No proper explanation of what all the tokens junking up my inventory are for, or where the hell to spend them, or why a WvW player should care at all about any of this. Just vague crap about spend them somewhere, somehow, by guess work, or esp or something.
Sidenote:- I wish the “living world” didn’t also mean stagnant under resourced WvW lack of content (no, the kitten vertical power grinds now in wvw is not content it’s the opposite).
Anyway D-minus for the NPC/mail help for this living world update, even less helpful than the typical living world content.
This was an intentional change. The previous behavior where the pull succeeded regardless of facing, was inconsistent with other pull skills like Scorpion Wire and Spectral Grasp, as well as most other ranged targeted attacks. It’s still a useful skill. Yes it has a longer cast time than other pull skills, but it’s unblockable and brings all of the other tool kit skills along with it.
Either magnet should get a consistent cast time, or other classes with pulls should lose the ability to weapon (& sigil) swap, or engineers should gain weapon swap. Obviously a useful cast time would make far more sense.
Eh, it’s a very very easy animation to spot, on top of seeing a line going towards you. I can understand in WvW, but then again there is so much going on in there it is hard to ready any of that stuff. You can dodge it, it is not undodgeable.
Got to quote this.
Obvious animation and relatively long cast time for a skill that has the sole effect of pulling an enemy – unlike the other skills mentioned.
And while we do have the other skills in the kit, they don’t come cheap – we’ve got a single weapon slot and main weapon damage is nerfed in account of our versatility, according to the class balance philosophies in the 14 december patch.
And by the way, grenades are also inconsistent (in that they have no proper autoattack). I assume those will be fixed as well soon, then.
Typical example of engineers being charged opportunity tax like 6 different times in a completely inconsistent way. We’ve already paid heavily for our kits.
In wvw and some pve, turrets die so instantly you can’t trigger their abilities, sometimes they don’t even finish their creation animation. They just evaporate to any aoe.
It is possible to prevent this without giving them over powered hp and toughness for other situations.
Make turrets only able to take a fixed percentage of max hp in damage per second. For example max damage per second is 20% of max hp. This means turrets last minimum 5 seconds, and get 1 shot off. Then junk the useless 30% damage reduction trait, and replace with reducing the max damage each turret takes to say 12% per second so they last very slightly longer.
Can we please get the option to turn off kit graphics, so we can participate in the backpack and weapon skin collecting. 11 months of engineers asking, it’s not a new issue.
Thanks.
P.S. Couldn’t one patch one day be about hats or gloves or something, not weapon skins and backpacks which exclude engineers.
We use this to measure how effective employees / workers are at their jobs and bonuses are tied to it.
The success of the living story content has got PvE players logging in more and gem spending has gone up. The new flute costs 500 gems for reference.
On the WvW side, entire guilds move servers pay 1800 gems per person ( equivalent to 3 to 4 players spending in pve ). This tells the company that the WvW developers are done a great job : by not doing unnecessary fixes that will reduce the gem spending.
Unbalanced matchups is good for business : you create resentment, envy and motivate players to switch servers to be in the A Team.
Yes, we complain a lot about matchups, zergs, camping in WvW but our actions are actually endorsing the developers NOT to change the current situation. To show your dissatisfaction with WvW, these are the steps that will have a clear message that we want change :
When all these reports show numbers that motivates changes to be done, then things will happen.
Frequent forum posting / activity with massive gem spending tells the boss that you have a superstar WvW developer doing great stuff !
Unfortunately there is no good metrics for people who stop playing due to frustrating matchups, only for those who pay gem transfer costs to try discover a better matchup.
I’m sure new guilds are being formed(or consolidated!), new commanders are being trained, TS servers are being utilized and PvE players being persuaded on other dying servers so this advice isn’t really ground breaking, and it doesn’t really solve some of the serious problems with this game mode. And obviously, people playing through the pain in hopes of sporadic “short moments of glory” isn’t sustainable because servers wouldn’t have this mass exodus problem, and I can’t say I blame them.
I am not claiming the current system is good. The winner is determined by coverage. The server with the superior coverage wins.
Everybody knows that the outmanned “buff” is joke. Breakout event won’t help you on enemy borderlands when an enemy force which is many times larger than you spawn camps you. Trust me. I have been there. Many times I have put on my commander tag when pretty much everybody else has rage quit. When our own borderlands have just me and 2 up leveled characters. Enemy is controlling the entire map and moves in a huge blob.
Desolation probably lost 1500-2500 hard core WvWvW players in a period of 1 month and after that dreadful month several guilds probably even quit the entire game. If this is not mass exodus, then what? Almost everybody was saying Desolation is dead. But the miracle happened and we survived.
I think several things should be implemented:
1. The outmanned buff should be separated to several levels of severity, which grant defensive buffs to the weaker side (more health and thoughness to NPCs, structures and players) and also have an additional clause taking into consideration of total number of players in all 4 maps (to prevent a server from leaving 3 maps empty to enjoy outmanned buff there and total steal rolling one map). This would also partially make night capping less effective.
2. Reduce the number of players who can enter a WvWvW map per side, but when a player enters a queue she/he is given choice to fight as a mercenary for the outmanned side on a completely different side. This would also reduce lag on stacked servers.
3. People are obviously moving to winning servers (aka band wagoning). Thus the transfer cost should be based on WvWvW track record and not world population:
cheapest transfer cost = those servers who haven’t won a match up in 3 months
medium transfer cost = those servers who have won a single match up in 3 months
highest transfer cost = those servers who have won several match ups in 3 months
Good suggestions, frankly any changes have to be better than the devs current ostrich mode with regard to pop imbalances.
Even if bugs ever get fixed, turet don’t shoot at things that matter, and don’t survive enough, are too immobile for recharges, have bad trait support, and toolbelt vs. detonate is a design fail.
One of many possible solutions to make them survive enough to be so somewhat more useful in more than tiny scale pvp is:
Make turrets only able to receive 20% of their max hp in damage, in each second. Change the 30% trait, which is useless, to upgrade the maximum turet hp loss per second, so they can only lose 10% of max hp in any one second.
Then actually test it in WvW and PvE, instead of balancing everything only around the small scale arena mode needs.
Once in a while I get a random angle (e.g. 90 degree) turn or a 180 rubberbanding from rocketboots. Often creating situations that prove fatal in WvW. Is this particularly WvW lag or a general bug for rocketboots?
Been reminded of the occasional lag/freeze when using rocketboots, also another very annoying bug when an ‘escape’ skill makes things worse not better.
Bomb-kit should be changed to Mine-kit, with the bombs having a 4 second fuse, but auto proximity detonating as soon as a hostile is inside their range.
I’d be willing to bet turret health is balanced around small scale PvP. In a 1v1 fight with another player they have enough health to survive incidental AoE damage but the opponent still has the option of killing them quickly by focusing on them, which seems like a good way for them to work. Coincidentally, you actually see turrets used sometimes in sPvP.
The problem is obviously that, in the other two game modes, you’re generally fighting things that do a lot more damage than one enemy player, so the turret just gets reduced to scrap metal in seconds, even if you take those unappealing traits nobody uses to give them more toughness and health regen.
One of many possible solutions is:
Make turrets only able to receive 20% of their max hp in damage, in each second. Change the 30% trait, which is useless, to upgrade the maximum turet hp loss per second, so they can only lose 10% of max hp in any one second.
Then actually test it in WvW and PvE, instead of balancing everything only around the small scale arena mode needs.
3d seconds of dazing yourself, is often more beneficial to your opponents than the invulnerability with shrink which warms them not to blow any cooldowns is benefit to you.
It’s a junk trait since elixir-s was made wothless except for stomping in spvp etc.
Program team is too busy on more important things.
Fair enough.
Art asset team clearly isn’t too busy, so use art asset changes to solve the problem.
Have all back pack kit arts changed for graphics that appear on forearms and biceps.
Now legendary weapons, fun back items etc can all stay irrespective of the forearm & bicep kit items being on or off.
A unreasonable amount of time. Excluding the lucky drops some people get sometimes WvW is not a consistent source for income. I would say I make around 10g a week playing WvW, though I don’t play a lot of hours so I guess you could make more. Sadly I say go farm some PvE for a few days to make your set. Or be lazy and just buy gems
I’m far more inclined to buy game currencies when I want to reward a dev team for good work, not to mitigate design fails or uturns This was billed as a low grind game, without buy/grind determining strength versus players.
Seeing as the new sentinel equipment isn’t available via wvw tokens, (sadly no surprise). How long do you estimate it will take you to grind just via wvw the large amount of gold needed for a full new set, including weapons, sigils, runes, armour, accessories etc.
Because I loved the beta potential and feel of engineer.
Because after so very many build crippling nerfs, I have a lot of soul bound to my engineer equipment sets in the bank I hope to use one day.
Because changing to another class feels like tacit approval for the lack of dev effort put into this one.
Because I still have high hopes each patch that maybe the next one will see both talent and man hours applied to engineer issues.
Because contrary to what we were promised it’s a large grind for typical players to swap chars in anything but arena mode, and I’ve always preferred open world pvp (wvw here).
FT has a multitude of problems still. QoL, dps, burst, toolbelt skill, lack of finishers, traits, each skill, power/cond compared to other power/cond weapons, retalia,tion, auto, accuracy, range,
Flame Blast is arguably the best burst weapon skill Engineers have.
It does almost equal to Grenade Barrage in damage.
Flame blast isn’t a bad skill, even if it is incredibly susceptible to skill lag problems in wvw, and it isn’t supported that well or very cohesive with the rest of the kit.
FT has a multitude of problems still. QoL, dps, burst, toolbelt skill, lack of finishers, traits, each skill, power/cond compared to other power/cond weapons, retalia,tion, auto, accuracy, range,
Thanks for the replies. Planetside 2 engineer certainly sounds interesting. Meaningful support roles can definitely make large scale MMO battlefields far more tactical and varied.
How many Engies are STILL playing as a percentage of the total population, can we get this as total aggregate hours played by each class, per month since August?
What abilities, conditions, and unique functionality are you trying to highlight for our profession? Is fire part of it? If so, why do you keep nerfing our access to it?
Why are your condition mechanics the same as other games were years ago even after theirs were shown not to work well?
If turrets are not mobile, why do they have such low survival attributes? For weapon emplacements, should they not have more defense and be more on par with siege weapons instead of minions or elementals?
How many hours monthly are played in each profession by ANet employees? I would prefer actual data to anecdotal accounts of “Mark, that guy in accounting who has an Engie, I think…”
Are there any plans in the future for profession specific mechanics in WvW, since Warrior banners can buff inanimate objects, mesmers can portal into towers and what not, and now there is an anti-stealth trap? Any chance it would be siege related?
Funny point about condition mechanics, why the hell have EQ1 style DoTs, haven’t we learned anything since last century?
1 out of 20 engineer builds works ok, quit complaining and all respec the same.
19 out of 20 of our builds are now seriously sub par, it’s going downhill.
by the looks of it we’re still gonna get even another nerf on nades some time along with our condi builds .
Yes that’s the two states of mind of engineer posters.
Anet state of mind is .we’re totally winging it, with no vision consistency or goals for engineer, lets nerf everything else so bad that players may one day use turrets for more than point defence. Keep nerfing engineer every month without fail, eventually everyone who wants balance will reroll, and we’ ll never have to tell our bosses we have to have at least 8 more staff to cover balance minimums for the classes in all game modes.
It’s part of A-nets vision of the engineer being versatile. Having half the range of high armour, high hp warrior s rifle makes us anet versatile. Cc-ing ourselves even when the shot misses or our opponent actually has access to reliable stability and is immune, makes rifle anet engy versatile. Having a gap closer that is so broken it is actually slower than not using it at all and walking, is another part of anet engy versatility. Having net shot miss any moving target at range, when warrior cripple shot hits, helps anet make engy versatile. Having warrior 20% CD skill reduction also include omg piercing! for all rifle skills is much less versatile than the engy with 20% and nothing else.
3 cheers for Anet’s vision of engineer versatility, I’m so glad we’re paying a mainhand damage tax for it.
Looking at other professions downed state skills and using them, just serves to emphasise how awful and unbalanced the engineer downed state skills are.
Unfortunately no amount of breaking the engineers most popular features every month is eve going to make turrets good until they have some A.I. and last longer than a second vs aoe.
Q: How do you reconcile your design philosophy of making the engineer a versatile and flexible combatant with the engineer talent trees that force deep specialization to even achieve a modicum of effectiveness in an exceptionally limited and inflexible playstyle?
Indeed. Also, can we get a comprehensive design vision statement for engineer, that is actually relevant to the profession, and is consistently worked towards.
They lowered the bleeds, and at the same time lowered the fire rate on pistols during beta, 1 change was feasible, but both changes at once without re-evaluation after, was a design failure, engy pistol damage dropped too far.
Recent changes to confusion really haven’t helped static shot either.
Maybe I am doing something wrong but I am looking for some advice.
Anytime I try and use a turret it always gains aggro and gets destroyed within roughly 3 hits.
I don’t see the use in these if they get destroyed so easily and don’t have a chance to do any damage or what not.
Is this normal? Is there a way that I can take aggro off the turret?
Thanks for the help!
It’s just really horrible design. It’s been really horrible design since beta1 (which was more like alpha 0.1 for engineer). For some reason we cannot get the devs to understand some basics of why turrets suck, they just seem totally blind to turret problems (and pretty much any engineer problems tbh we even have to post our bugs in theif forums etc to actually get any attention).
grenade kit just needs 75% faster flight time and it’s pretty perfect. A low chance blast finisher would be nice tho, engineer in general are weak for finishers that don’t have drawbacks attached to them
WAIT… I can do this. Because no devs ever read these things, I will step in. Put a sticky-note marked “Waggy Balanceright” over my name! Paint red the part of your screen in which my name appears! Get your thumbs-up fingers ready because I am your personal, ANet Developer for this thread!
Engineer downed skills are one of the biggest piles of mediocre uninspired subpar kitten I’ve seen in 16 years of MMO gaming. The only part that doesn’t need looking at is skill 4 because it’s basically the same as everyone else.
Grenades will never be balanceable easily until they do anything like similar damage to mobs and unaware players on the one hand as on the other hand the damage they do to players who press movement buttons. Grenades also won’t be a proper long range skill without changes.
Both are solved by speeding grenade flight up. The speed increases for arena modes were too small and proper speed increases are very needed in wvw also which is also a pvp mode.
