Guild Wars 2

You know what is the sad part about the kit refinement nerf for your build?
It happens to be the weakest link in your ideas:

one word: stunbreaker

Before, when using those 3 kits with kit refinement, you could swap kits when stunned.
This would result in putting down the light field from super elixir that healed you and removed first ondition. Than aoe fire blast and remove another stack of conditions, followed by a cripple field… all while stunned.

Not as good as a real stun breaker, but at least better than nothing.

Now with the nerf to kit refinement, that ‘second rate’ stunbreaker is gone.
Leaving your 3 kit build with no stunbreaker, and no reliable kit refinement procs for EG in mid fight either…

Big nerf to your idea. It’s not just about the cooldown, it’s about the whole utility of kit refinement being thrown in the garbage.
The nerf is HUGE for multi-kit builds, in more way than one.

1. EG and FT were already linked by nature in the traits

2. this patch they buff and fix both FT as EG

3. they nerf the one talent making the combo use of Ft and EG really worthwhile…

Beats me, seems Kit refinement procs were overpowered…
Sure we’re not talking about a failed 100nades nerf here?

Bit sad actually: I liked using both EG and FT, and was really happy about the patch… till I saw the kit refinement note and totally lost interest in a blink.

Dutchares.6084:

VOLKON.1290:

I’m in JQ and I agree that this may not be the best thought out change I’ve seen personally. Last night there are white swords on Lake, so knowing the change I go there and see a swarm of Tsym on the wall with four cats going full bore. /facepalm

What this change means is that WvW will become less fun for those people that will be required to be planted in towers and keeps to act as scouts, a role the NPCs were fulfilling fairly well with the old sword system. We have to dedicate people now to serve as NPC alarms effectively or lose structures to the hidden zerg.

ANet… it may be worth reconsidering.

Or you play in like 4-5 groups, instead of a massive zerg and a few people inside keeps/towers waiting..
New tactics: a few groups scout/defend a part of the border while other groups try to take keeps/towers..
Resulting in lots of 20-40 people battles.. Meaning having most players isnt the main factor anymore, but having good groups that can win fights(skills), and tacic/teamwork between groups… so a lot of more fun.

The numbers you mention are something the lower tier servers can only dream of.
I suppose that’s the real issue here.

For some servers it means ‘reducing’ their groups to 20-40 battles as you say, while for other servers getting 20-40 is a big fight.

It’s all over this post: the way the higher tier servers reason from their own numbers, somehow assuming the lower tier servers can split up to ‘small’ 20 groups too.

Summary:

- for higher tiers this change means more ‘small’ teams of 25 players before being seen. Making the meta game more organised and small scale.
This is an improvement.

- for lower tier servers this means allocating even more people to specific tasks, because that ‘big’ 25 man group is now unseen on the map.
Groups that had 10-15 players now need to put 3 or 4 of them as scouts, leaving them completely chanceless against that bigger group of 20-25 that they need to find first.
This is a change for the worse.

All over these posts I see the failure to understand this fundamental difference in impact the change has.

Instead of merging more traits that effect kits, they nerf one of the traits that actually helped ALL kits…

Flamethrower and Elixir Gun are linked by TWO traits of 20 points in different trait lines. Yet they are now a bad choice to use together because of kit refinement procs eating each other.

Counterproductive logic here.
And completely going against the fairytale idea of the ‘versatile’ engineer.

So if I want the super elixir proc from EG… I can’t use a Flamethrower, or tool kit, or med kit, or any kit for 10 seconds…

So much for no cooldown kit swapping.
We can now chose between multi-kit instantswapping, without kit refinement.
Or have kit refinement and only use 1 kit, or accept a 10 second cooldown on any swap.

Biggest nerf to engineer versatility I have seen.
Not biggest engineer nerf, just the biggest one to their versatility!
Oh the irony…

I respect the OP a lot, but I don’t read the rationalisation that I think is the real one for this change. Maybe I’m wrong of course.

Basically they did this, if my view is correct:

to nerf a high burst build 100nades, they nerfed kit refinement for all other engineer builds as well.

I used 3 or 4 kits mostly.
Kit refinement was a core trait to that gameplay.
Now I will ‘waste’ the kit refinement proc on stuff I don’t need, while not being able to rely on the procs I actually need on the spot.

To tone down 100nades, they nerfed a LOT of other engineer builds with it.

Kit refinement was not overpowered because of the cripple, or not even because of the condition removal.
It was only an issue in the 100nades build.

And now the funny part: if the 100 nades build doesn’t use a tool kit or med kit… they won’t even notice the shared cooldown!
They will mostly miss the magnet pull if they drop Tool kit of course, but if they replace tool kit with a deployable net turet for example, it ‘could’ work too.
100nades build can probably work around this nerf, while the multi-kit builds can not.

Kit refinement was the most VERSATILE trait engineers had.
Guess we’re not supposed to be versatile with kits after all.
Not with turrets either, or gadgets.
Just a little with elixirs…

If they would disable portals in the JP, not only would they have made it fairer, they would also have reduced the population in it by 85% or some other made up number I can throw out here.

Personally I find it a bit silly that you need to organise for a Jumping Puzzle, while there is a fight outside that needs all those players in more important places

The fights can be fun, mostly they’re just ganking and completely unfair, but still: they ‘can’ be fun.
But they are always a waste of time, looking at the bigger picture.
The player gains something, the server only loses a player. Or a lot of players…

if it was an organised guild group of EBay, than they could do that before to be honest.
I don’t see the real benefit of the change if we’re talking organised guild attacks.
They tried not to make swords anyhow, and could be at the inner unseen before this patch too.

And that too forced the defenders to split up forces, so that’s not new either.

The real change is for those attacks where you can’t avoid attacking, not for the organised guild runs against doors…

The thing is: it’s a step in the right direction for those WvW’ers who already got the most loot!
Being the best (aoe) damage dealers in big groups.

Those who were playing support already hardly get more loot.
Why?
Because they still don’t tag anything more than they did before…

They end up with more, but not even in the same proportion as the increase the damage dealers get.
Every wvw raid guild asks (or forces) support speccs and professions, while oddly enough the game gives the most loot to those who focus on (aoe) damage the most.

And every raiding guild knows those damage dealers wouldn’t survive a head on collision with another guild… if it wasn’t for the supportive roles (heals, boons, cleanses, cc…).

Just like the game rewards zerging karma training waaaaay more than doing constructive stuff like supplies, repairs, dolyaks, scouting, etc…

The players seem to know what is important.
But Anet designed their game contrary to that knowledge and rewards the selfish damage parts most.
Both in wvw and spvp by the way (compare attacking points to defending points)

The change fits the typical Piken playstyle extremely well (talking about pre-guild drama playstyle).
Our teams will orgnasie and get towers down before the enemy knows we’re there.

I just don’t believe it will splti up zergs of randoms, that’s all.
And because of that, I hardly see the need of the change in itself. Not making swords was a skill test of your groups, or in most cases: a test of remembering those 3 randoms near you aren’t on your TS and didn’t hear ’don’t attack the gate’

Scumbag Mawile.6384:

Thank you based support.

Though you might wanna fire off an AoE if you’ve got one. It’s just that easy.

so true it hurts.

As an engineer if I use healing bombs for my team, I use elixir gun cleanses and healing, I use knockbacks and cripples, and all that sort of things, I hardly get bags to be honest.

If I mindlessly spam grenades, I can’t pick them up fast enough…
The difference in drops is humoungous, while I’m hardly helping my team with grenades in mobile fights. But man, do I tag everything in sight!

The change in drops in itself is a cool thing of course.
But how this game canbe so blind to anything else but doing direct damage and zerging is beyond me.
No love for support still, seriously?

Ventari.8257:

honestly this is the BEST decision they have made. Learn to strategize have scouts it forces servers to use more teamwork and coordination. don’t be mad because WvW got a little “harder”. man up and deal with it it is truly an amazing change because its possible for small groups to accomplish more now and also for more “ninja” bd tactics to succeed.

maybe drop the number but still it a great change period end of discussion.

it’s not about manning up, or playing strategic, and certainly not about wvW getting ‘too hard for us now’.

It’s about being realistic.
This change is good for small guild groups, but for bigger groups of randoms I can’t believe it will lead to them splitting up in groups of less than 25 per commander.
That simply is an unrealistic view on how these groups are formed and the lack of communication they have compared to organised groups on TS or Vent.

Randoms will stick on badges, and unless those badges count their numbers and work together and actually form squads of less than 25 with NO ONE else following… you can’t make this splitting up work.

By the way: I respect your opinion as much as the next, but don’t say that your argument is the ‘end of discussion’.
I’m not here to be told by you what I can or can not argue about.
It makes you appear incredibly arrogant, instead of making your argument appear strong (which is probably your intention).

Gaudrath.6725:

Haha, this is too funny. How about you guys look where you’re going? What, you see the little swords on a keep, you go in to check it out and… get surprised by finding enemies there? Were you not expecting trouble, since you’re going to check out why the keep is marked as under assault?

Look on your minimap less, look around you more. And with 25 people, you can’t blame culling unless your comp is from the nineties.

And yeah – as others have said, how about ceasing to run like a big huge herd of zerglings around the map, and actually splitting up? Maybe have a few scouts going around the map and relaying information instead of all of you following your commander like a bunch of zombies on speed?

Man, people will complain about anything. Put a little effort in it, get out of your comfort zone for once. It’s WvW, not PvE! There is no “proper way” to do things! Your enemy uses the new mechanics to their advantage? And you can’t? Why?

Adapt!

I actually think people will split up ,less in the zergs.
Simply because they will realise that the swords they run towards have at least 25 people there…

Any smart group will try to stay under 25 of course, and to catch these small groups in the act, you’ll need to spot them indeed.
But this won’t happen by zergs spliting up.
It will happen by the same people doing helpfull stuff now, not by the zergers splitting up.

We are boh from Piken, and he core of Piken WvW (ignoring the recent shifts back and fro) has a very good mentatility towards being helpfull and doing the supportive stuff.
So I think for our server the change won’t mean that much, if anything it could be a good change for all of our smaller groups who do specific tasks and co-ordinate well.

But in general, as far as ‘zergs’ go… no: I don’t believe this change will split up zergs.

Skapocalypse.5236:

All ANet has to do is reward people for scouting and tower sitting. It might be in the works already(doubtful but it is a possibility).

I for one don’t mind sitting in towers and defending and I never will mind.

You touch on something here:

‘all Anet has to do is reward scouting in towers’.

Like they need to reward support, running supplies, repairing, escorting dolyaks…?

They’re not doing any of these in any meaningfull manner (some xp, that’s it at best).
There is absolutely no reason to assume they work on rewarding scouting, or staying in towers.

The system rewards zerging, and only the part of doing damage in a zerg.
For all those actually trying to help there is no other reward than the personal knowledge you did something helpfull while giving up karma and badges for it…

I will be scouting too if needed, depending on what our guild is up to a any given time.
But I don’t buy the argument of rewarding scouting, not even as a theoretical possibility the dev’s might consider.

Skapocalypse.5236:

I like it. Now you need to keep scouts in towers and maybe 3-4 people in keeps. People just need to adjust(and they will adjust) and not just zerg around and follow commanders.

the same zergers will zerg, and leave the others to do the scouting.
The same people who run dolyaks now, or supplies…

Most zergers will expect ‘others’ to stay behind, never themselves.

The end result will be that most towers and keeps won’t have designated scouts on the lower populated maps.

‘Not making swords’ is a form of organisation. It often fails, true, but that doesn’t mean the system had to adjust.

Look at it this way for your argument: people sometimes adjusted to not making swords, and sometimes they didn’t…
Same will happen with scouting: some will, some won’t.

People ,won’t magically adjust: those that bothered now with being supportive for no reward, will keep doing it.
The karma trainers will still try to train.

Dyno.9467:

Red Guard has an excellent reputation on the EU servers, there definitely up there with the best of them.

I’m from Piken Square where Red Guard is, and they get my vote indeed.

Of course I can’t compare to ‘all’ other guilds since I haven’t watched all streams, experienced all those other guilds fighting.
So maybe there are other guilds out there who would do better. If so, I’m sure RG wouldn’t mind fighting them if they have the chance.

At least on our server RG is considered to be among the best in the game.

Durzlla.6295:

Because the ranger, unlike the engineer, is supposed to share in the extremely high amount of evasion that is the thief, the engineer, unlike both the ranger AND the thief, does not evade attacks but simply shrugs them off.

If you haven’t noticed we have 2 traits that’ll apply protections pretty liberally AND we can get perms vigor by either swapping kits, or just from critting, making us a LOT more evasive than a ranger could even dream of being if we have the tool tree maxed out as well, because, you know, we get 10% of our endurance bar back with each tool belt skill use.

The difference is: if we do all of that, or even just part of these traits, that we end up with not enough traits to make any decent build.

Engineer traits do need better synergy, and a lot of cleaning up.
Regardless of what rangers have or have not, engineer traits are scattered all over the place.
To be truly versatile, our traits need to be versatile in the first place.

Some traits are superb in their versatility (kit refinement being the best versatile trait around IF you like kits).
But sadly enough most traits are not versatile.

Saturn.6591:

U all wrong; ther r no girlz on the intahwebz!!!!

:P

Well, actually there are. I’ve met quite a few of them haha. Though there’s only one girl I remember right now that I know she’s playing WvW.

Hmhmmm… what would interest me more is, if girls/women actually play male chars too. I mean it’s not a secret that many guys like to play female characters (me being one of them; I play female and male). But I don’t remember that I ever saw a girl with a male char.

I know one.
Human warrior in scarsely hiding armor…
Her character is even so ‘male’ we tease her with his Village People look.

quickthorn.4918:

I’ve had badges of honour for capping camps, often 2 of them. Not all the time though, so I’m unsure how the criteria varies for getting them.

wouldn’t that be the npc’s dropping them?
Which is enough as reward for camps for me.

But I doubt the ‘capping’ itself rewards any badges.

silverfire.2547:

Kimbald.2697:

Yet you get the highest ammount of badges in one go from Jumping Puzzles and killing Champion npc’s?

Well, the devil’s in the details, and I forgot to mention that I was a proponent of removing the badges from the jump puzzle and champion NPCs entirely so long as the method of earning badges is more clearly stated (even if it doesn’t change otherwise).

Jumping puzzle is just odd with its rewards. Can be fun, but always seems out of place.

As for the Champions: just give them a strategic advantage like Dredge, Quagans and what not…
Killing them buffs the server that killed them or something. A usefull buff if possible, but that might be asking too much.

WvW from launch was intended and designed to have large numbers of players cluttered up in small keeps.

There is NO excuse that they didn’t see this coming, or had no opportunity to test an ‘unforseen’ occurance.

Skill lag, like culling, is a technical issue that is severely ruining players enjoyment of WvW.

I’m still having fun most times in WvW, but when I die for yet another time due to not being able to click a single button, while getting stuck in invisable aoe fields… I tend to get bored and logg out.

One day I won’t bother to logg back in, if it keeps on happening every single night as it does now.
No one will miss me I’m sure, but I’m just as sure that I’m not the only one slowly getting fed up with the unplayable nature of big fights these days.

silverfire.2547:

That’s a lot of rewarding people for not killing players in a PvP mode.

I’m all for sorting out the arcane hand-waving that determines who earns a badge and who doesn’t off of a kill, but letting PvE objectives dictate a badge that was meant to signify a PvP trophy cheapens its value.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d always been under the impression that the badges were a slightly more tasteful euphemism for ‘ears’ and spikes/barbs/needles were fingers that were ‘collected’ from kills as trophies.

Under that logic, if they actually told us that each kill would earn up to 2 badges total among all people who ‘tagged’ that kill and everyone else had a % chance at a spike, I’d be OK just knowing how it happens. Just randomly giving deterministic opportunities to earn badges off of PvE objectives stinks of putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound to the head.

You don’t find ears and fingers from walls. You find them from people.

Yet you get the highest ammount of badges in one go from Jumping Puzzles and killing Champion npc’s?

I understand your point, but I do think the system needs a lot of work.

The OP has valid points, even if he might get carried away a little too much on the examples.

As in spvp the game rewards the individual player too little for defending in WvW.

The reasoning is: your team wins if you defend, that is your reward.
Yet for offense the reasoning is: you get more badges even if you help your team win less by fighting in the wrong places.

There is something wrong in this system.
And the general idea of the OP’s suggestion could be a good direction to solve this issue.
Without taking away the current more offensive ways to get badges.

This is related to another issue: an aoe damage specc gets 4 or 5 times the ammount of badges a supportive tanking specc gets in a zerg (ymmv).
Both speccs need each other, but any raid guild knows you can’t survive without the support speccs. Yet they get the least badges for what is often the most important role.

SabreWalrus.8647:

Zumy.6318:

As we play quite competitive PvP, the tone in TS can get a little rough. Am I wrong if I think, that the most girls play in a more “lets do stuff together and have fun. oh lawlz a wipe, that was funny ^.^” way than in a kitten we got beaten by that team, lets flame eachother and afterwards check the things that did not work out 100%"?

I like playing with girls in my 3 hours of PvE a week, but (please dont take this bad, its due to my very own expirience) Id not want to rely on a girl in my WubWubWub team, as I see them as less competitive than men. For sure not less skilled though. Must be the testosterone

No flaming on our guild TS, only a short bout of constructive criticism before we get back into the action.

There’s as many varying personalities amongst women as there is with men. There’s some women I wouldn’t want on my team if I didn’t think they were competitive enough, just as there’s some men precisely the same.

Female raid lead and current stand-in GM of my guild for the record, but I’ve never been aware that my gender has to matter. I just play the game.

Mrs Walrus, you’re fast in your thinking, strategic in your decisions and you adapt to every fight really fast on the go.
You’re as good as any male commander I’ve seen.

So no: I couldn’t care less about your gender when we’re raiding

My guild has a female commander (and male ones too) and at least 2 other regular female players in the WvW raids.

For obvious reasons I won’t be naming them. If they feel inclined to do so, they don’t need my help for that.

But yes, we do have female WvW’ers in our guild.

MrSilver.5269:

Rfreak.6591:

It’d be pretty wrong to ask to be exactly like elementalists but just better (lack of cooldown and sudden change in skill range) imo, but I’d surely find myself more comfortable if I was able to completely edit the skillbar’s layout and UI (even the numbered slot for easier access to kits at times), however after this much time playing the engineer I don’t think it’s a problem.

I’d be fine with a cooldown on kits so long as you could spec to reduce it.

I wouldn’t be fine with that.
Instant swapping is the bread and butter of my engineer. With cooldowns my engineer wouldn’t be worth it in terms of fun.

And specc for it?
I don’t have enough trait points to specc for any versatile build as it is, I really don’t want any other feature limiting my trait choice even more.

Just to say we’re not all accepting the same changes, so be carefull what you ask for.
Others might have different views on what is needed.

I mostly want more traits to work on different levels, like the wonderfull traits kit refinement and static discharge.

Grenadier should effect more than bombs, piercing shots more than pistols (rifles get that for free…) juggernaut on more than flamethrower…

I want that alledged versatility!

We are versatile, and we’re fun.
but we are not versatile enough in traits. Our traits are too narrow in effect, and hence all our good builds are single purpose builds.

hardly any popular engineer build is versatile in my book.
How many really swap from decent dps to decent support to decent tanking to decent cc?
Most do one thing pretty good and all the rest pretty bad…

Traits are the answer: wider range of skills must be effected by many traits.

Kit refinement on untraited grenades is still 6 grenades just like the normal barrage, so the trait defenitely is worth it.

For Flamethrower it does an aoe burn that removes condition too.

Not that static discharge is bad, but if the issue is condition removal, than kit refinement is a good compromise between that and damage.

And don’t forget that static discharge works unreliable on thrown skills if no enemy is near you.
Not to mention the Flamethrower toolbelt has a very long cooldown as it is (so less static discharge).

Basically your main trade-of in damage is:
lose a static discharge on your grenade barrage and get a free grenade barrage from kit refinement on the grenade kit swap.

Test it a bit on dummies, see what you like more.

Kit refinement also gives the aoe burn and the condition removal on FT… I know what I would pick

Just a small note: if he uses the flamethrower with kit refinement, he has at least that fire blast as condition removal. Not a lot, but something.

And if conditions are really a problem, he could give up the 15% damage on flamethrower for condition removal on elixir use I guess.
Trade-off, but so is everything as an engineer… versatility anyone?

Casia.4281:

Kimbald.2697:

and if not a stunbreaker: add an immobilize or cripple to it, so at least some of the damage lands…

someone did a bit of a necro here. haha.
But still the skill could use one of these touchups.

i did want to comment on this.
Acid bombs initial damage is INSTANT. its 6 ticks of damage over a 5s duration.
.8 scaling per tick. quite impressive really.

the damage is indeed quite high, and contrary to the rest of the Elixir Gun it actually scales pretty good on power.
I said ‘scale’ and ‘power’ in the same sentence, so over to you again Casia

My feeling is that the damage is good, but even mindless mobs don’t stay in it, let alone players.
You know who usually stays in it longer? Bosses that just did their ‘special’ and zergs who can’t tell anything apart from all the particals exploding on our screens…
Everyone else just moves out of it and get the initial blast with 1 maybe 2 ticks if really lucky.

Riojin.2649:

What? Is that some sort of bug

must be, seems a bit unlikely that a major sigil is intended to be better than the superior one

My guess is that they have the 2 inversed…

Riojin.2649:

I that case go for sigil of chilling. Increased chill duration for another 10% if you want to go full chill spec. I would also have a corruption weapon for the stacking.

take the major sigil instead of the superior, it’s 20%

(in spvp you only have the 10% one)

GottFaust.5297:

Kimbald.2697:

How can you even remotely present this as ‘how it really is’?

You’re speculating to the extreme, nothing more.

Culling being a reason why people think their server has less capacity? Seriously?

What official message or data are you basing you assumptions on?
I agree many of the speculations about reduced capacity are assumptions without proof too, but you present theories that are just as unlikely and unsupported to be honest…

And yet you blindly subscribe to the even wilder speculation that A-Net secretly lowered the population cap in a conspiracy to cause Wv3 to be terrible for top-tier servers and thus force them to pay money to transfer.

no I don’t.
What in my post says I subscribe to any conspiracy theory?

Try to read: I put down YOUR speculation.

I do not add any speculation of my own to the post. None at all.
On the contrary: I even questioned some of the other specualtions made, in a general fashion.

Don’t you realise you just put words in my mouth I never uttered, from near or far?
Your reaction proves that you are mostly shortsighted and biased and out for a fight.

How can you even remotely present this as ‘how it really is’?

You’re speculating to the extreme, nothing more.

Culling being a reason why people think their server has less capacity? Seriously?

What official message or data are you basing you assumptions on?
I agree many of the speculations about reduced capacity are assumptions without proof too, but you present theories that are just as unlikely and unsupported to be honest…

sostronk.8167:

style.6173:

The best class for running with a zerg is ele. There is no question on that. Strong aoe damage, speed, and heals. It is the one class that can do it all.

lol @ people who say thief

Don’t forget thiefs can provide AoE stealth, which I have seen completely kitten

Pretty much all classes can contribute well to a zerg. The bigger the diversity the better. I think with zergs the biggest problem is not having any or many of a specific class.

most organised WvW guilds that I see apparantly have a very uneven set-up of professions.
Count the guardians, than count the engineers… Count the warriors, than count the rangers…

Some professions are far better for raiding guilds than others, even if they still have that one engineer or those few rangers for aoe.

sadly this game has 2 standards for WvW:

1. you have what is good for your group to run with, so high support builds

2. and you have what gets you a lot of lootbags and badges: high aoe damage builds…

The high support builds get far less drops than the others.
Those drops matter, since they include rares or even exotics. Badges aside.

In our guild runs I often hear what others are getting in exact the same groups, exact the same fights. And the damage builds get waaaay more drops than the support builds.

But what builds do guilds ask for in a group? Those very support builds… they are always what the group seems to ‘need’ the most. Yet it’s the dps build that gets the best reward?
This system is utterly flawed.
Support needs to get better rewards, in all aspects of this game.

and if not a stunbreaker: add an immobilize or cripple to it, so at least some of the damage lands…

you know what it should be?
A stunbreaker!

No kit has a stunbreaker, so engineers are forced to give up one slot just for that, while we are supposed to be ‘versatile’.
Versatility is almost directly linked to having different kits, putting a stunbreaker or two in those would help a lot.

Elixir Guns Acid Bomb would be my first candidate to add a stunbreaker.

kitty culled yet?

Pendragon.8735:

Seren.6850:

if people join your squad they can no longer see other commanders on the map, I guess it was done with good intention

This is a big problem, they could have just had ‘your’ commander have his Icon changed to a special color or something.

It’s helpful for every player to know where all the commanders are on the map, where battles are taking place, where they might temporarily head to if lost or separated, where to avoid, etc, just general battlefield awareness, it really restricts it.

your commander can still see the other commanders.
So mostly it forces your commander to pay attention to that as well, instead of having another one in the group follow the commander movements on the map.

I like the idea of the squad, but I totally agree it would be simpler to just give your squadcommander a different color tag while still seeing the others.
If your squad commander has a yellow tag for example, you would never ever mistake a different blue commander tag for your own squad, not even in the heat of the battle.

Jeknar.6184:

waeren.9743:

Jeknar.6184:

I bet that will just leave the “randoms” more lost because I’m sure every commander just like to work with their own guild/group.

I’ve even saw a commander (No names or guilds will be said) say once: “Whoever isn’t from my guild, please follow the other commander, not me”.

There’s several reasons for that. The main ones being the other commander needs people and you eat up boons that could’ve gone to guild members.

They complain when they don’t get help, and they complain when randoms try to help… I don’t understand the commander types…

It all depends on the goal of the commander that very moment.

My own guild sometimes assembles all the randoms on the map.
At other moments we ask them to join a commander of another guild, who we agreed with that he will take the randoms while our (and other guilds) do specific tasks and attacks.

Some of our guilds never ever want a random following them, not even one of the other raiding guilds on the map.
Why not? Simple: these guilds are using their strenght of perfect co-ordination and movement. Any one else following them doesn’t hear the orders each second, they don’t know the used tactics or can’t tell that it’s this or that tactic since they are on their TS or Vent.
The only ‘contribution’ a random makes to their attack is: give away their position to scouts… and as said: that includes members of other raiding guilds who are friendly with these very commanders.
It’s about strategy, nothing more.

I already mentioned that I consider Piken Square ‘randoms’ to be of a pretty good sort. They are very helpfull and follow as precise as anyone can who is not hearing the commands on TS after all.
We always have at least on commander who is tagged up for the randoms on the map(EB for my own guild usually).

I’m not aiming for selfish systems for commanders.
I merely ask for the option to be visable or not, depending on the strategy used by the commander and the guildgroup.

I realise that this will lead to some commanders just becoming invisable outside their squad 24/7.
But as long as there is some co-ordination with other commanders who are visable, than all is good and fair.

Some servers have this level of working together, and some might not have this.
I can’t tell for other servers, but I hope my suggestion wouldn’t suddenly remove all commander tags on the map for randoms.

loopi.7913:

Unless its a well known commander playing their new alt :P

of all things, commander badges should be account bound…
A good commander is a player, not a certain profession or race, not the character.

A bad commander is bad no matter what character he’s on, wouldn’t help there, nor make it worse.

But that’s another change of course, for the moment we’re stuck with character bound commander tags.

Commanders sometimes need to speak out of their own squad. It’s all about co-ordinating when needed.

Having an icon could help when speaking in /map or /team.

But as mentioned: it never takes long before you know the names anyhow…

Jeknar.6184:

I bet that will just leave the “randoms” more lost because I’m sure every commander just like to work with their own guild/group.

I’ve even saw a commander (No names or guilds will be said) say once: “Whoever isn’t from my guild, please follow the other commander, not me”.

On Piken Square we very often have certain commanders working with guild only, while co-ordinating with other commanders who ‘pick up the randoms’ for numbers.

Depends on your server, but our server certainly would not have invisable commanders only.
Piken randoms are too good to be left unused!
But for some actions it just doesn’t help having people around not hearing the directions on TS and such.

I understand your point, but that would depend on how your server organises it’s WvW.

most of the damage from Flamethrower is ‘normal’ white damage, so based on power.
Ony a small portion of it all is burn damage (so condition).

Flamethrower #1 hits a lot of times on a short period.
In other words: it does fast attacks.

Fast attacks, many attacks, means that each of those can crit.
So a flamethrower has a lot of chances to crit (bit like grenades who have 3 chances to crit on each throw of 3 grenades…).

So in my view Flamethrower benefits most from:
- power
- precision and crit damage

Should you take power-prec-crit damage or power-prec-toughness?
Depends on what you do.
Do you want to kill faster, or live longer

Power-vit-toughness would work too, but your daamge will be noticably lower without the critting (this is what I use in WvW, but I’m a tanky engineer).

When joining a commanders squad, you only see that one commanders tag on your map.
We all know that.

This isn’t always helpfull for combined tactics, but at least your commander can see the other commanders so that’s working at least.

The opposite can’t be done however: a commander can not be visable to ONLY his own squad.
Or even better: be visable to only his own squad and other commanders.

Why is this important: to avoid attracting every single ally you have on the map for more co-ordinated (guild) actions.
If every random player joins that commander they dont hear Team Speak, or read guild chat, etc…

Sometimes it is good to attrackt every random, to build up a bigger zerg.
I’m certainly not dissing those random players, they often give you the numbers you need to be effective. Kuddos to them, for real!

But sometimes you need to be just one organised team without anyone giving away your position, following movement and all that…

How do we solve this at the moment?
The commander de-badges and we call target on him or her, over and over again… losing the option to effectively call target on others by the way.

A simple solution:
give commanders the option to be visable to:
- all
- squad only
- squad + other commanders on the map.

Can’t be that hard to do…

New system:

- better for scouting (you see the models from far, but have no idea how many)

- worse for fights, since the enemies only render few by few so it takes too long before you realise how many you are fighting.
This potentially ruins any tactic used.

reduce the cooldown of #3 and I think things would be ok.

Quite simple as a change, but the effect would be huge.

And for a bigger change: why should #2 be a pull of your enemy?
Why can’t it be a pull from you to an ally?
But that would mean losing the interrupt of course, which is the main way of using #2 of course…

As said: simply lowering the cooldown of #3 drastically would solve it for me.

Rezzet.3614:

Sylosi.6503:

There is a buff in the general section:

Profession Skills
General

• Gadgets placed by players (such as turrets) will now apply boons and conditions based on those players’ stats. Those conditions and boons will not be reduced to level-1 values when the triggering gadget is destroyed.

so how should that work since the only turret wich grants boons is the healing turret .

well, that’s it really…

Before when you destroyed healing turret, the regen stayed on you. But the healing done was suddenly only 5 (FIVE) per tick.

Now the regen stays as it was before destroying the turret. The stats counting than will still count after the turret is gone so the regen won’t drop to 5 anymore.

That’s the buff: important for healing turret, less so for the other turrets.
Not sure if flaming turret for example was ever effected.

JohnDied.3476:

Mif.3471:

Leetsura.3507:

This is broken again…

Med Kit or other kits?
Because Med Kit was never fixed.

Med kit is fine the way it is, as in really good for buffing yourself. Try any rune that activates on heal and you’ll see why a lot of people would be upset with this “fix”

Haven’t you noticed how med kit also gave the buff when stowing?
Try it in spvp or the Mists: when swapping in or OUT of med kit, you get the runes buff.

In other words: they should fix the med kit stowing, because that shouldn’t change the proccing of rune effects ‘on heal’.

Stowing the med kit counts as ‘using a healing skill’. So as long as that is unchanged, your argument is irrelevant.

I find it terribly annoying I can’t go from med kit to my rifle or pistol, or shield.
Having to pass through another kit first can make a huge difference in the heat of the fight.

Personally I’m very happy with the weapon stats working on kits, no more dropping in stats on switching.
But this is only half the issue. The weapon damage must be fixed as well.
But since it’s in the patch notes, I hope they will bugfix it any day now (as they should).

Other than that my flamethrower misses less, which is nice too.
Healing turret fix is ok too, other turrets still need work.

Incendiary ammo is a tricky one:
-yes, it should get the same treatment as all other simular skills
- no, it was by no means anywhere near a good and balanced skill.
Together with the fix they should have buffed it too. It’s now a little weaker than before, which is a really odd thing seeing how weak it already was for the long cooldown.

I expected more, but the kit scaling was the major one for me.
If they fix the weapon damage bug, at least it will be a major improvement to engineers.

Far from done though, they really need to step up the pace for engineers…