champion, Example, My “Axe” bar is 5 out of 5 ranking, and ive lost everysingle one of my axe games. But in my games, my indivudual score is high.

For GW2, we have skills since each person is not a set hero, so we dont need profile leveling up and “Masteries”

2. This model is dumb, Several heros in league REQUIRE a decent rune page to have a chance at a good early game, this means unless you farm them, you are at a disadvantage.

“Sports are usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition” – Wikipedia on sports

If this is the case, how is it a fair setting that creates fair competion if I dont have what everyone else has from the start? This means there is factors based outside of my control.

For Tourneys where you have access to everything, THEN its fair, but in the normal game? if you dont have runes/masteries and face someone who does, you will be a SEVERE disadvantage. This does not create “Fair” competion.

3. GW2 has this lol, any pvp has this tbh.

4. We have traits, skills, weapons and TEAM SET UP, aka if you want X number of X proffession, or want a more deverse line up, etc. But this is where both games are botched, not ALL choices are equal. I can tell you, even in the dota scene where more things are balanced then league, there is still a pool of “elite” heros that are just plain better.

Same with professions, some are just not strong enough right now. But tbh, no competetive game is without this. Fighting games have some fighters better then otehrs, just the way it is.

Either way, im confused at what you want, Do you want GW2 to be league? League is not a good choice to compare GW to, because League is an entirely diffrent game type that mixes RTS elements with fighting game elements etc.

As a matter of fact, id say GW is BETTER at being ready for a pro scence because it does not have things in its pvp that require you to farm previously, I can walk into pvp in this game and be on equal footing gear wise, where as if im a fresh 30 in LoL, I will be unable to contend with people who have more heros then I do and more runes then I do, which means I have a limited choice.

Also, once again, being popular does not really mean that the game is “Ready” or a “good” esport. It just means its popular and people wanna watch.

Lacross is no less balanced then Basket ball, but basket ball is more mainstream and thus is watched more. Does not mean its a better sport.

League is actually really unbalanced, its Tourney scene is basicly “play whats most op currently, and win” not all the champs are created equal.

As an Avid league player, I can tell you, from a pvp perspective, GW1 was much more balanced, League is a DotA style game, and sadly isnt learning much from it. DotA is still be updated and is much more balanced.

I miss the skill selection for sure. I feel like all that matters is my weapon, and less the skills I choose to take… Sword bars were vastly diffrent in GW1, in gw2, nah.

But its much more simple now, so I guess thats a plus.

Shinzan.2908:

Why do people care about there being bots, never got that, I understand Anet would care but they don’t affect my game experience in any way.

Uh, yes they do.

They put gold into the market, and thus raise the amount of gold, thus lowering the “Value” of your gold.

And plus, you know how hard it is to tag in events when their is 35 bots in an area being a pain? It comes and goes, some areas its worse then others, but man, sometimes its gross.

I LOVE to explore and climb and stuff, so its really annoying to be off in the shiverpeaks where not many people are and seeing the landscape without many people, I duoed a group event with some ranger who said “High five!” afterwards, that was great!

I go back to queensdale and what do I see? bots bots and more bots. And that KILLS any sense of good feeligns I had. And thats no fun.

Some of the traits are good, like signets onto the ranger is GREAT, the problem is it requires you to spec to 30 in a tree, maybe if stone CD was like 60, and wild was like 80, but right now, you spec 30 points into a tree for what, 120 CD skills? thats not worth it imo. if it was maybe the 20, that would be great.

Cause look at NM, the 15 trait is “pets gain all boons that you do” this is GREAT for setting up stacking buffs, it is at 15!

Problem is it is in NM which has very little other benefits for you, and I feel like they should rework the BM line to have the “Share boons” and “Share signets” thus making people who spec into BM be able to really “Synergize” with their pet.

A whole rehaul would be cool, but shifting them around would also be really good.

And yeah, Grenades are op as crap sadly, Flamethrower holds its own, as does rifle/p/p, but really, wanna do damage? get them nades, op as helllll

PotatoOverdose.6583:

All of the above also explains while flamethrower starts out awesome at low levels, and becomes much worse at higher levels; poor scaling.

Are you sure about this? this might be the case if you have no flamethrower traits, but I started my engineer with hopes of using it, and found its damage to be terrible, and my rifle was out damaging it

But when you got the right traits, flamethrower just rocks, with on crit procs and its sheer number of hits, the flamethrower itself does not do alot of work, but its attack lets it stack conditions/vul/might stacks and since its aoe it does ALOT of damage imo.

lets look at the values from the wiki, just for funzies, I dunno if these are base, or how they work. But, it lists hip shot as 251 damage with a 3/4 second cast time, or 0.75 seconds.

Flamethrower does 490 over 2.25 seconds, this means you get exactly 3 rifle shots in the same time.

Flamethrower also does a 1 second burn after the fact though, for 328 damage, bringing the flamethrowers total damage up to 818, where as rifle looks at 251*3 or 753 over the same time period.

Assuming lets say 50% crit, the flamethrower will crit for 5/10 of its shots on average, where as the rifle lets give it the benefit of the doubt and give it 2/3 because it gets stats, meaning it can have prec on it, lets say its got 60% crit.

Crits are listed as a default 1.5x so ill use that as my basis. This means the flamethrower does 49 damage a hit 10x, meaning it half of these crit, you get 613~ + 328 burn for 941.

the rifle gets 2(251* 1.5) + 251 = 1004

HOWEVER, the flamethrower with traits such as “chance to bleed on crit” and “chance to vul on crit” at the listed values on average per flame jet at 50% crit you get 2-3 vul stacks AND 2-3 bleed stacks, meaning you will in a drawn out fight get more damage from your 1 from a flamethrower then from a rifle.

This is not even counting the might you get from juggernaut.

However, I agree with the rest of your post, as my math even shows, that rifle with crit/power gear just scales REALLY well, However, I think kits in the end are the best weapon choices simply do to the way they function. Though this is not counting blunderbuss/jumpshot which gives the rifle extreme burst versus the flamethrower, But imo flamethrower scales quite well into the later levels with traits and what not. Rifle gets a 10% increase from its trait, where as flamethrower gets a 15% so really if we count that, we might see flamethrower gain a lead? who knows!

I think people should look at kits alot more, yeah they dont give you weapon stats, but they have sheer base damage on their own its pretty crazy!

Deleven.7508:

while i partially agree, your being too angry, a polite approach would have been more productive

I dunno, Ranges took the SB nerf pretty hard, and we sat there and crossed our fingers “Anet will not leave us hanging, SB may be gone, but we will get something soon…”

Ranger is litterally the only class that did not recieve changes this patch, tbh, I would perfer a nerf to nothing, Its like we dont exist. A proffesion filled with nothing but robots. Odd for a class supposed to be dedicated to nature.

No. Because a great example is in pve where enemies stand still mainly, perma swiftness is less strong, but in pvp where movement is everything, its MUCH much stronger.

Stability? that kitten is nigh usless in pve since its so hard to come by, and knock downs are not frequent enough. But in pvp wheere control will kill you, Stability is amazing. See? The game modes are entirely diffrent and need to be treated as such.

Deleven.7508:

they might not want to buff them too much until the botting problem is figured out, rangers seem to be the main class used for this iirc

if thats the case, then the ranger class might as well be removed. because as it stands, all the people who picked up ranger are now leaving, meaning it will be NOTHING but bots, so then you can remove it, kill two birds with one stone I guess.

But really, the bots use alot of classes, the first bot I ever saw was actually a warrior. So kitten Rangers are the flavor of the month for bots sure, so does that mean ranger is the class that you are only allowed to play if you wanna afk cause thats all tis good for?

Peter.9406:

Every single class was addressed in this patch, EXCEPT rangers! Ok, every optimist out there that was saying there was something in the works out there for rangers has to be doubting themselves now. I was hoping that this update would at least bring some minor fix to the ranger dilemma, but I was sadly mistaken. Why do you guys think we were the only class left out? And do you think the current state of the ranger is fine and maybe we are just doing it wrong if the ranger was the only class not addressed in the update?

“Doing it wrong” is a bad excuse. A class should not be punished for being “hard to use” a class should be balanced, if a class is easy and yeilds better results, its better then ranger “but a ranger can beat a warrior with effort” if Equal give results in less gain, the ranger is broken and needs to be fixed.

if it needs a rework, then do it. Dont skirt around it, cause as it is now, its a class that seems to have alot of appeal, but no one wants to play because its so bad. Thats a terrible flaw in design.

Taurethion.7302:

I joined the Vigil on my first character, and I’m noticing something a little odd. It seems like there are very few humans in the Order (and those I’ve seen have been grunts, except for the Vigil member who recruited me- and ALL the orders sent humans to Queen Jenah). Given humans have a long martial tradition, it frankly seems weird. I know there are even fewer asura, but I didn’t find this surprising given their culture and size.

Are humans joining other Orders, possibly due to not wanting to serve under a Charr that used to fight them? Are they so embattled that most who chose to fight stay in human lands? Is this an awkward attempt to illustrate the fading of humanity from their height? I haven’t reached the end of the questline yet (the level 59 quest Retribution is up next), so if I simply haven’t reached something that answers it or shows more humans yet (preferably as something OTHER than cannon fodder), let me know!

imo, it has to do with the fading of humans from not just glory, but the world all together. I find that alot of npcs are Charr, Norn, and Asura. Humans are not around at all, Sylvari are a bit rare too, but alot of scout NPC are Sylvari, but it feels like humans which used to be the only race, are now a dying race. Which I think is why I like them. in GW1, I always wanted to play a charr, cause they felt rare and cool, But now, I feel like “Charr are sooo common!” Humans are a dying race, who have moved to pirating and other…“Shadey” dealings to keep themselves afloat, and that I think is why the order of whispers has alot of Humans and the others have less.

Engineers use kits because its not their proffession mechanic, their mechanic is that even though they “lose” a slot to the kit, they actually still have a skill they can use on the toolbelt, meaning they dont really lose a skill at all. A great example is medkit, it means you have no healing skill when you dont have the kit on, but thats wrong, cause you get a GREAT heal skill on the toolbelt, have bomb kit on, but wanna stay at range? you can be in P/P and STILL have access to a GREAT skill in big ole bomb, so really, we have kits because we dont actually lose a slot to them.

nowitsawn.1276:

mulch.2586:

nowitsawn.1276:

According to the wiki:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Defense + Toughness).

So, if this is true, doubling your Armor (= Defense + Toughness) should halve your damage intake. This would indeed mean that Toughness has diminishing returns.

The formula isn’t right because it’s leaving out crits and conditions, but does seem correct for direct non-crit vanilla damage.

The formula also shows you that there’s no diminishing returns, but it’s not an additive/subtractive, but proportional.

To call that “diminishing returns” is absurd, because if it were straight up subtractive, at some point if you had enough toughness, you’d be getting healed by taking hits.

Not sure what people mean here with the term ‘’Diminishing Returns’‘, then (to be honest it’s the first time I’ve seen it being used this much in an MMO community) . What I meant was that, in how I understand it, as your Toughness increases, adding the same amount of Toughness on top of that will yield less and less noticeable results in damage mitigation.

Like if you were to attain some absurd amount such as 10.000 Toughness, adding 200 more won’t really make a difference, but if you only have 500 Toughness, another 200 would help way more.

As for how that affects your survivability… well, I’m not going to pretend I know much about the math behind that :p

Not exactly.

if you have 1000 toughness, and the attack does 1000 damage, then you get 1200 toughness, and you take 800, well, you took 200 less damage, or 20% less damage.

well, lets say you add another 200, and you take 640 damage, well, you took 160 less damage! but you still took 20% less damage, so while it appears to be diminishing, it infact is not.

These numbers are made up, but they get my point across.

Another game I played had stats “Intelligence” for each 250 INT one aquired, one would gain 100% damage from base.

This means, if you had 250 INT, and gained 125, your multiplier would go from 2.0 to 2.5

however, lets say base damage is 200, that means you go from 400, to 500, a 25% increase.

But lets say, 200 base damage, and you have 1000 INT now, well that makes the multiplier 5.0, if you gain 125, it becomes 5.5, but that means its now

200 * 5 = 1000, versus 200 * 5.5 = 1100

it is a mere 10% increase now, however how INT worked in the formula was NOT diminished, but what you see was, this does not mean INT has diminishing returns.

The key here is that these things generally look at it from base. But when you teir it, like rather then looking at 0→200 0→400 you are looking at it like, 0→200→400 which will skew results.

I think this has to do with several factors that are double edged swords for me.

Dynamic events,

These things require people to take down if they are the group kind, the system allows everyone to be rewarded equally, So you will get help. However, this creates an odd issue. Partying ive found gives me no greater rewards of functions other then seeing them on the map on overworld pve. So why would I party? I only party for dungeons, and thats only because I HAVE to, on overland pve? I can run around with a guy for hours, we both get EXP/loot/objectives done, So we dont need to form a party. This is AMAZING for people who have 15 minutes to play on break or something, they can just follow a group of people and get some events in etc, but it also means that the players have no incentive to get to know one another and socialize, as they dont need a party or legit interactions to get ahead.

Basicly, GW2 is great for casuals, as it should be. I love that about it. But at the same time, I have yet to make a single friend in game I didnt know prior in my some 150 hours of play,(im a casual!) I feel like I have no reason to form bonds, since if I wanna do events, I can just join the zerg for easy stuff, and never create lasting bonds.

Dungeoning would be so much easier with an established group of people, but in dungeon runs, ive had people help me since I was a noob and didnt know where to go, but come end of the run, we made it through despite my noobness with only a few silver to waste on repairs, but I exlclaimed “Good job everyone!” in party chat, to find my pick up group had already left the party lol.

I think we need something outside of the game to communicate as well.

Luxiom.8279:

This discussion comes up in every MMO The concept to study is effective health points, aka “how many hits can I take before dying?”

This is a copy paste from my guild-forums as this discussions is currently under way there too:

TL:DR
There are no diminishing returns, soft caps or hard caps on Vitality OR Toughness when it comes to survivability from direct damage!

Increasing Armor OR Health-pool by X% will increase survivability against direct damage by X%

Increasing Vit will also increase survivability against condition damage by the same X%. Toughness will increase received healing efficiency by the same X%.

Example:
Say you have 20,000 health points and 2000 armor (close to base stats of a Warrior). En enemy hits you for 1,000 damage on each hit. Disregarding your self heal you can take 20 hits before you go into downed state.

Armor-slots gives 224 sat-points for a secondary stat, trinkets (without jewels) gives 240 stat-points for a secondary stat. Lets round this to 200 each for the following example.

Adding 2,000 health, trough 200 Vitality on say armor-slots, will let you take 22 hits before downed, increasing your survivability by 10% against direct damage. As condition damage ignores armor you will also have increased you survivability against condition damage by 10%.

Adding a additional 2,000 health by putting Vitality as a secondary stat on your trinkets too (not jewels) will let you take 24 hits before downed, increasing survivability by an additional 10% from base.

Aka, each 100 Vit will let you take one more hit so no diminishing returns.

The same goes for Toughness.

Increasing Toughness by 200 make is so each hit will now do ~909 damage per hit, letting you take 22 hits before downed.

Increasing Toughness by an additional 200 will make each hit do ~833 damage and lets you take 24 hits before downed.

Each 100 Toughness will let you take one more hit, so no diminishing returns.

In addition. Toughness will make all received healing more efficient. In the 20,000 health/2,000 armor example being healed for 5,000 health negates 5 attacks at 1,000 damage. If you add 400 Tougness instead of 400 Vitality that 5k heal will negate 6 hits instead. Healing efficiency will in short be increased by the same % as survivability against direct damage when stacking Toughness.

Conclusion:
As you can see in the example above, the first 200 points of toughness mitigates 91 damage (from a 1k hit), and lets you take 2 more hits. The next 200 points mitigates an additional 76 damage, but still lets you take 2 more hits before you are downed.

This leads to the belief that there is a diminishing return on investment on armor as people only see that 91>76. This isn’t true. The first 100 points of toughness and the last 100 points of toughness will increase your time to live equally (as always disregarding healing/condi-damage).

Disclaimer:
What excat increase in % you get from each point of Toughness or Vitality depends on how much you already have and the ratio between the stats. So the example above is just that, an example. If you had 25,000 health and 3k armor 100 Vit would ad 4% survivability against direct damage and 100 Tough would add 3,33%.

The reason they don’t add the same %-amount is because the damage formula works on multiplication. 50×50 is bigger then 1×99. As you usually have more armor then health (1:10 ratio) Vitality gives more effective health-points per stat-point.

+1

Effective health is something that few people tend to think about.

Hsinimod.5784:

The Rifle allows us to keep range, but requires us to be extra close…. it loses much of its point. The toolkit is just so bland.

You are assuming that we should have an option to stay at one range. Engineer’s kits ALL have abilities that award you for being at diffrent ranges.

Flamethrower,
1- Mid range skill
2- Long range explosive aoe
3- Melee knock back
4- Mid range fire field
5- Melee range blind

Elixer gun
-1 range skill
-2 range skill
-3 mid range aoe
-4 Melee range aoe
-5 long range aoe

Med kit is melee range without the toss feature, Bomb kit is melee range, Toolkit has melee moves, but a ranged toolbelt option, and magnet is midrange.

Engineer I think was DESIGNED to move fluidly from ALL ranges of combat.

You think rangers have flashy skills? or less boring kits? Ever played with longbow? You may think LB has more control then rifle, but you couldnt be more wrong, LB sucks so bad because all it has to keep things away is ONE knock back, and does LESS damage at melee, Rifle is leagues better, it has the ability to do good damage at ALL ranges.

As for needing more weapons, bullocks. Engineers have kits, that is the replacement.

“But they take up utility slots!” Yeah, they do. But they are even more varied then elementalist attunements. I tried to play a staff Ele, and I was bored because Attune swapping didnt actually give me that much more variaty, all it gave me was diffrent flavors of the same thing.

I can be healing my team one seconds with my elixer gun, then I can be DPSing with my flamethrower at mid range, then I can be doing obscene damage in melee with toolkit.

if I am a staff ele, I can do AoE damage + burn in fire, AoE damage+bleed in earth, AoE damage with condition/CC in air, or AoE heal in water.

There was very little variance, and it was just not fun. Kits require a utility slot because they are massively strong considering, And its not like you are actually losing out,

if you run medkit/nadekit/bombkit/toolkit

You still have,

a self heal, a AoE nade barrage, a AoE cc/nuke, and a Boomerang damage projectile.

So even though your utility slots are filled, thanks to the glorious toolbelt you basicly have your utility esc skills intact.

Well, Norn get to fuse with spirits of nature, So why not have the range be able to shift too?

Wild shape

-Gain a new skill set corrisponding to the currently active pet
-Puts pet swap in cooldown until duration has finished

So for instance, when you become a bear, you get mauling/Tanky like skills for a short duration.

Becoming a spider gives you massive nets/immobles and poison.

Becoming a feline allows you stealth and massive burst/bleeding damage potential

Etc, The skill set could be modified versions of the pets ones as well! that way you could essentially gain improved drake abilities, or other such things.

The Nature magic tree seems lacking imo, But this would give us that “Druidic” feel that some people want!

For balance, you could have it be a fusion of you and your pet, so your pet goes away for the duration, but you become a rampaging hulk of beast.

coglin.1496:

Doesn’t appear very smart to attempt to start a discussion against a build in general based on one single fight with one single mob.

I have used turrets on tough mobs. There is a bug with the trait for now, but when it was working you can place all of your turrets by target and not drop them in front of you.

I remember pics posted with turrets placed on shrubs and other unreachable locations and threads asking if that was working as intended. The devs posted and said yes, if you can get a turret there, then it belongs there. Picking your ground and placing your turrets in strategic locations can make all of the difference in the world.

If you run up and plop your rifle turret right in front of the mob, you have no real reason to complain if he destroys it. What does your comments about the thumper turret have to do with what happened to the riffle turret? Did you have some expectation that the thumper turret gets aggro by default? If you lay all your hopes into assume you can guess where a champions agro will go, you can’t hardly be upset if it turns out you made an inaccurate assumption.

So the target ground turret trait is borked? and when it wasnt, you could put turrets on rocks and stuff? thats pretty cool actually, good tips for when they fix it haha.

When turrets do work, it is AMAZING I must say, but yeah, they leave alot to be desired. Mainly because It does infact seem like mobs rush for the turrets, I think this actually has to do with kiting.

For example, when I kite, The enemy quickly loses intreast in me cause my turrets have been plinking him, But when I stand there at tank his hits, he is much more likely to be pleased to sit on me and beat me down, sadly tanking enemys on engineer is not fun.

Toolkit/Rocket/Rifle was what I ran with supply drop and healing turret. It is neat when it works, or when there is alot of other attention to the enemys.

Sabb kinda hit the nail on the head, Turrets can potentially do the most damage with the least amount of effort, in the perfect situation, while a skill does X damage, the turret does Damage for its entire life, And it will live aslong as its hp lets it. So if skill does X damage, but rifle turret does 0.25X with a rate of fire of 2 seconds, and the other skill has 25 second CD, that means it 10 seconds, a rifle turret out damages it, and by the time its CD is up, the turret has done well over twice the damage, resulting in higher DPS, But as stated, this requires turrets to be able to be left to do their job, which they sadly generally are not left to do heh.

Algreg.3629:

Dice Dragon.4326:

Algreg.3629:

and still the argument applies. Yes, you CAN play the game in any way you want to, you just cannot expect to win if you play it wrong. You can tell your boss how much he sucks, you can show up 2 hours late to work, but we live in a universe of consequences. Sure, play the game like another game you know, but to believe you are entitled to succeed regardless of the way you play is outright ridiculous.

Doesnt this go against the design though? Whats the point of having diffrent trait trees and skills if you only need to use the “best” and that is the “proper” way to play?

in any game, there are ways to play it “good” – in the sense of reaching your set goals better – or worse. How can you have a system that rewards any behaviour equally? If you are looking for this kind of environment, a computer game simply isn´t the place to be as they always confront you with artificial challenges you have to overcome by adopting artificial sets of behaviour, some more succesfully than others. If you want a I can do REALLY anything enviroment you need to log on to stuff like Second Life.

Eh, I dont mean that exactly, I know that there will always be “better” builds, but if everyone is running the same build, then you know something is wrong. I personally think there is plenty of options for dungeons for most classes, but its still silly to blame it on “playing the class right” since the classes all have several diffrent ways to play.

Plus, its really about team play, if everyone runs a blanaced build, you will have a much easier time, but if you are the only one running support, you will fail, cause everyone else isnt supporting you, and following up on your support since they are all class cannons or something silly, The holy trinity is gone imo, but at the same time still there. You still need a dps, a few “Supports” and “Tanks” are pretty much gone. But some classes support is either UP, or bugged, etc. So the game will be much more friendly when certain trait lines are actually buffed up to be able to compete in said role :P

“How come other pet-based classes in other games don’t show this “inherently unbalanceable” problem?”

Imo they do. while turrets/minions have a high turnover rate, the CD does not start till after they die. Meaning if the AI or AoE hits your turrets, you just lost all the utility/things you traited for, for nothing basicly.

I played a MM in gw1, and I will never be able to play one in this game imo, simply because I dont like the fact that I need to be level 60ish to even remotely try to use minions. Without traits, the “optional” pets just die, and have long recharges, meaning you put all your ability and “potential” into pets that are dead as soon as the fight starts.

ive partied with good MM, and seen decent turret use, but its REALLY painful to make work imo, and generally not worth the time.

I have seen pet classes be either kitten broken, or dead weight, the game I came from had a class called “summoner” well, some of the end game dungeons required you to do VERY specific things, like “dont attack” or “friendly fire” and since you couldnt control your summons, this meant that your summons would set off bombs, kill party mates, or kitten over gimmicks getting you killed. So you were forced to have no summons out in those parts, basicly being dead weight.

But then on the flip side, any setting you COULD use summons, you were litterally the strongest class in the game.

The sad part is really that this is how it feels for alot of pet classes, the times your pet works, its overbearing and to strong, and the times they dont, you are dead weight. They need to balance this, so your pets are not OP in simple tasks, but are not weak in complicated ones.

As it stands right now, Anything that your pet can tank makes the game easy, but when you lose your pet due to areas of the game that punish “mindless” minions, you lose alot of your potential you are forced into. My ranger can solo overworld group events sometimes if the champion does not have extreme damage, but in dungeons my pet is massive dead weight. So its the case of, im either op as crap, or garbage, and thats just not fun :’c