Guild Wars 2

Thank you MadVisions, yes that’s what I meant.

I only went into Engineer because that is what I have the most knowledge about.

On the topic of Hambow, I believe that the CC, damage and AoE pressure it gave out was widely complained about at the time. Earthshaker and Combustive Shot would (and still do) take up a good portion of a capture point. Of course, now we have far more tools for dealing with it, but at the time it was brutal.

It seems as if HoT took what Hambow was notorious for, and gave it to almost everyone except Thief and Elementalist. Elementalist was given the ability to just sustain through it.

If you’re finding it easy to get kited, or having difficulty putting out more CC pressure on a more consistent basis with Scrapper over Engineer, then I don’t know what to tell you. I’m putting out way more relative CC pressure now than before.

Crowley.8761:

I understand there’s some serious power creep going on, but the game is just a lot less fun now in my opinion. Rarely do you get a good fight where you make actual tactical decisions like before, spam or get spammed and hope everything dies before you run out of cd/endurance.

While I’m not exactly finding myself insta-bursted, I do feel the same. I’ve been playing the new Warrior Macebow build to get my 10 profession wins for the last backpack achievement. The lock-down and damage on that build is insane. head-butt (stun+ shattering blow to prevent self-stun) → Skull Grinder (daze) → Shield bash (stun) + a few hits → Skull Grinder → pommel bash (a daze) → Skull Grinder. It’s not OP, I can take them on with my Scrapper, but kitten . At least it’s balanced by the fact that if you aren’t frenzied then your survivability is nil, which is great because Warrior finally has the feeling that in order to succeed you have to play aggressively.

Haha, well, I wouldn’t mind some ‘Murica freedom, I don’t want to get freedom’d THAT hard…

While I’m glad that the game is better balanced (sorry Guardians…), I really think with the introduction of elite specs, PvP became a lot less fun, thanks to all the AoEs and CC.

Even with the scaled down effects, the game is a mess. Between the Tempest Shouts, Warrior fire fields, Scrapper lightning fields, Dragonhunter traps, and other introduced skillsets, I’m just bombarded with things to track. Nevermind the AoE that already existed in the game (enormous Necro marks, for instance).

I know that the game itself doesn’t differentiate AoEs at a technical level, based on what Anet has said on the matter, but I really think skills with large AoEs need to be toned down.

In fact, I would really like some of the large circular AoEs turned into aimable and linear skillshots.

I’m an Engineer player, so I’ll use this class as an example. While the old Rifle build (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUhSsYJXw+KQ7FLsFVYKeRvmYHNFzI4IuBBAA-TJBFABA8AA+vMwCXAgW2fAA) was a bit too strong at its peak performance, everything in it required solid timing. Rifle was single target, and could only lock down one opponent, and one of its CCs knocked YOURSELF down. So in a teamfight, I had to choose my target wisely. Grenades were powerful, but had no control abilities in its own right, so if I needed to prevent an enemy attack I had to swap out of it or dodge. Tool kit had an AoE cripple with WEAK damage, a single target power attack (crowbar), a powerful block (a bit weaker than Mesmer’s Shield 4) and a single target pull. Elixir S was for survival, and had a high cooldown.

Now look at the meta Scrapper build. PBAoE reflect, an evading dash that can proc an AoE daze if it goes through a lightning field (TWICE), a 360 block that hits everything in front and a large AoE circle stun. For utilities, we use Elixir gun because of all the conditions present, bulwark gyro for the AoE reflect, 50% damage reduction from anywhere and potentially AoE daze+lightning field to proc more AoE dazes in (if traited with Final Salvo). Our last utility is either an Elixir or Blast gyro.

You can easily see how not only is Scrapper easier, but it deals a huge amount of AoE CC pressure, AoE damage pressure, while packing a lot of sustain. I can do things my old engineer could only dream about, without even trying. And that’s NOT a good thing! And it’s not fun to watch.

I’ll just say, that while I know you will never release Elite-spec-free PvP, if it was an option I would definitely go back to playing that over Post-HoT PvP. I am just not having a lot of fun. But I used to enjoy PvP, and I’m grinding out that backpack to show my appreciation for the game I love.

Cheers.

EDIT: Why is this showing up as a question for me…I didn’t check that box O_o

Funny enough I was in a team with 3 thieves and 2 eles against a Mesmer, Revenant, Scrapper, Druid and Ele (dat metagame lol).

We played our mobility to our advantage, and focused down targets that were easy to interrupt for pulmonary impact, like Tempest and Druid. The Eles spec’d for more support and helped keep us alive. That’s the difference between good teammates and bad ones, I guess. I’m sorry you got the latter.

I started S3 in Sapphire (was Diamond at the end of S2). Leagues are clearly a false representation of player skill.

Seems like a decent idea.

Results with:
Main-hand Pistol gives all the big damage.
Off-hand Pistol gives AoE blind/confusion and immobilize/cripple and additional condition damage.
Shield gives personal defense.

Three defined roles for each one. P/P doesn’t really get a significant buff, and P/S does.

A mobile shredder gyro would be really awesome…it could work like a faster Whirling Axes.

So long as the Gyro can actually keep up with a swift’d engineer.

Ardid.7203:

All this suggestions have been said before with loud and populous support. Yet we haven’t had any answer after the first one: “We’ll see if we can see to maybe perhaps do something about that”.

Then the answer is to get more vocal

redwing.9580:

I feel like gyros should worked like a timed version of the herald skills where the gyros are more just visual icons while your the one pulsing the buff as it would remove the ai slacking behind

That would definitely buff the usability of Gyros. Essentially, it would eliminate the delay and bugged pulsing. I assume the Gyros that would be exempt from this are Blast Gyro and Shredder Gyro.

However, Anet would never do this, because you lose the thematic element to Gyros, and if you only apply this to Medic, Bulwark and Purge Gyros, but not Shredder and Blast then you’d be moving away from Anet’s stance on normalization of skills.

WvW roaming has a plethora of situations where you aren’t fighting around a node. The lack of a gyro’s ability to proc while moving directly reduces the amount of pulsing some of them output. See Xyonon’s comment on medic and purge gyro.

Gyros Scrappers in open-world PvE can’t use gyros properly without Gyros being able to fly down ledges.

Do all gyros need to scale with Engie stats? The only one I am 100% on board with is the Shredder Gyro, the rest of them can just have their HP increased. Blast gyro, the other damage one, is mostly used for the CC.

I approve, but only because I love the idea of a freshly Moa’d player turning around and pecking the enemy Mesmer to death.

I like the idea of the leash mechanic.

I think with all those quality of life changes, I could probably run a 5 gyro build fairly well. Since the only gyros that do damage are the shredder gyro (useless) and the blast gyro, I wouldn’t need to feel guilty about running an AI build

Plus, the gyros are so cute…

Just putting this out there: for gyros to work better with engineer, then we need them to not only keep up with us, but also to follow us down ledges and pulse while moving.

Otherwise we are restricted in ability to use them. I can basically only use them well when staying in a set area where I don’t move long distances. This isn’t ideal or considerably fun.

To reiterate, my suggestion:

1) Allow Gyros to follow us down ledges in a straight line (or at least mostly straight). When Blast Gyro Tag is thrown from a ledge, the Gyro should be able to travel down the ledge toward the enemy.
2) Able to pulse effects while moving. Most Gyros have to stop to apply their effect. Even the Blast Gyro often needs to stop before detonating.
3) Improve their speed so they can keep up with an engineer running with swiftness/super speed.

Thank you.

The question of replacing shortbow as your secondary weapon set is less of a question about modifiers and damage, and more about whether you can afford to lose infiltrator’s arrow, as that gives you a lot of mobility without spending endurance.

This balance iteration is still young. If a thief spec appears that specializes in killing people (besides +1ing) or team fighting and less about back-capping, then P/P can potentially be an okay alternative to shortbow.

So long as the primary benefit of thief is mobility and back-capping, then shortbow will be essential to any build.

My problem with Sw/P is that Pistol Whip takes too long to cast and uses too much initiative. Offensively: Why use a melee, single-target, 6 initiative stun when I have a ranged, single-target, 4 initiative, faster daze? It’s more reliable to get my Pulmonary Impact strikes. So if, generally speaking, I’m always preferring Head Shot over Pistol Whip, then I’d rather drop Sword for Dagger, and gain a strong blinding gap closer, an execution skill and a higher damage auto-attack.

Overall, Pistol Whip’s initiative cost and cast time is too high, and the stun duration is too low. Since it has that animation wind-up where the skill doesn’t evade I can’t even use it as a reliable defensive option like a Mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy. And in PvP a thief shouldn’t be cleaving downed people in melee, making Sword even less of a desirable option over Dagger.

I think for PvP Sword is better paired with Dagger. Sw/P is better at cleaving PvE mobs down.

Whatever armor set, runes and sigils you want to wear is not important for world completion, so I left it out:

Power:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUhSsYJXwvLQ7FLDG0XASf7H/RNiB48zfQB

Condi:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhSsYfWwvLQ7FLpF1XNEANw4PmGlBYJuiHAA

Lazy:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlcThatY1VwvLQ7FL3FF4CGhBgYB9D5w4I2EJBA

I’m not quite convinced that P/P is up to par just yet, but I plan on trying it out using the new Destroyer’s amulet (+power, +precision, +ferocity, +cond-damage).

Maybe something like this…: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVn0MBFOhFmCOPB8PhFfCbeAuAfgeDhqQUYLAMAOTA-TZBFwAVLD04IAQ4UAUa/BAPAAA

Really not sure what utility #9 should be. Biggest problems are lack of condi-removal and disengage. The build basically works by relying on Steal into Blinding Powder + Bounding Dodger to gain stealth, then use Sneak Attack, followed by Unload spam. Once you run out of initiative you pretty much have nothing.

I’ll probably end up going S/D instead. Worth a try, though.

Just thinking…after the SCAR events in TD, a merchant can open up which allows you to buy Scrap Rifles.

It works similar to other bundles. You double click on it to equip the scrap rifle, and you can use it exactly like how it is in TD.

While playing Daredevil, I really enjoyed mixing unhindered combatant and the scrap rifle, and I think it would be really fun to use for general PvE playing.

The bass guitar fits super well with the machined weapon set, too bad it doesn’t glow red like the actual weapons.

I’m sure it would definitely increase sales of the Base Guitar if it was tied into a bundle!

Just wondering what people think of this. When you buy the bass guitar, you would also get it as a hammer skin that plays some notes when you hit enemies.

I love FLCL, and I thought this would be an awesome idea.

I’m not sure how the longbow would lose its functionality, given that you can cast the fire-field alongside the sticky arrow. The Counter-Attack skill swaps with the F2 (parry slot), not the F1 (burst slot). This is distinct from Berserker, in that for Berserker the Berserk skill swaps with the F1 (burst slot), rather than the F2 (frenzy slot).

And the way the hammer skill would work would be similar to Revenant Staff 5. Revenant staff 5 pushes enemies forward and out, but the hammer counter-attack would only go forward. Also, it would only consume one stack of stability. The way Revenant staff 5 removes multiple stacks of stability is stupid, and is one of the things which only serves to reduce the enjoyability of playing and watching GW2 as a competitive pvp scene.

The enjoyability of fighting as AND against this spec was one of the things I had in mind when thinking of it. Every component of the spec is distinct, in that you won’t see similar things as you see with Tempest shouts, Chronomancer wells or Necromancer marks, where you see a clustered stacking of these abilities and you have no idea what to do other than evade/block through it. This is the real problem of skill clutter, rather than Elementalists aura effects. When fighting the Champion, you will know when he is parrying, and you will know when he is able to use his counter-attack, and based on his weapon you will know what counter-attack the Champion is capable of doing. When playing AS the Champion, you can use parry to punish people who spam abilities. Any Scrapper that tries to use Rocket Charge on you will regret it when you parry and stun them right back, and follow it up with a burst ability. Rocket Charge gives the Champion three opportunities to parry and puts them right next to the Champion. For a more specific example, take Axe. Let’s say you’re running the Champion and the trait that makes critical axe hits generate more adrenaline. You are winning against an enemy and they try to flee and use a cripple/chill ability on you and you parry it. The counter-attack on Axe will let you leap toward your fleeing opponent, then leap again (similar to rocket charge). Landing at least one leap, followed by one axe hit would refill your adrenaline, allowing you to finish the retreating enemy with an eviscerate. The enemy can counter this by baiting out parry prior to fleeing. Or failing that, make sure to dodge the second axe leap to deny adrenaline and put distance between you and the Champion. When fighting the Champion you can only fail so many times before he gets you with his sustained pressure. Something like a rifle core Engineer would be able to easily take on the Champion and win.

One of the criticisms of this build, I think, is that there would be too many obvious animations which are easy to dodge or counter. Warrior has had this problem for some time. I disagree with the criticism in this particular case, in that the problem in this game is that powerful abilities for other classes don’t have enough of a tell. The skill floor of the game is too low right now.

I don’t like how the Warrior has been themed as a simpleton fighter. The Berserker class seems to enforce this. The profession mechanic may be the burst skills, but being a Warrior is more than that. Of all professions, Warrior should be one with their weapon sets. A true martial artist. Warriors became Warriors (from a lore standpoint!) because they are skilled, not because they are too stupid to be a mage or an engineer. We need a spec that enforces this and gives the Warrior more non-passive complexity.

Warrior and Berserker focus heavily on the more barbaric side of warrior. The next elite spec should focus on the aspect of warriors that have more finesse in their method. I think it would be cool to have a spec completely based on parrying attacks.

New Weapon:
Melee Staff. Staff will focus on blocks and and putting melee pressure on enemies. I’m not sure what the exact skills would be, but the overall vision is for it to be a weapon that might not deal a lot of damage, but it will easily wear down enemies by blocking their major burst abilities and using up their stun-breaks and condi-clears (main condis would be cripple, vulnerability and weakness, conditions which mesh well with a duelist or skilled fighter). After you wear them down you can swap to a more damage-oriented set. The main counter to staff is blind, range or skilled mobility. So thieves and druids would do well against this. Necromancer, Revenant and Elementalist might not.

Profession Mechanic:
F2 ability is Parry. Base cool-down is 10 seconds and you can use it any time. When used, the warrior will block the next attack (ranged or melee) that hits it. When adrenaline is not full, successfully blocking an attack will give a huge amount of adrenaline. If adrenaline is full, then blocking an attack will change the F2 ability to Counter-Attack for 10 seconds. Counter-Attack uses half of your adrenaline to use an attack based on your weapon. If Counter-Attack isn’t used for 10 seconds then it reverts back to parry. Note that Counter-Attacks aren’t automatically used against the enemy that you blocked, you can target another enemy and use it on them.

List of Counter-Attacks after a successful Parry:
Sword – Whirling Riposte: Does a 2 second whirling and evading leap toward your enemy before striking your enemy, immobilizing and bleeding them.
Mace – Unsavory Smash: Whirl your mace around yourself, reflecting projectiles and taunting your target. After two seconds, bring your mace down and knockdown enemies around you.
Axe – Punishing Leap: Leap at your opponent, applying bleed and vulnerability, then leap again at your target, granting you fury. If your target was hit by the first leap (they didn’t dodge, block or blind), then you also blind them with the blood on your axe.
Rifle – Slamfire: Gain a buff that eliminates the cooldown the next rifle skill you use.
Longbow – Sticky Arrow: Fire an arrow at the target that detonates on them, inflicting burn.
Hammer – Hammerhead Charge: Point your hammer forward and charge a set distance toward your target. Anyone you hit along the way gets pulled with you until you reach max range.
Greatsword – Mordau: Flip your greatsword and grab it by the blade, bringing the hilt down on your enemy, stunning them for a long duration, and applying vulnerability.
Staff – Clearing Swipe: 360 Whirl that knocks all enemies away from you.

Utility Skills:
The new utilities will be survival skills (similar to ranger). Coming up with specific skills would take a while, so I’ll just detail the overall vision. The idea is that the utilities address the warrior’s defensive issues by giving them bonuses on attacks. For instance, one survival skill (Underhanded Strikes) kicks up dust, blinding opponents and gives warrior protection while removing one condition each for the next 5 strikes landed. Another survival skill is a low cooldown but low range dash (Combat Shuffle) which evades an attack, and gives the warrior stability if used after a successful parry.

Traits:
Each stage of adept, master and grandmaster will have a trait that will either: improve the speed and damage of parry skills, gives more sustain from survival skills, provide boons on successful parrying/counters.

I will admit, this spec is very PvP and small-scale WvW-oriented. This is where warrior needs the most help. I don’t really see the necessity of giving Warrior a more fractal/raid-oriented spec when Berserker is just so amazing. But in open-world PvE this spec will give Warriors a lot of defensive options that they don’t have; so it would be a powerful solo spec. Anyway, just had to write this out. Warriors definitely needs a PvP spec that promotes tactical offensive play.

The RNG and that fact that it simply copies skills of two other classes (three if you include underwater, four if you include the tool-belt skill) shows how Elixir X remains a relic of the old state of Engineers, where Anet just mish-mashed a bunch of skill effects together and called it a day (remember the old rocket boots?).

Tornado does not make any sense at all, but in my opinion they need to change Elixir X in its entirety to make it a far more unique skill. Although Moa-ing 3 people in PvP is pretty fun…

I like all those ideas. Even if the dev team doesn’t see this one thread, if the community begins perpetuating good ideas in a constructive fashion using critical thought, then eventually devs will notice.

Notice me dev-senpais!

Why is boon share a lazy suggestion? Revenant brings the boon share in the form of a power build, why not have Engineer bring the boon share in the form of a superior condition build?

You don’t need to down play ideas as lazy. Warrior’s current position as a meta PvE class stands on lazy design, in a sense.

Anyway, I think to find Engi’s niche, we need to look at what other builds lack. Druid is a burst healer, it does not sustain at a constant rate. Revenant has sustain healing, but it’s tied to the Ventari tablet, and Revenant can’t constantly swap legends. Tempest is similar to Revenant, and has high condition removal, but is pretty inflexible with other trait-lines.

The options include: crowd control, protection, supplying offensive boons, boon duration on specific boons, mobility…anything else? Though one might be able to argue that the ability to unconditionally swap to the “heal mode” is fairly unique. Druid needs to build-up the Avatar, Elementalist needs to be in water, Revenant needs to be in Ventari. Being able to squad heal then immediately go back into the damage mode seems like a big plus.

It wouldn’t pulse multiple times, only once. So you get 5s of resistance every 20 seconds. Essentially, it is simply applying boons, as you say. I only mention pulse because from a thematic viewpoint, it would be a “pulse” of healing. But yes, it would have more in common with an elixir toss.

If Anet doesn’t want the healing archetype to exist, then what about Druid? Irenio even mentioned that Druid was not a significant damage spec, and intended to be a heal-based spec. Remember that for pugs and uncoordinated groups, the most popular raid Druid spec involves almost complete healing gear.

Now, for bunker down. In Raids and fractals, bunker down is useless. I would only use the trait in PvP for the self-heal capabilities. The intent of my changes to the kit is to open the option for Engineer to be a prominent heal support much like the druid, tempest or ventari rev, though filling a different niche.

But I don’t want it to do what Healing Turret currently does to all other heal options, in that Healing Turret overshadows all others. I can’t rightly suggest that Med-kit be more beneficial to the engineer itself, because then they’ll just take med-kit over healing turret when they want a more “personal” healing option. Hence my suggestion to make med-kit a worse option to heal the engineer than heal turret, but a better option to heal party members. The Engineer itself has the tool-belt skill to heal itself, which I think is fine in its current iteration.

I like that idea of keeping the throwable potions from med kit, where they AoE pulse from where you drop them instead of having to be picked up. That seems like a fun idea.

It would make Med-kit very fun to use in all game modes!

Because we haven’t had a med-kit thread in a while…

There’s no reason that Engineer should be as bad as it is as a healer. We have so many healing-oriented traits that this should be a non-issue, but nevertheless it is.

My vision is that Med-Kit be reworked slightly to be a more viable option.

Where Engineer healing skills should be in terms of role:
Elixir H: SHOULD be the best personal option.
Healing Turret: SHOULD be the best compromise between self-heal and heal support, and potential offensive option when traited with explosives for the knock-back.
Med-kit: SHOULD be the best party healing option.
Medi Gyro: SHOULD be the best option for Scrapper when traited with Gyro traits.

My suggestions are:
1) Obviously, like many players have been saying, increase the base and scaling outgoing healing on Med-kit 1. For a skill that does not do damage or heal the engineer itself it should be fairly powerful.
2) Med-kit skills 2-5 should not be pick-up items, but PBAoE healing pulses for allies, which heals the engineer for 10% of that value, with cleansing synergy increasing it. For each outgoing ally hit by that skill, it increases that self-healing by +10%. So the maximum value that would be healed is 50% of the outgoing pulse. The idea is that this kit should be awful when the engineer is alone, but scale up in usefulness when surrounded by allies.
3) The resistance up-time on Throw Antidote should be increased to 5 seconds…personally I would like some quickness as well to help out the chronomancer in the party with their rotations, but that probably won’t happen.

With some boon duration, an Engi healer would be effective at keeping fury up for the party (in case the party doesn’t have a revenant), while being powerful at lower, but sustained healing and condition removal. Druid would be better at burst healing, Tempest at throwing down water fields, and Ventari Revenant for reflects (which looks important for the future Slothasor fight).

What do you guys think? Any suggestions and/or criticisms?

M.O.X. ?

Why not a golem in the mists?

Very constructive /s

I believe the implication is that he wants to just camp flamethrower, hence why he mentioned failing to land grenades and bombs. I mean, if you can’t land grenades and bombs on moving targets, then you probably aren’t landing napalm a lot.

Flamethrower’s 3, 4 and toolbelt skills are insanely powerful tools for a condi engi, but camping flamethrower in raids is an awful idea.

The damage output is mediocre still, even with applied force, mass momentum and juggernaut.

If you miss the raid bosses with grenades then you need to get better at using them.

If you launch your bulwark gyro, you gain access to the ability to destroy it. Launching a gyro triggers no cooldowns.

If you destroy the bulwark gyro, you THEN trigger the cooldown for both launching bulwark gyro (20s) and the cooldown for exploding the gyro (10s). Since 10s is lower than 20s, you will never be impacted by the cooldown for exploding the gyro. Even if you launch and destroy the gyro immediately.

That is one of the major problem of gyros. The second one is that they don’t follow you down ledges.

I expected at least that the movement speed problem of gyros would be fixed this patch. It is the simpler of the problems. Yet I remain disappointed.

Hey! Nice concept. I love the idea of main-hand dagger.

I think the major difference between our designs is that my spec is more focused on interception and chasing down enemies, but is weaker when fighting on points. Your spec, while mobile, is much better than mine in a bruiser role than a stalker.

I would rather have the “tracking” mechanic on the profession skill bar (F5), rather than have it passively applied on attacks. One of the main things I’m pushing with this spec is that we get away from really powerful things being applied passively, or effects being activated without effort from the Ranger.

I think I would trade my rifle idea for your dagger. I like the #2 leap daze.

Love the main-hand dagger skills.

Not so sure about the heal. I don’t like preventing my own movement. Perhaps the heal skill should give a small burst of healing, and additional healing while striking marked enemies.

I kind of feel like the tricks you’ve designed would end up leading to people using this spec as an on-point bruiser, similar to what the old engineer was. These utilities are very useful in team-fights. I would definitely enjoy roaming WvW with this spec.

Justine.6351:

is there enough pve in it though?

Well, for open world PvE, dungeons and fractals it would be sufficient. One of the problems is that if you’re the ONLY ranger, it would be tough to give up spotter, frost spirit, grace of the land, etc.

But most of these buffs don’t stack twice. Currently, a raid group will only really want one ranger (druid spec) with all of these buffs. Adding my proposed spec would give a ranger a more personal DPS option, which would hopefully promote groups to willingly allow another ranger to fulfill a spot that would normally be taken by a revenant or other DPS class (power or condi). The one role this spec would fail at is tanking, but that’s why we have the base spec and Druids.

So the PvE role in raids or group content for this spec would be as a secondary ranger.

I’m an engineer main, but Ranger looks like a class that has a lot of promise, and I really want to get into it. Unfortunately, I’m not the biggest fan of being a healer, though the druid is really awesome. I’d rather have a more hunter feel, which I don’t really feel like I have with the base spec (feels more like an archer or soldier with a pet, depending on your weapon set).

My idea was to have a spec with low out of combat mobility, but based purely on chasing individual targets, using your pet to “track” enemies and get massive mobility.

Perhaps the new weapon would be an off-hand sword/axe/mace OR rifle. Off-hand weapon would be based on immobilizing enemies and perhaps single-target hard-CC. Rifle would not be sniper-like, but more for “hunting”. Two of the skills would revolve around crippling/knocking down your target. The other 3 would be skills which deal increased damage to enemies who are crippled/CC’d, or have bleed/poison stacks above a threshold (to make rifle useful with axe or shortbow). Trying to emphasize the hunter-theme here.

The new profession mechanic is “track”, which paints a target on one enemy. So long as your pet is alive you have increased running speed when heading TOWARD your target, and your attacks inflict cripple on them and deal 10% more physical and condition damage (so does your pet). No idea what the traits would look like, but one trait could be called “blood trail”, which reveals enemies when you apply a certain amount of bleed stacks to a stealthed enemy.

New utility skills would either by physicals, tricks, deceptions or venoms. To differentiate between thief venoms (which are passive buffs), ranger venoms would simply inflict poison + non-damaging effects (like reduced endurance or such) if it lands, while also leaping at the enemy target, and you must have an enemy target (except one venom can be an un-targeted leap, because there needs to be at least one stun-break, and requiring targets for a stun-break is just bad). I wanted ranger venoms to synergize with the Poison Master trait…yes I know that venoms and poisons are actually very different in real life.

Thief is getting much deserved buffs this week, but it should be remembered that once upon a time thief was required in competitive comps because of its unmatched mobility. This ranger spec was not meant to replace the thief’s role as an unrestricted burster/back-capper. It was meant to provide a different class with equal mobility under different conditions (this ranger spec MUST have a target, so he is more focused on preventing thieves from back-capping, or harassing people walking to/between points). Also the idea is that this build is less bursty, and more focused on sustained damage, and has no stealth.

A spec like this embraces what GW2 PvP needs…less AoE everywhere, and more tactical single-target gameplay. Also, the idea is that there is nothing passive about this spec. To get any bonus, you have to actually DO something successfully…so no kitten health threshold traits…

Anyway, for some reason I felt the need to post this here. Feel free to tear it to pieces, I think it’s cool.

A public test domain would be useful, but this problem could have been solved, or at the very least reduced, by thinking alone… in my opinion.

I can definitely understand that somethings are going to be overpowered or over-tuned every once in a while. This happens in any game (see: release Xin Zhao for League of Legends, R8 for Counter-Strike).

My problem is that I don’t understand the logic inherent in Anet deciding that a balance patch before leagues wasn’t necessary.

My problem begins with the company considering the HoT release patch as a balance patch. Prior to this, we have only had beta weekends to test the elite specs (and even then, some elite specs had more opportunities to be tested than others). There was literally no time for anyone to optimize builds for any class.

So, it wasn’t until HoT was released to the live server that the masses were finally able to put elite specs to the test. The meta-game for PvP has just been shaken up like a snow globe. The snowflakes now need time to settle. Therefore, by my reasoning, the time between HoT-release and PvP leagues was the time to take a hard look at class balance and attempt adjustments to classes. A few weeks isn’t a lot of time to balance all these skills; I will concede that point, but with PvP leagues coming up it should have been high on the priority list. The meta was definitely settling before PvP leagues started, and every competent PvP player was starting to see the bunker meta form, especially from viewing pro tournaments.

That’s why I cannot accept that “we consider HoT to be the balance patch” to be an appropriate answer for the lack of bunker meta nerfs. While people are also complaining about the league system, I don’t think it’s necessary to throw fire at Anet…especially while leagues are in the first iteration. If I was the designer, I’d definitely want constructive criticism. But the reason behind the lack of pre-league balance patch does not make sense to me. Especially now that many new players are exposing themselves to PvP and dealing with an extremely tiring meta-game.

What do you guys think?

They said that the reason they changed it was because some people would get distracted by what they were doing in PvE, and ignore the PvP queue pop-up. I believe that, at the time, the pop-up didn’t require you to accept the match and would just request that you go. If you ignored it, the match would be a 4v5.

Of course, with the new pop-up which asks you to accept the match, this feature is not as necessary.

Low priority suggestion, but in the future can we get that dance for our characters?
Like in Dance Book Vol 2?

It would be awesome for Charrs and Asurans.

>_>

With the vigor uptime, I have no real problems just dodging rapid fire and the knockback, putting CC on them then unloading.

Elixir S stealth + magnet pull +prybar into blunderbuss will pretty much guarantee their eventual death.

Well, they tried with AED. Removes all damaging conditions when it procs. It’s still crap though. I mean, a 40s CD? The toolblet skill is melee range and single target…

Meanwhile, healing turret can get me 2 condition clears every 30 seconds, two sources of regen and a water field to blast.

Yep.

The power of IP could be SOMEHOW spread across our weapon skills. Our weapon skills are fairly weak on their own (one of the three main reasons we use kits is this), and for engineers to obtain viable builds that use primarily elixirs or gadgets we need our weapons buffed or reworked. What this change is meant to accomplish is this: in order to regain the power of IP we need to hit multiple weapon skills, rather than just one single crit.

The problem with this is that it will require engineers to get extremely close at all stages of teamfights. If you read previous Anet posts, they actually designed the Engineer to be a ranged-yet-close-quarters fighter, but they took away our decent condition removal and they refuse to give us reliable and significant stability options, which prevents us from achieving their intended playstyle. We wouldn’t be able to survive the focus fire if my proposed IP change were to be made on its own.

I would consider it an acceptable trade off if it means we got condition removal and stability options. But I doubt Anet’s ability to do this successfully, so I don’t see it as feasible at this time.

What do you guys think?

I found thief to be pretty simple. Once you learn how to use the smoke combo fields, that is (but engineer and elementalist require learning how multiple combo fields work). Like Engineer or Mesmer, timing is very important (assuming you’re not at scrub-level and still fighting turret engies), but I never felt like I had to learn actually deep mechanics, unlike engineer, where you have to learn every skill-tell of other classes otherwise you get shredded by conditions or CC’d to death or killed by focus fire (most higher skilled players will focus engies). Thieves are certainly more intensive than Guardian, Ranger, Necro and Warrior, however.

I think the difficulty people are having regarding thief right now is more in the fact that they have been nerfed time and time again to the point where (in my eyes), they are a low-level threat to anyone but mesmers and people already at low-hp. But as for being mechanically intensive, I just don’t see them being more intensive than Engie, Ele and Mesmer.

Several of us reported this bug when the outfit was released. No fix.

They won’t refund gems either. It’s really stupid.

Depending on your playstyle, Engineer or Elementalist. I found Elementalist leagues easier than Engineer because Elementalists are pretty easy to heal up with. Engineers must look at the situation ahead of them, and use the right set of tools for the task. Elementalists have various combos, and you need to choose which one you would be best for the situation.

Mesmers and thieves come next. Mesmers have problems with conditions and thieves, and generally have to worry about surviving all the time, but their main attacks are pretty easy to pull off. Thieves require a lot of timing to play now; there is a great deal of risk when playing one, but for the most part the playstyle is rather simple in comparison to kit-focused engies or d/d elementalists.

Everything else does not even compare, aside from bunker guardians at the highest level of play.