Guild Wars 2

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Fractals 40+ advertisements were sure popular tonight.

I want to join the last guy. Pie > cake!

Oulov.7913:

Colin Johanson: “(….)when you finish the story version of a dungeon you unlock the explorable version of that dungeon. Those are intended to be *the super hard, very coordinated group style content like Slaver?s Exile, or Fissure of Woe, or the Underworld.”*

Pfff hahaah. Gotta admit, this guy has sense of humor. He compares the great/challenging/elaborated Gw1 dungeons to those flimsy excuses for dungeons we have now.
Just add the hard mode for dungeons (the lazy option) or close this thread.

They were treading in uncharted waters with the entire combat system. It’s no surprise their first tries had mistakes in them. It’s just a shame they never iterated upon them to make something better, instead getting rid of that entire department.

Crystallize.8603:

Lordwafflez.4163:

I had to literally tell this guy for 5 minutes to sit on the oil leak in path 1. And the other time this guy just aggroes all the mobs all the time. Then when i tell them “Please dont aggro the mobs” they just keep doing it. Why don’t people just listen to people who have done the dungeon before? Is that too much to ask?

Do you even know if he was able to speak English? There are people from all over the world playing and maybe he didn’t understand. Also, you’ll find players that are older perhaps, and are used to VOIP don’t tend to pay any attention to chat period.
Final instance, they had you blocked and you didn’t notice!

Talyn.3295:

AP are a great filter.

When you look at a group and see them in the description you know right away if your the kinda of person who wants to be in a group with them or not. If you don’t mind AP points used as an experience guide join. If you do don’t.

Under 2k AP = generally terrible or an alt.

EDIT:

Under 7k AP = generally terrible or an alt.

Over 10k = usually some terrible PHIW.

Exactly, more personal challenges where each individual makes a sizeable impact. Honestly though 10-15 man “raids” would be fantastic. Takes a bit off of the individual even going to that size, but well manageable. I just don’t want “challenge” to be “herding cats,” it’s not the fun I want.

Because it’s “the symbol line?”

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

ArkisTruefire.1746:

You’re comparing a bunch of non-elites to an elite skill.

See time warp. Also irrelevant: putting a broken skill in the “elite” box doesn’t make it right.

Zlosnica.8936:

So let me get this straight, one of the few actually good things which happened to guardian this last patch should be nerfed because you think the dungeon’s were easy? Is this some kind of joke?!?! People are never happy about anything when you give them something. “No this is broken it should not be like that”, when its suck’s “Bla bla bla we didn’t get anything” and so on. Stop crying and write useless post’s, about a class which suffers from the most from every other.

I see this kind of thinking a lot. In other forums. About their classes. Kind of funny, isn’kitten

This is not how balance is supposed to work. Giving one class inferior (debatable) prowess just so one OP skill can compensate just means that things are polarized and broken. If you feel that guardians have been nerfed unfairly, you should make a topic about that. If guardians need a skill like FMW to compete, then that means guardians should be buffed so they don’t need FMW to be so over the top.

Jerus.4350:

Why do you consider it a 1.5 increase to damage? For Hammer maybe, but the other weapons it just means you get back to auto attacks sooner. Meaning it’s not a full 1.5X damage, just a nice increase.

For hammer and main hand sword. Technically it is a DPS increase (damage per second), but I just call it damage for short. You do bring up a good point, which makes it more complicated to get the actual effect of quickness out there.

If you look at any individual skill, it is a 50% increase to DPS because the skill now only takes 2/3rds of the time to cast. In a long chain, this additional air will be filled by auto attacks, which can be considered as just having a 50% damage increase. This has a compounding effect, where you both get to auto attacks faster, and auto attacks do more damage.

Unfortunately, making a formula for this is a bit hard. To get the DPS increase overall, you’d need to take a sampled time frame, see how many attacks you can do in that period, and then compare that to a quickness period. For example, lets take the guardian greatsword. In 10 seconds, you’ll do the following:

Symbol of Wrath (0.75), whirling wrath (3), 7 auto attacks (0.83 each)

On tooltip, this comes to 4386 damage. Compare that same 10 second interval using quickness:

Symbol of Wrath (0.5), whirling wrath (2), 13 auto attacks (0.55 each)

Tooltip damage: 6395, or a 45.8% increase. This is slightly off, since the tooltip doesn’t factor in the projectiles from whirling wrath. This also doesn’t factor in things like the increased might stacks from greatsword auto attacks.

This is true for any class. DPS can be summed up as

(Auto attack x Time for auto attacks + Spike skills x Time for spike skills) / total time.

And the contribution that quickness makes is

(1.5 x Auto attack x (Time for auto + 1/3rd spike time) + Spike skills x (2/3rds spike time)) / total time.

Overall I generally consider quickness to be anywhere from 40% to 50% modifier. I go with 50% as base, because otherwise you need to go very heavily into specific weapons and builds and timing.

Isn’t that a knowingly going to an extreme though? It’s a 50% decrease in attack time. We know that for Mace or GS namely that the strength lies in their burst skills while having a lower auto attack. All I’m saying is it’s worth putting a <50% for assumptions in that regard, acknowledging that it’s not a full 50% increase

Also even with Sword you consider the offhand which are all burst skills. So not quite 50%. Other than hammer you won’t see a full 50% increase.

Your pessimism isn’t wasted on me, you know I agree, just saying I think it was a good video, good suggestions, even noted upon why an upper level of content is good. But, we all know it’s not happening,.

deSade.9437:

Still at it? Auuuauuuuuh… Auuuwoohwoohwoof, anet plz.
Eh, ok, it’s good to spend some times talking about the same ol’, same ol’. We all gotta do what we gotta do to keep ourselves entertained. Understandable.

You keep forgetting the Liadri incident. It bugs me. Why have people such short memory. This.. guy whatever… must’ve forgotten the wave of whining in this very forum and youtube.

Also, +1 to migraine-inducing with the evergreen topic “make other stats more useful”

That’s the thing, like we’re a vocal minority promoting more challenging content, it’s also a vocal minority demonizing it. Back when I was a weaker gamer I enjoyed watching/learning from those ahead of me. I liked that there was a ton infront of me to experience as I got better. Look at what people watch on Twitch Channels. Are the most popular ones the people doing casual things like SW farming? Or are they the top tier PVPers or guys soloing Arah? Last I saw Purple Miku and Phantoma(sp?) were the top 2 on GW2 at the time FAR above the rest… and they’re both at that level that the average player will never achieve.

This idea that people just want to put their heads down and farm stuff to get loot is simply bullkitten spewed by a vocal persistent crowd of people who get kitten if they can’t do something. People with ego’s they can’t back up.

That’s not to say that GW2s main crowd isn’t more casual, but I really don’t think their main crowd dislikes the idea of better content. In fact I feel the opposite. Now if it became the main focus, yes we’d have a problem. But, throwing some in there spices up the game. It gives players something to push for, something to achieve. And the difference between a video game and a movie is that feeling right there. The sense of accomplishment. If the only accomplishment in the game is to get pretty skins through constant grinding… we’ll you’re going to push away players just as much and probably more than if you gave people something to actually give them a reason to improve.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Hayashi.3416:

A traited FMW gives 20% quickness uptime for 50% dps boost, or 10% AoE dps boost.
An untraited Discbanner gives 75% banner uptime for 170 precision+ferocity (8% critrate, 11.3% critdmg) ~ 10.5-11% AoE dps boost..

I’d check the math again. On zerker guard I came up with a 10% increase when applied, totaling to a 7.5% when factoring in uptime. This is assuming the banner is maintained throughout multiple fights.

When traited, FMW gives a 20.8% quickness uptime, plus another 41.6% uptime on fury. This causes two stages of buffs: 1st is 1.5 × 1.14, totaling a 71% damage boost for 20.8% of the time (14.8% party DPS), then 14% DPS for the 20.8% remaining effect time (2.91%), totaling the party contribution to 17.71% party DPS.

Quickness, unlike banners, are not static additions. They are modifiers, with a straight 1.5x damage boost to action speed. So thus, while the overall contribution of banners decreases as you add more things (might, fury, spotter, etc)), quickness multiplies every single bonus. Including banners. Quickness also stacks in duration.. Banners are unique buffs that do not stack.

This isn’t the whole story, either. There’s an additional factor that needs to be considered: Fight length. If an enemy group dies in 5 seconds, then FMW effectively has 100% uptime for that incident. If the fight lass 10 seconds, 50% updtime. 24 seconds has the 20.8% uptime, but 30 seconds has 33% uptime, since it gets used again. So really, FMW actually has an oscilating uptime that bottoms out at 20.8%, giving a much higher quickness uptime in the relevant situation: the fight.

This is the reason why it is that, on the 5 guard group, we still effectively had perma quickness even though not all of us took the honor line. With the recharge being reduced from the travel time between fights, to only using the skill during relevant moments, the actual uptime of quickness is higher than calculated. The 20.8% is the minimum, assuming a permanent fight.

Now this does apply to banners, but it is not as beneficial when compared to something like FMW. FMW is a short effect on a short cooldown, where’s the banner is a long effect on a long cooldown. This causes a problem, in that the travel time between fights sees the effect tick away, doing effectively nothing. The travel time during the down time does increase the efficiency of banners, but FMW does not have an overflow issue like banners do.

Because of this, I’m not sure that a 6 second quickness (+ either 10 or 12 seconds of fury) on a 60 second cooldown would be useless, or even underpowered. It would still be 5 times stronger than all of the other quickness skills, and it would still be used in groups to increase offense (whereas renewed focus is basically an invuln skill on a 90 second cooldown). It is still twice as potent as time warp, whether both are traited or both aren’t.

Why do you consider it a 1.5 increase to damage? For Hammer maybe, but the other weapons it just means you get back to auto attacks sooner. Meaning it’s not a full 1.5X damage, just a nice increase.

It’s not that we’re against changes, it’s that we don’t believe for a second that ANet cares to do anything. That and many changes suggested are more or less “make it more like pvp” or “make people not wear zerker exploit gear.” WP actually has suggestions that people in the dungeon subforum have made before. A Gambit system is exactly what dungeons need if they want a nice fix to keep them as viable fun content.

I’m not sure I completely agree with his system in that I don’t think it should be a strict progression needing all the baselines. Have them all open but a gold for having them all would be fine by me, but I could think of combinations of bronze and silver I’d like to do.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Carighan.6758:

Leo G.4501:

8. Content only a minority can complete? This is in different theoretical territory as now we’re talking about resources. Development time and money can only be allocated finitely so my thoughts on this is mix

Not really. If we want the content to be:

• Challenging for the player (do we want that? Or do we mean challenging to the character?) and
• Risky to undertake

Then by extension we’ll have the majority of players be unable to complete it or the players who are now demanding more difficult things to do will be sitting here again after a handful of runs.

It’s in the nature of the beast. If you want content which is perceived as difficult, then in an MMO you do this via induced elitism. You make it so that only a minority will complete the content. This minority then has bragging rights, they get to feel more skilled / tougher / more dedicated than the rest.
Because essentially you created an aptitude test. And to have any meaningful value of difficulty, X% has to fail the test. X will likely have to be a significant number, so that only a minority gets to feel that the content was difficult but hey, they made it.

This cannot be avoided.

This ^ , I see people saying “I don’t mind difficult/challenging content being in the game but it must be inclusive and every random group of players must be able to complete it”, where the two are for the most part mutually exclusive.

The idea is that the majority aspire to complete it, while only a very small minority actually complete it. In the game world context everyone wants to be the hero but only a very small number will actually be the hero.

That last statement couldn’t be further from the truth. The Gambit type system allows everyone to be the hero, just some accomplished a higher difficulty than others. You still defeat subject Alpha, but some will have done it in a more deadly setting than others.

Though you kinda have a point in that it’s all a big ego show, people get their feelings hurt when someone is better than them, but that’s nothing but envy. And people talk down to others if they’re better, but that’s just pride. If people could just get over themselves, well, yeah who’re we kidding

Every criticism I’ve read in this thread (granted just skimmed) was addressed in the video. Not a huge WP fan, disagree on some stuff, but this was an excellent breakdown and would be a nice system.

He suggests a system that would likely have most taking it slower, perhaps beefing themselves up a bit with different gear. It incentivizes not skipping with better drops. And, disincentivizes skipping through making it more challenging and increasing the risk and punishment. Stealthing being called an exploit can’t be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t trivialize some content and knocking it down a notch on effectiveness would be solid. I always wanted some of the big stealth skips to have some “revealers” such that you had to pay attention, think dredge fractal or the caithe LS mission. But, his solution seems nice as well.

As far as bringing elitism into it… honestly, I think GW2s easy content is why I find it so much more overbearing here than I’ve seen in other games. Granted I didn’t play much WoW or LoL, but I have played a lot of other games. When you know you’re in for a rough time you don’t freak out about a little screw up. kitten happens. When you expect something fast and easy and someone screws that up, well that’s what causes frustration and frustration leads to that elitist attitude.

I think WP summed up my thoughts on challenging content that’s only played by a minority just fine. It’s something that gives another level. Something to strive for. Even if it’s not played regularly, it’s there as something to push players to improve and break up the monotony of whatever grind they’re used to.

And, the beauty of a Gambit (or skulls) system is that the content, the meat of it, is there for everyone. It’s a choice to bump things up and make them tougher. Can’t do the Gold Skull? Well no problem, just do whatever you can and still do the content if you find it fun. You don’t got to a gym and start telling them they should change their equipment because you can’t do the highest weight on the lat machine. Why do people have that mentality here?

Defensive support focus vs offensive support focus. I find guardian more fun, better rotations, though the whole Usain Bolt thing is fun on warrior.

Night sigil is best in most dungeons. HoTW, CM, and Arah are the only daytime dungeons I believe. There you could go Frailty to help with a stack and a half of vuln on bosses, or maybe just grab accuracy /shrug not a ton of great daytime options but a few decent ones.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I don’t think it’s exploity at all to immobilize and prevent a boss from getting to a trigger spot. If ANet didn’t want that to be a possibility, they’d make them invul when they start walking to their trigger spot, like the CoF p3 boss is.

So Lupi wallsploit is fine, because I mean they just wouldn’t have made it possible right? Not saying it shouldn’t be allowed, my personal opinion is to allow basically everything but strait hacking, but it’s surely exploity.

Yes Mortar Kit is GREAT, well, parts of it. Namely the blind field which with siege round is quite long. Then double blast into a fire field at the start of a fight, yeah it’s nice.

My suggestion, initially go rifle focus on power/prec, trait into tools and get streamlined kits asap for perma swiftness. Kits get your nades asap and unlock mortar when you can use elites. Explosions will be the next line to get for traits.

Been leveling my engi, looks like I’ll finish it today. Did like 12 levels yesterday just doing this rotation on packs of enemies I’d gather up with nade/mortar.

Incendiary Ammo
Drop Orbital
Napalm under it
Smoke Vent (FT 5 blinds)
Flash Shell (mortar kit blind field)
Flame Blast on your napalm
Acid Bomb on your napalm
Grenade barrage
Jump Shot
Blunderbuss
Finish off with nade rotation 245 maybe a flame blast to end it.

Yes, it’s a bit much for a new engi… it’s my third I’m leveling, but I hope that gives you a bit of an idea of what can be done. I was able to gather packs of 4-12 things and blow them up before I even really took damage most of the time.

Wethospu.6437:

Enko.6123:

Question. If you immobilize a boss and prevent him from getting to somewhere where he then starts attacking, is that consider violating rule 11.) Attacking enemies which don’t try to fight back is banned.

There’s two instances that I can think of that the boss doesn’t start doing anything until it gets to that point and another instance where this happens mid fight.

It doesn’t violate rule 11. I specifically left “attacking” out so it would cover cases like Shoggroth. Perhaps changing “fight back” to “act” would be better?

Jerus.4350:

So is pugmode shoggroth or Subject 6 in thaumanova immob ok?

Personally I feel that Shoggroth it was probably intended, I mean who wouldn’t think “hmm can we slow him down when he tries to run away,” it’d have been a huge oversight if they didn’t think of that one.
—

I guess that would sum up the entire dungeon content.

:D you have a point.

deSade.9437:

I think that’s the problem, they wanna distance themselves from the old MMO raid formula and cater to casuals and blablabla and instances aren’t gonna happen anymore okthxbai.
I’m tired of these thoughts going in circle… they’re not gonna address dungeon, get over it. They didn’t even bother MARKING THE kittenING DUNGEON MERCHANT ON LA’S MAP, for Papa Emeritus’ sake.
Seriously.
…seriously?

Aye, can’t say I have much hope for anything when they don’t even give any type of comment on what this “challenging group content” will be before they ask for pre-order sales. To me that’s just saying that they either would negatively affect sales or that they just don’t think it’s a focus for people looking to purchase and thus not worth their time.

So we have magic and gods that actually interact with people, but the idea of combining Sulfur, Charcoal, and Saltpeter and using it to accelerate a projectile through a tube is out of the realm of reasonable?

I’m not a big fan of guns, hate them to be honest, never like the gunner classes in other games. However I find GW2 to be more of a Renaissance period game than a dark ages game. And I’m fine with that.

What Obal said…

Obal

Hammer + Mace/Torch
Best for an easy time. Use if you feel the need.
Good for CC for some events
Use Focus at start for Shield of Wrath then swap to Torch
Use Focus for fights only if you need to do block rotations
Builds:
Damage Build
Use when you don’t need much/any utility

• Zeal – Fiery Wrath, Kindled Zeal, Symbolic Avenger
• Radiance – Right-hand strength, Radiant Fire, Amplified Wrath
• Honor – Invigorated Bulwark, Empowering Might, Writ of Persistence

Utility Build
Use if you need utility

• Zeal – Fiery Wrath, Kindled Zeal, Symbolic Avenger
• Honor – Invigorated Bulwark, Empowering Might, Writ of Persistence
• Virtues – Unscathed Contender or Master of Consecrations (When Needed), Supreme Justice or Absolute Resolution (When needed), Permeating Wrath (Solo) or Battle Presence (Group) or Indomitable Courage (When Needed)

So not as cut and dry as the old setup, you’ll be swapping between Virt/Radiance most likely between encounters. Need Projectile defense or support and Virtue is your thing, just wanna blow things up while providing support from a lot of protection and or healing, Radiance is your man. Radiance allows for the double Zealots Flame, which hits hard, plus other uses.

I’m loving the setup, finally made my ascended torch, now if they’d just give me a reason to use shield I might make it to actually full ascended everything.

I planned on toming my guy up once I hit about 50, well… I’m just continuing the old fashioned way. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s very powerful.

Get your grenades, barrage is great burst. Flame Blast on Flamethrower is great burst. Acid Bomb on EG is great burst. Once you can grab your Mortar kit and you can toss down a blind field, if you go into explosives you can trait it to last quite a while.

That said, I’d trait tools first, get your streamlined kits for perma swiftness.

This is my third engi so I kinda have the hang of it, but I just leveled from 50-62 in about an hour and a half by mass killing rarely killed stuff with killstreak/birthday booster/experience booster. I’d pull 4-12 things together and burst them down real quick while they remained blinded and essentially harmless.

Engi’s a profession where you constantly swap between your big hitters to burst.

Big hitters being:
Acid Bomb
Grenade Barrage
Flame Blast
Prybar
Freeze Grenade
Shrapnel Grenade
Poison Grenade
Jump Shot
Blunderbuss
Static Shot
Blowtorch
Orbital Strike

and some others, obviously you can’t use all that list at once, but they are the things that if you are set up for them you want to rotate to as you move through the list. You don’t want to be using the 1 skill till you deplete your list of options.

I’d suggest getting your kits first. Tools line second(up to adrenal implant). Save up for Explosions at lvl 45 and then go deep in that. You’ll get the speed for travel then the burst for damage, and have your wide variety of big hitters from your kits. Rifle + Power/prec being your focus for gear. Personally I’m going condi this time (3rd engi again ) and it’s not bad but I know power is better.

So yeah, stick in there, gets better after 20-25 or so when you have your skills to actually use. I’m blowing stuff up right and left, blinding them so they can’t attack back and wiping out a dozen enemies while at full or nearly full health. Only died a dozen or so times because I’m Yoloing everything.

I like the path, if it weren’t for the bugs I’d probably do it more often, but those are annoying. My first win though was with a water camping staff Ele, 2 thieves that couldn’t/wouldn’t stealth, and something else that was not much help. IIRC about 2 hours to get through. Since then the majority of my attempts have ended in a bugged path, so I’ve just left it out of the things I want to do. If they’d fix the bugs it’d probably be high up there on my favorite paths.

Sarahfull.4930:

Jerus.4350:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I just want to make sure this isn’t highjacking someone’s elses initiative, if all is fine, all is well!

Pretty sure the old leaders have gotten burnt out and have stepped down. Though both are great people and have always been willing to help those who actually want it. Mentoring is… well, it’s draining. Getting a group of people who actually eat up what you put out is awesome, it’s great, nothing draining about that to me, but that’s a rarity. More often you get those just wanting you to carry them through some content, or that argue with you because what you suggest isn’t what they read somewhere or saw in a speed run. And, of course those that just can’t “get it” where half way through you’re both thinking “kitten , this just isn’t working.”

It’s a lot of work.

I wish I still had the energy. I made some friends that came into teaching runs with me, or that I was leading, but I just don’t have that kind of motivation anymore. I wish the new guys luck. There’s nothing wrong with a passing of the guard.

Jeebs, I’m still gona bring you along with me =)

I see it as a test, like the talk here before about stacking spots. Can I ( as a mentor ) explain and / or give reasons for everything that I am doing and explaining to people.

I’m always happy to come along as long as I’m not “the guy” I don’t have it in me anymore. That goes for any of the mentors, feel free to hit me up if you need to fill a group.

So is pugmode shoggroth or Subject 6 in thaumanova immob ok?

Personally I feel that Shoggroth it was probably intended, I mean who wouldn’t think “hmm can we slow him down when he tries to run away,” it’d have been a huge oversight if they didn’t think of that one.

In Thaumanova though, you’re doing it before he even initiates the activation, it’s so fast that you’re best off doing a quick knockback then starting the immob chain., There I think they just didn’t think of it, or maybe they did and it was intended, but I can’t help but feel that it’s less part of the event and more hax feeling.

So personally I feel this is one of the situations where it calls for specific exemptions more than an overbearing strict rule, as again I think in one situation it’s intended and the other it certainly feels exploity.

Maybe “immobilizing to prevent the initiation of the encounter is not allowed?”

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I just want to make sure this isn’t highjacking someone’s elses initiative, if all is fine, all is well!

Pretty sure the old leaders have gotten burnt out and have stepped down. Though both are great people and have always been willing to help those who actually want it. Mentoring is… well, it’s draining. Getting a group of people who actually eat up what you put out is awesome, it’s great, nothing draining about that to me, but that’s a rarity. More often you get those just wanting you to carry them through some content, or that argue with you because what you suggest isn’t what they read somewhere or saw in a speed run. And, of course those that just can’t “get it” where half way through you’re both thinking “kitten , this just isn’t working.”

It’s a lot of work.

I wish I still had the energy. I made some friends that came into teaching runs with me, or that I was leading, but I just don’t have that kind of motivation anymore. I wish the new guys luck. There’s nothing wrong with a passing of the guard.

Talyn.3295:

Taku.6352:

They go down 1 stack per second so 2 ppl can easily carry it.

I am well aware of how fast they go down. However unless you have a perfect run and don’t get hit at all you are gonna have to take an extra couple of seconds to heal or what not between pulls. I don’t think its asking to much for the others in the group to help out as well, it is a team effort after all.

Very true, at the same time I rather have anyone not comfortable and not wanting to learn to just leave it alone.

Evapor.6849:

But, he does needs his kits to survive? Assuming hes running 3 kits I could see it being really hard to hit the seal, when you initially walk in the mobs spike you pretty hard and you usually need a defensive cooldown. I’ve don’t play my engi much but what he said seems fairly reasonable.

Run 3 kits almost exclusively in fractals, and I love taking the hammer

Dodges and toolbelt skills still work just fine. Engi’s really no worse at it than anyone else.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Because you don’t get E-Sports from PvE sadly, so the game is balanced around PvP, it took them years in GW1 before they finally separated skills from PvE and PvP, so they could balance 1 game style separate from the other, without affecting the other game mode.

The DnT run dungeon tourneys are actually not far off from the ANet advertised PVP tourneys, just saying.

RunicAura.9860:

Ok so there has to be a way around this issue. I was just thinking. How come pve skills get nerfed when they are having issues in pvp. I mean I understand the engineers grenade was not responding as intended. So yeah they needed fixed. though from what I can tell it is first pvp that brought about this detection. But before that engineer’s mortar kit to powerful in pvp so it gets balanced in pvp and feels like a nerf to pve. My question is if something in pve is work good but is to powerful in pvp why does pve get nerfed while pvp gets balanced? I’m just wondering on this I have seen other things in the past similar to this. I mean now like some others I feel mortar is way weaker then it should be in pve. I mean I can do 6000 dmg easily on my elementalist I have loads of fields but now I’m lucky to get over 1500 with my mortar on a crit. Where is the balance in that? And it is not a case of “learn to play” I may not be the best but I’m not the worst player ever. And I know how to equip and use my skills and traits. If you get over 1500 with a mortar let me know how you manage it… So yeah why is it pve gets nerfed for pvp? Why is it ok for one class to be able to do 6000points easily while the other class who should do similar with the chosen weapon does WAY less. I just want to understand the logic behind this. I just name this situation cause it is recent there are other pve nerfs that was brought about by pvp being unbalanced.

It absolutely is a case of learn to play. Engi’s are not based around auto attacks. We’re a profession that gives you carpal tunnel. Swap around get your big hitters out, then auto attack. Mortar was too good. Grenadier was too good.

Even with those nerfs we’re still sitting at the second highest theoretical damage in PVE. SECOND HIGHEST. What is this complaint about? We have great burst potential, great sustained damage, it’s all AE, so what’s the problem?

The logic behind the mortar nerf is that it was too much damage. It was exceeding bomb (which is our highest 1 skill) but you could land it from 1500 away! Not sure how that can be considered right. So now it’s nicely tucked away above rifle, below bomb, and about the same as all 3 nades, but again landable from further away, which along with field generation was the point of it, our long range option.

The grenadier nerf, well, it wasn’t working as intended. To go on, they specifically changed the old grenadier trait and made the 3 nades baseline because they felt that a 50% increase in damage from a trait was a bit absurd. Well, with how grenadier was working it was a 33-66% increase on your standard nade skills and apparently 100% increase on your barrage. Can you explain the logic of thinking that was in any way intended?

Again I’ll say Engi is sitting quite pretty right now. And I do agree with the idea of splitting PVP and PVE balance, but again, these examples were changes that were done right for both sides.

They specifically lowered the base damage and raised the coefficient multiplied with your condi damage in this last patch. They did this for all condi’s. They wanted to strengthen condi’s when you specced for them and weaken them when you didn’t. You’re asking for them to reverse what they just specifically did. IIRC they said at 700 condi damage you’d match the old, but at max you’d exceed the old max output.

Lag Spikes.9253:

Problem is the boon it self. Should not be stackable in duration at all.

How many stacks can you have of it right now?

Xyonon.3987:

Disabling grenadier trait is (lets assume it is fixed now) even a dps increase if you swap on the alternative 5% dmg traits. Grenades will always be used for it’s toolbelt, 2# 4# and 5# for dmg and 3# for utility. Nothing changed by disabling this trait.

I personally didnt even use it, since I’m not a fan of “using op bugged stuff” :P Don’t cry about something that has never been yours intentionally!

Naw, it was also giving extra normal nades I was seeing 4-5 from the 1 skill when I tested it. Much more than a 5% buff. But, hell yeah I abused the kitten out of that, made me LOL, glad it got disabled though.

How many licks does it take to get the to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?

Enko.6123:

Jerus.4350:

Yeah I got 2k and change from the patch, used some already to swap some ascended stats, and a few more swaps on the docket.

Seems odd though, again they’re hindering those who do the only content that needs ascended (fractals) from getting it without forcing them to go other places

Fractals is actually the only place to get them that’s guaranteed now since you can still exchange fractal relics for spirit shards.

0.o didn’t see that on the wiki, NICE, great to know. Honestly I don’t even really do dungeons anymore just fractals and screwing around.

Nyx.7342:

Hm i dont think there’s any good place to use gs. I see people using it on grawl but even there i prefer iduelists and having focus for reflects etc.

Kind of topic but is staff a dps increase in short fights with iwarden? I’ve seen in a couple speedruns mesmers will use staff to drop chaos storm (prob for the buffs) and then iwarden. Personally I’ve never used staff in pve except for phase retreat in skips.

Knockback at dredge cart in SE3 is the only place I’ve seen it used well.

Yeah I got 2k and change from the patch, used some already to swap some ascended stats, and a few more swaps on the docket.

Seems odd though, again they’re hindering those who do the only content that needs ascended (fractals) from getting it without forcing them to go other places

blastingmnktpoo.9637:

biofrog.1568:

Hmm.. and here I was thinking they wouldn’t just disable Grenadier since it is so central to a Grenade Kit engineer, and engineer as a class itself. Guess I was wrong.

Guess I will also be shelving my engie until they fix the trait
I feel sorry for those who main an engie, but I guess you can go try some other builds for now.

f
I am an engi main, since beta, and i can honestly say that although this sucks it doesn’t make engi unplayable. Infact i still think that it is one of the stronger pvp classes at the moment. Before this update people used grenades at that radius and velocity all the time, even if they aren’t 1500 range anymore rarely did you hit anyting at that distance solidly anyway. If there were better options it wouldn’t even be a big deal. But glass cannon is very underwehlming and the other is a fall damage trait. Honestly I am more upset by the fact that i don’t have my predator effects anymore

They should enable all grenades to have the pred effects!

What are their chances out of a champ bag?

Gern.2978:

Celwina.2598:

I can’t wait until Grenadier is fixed and brought back in early September.

That’s really what is at the heart of what has me bothered.

If it needed fixed that’s fine. I have never been a big PvP’er or WvW’er, so i never really noticed this bug, and certainly wasn’t exploiting. I was just using the same build I have always used as dungeoneer (or at least the new version of it). And when a net says: “temporarily disabled until the next scheduled release” I get mad, cause I know what that means: “We see that it needs fixed, but we have more important things to do like make some more outfits for the gem store. So we are just going to turn it off until we feel like getting around to fixing it, maybe sometime next year.”

All the people talking about how we have other viable options like bomb kit and whatnot really don’t know what they are talking about. Grenade is are main DPS kit. No other kit or weapon can even come close to the damage of Grenades, (yes, that is a problem, as I have said before: we need other viable options, but Nerfing Grenades doesn’t make those other options more viable, it just flat our nerfs our damage) and I am not talking about grenades with some multiplier or piercing glitch. Engineers are just barely accepted as good for dungeon groups, but without grenades you are going to see us outright rejected. And yes, the grenadier trait is that important, if anything just because it helps us actually land all our grenade attacks, and thus put out our full damage. No dungeon group worth their salt is going to accept any person who is incapable of putting out their full amount of damage.

Grenades are fine. We’re number 2 in theoretical damage, it’s tough to actually do it, but we’re sitting quite pretty on the damage side. If you’re a dungeoneer you should be using Glass Cannon not Grenadier even when it comes back.

Rotation is something like: Incendiary Ammo → Grenade Barrage → Napalm → Flame Blast → Acid Bomb → Jump Shot → Blunderbuss → Shrapnel Grenade → Freeze Grenade → Poison Grenade → Flame Blast… then continue to nade spam in between your big hitters.

Nades are still awesome, still the best choice, still the best damage for PVE, namely dungeons/fractals.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

News flash: balance is not decided around pve and even then its terrible form to make two completely conflicting traits one will always make the other obsolete.

Yup it’s designed for it’s ohh so successful esports… what a joke.

It’s a bit much. But, uptime isn’t the be all end all of analysis, I think the low duration is a tradeoff. That said most of those comparisons are to self only skills, this is group, so that’s enough to be a nice tradeoff for the short duration. 45-60s I think is right. More than that and I feel it should have an increased duration.

And as people have noted, at 60s, well, not sure I’d ever use it over FR in a PVP environment, so my leaning is very much towards ~45s.

Also, the idea of traiting for this… I don’t know, honor is not a tree I’d go into for anything but Writ of Persistance, so I wouldn’t give that up to get the 6s off my cooldown even with FMW being what it is.

Scepter trait needs a massive buff. Cooldown adjustment, Damage modifier, something. Been saying this since they first revealed it.

It’ll almost never beat out the 7% on burning trait and even if it does it’d be by a minuscule amount that’s it’s not even worth considering where it might be applicable. If your VoJ is proccing you’re getting burning, meaning 7% flat right there or a single might stack for 10s…

Maybe if they doubled the duration or amount of stacks you got it could be considered in solo play, but just… ugh.

And don’t get me started on Retal from Aegis… really ANet?

I love the new trait system’s design, but sets of traits like the adept in Zeal fail to create that choice that it’s supposed to force. Not many complaints about the trait system but this set is one of my annoyances.

DonQuack.9025:

Sorry Jerus I disagree. A “fine job” is catching problems such as these before releasing it. This is a “Mediocre job” at best.

Funny thing is. I have a feeling they probably knew of more than a few of these bugs before it was released. Some QA/Tester is locked in his dungeon screaming “I bloody told you and No you didnt listen” in his head.

That’s fine. And, I’m sure you’re right in that they probably knew some stuff. I guess I’m just a bit forgiving, testing for the unknown is tough. I’ve been in games that do have test servers with hundreds of people running around testing this kind of stuff… and things still slip by.

Rin.1046:

There seems to be a lot of people here who know how to develope games. If its as easy as people are insinuating it to be in this thread, I am surprised there is not a lot more AAA MMO’s on the market.

/s

Thanks for the update Josh.

Absolutely.

I will say it’d be nice if they had a test server in the way other games do. A server you can load into as a player to mess around with new stuff. In other games it’s made them aware of stuff like this, I mean free testing never hurt right? Either way, I think they did a fine job, and are continuing to do so on the systems side. Just gimme content in HoT!

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3bzcyv/there_is_a_big_possibility_that_the_challenging/csqydc1

Silverwastes confirmed challenging

If you had to do SW with 10-15 total I’d be ok with that. The bosses with low people are pretty fun. 10 people you’d be doing each breach boss with 2-3, each VW with 3-4. (though the timesink of defending…)

Evapor.6849:

@jerus Because money is nice.

And to op I fully support this idea I have watched my stash slowly dwindle, but that kitten they hired that determines what is and isn’t a pve reward probably didn’t like how much money you could make with skill points.

Ohh I get that, I was just wondering what his need for 8k of them was?

Curious, why the big need for shards?

Xcorpdog.2840:

Jerus.4350:

I like all the engi love but you have to think about practicality, while engi has a high potential many (including myself) don’t reach the actual potential. it’s possible, it’s not out of reach, but in a practical sense we drop quite a bit. That said Engi is still high, you can do great damage without perfection, it’s just worth noting that optimal isn’t likely.

Also, an Engi solo beat the Ele solo of bloomhunger, yay reflects

Take a group of mediocre PUGs and the ease of Staff Ele or GS warrior is likely going to win out. In a speed run where everyone is performing near optimal and yes Engi will skyrocket. It’s just not something you should count on being realistic. A good-great engi will be awesome, a mediocre engi vs a mediocre warrior and the warrior will win out. Generally speaking Staff Ele/GS War/DDThief are all pretty easy great damage. The next level would be Guard/Engi for mediocre players.

I say this because I don’t think people should adhere to the possible when PUGing, just the possible when optimizing, and don’t assume anyone will optimize if you don’t know them and how good of a player they are.

While your grain of salt is always healthy, with everything…. really everything.
The OP is actually asking about their relation in speed clear comps, where you don’t have to treat everyone like an npc outside of basic interaction.

:D what can I say, was just a bit tired of spreadsheet info last night. It’s all well and good but without a bit of reason applied it’s not very meaningful.

I like all the engi love but you have to think about practicality, while engi has a high potential many (including myself) don’t reach the actual potential. it’s possible, it’s not out of reach, but in a practical sense we drop quite a bit. That said Engi is still high, you can do great damage without perfection, it’s just worth noting that optimal isn’t likely.

Also, an Engi solo beat the Ele solo of bloomhunger, yay reflects

Take a group of mediocre PUGs and the ease of Staff Ele or GS warrior is likely going to win out. In a speed run where everyone is performing near optimal and yes Engi will skyrocket. It’s just not something you should count on being realistic. A good-great engi will be awesome, a mediocre engi vs a mediocre warrior and the warrior will win out. Generally speaking Staff Ele/GS War/DDThief are all pretty easy great damage. The next level would be Guard/Engi for mediocre players.

I say this because I don’t think people should adhere to the possible when PUGing, just the possible when optimizing, and don’t assume anyone will optimize if you don’t know them and how good of a player they are.

Purple Miku.7032:

This puts it into perspective how over-the-top ele’s damage is, considering that the DPS you have in this video rivals the output of a pre-patch ele when line-casting.

As I said in pm to you a few hours ago, I’m surprised you managed to get him to aggro on rocky because any time that I’ve solod him he very rarely would aggro on rocky over me if I dragged him to that pole :P

To be fair he’s using the wall to kinda have a pseudo line casting isn’t he? Still impressive regardless, don’t mean that in any kind of derogatory sense, just that he is getting more hits because of it, is he not?

ePush.3148:

100+% crit warrios with quickness
5 hammers guardians partys with symbols bug
hitkilll shatters

But well, only granadier got nerfed. For all engi players, go play some zerker warrior pve build, anet hate us.

You’re behind a day. Symbol trait got disabled too. They’re both being worked on and when they’re ready to function correctly they’ll be released back into the wild. No need for Woe is Me comments.