Guild Wars 2

Dwayna open on Tarnished Coast as of twenty minutes ago or so, circa 8:00 am PST

Aristio.2784:

Halcyon.7352:

Kain Francois.4328:

I think Engineers should not be punished for strategically using immobilize with Big Ol’ Bomb. Isn’t that the point of the skill? Nerfing it would be silly.

That said, I think they should make a more dramatic effect for the sake of telegraphing it better.

It’s in all technicalities, an unintended bug. There’s a difference between strategically using skills to your advantage, and exploiting something unintentional

Granted, no one should be stupid enough to stand in a big ol’ bomb radius, but the same was true of 100nade burst, and look what happened there.

Now that it’s been brought to light, you can bet on some haphazard fix to be incoming, sadly.

You make my head hurt.

Yes, immobilizing someone so a skillshot lands is a bug/exploit. Obviously.

What? I’m talking about taking advantage of damage scaling in a transformation.

By definition, that’d be an exploit, that I’m surprised has persisted in other professions.

I’m not arguing how amusing, or realistically usable this is. I’m not for or against anything, nor whether or not Arenanet should do something about it, I’m simply pointing out a fact, and I’d be very surprised if nothing was done about this once it becomes more public.

It’d definitely be a complicated affair to tackle, which is why I assume nothing has been done yet.

Imagine if a warrior were able to pop Rampage and finish casting a kill shot…

I really wish they would have given more specifics on when exactly he’d be closing as a vendor.

I checked nearly daily after SAB closed to make sure I had items I wanted – Sometime around after a week into May, I was disappointed to find that Moto was no longer selling anything.

I had plans to use my remaining baubles, as they’re not particularly hard to earn, when SAB comes back anyway.

Kain Francois.4328:

I think Engineers should not be punished for strategically using immobilize with Big Ol’ Bomb. Isn’t that the point of the skill? Nerfing it would be silly.

That said, I think they should make a more dramatic effect for the sake of telegraphing it better.

It’s in all technicalities, an unintended bug. There’s a difference between strategically using skills to your advantage, and exploiting something unintentional

Granted, no one should be stupid enough to stand in a big ol’ bomb radius, but the same was true of 100nade burst, and look what happened there.

Now that it’s been brought to light, you can bet on some haphazard fix to be incoming, sadly.

Great video~ really fun times, and I have no idea how so few noticed you.

Kain Francois.4328:

How did they NOT notice you?

How did you kill with Pistol’s weak #1?

If you mean the first ranger, the Vet Wizard did most of the work.

This bug with names and item infocards/tooltops is pretty common… nothing unique to the shells.

Any NA uncontested?

Yep. The only reason we were able to stand up to DB’s SEA is cause we had some people pulling long hours.

I was doing the task in Brisbane on my lowbie mesmer near where the Unholy Triad(?) spawns, using my illusions to set off mines for task, when a friend stopped me to ask something:

How on earth is your illusionary magic confounding a hunk of metal and explosives?

Don’t expect too much realism in a fantasy MMO.

Some people lay down ranger traps and necro marks with the specific intent to take advantage of the split second between when the champion spawns, and when dynamic event playing scaling takes effect.

I’ve seen an instigator killed in about 12 seconds flat, due to the number of people doing this, nearly half his HP gone in the first two seconds.

It’s essentially gaming a flaw in the game to speed up a farm, for personal gain. I don’t know if the timing of the instigators are linked in anyway – If not, then there is nothing to gain by doing this, other than annoying players trying to get to the event to get credit.

That being said: Not everyone who does this is doing it for the intention of exploiting. it’s simply the way some classes can and do work.

There’s no easy answers here either way, and I think we’ll have to wait for a red post to clarify.

I can confirm that Cleansing Formula 409 and Medkit Antidote works quite well on this burning condition. Strange that Elixir C doesn’t.

Engineer is undeniably at it’s weakest in WvW. We’re stronger in both sPvP and PvE situations.

That being said, I feel far from useless or underpowered in any way as an engineer in WvW. I have every profession except for Thief and Mesmer at 80, and I prefer to WvW with my Engi by far, because I’ve found a fun fairly survivable, hard hitting, and good support-y build. (In signature for reference)

Honestly, picking and choosing your fights well I feel is pretty key. We don’t have any real movement effects beyond Acidic Leap, and once you’re tagged and in combat – unless you can get lost in friendlies or they disengage – you better have an escape route/method planned.

As Yamsandjams says, don’t discount our blocks and Elixir S. S’s toss also can give a few seconds of crucial stability or a stealth. I will say that WvW is one situation in which I do miss Veil being on Toss U.

Elementalist isn’t the only class that can run right through a zerg into a tower/keep, I do quite well bypassing a zerg with 409 trait, the Alchemy Master minor, Self Regulating just in case, using P/S and EG/Toolkit & S.

I’ve seen Engi’s use bombs, Toolkit nails and glue shot to some success in slowing down pursuers, and indeed, Acidic Leap is fantastic if you’re quick on using aboutface.

In prolonged zerg vs zerg situations, Self Regulating defenses almost feels like a must – With the amount of heals and condition removals I can pull off, I can usually quite easily survive long enough to use it multiple times, provided you have somewhere to retreat to.

Osi.3504:

Halcyon.7352:

Lisa.6102:

Osi.3504:

You are doing it wrong.

Get 200% MF buff, get 50% booster, 30% food, 10% g-banner (or 15%), 15% sigil, and 10% passive guild buff and go farm Skelk with Berserker Gear sitting on 315% magic find.

Every time I go farm for roughly 1 hour segments I usually get.

40-60 Potent Blood
10-15 Powerful Blood
40-60 Sharp Fangs
10-20 Vicious Fangs
2 Crates+
2-4+ yellow/exotics

It seems to be great overall, and they spawn like crazy. (just north of the south-eastern WP).

Same here

Used to see numbers like this farming skelk on my 385% ish MF Engineer.

My last two tries on my 300% MF Guardian have resulted in: (one hour sessions)

4 Powerful blood
35 Potent
3 Vicious Fangs
26 Sharp Fangs
2 crates
4 rares
1 unid

6 powerful blood
42 potent
4 vicious fangs
31 sharp fangs
2 rares
4 unids

Either RNG is being simply unkind to me (or that 60%ish MF makes that much a difference), or there was a skelk drop nerf.

I miss 30 powerfuls an hour…

My kill ratio per hour may be higher, I can usally two shot them or AoE them down really well with dancing dagger or sword and I use a 25% movement buff, plus I sometimes kill the skelk/rays in the water and move to the far eastern shore in hopes it reduces farm codes etc.

You may or may not be killing them faster, but the thing is, I followed the same paths and recorded what was dropped for one hour periods. Pretty clear deviation on the recent results.

Only other factor that could have played a part was other people in the area farming, clearing mobs. But I prefer to farm during oceanic hours, or in dying overflows for that very reason.

I’ve had exactly one drop in the same amount of time I’ve had maybe 11 crates.

The drop rate seems common enough – I had a friend farming instigators and stopping to do odd events on the path. He wound up with no less than 8 reef rider minis in just one evening, maybe 6 hours. Nearly full on MF, gear, accessories, runes and sigil, Settler’s.

And we all know how common mob drops are while farming instigators.

I was on my engineer at the time with similar gear, and I only snagged one doing the same thing.

Have spent two additional days in Southsun, maybe 3-5 hours each, no minis.

Lisa.6102:

Osi.3504:

You are doing it wrong.

Get 200% MF buff, get 50% booster, 30% food, 10% g-banner (or 15%), 15% sigil, and 10% passive guild buff and go farm Skelk with Berserker Gear sitting on 315% magic find.

Every time I go farm for roughly 1 hour segments I usually get.

40-60 Potent Blood
10-15 Powerful Blood
40-60 Sharp Fangs
10-20 Vicious Fangs
2 Crates+
2-4+ yellow/exotics

It seems to be great overall, and they spawn like crazy. (just north of the south-eastern WP).

Same here

Used to see numbers like this farming skelk on my 385% ish MF Engineer.

My last two tries on my 300% MF Guardian have resulted in: (one hour sessions)

4 Powerful blood
35 Potent
3 Vicious Fangs
26 Sharp Fangs
2 crates
4 rares
1 unid

6 powerful blood
42 potent
4 vicious fangs
31 sharp fangs
2 rares
4 unids

Either RNG is being simply unkind to me (or that 60%ish MF makes that much a difference), or there was a skelk drop nerf.

I miss 30 powerfuls an hour…

Melandru is open for business once more on TC, as of 6:15 server time.

Using a power FT/EG Elixirs/Juggernaught build, I roam decently enough when needed. I do surprisingly well as a zerg frontline flamer grunt however, and I love nothing more than getting behind enemy lines to spam my knockbacks to separate individuals from the zerg into the jaws of our own.

Elixir S trait and 409 buys me just enough time to escape the zerg when I need to, where I can support quite well with stupid low cd fumigate condition cleansing, some healing, and blast finishers where needed.

7k flameblasts on a target which I have poisoned, blinded and confused, and can subject further control effects to is a joyous thing.

Anymras.5729:

They won’t notice until somebody posts about it in the PvP boards, don’t worry. I give it a day or two.

This.

Yep, they’re not missing, just combined now.

Lot cleaner.

XelNigma.6315:

reads patch notes from top to bottem WvW chests… rest is meh.

My thoughts exactly.

While I’m glad to get bugfixes and traits operating, it falls firmly under the category of: Should not be broken in the first place.

So yes, back to thread topic please… Is there anything new besides Canach and Null, aside from the cool WvW changes?

And aside from possibly looting the new acessories/mini rider, if even that’s in the game.

You shouldn’t be standing in the mine detonation radius to begin with, so the mine detonation makes no real difference. Stay out of red circles. (They don’t change in radius…) Move away from the sparks.

The boss’s ranged attack does pitiful damage, the only thing that’s mildly threatening is his melee stabs, which have a super long cast time in which he’s rooted in place. Simply move away, or better, through him.

Stability helps with his pull, or a reactionary blind, protective boon, evasion, block, what have you.

bullettohead.9715:

I think I speak for most everybody when I say this.

CC does not make bosses fun or challenging. It makes them annoying as kitten.

Stop giving bosses that do nothing but kittening CC

Null does nothing but a pull. CC? Wat.

I seem to recall Canach having a stun at least.

A massive step down from Molten Facility. You can thank all the people who whined incessantly about a proper dungeon being at the culmination of the last story arc. It was amazing and I’m sad to see it go as temporary content.

Subdirector Null wasn’t particularly hard, nor was it particularly difficult to figure out fight mechanics for anyone paying attention. My first group of first timers wiped only once, and I haven’t died in subsequent runs, even with Null being in love with me

I don’t understand the… ‘nude’ thing. There’s a burn phase. Doing it nude means you will die, for sure. DPS is quite necessary here from what I know, and you can’t achieve that with no gear stats.

All in all: Good encounter. Good single encounter. There’s the flaw… Where’s the rest of the dungeon, seriously? No unique rewards. Beyond perhaps getting the daily bonus chest, there will very quickly be no one running this aside from people who haven’t done it yet.

Last two posts sum it up pretty well.

I don’t know about ‘reign supreme’, but Engies were definitely amazing in sPvP, and still quite good now.

Sadly, aside from fixing the sigils (which should have been working from release), it feels very much like we’re on the same path as the elementalist. And they just took it hard in the last patch.

The vet spiders spawned by the champions do not drop loot. Nor do summoned grubs by the giants.

It was a change to address people farming the latter for easy kills and loot.

The Vet spiders are simply out of hand at the moment, I really do hope they balance them out when they finally fix the event scaling they claim to be working on.

‘Unique’ is also a pretty standard MMO term, beyond the wiki and other sources having this information.

That being said, I really do wish token bought items… heck, even Karma bought would have a ‘sellback’ refund period.

From my experience, instigator chest DR is very much tied to account, not character.

Can’t say on mob farming, as I only bother to farm with my engineer for now.

Just my results:

8 hours of farming (Mostly for Blood/Scales). 330% MF
-11 Southsun crates (Ticket was in the 9th crate for me)
-1 Weapon ticket
-8 dyes
-98 Powerful Blood
-80 Armored Scales

I never actually wanted the weapon ticket. Was just in it for the materials.

Of all the low drop rate things that have come in content patches, I get this… Really wanted that MF jetpack. :<

If you AFK, take a second to hit escape and click logout. Or Heart of the Mists.

If you have stacks that you don’t want to lose or something else, port to Pearl Islet – this is apparently Southsun’s new ‘hub’ and a very safe Akitten zone now.

Had no problems doing this guild rush last night.

I think some of the flags are obscured, but if you go to the location it counts anyway.

I thought it meshed quite well with the new changes to Southsun Cove, particularly the last bit.

I’m more personally annoyed by the much harder to catch elementalists.

People can exploit it to dodge while immobilized, and with a cooldown of 5 seconds on Evasive Arcana, chances are good it can allow them to escape.

Because yes, fixing an exploit = taking away the money from all the hard working players.

There is no shortage of other places to grind and farm, even exploits to take advantage of sadly.

That being said, complete removal of loot from the mobs seems like a silly bandaid fix for the moment.

@Healix: I’m not sure an anti zerg mechanism will ever be be properly introduced. Also, flat numbers and math like that only happen in an ideal world. Bring too many people to any (non exploit respawn rate) farm spot, and see what happens… people wind up fighting over mobs, being disorganized, and the kills per minute definitely falls off.

Still very much in the game definitely. Couple of threads floating around on this

I don’t know how this compares to other infinite tonics, but I was disappointed by the five minute duration too.

It wouldn’t be nearly so bad, but there is such a variety of potential cats you can transform into, the chances of getting the same one again are really low, which is what irks me the most.

Ever since the reset earlier today (the ‘Routine Maintenace’ one, for which I strangely downloaded about 2k mb of data) I’ve had issues changing chat channels.

At first I thought I was simply unable to change channels period. I simply restarted the client multiple times.

Then one time, after attempting to whisper someone repeatedly, and getting no where, I simply gave up. About two minutes later, my chat panel went nuts. As if it was acting out the actions I performed several minutes earlier.

There is an incredible delay time for any change to or from whisper channels, and to or from map/guild/say chat for me.

Anyone else having similar issues? Gameplay is fine, doesn’t seem like a latency issue. What’s also strange is that I don’t have any issues using the actual channel I’m already in – I can type and send messages just fine. It’s only when I try to change channels, that there’s a delay.

Trading. Like an actual trading interface.

Silly to me that everything must be mailed. Kind of ruins immersion.

There are definitely events that have been removed from the game as well, or are in such a broken state that they never trigger.

Fun stuff.

So out of curiosity, why was an achievement made related to an item that had such a high level requirement to begin with?

Would it not be possible to reward the achievement on simply purchasing the item? I assume it’s soul/account bound, or easily could be made as such, I don’t recall off the top of my head.

But I was disappointed when helping a friend with the Southsun achievements, only to learn he couldn’t earn this one as he had no high levels.

Definitely the best shield skillset in the game, yet so few people seem to even be aware.

Guild got into a discussion on this exact subject yesterday. I was the only one to even mention engineer…

VOLKON.1290:

Apologies to the EU folks… you’re not being slighted in the least, it’s simply a matter of perception. Over here in the NA group we never see Viz. Never think about them, fight them or even notice them, because our focus is obviously on who we’re fighting now or potentially next week.

I cannot this ^ enough.

It’s not that we dislike or don’t care about the EU ladder, it’s that most of us simply aren’t exposed to it, or bother to keep up to date on unfamiliar realms. I’m sure the same is true of many people on the other side of the ol’ pond.

If you’re from EU and keep track of the silly things that go on in the NA ladder, more power to ya. But don’t hate for no reason at all.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Seras.5702:

Conclusion: Both seem very similar to me, in playstyle at least. Looking at the numbers briefly, FT hits harder on autoattack than pistol. FT, while benefitting from +condition damage, is a power/precision weapon, while pistol is def a condition weapon. The cooldowns on the shield (especially w/o traits) are too long; which means our blast finisher isn’t as spammable as I’d like. As opposed to FT’s fire field which can maintain 33% uptime even without traiting.

So, if I bring a traited FT, I guess it’s worthless carrying a P/S with me too huh?

Why do you say that? I use a Pistol + Shield all the time with my Flamethrower.

The Shield cooldowns are kind of long, but Magnetic Inversion’s Blast finisher is a lot more useful in most situations than Blowtorch—not to mention the added survivability of Magnetic Shield’s projectile reflect (can’t have too many of those) and Static Shield’s versatility as either a melee block (with a Stun) or a projectile block.

It’s a really nice “Oh shet” button. I use the Healing Turret a lot so I will frequently use Regenerating Mist + Magnetic Inversion for the Water field + Blast finisher combo to do an Area Heal for my group.

I also would not rule out Power builds on the Pistol. Poison Dart Volley actually does a ton of damage if you’re specced for Power and Critical Damage. Not that I would recommend maining the Pistol with Berserker stats, but if you’ve got the Berserker stats to bolster the Flamethrower’s damage, you might as well use it from time to time beyond its Poison application.

I don’t really understand the ‘versus’ situation here either. P/S & FT is a match made in heaven, imo. Extra might stacks from finishing FT#4 with shield #4, and added control and survivability from the shield.

I frequently see 3-4k poison volleys with my mix of zerker and cavalier.

Elixir Gun scales surprisingly well off of power too, and I use it for most things an engi would use a rifle for.

I just love shield and Static Shot too much to give it up for anything the Rifle has to offer, other than the rare times I might need the low CD immobilize or extra (single) knockback.

Speaking from a PvE/WvW perspective here.

XelNigma.6315:

Iv not used that skill in so long, surely the pistols arnt still aiming to the sky.

Played around with it yesterday for the first time in a while. Definitely still skyward!

Ezeriel.9574:

The warrior class is the one for you, lorazcyk. The best turrets in the game are warrior banners. My banner warrior with his, stack of peach pies, has around 500/second healing and still can do 8k 100blades.

…and of all the classes in the game, warriors my be the best for a condition build.

…and the best part about warriors. They are balanced and bug free.

The build I mentioned that I use can make use of it’s high crit rate to achieve about 300 hp per second from health leeching alone. Then there’s two sources of regeneration boon and super elixir field…

Flame blast crit with just 40% crit damage hits for 5.5k every 4.8 seconds, Flame jet around 6k. I’m not exactly min/maxing my damage either.

I mean we can throw numbers around all day, it’s honestly just a matter of finding a build that works for what you want it to do. Professions in this game are rich and varied, find what you like and works for you.

AeroJavi.1687:

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Its not really an issue. Or, at least, not technically a bug.

Ground targeted “fields” do a swiftness check. If you have swiftness, they won’t apply any more.
This prevents you from stacking swiftness from the same source.

They also apply on ‘pulse’ meaning once per second. Which is why you can sometimes run through guardian staff symbol without getting any swiftness.

They don’t have an internal limit, like some people think, of only applying to each person once. They just do the swiftness check as a backdoor prevention method.

That’s not to say there aren’t some bugs as well, but you have to narrow them down on a per skill basis. I have had swiftness fail to stack from sources that I know stack, but nothing repeatable that I could ever narrow down. Sometimes I wonder if its some kind of server latency issue.

But the not-stacking on ground targeted skills is a matter of design.

This is not true. If I recall correctly, mesmer staff #5 is ground targetted, yet it adds swiftness duration to your current boon if you had it.

Yep. It’s also ‘pulsed’ much like the gaurdian symbol. (You can run through it with swiftness, before it pulses and miss the additional swiftness).

Didn’t see this thread til after creating mine. But yeah.

“Fixed a bug with Dodge roll where it could get stuck in the queue and unintentionally execute after a stun or immobilize.”

Definitely not fixed. I’ve done it at least four times on my elementalist in PvE since the last patch, dodging while immobilized and as a result, cleansing it with Evasive Arcana.

The biggest problem on Southsun for any engineer will be the Reef riders, bar none.

Even given all our reflects, any number of riders swarming you is more or less a garunteed death if you don’t keep them at range, and have others there to assist. And I’m not gonna even mention the boon stealing difficulties beyond this….

As for Karka, definitely server lag plays a huge role on being able to dodge the bull’s rush, the karka ‘stampedes’. For anything less than a champion however, a simple static shield toss will stop the entire horde in it’s tracks. Or a Supply crate drop… or a FT air blast. You get the idea.

Same is very true of the Reef drakes. CC the crap out of them, and stay at range. Try to avoid the confusion and pull.

As for the Vet larger karka, as binidj.5734 said, the ‘jumping’ ground slam attack definitely hits twice for some reason or another. Flame thrower auto, #2, EG#4, and a few nades/bombs are all ways to quickly nullify clusters of eggs as well.

It’s always been a Charr looking pistol for as long as I can remember, not the one you have equipped.

I recall as the engineer utility belt, Hidden Pistols is glitched, with the physical pistols aiming upwards. Have screenshots from November of this.

Try an HgH power build. FT/EG, switching between HgH and 409 in your GM slot for incredible versatility, survivability and damage in both PvE, dungeons and WvW.

Can get some impressive damage with FT, a 25% flat boost is quite easy. 15% from trait, 10% from sigil and rune of your choosing.

I love flameblasting half the HP off of a fotm d/d ele and watching them as they struggle to deal with my silly poison burn and confuse uptime! I have the flexibility to survive as a frontline soldier in WvW and the capability to support incredibly well – fumigate is amazing. Cleanse five conditions on multiple allies, burn poison bleed and vuln any foes caught in it, every 9 and a half seconds.