Guild Wars 2

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Lopez.7369:

One of the things that surprised me when I downed Tequatl was how basic the strategy is. I’m sure even PUGs will be farming him within two weeks. It’s really all about stacking.

and having 6 competent turret operators.

And the other people in the map have no control upon it, unlike instanced content. So either you’re lucky and find competent people (or there isn’t still anyone and you can place trusted people) or you’re doomed to fail, along with another hundred people that, like you, can’t do anything about that.

Try doing that in a real overflow, then we can talk about it.

Kal Spiro.9745:

It’s only 15 minutes, and it’s generally pretty clear how well they’re doing.

15 minutes of getting frustrated at other players’ incompetence, lack of effort or simple laziness – or being stingy and not wanting to pay for a waypoint to ress themselves.
I play to have fun, and there is no fun in overflows – only frustration.

I would like if dead people automatically respawned in a near waypoint (obviously with the normal penalities and costs).
So that i don’t have to see dead people cluttering the terrain and doing nothing at all just because they don’t want to spend a couple silvers.

I second this. People don’t even want to talk the same language in europe overflows, let alone coordinate an effort.
I think i won’t even try anymore doing it on an overflow – it is just time wasted.

Would make sense putting some kind of guaranteed, worthwhile, unique reward – and tokens could be a way to make it so people still defeat him after a while. Cause as now it isn’t profitable, especially with the high chance to fail involved.
After all, i doubt people would have done tribulation mode if they had just a chance to get a coin for the weapon.

A rather important share of the fight relies on 6 people.
Usually random people. That may be afk, or even trolls.
Get the wrong ones, and your chances are zero.
Also, it is a dps check – and it is rather a specific one. Condition damage is near useless even when defending turrets due to the usual stack limit, not to talk about tequatl itself; precision and crit damage don’t work toward Tequatl itself, but at least they can be of use versus minions. But in the end, the people attacking Tequatl must basically focus on power alone. And that won’t happen unless you find people especially geared for it.
Also, you need organized groups due to the reasons above – and to properly coordinate the fight. That means you’ve got to be there preempetively, along with all the people you’ve organized the fight with (with trusted people on the turrets).
And that brings to the problem with overflows: you incorrectly say that he has been defeated in overflows…but those were organized beforehand, with people invited there for the fight. It is no different than doing it on a normal server.
What you usually find in an overflow is random people. That may even not care a bit about strategy and so on, maybe also being afk on a turret. Assuming it isn’t just created before the fight, then you may find yourself in an half-empty server and without even having the time to form a strategy.
Basically, in normal circumstances, there are far too many variables outside of players’ control. And the level of organization required for this event is outside anything else seen in the game, especially for a world event.
But these are the first days, so people are eager to try. Let’s see if it will be found still worthwhile in some week, especially considering the reward isn’t that great anyway…

Tribulation Mode also has a guaranteed reward not obtainable in any other content, though. Unlike Tequatl – whose unique rewards have just a rare chance to drop.
And you can do Tribulation Mode in solo – you don’t need to depend on anyone else. Oh, sure, you can do it in 5 people…but then you spend quite more time than doing it alone, cause being more people also increase the chance someone will do something wrong.
And with Tequatl you have over one hundred people, with a large part of those that should do anything right, especially the ones on the turrets. And if they aren’t able to do it right, the other people are screwed even if they play perfectly…

2 weeks? Heh, here in Piken Square people already aren’t even trying to do it during late hours. And we’re talking about two days.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

Gear check/grind?

LMAO!

All you need is soldier gear and a bloodlust sigil.

OOOOOOOOO SO GRINDY!

Casuals ruin games.

See, you aren’t considering a simple matter: is it worthwhile to invest on a rather specific gear for a single event (whose completition depends on a group effort, beside that) whose rewards are, for the most part, disappointing to say the least?
Especially when you can do more profitable activities and with less chances to fail them. Since the only unique rewards given by this event have just a rare chance to drop, and the event is hard to start with, so you can’t even rely on that little chance to recoup the costs.

Morrigan.2809:

As difficult as it is to get to Sparkfly fen on your own server these days- the chance of a character leveling just stumbling onto the event as Teq spawns happening is slim.
Even if it happened how many do you think there will be?

I wouldn’t say it is slim – especially if one doesn’t even know the event yet, so he may even try to do that; beside, he still is occupying a place in the server cap that would be better used by some other prepared player.

Morrigan.2809:

As long as they stay off the turrets and way point when dead they won’t be that much of a weight.
People with single target damage geared for power go on Teq.
People with other gear types like pres/crit damage that would not work well on Teq- defend and repair the turrets.
There is something to do for everyone really.
I do not see what the fuss is about.

Oh, sure, but that’s assuming that every single people will be organized and prepared beforehand.
But this is an open world event, open to everyone, not an instance that you can start at leisure.
If you get in an overflow – especially a newly created one – you may not even have the time to do that.
And there is still the issue with condition damage – be it the main boss or the minions, we’re still talking about ten or more people versus some mobs. And if condition users aren’t fighting tequatl, they must be fighting his minions – thus you still have the problem with full stacks and wasted dps.

GuzziHero.2467:

Um… a lvl 80 in less than at least full exo… is a waste of a character slot, and a team slot.

The jump in stats between MW to Rare and then to Exo is a quantum shift in effectiveness. I certainly would not take anyone into a dungeon with less than full exo armour and weapons (accessories aren’t quite so important). I dont care what stats you prefer, but exo is an absolute must.

I wouldnt mind if it was hard to get, but exos are so common, most people would salvage what they find.

But this isn’t a dungeon, this is open world. And a level 65 zone, actually. People at that level don’t usually use exotics, and i would dare say not even fully gear with rares – so if you stumble into the event while levelling, you’re probably just a weight for the team.

And the problem here is that we have a strict dps check on an enemy where some of those dps types are useless – because either they aren’t working at all, or are useless due to the magnitude of the event – more people there are on a single target, more conditions are useless.
So either you gear for it (basically spending money for a fight that hasn’t even got worthwhile rewards) or you’re weighting the team down.

It basically requires some specific types of equip. Precision and critical damage don’t work at all toward tequatl, and condition damage is quite useless too due of the scale of the event – as stacks will be always capped, so you aren’t actually doing anything.
More than a gear check, is a gear type check. In an open world event, with people basically taken at random.

Indeed, half of the stats are indeed useless. And you’ve got to equip specifically to do this boss. And to trust some other hundred strangers taken at random to have done it so, too.

Or just reality. We’ve got traits broken that were ignored since launch – like Scope – even if people insisted on them being broken. Or turrets – whose overcharges and rate of fire is broken at least since june, with a thread detailing their bug, and no fix on them yet – and we’re talking about a whole category of skills. We had a whole thread regarding bugs of the class, with things like scope written in that – and it was completely ignored.
And yes, you need comparison and perspective regarding that list- especially since some of those aren’t even buffs. Heh, the current juggernaut was even demoted as a master trait, since it wasn’t on par with the old one. Some of those ones are things we should have took for granted (kits autoattacks, seriously? i’m still waiting for grenades, by the way) like sigil on kits – that came along with a general nerf on kit attack.
Or when they upgraded the kits…that had to use an attack that depended on the highest rarity available on the engineer level. Yet they nerfed them back to exotic level after ascended items were introduced.
Also, a good part of those buffs were due to other nerfs – that you aren’t mentioning, as you said yourself. If they were even real – some patch notes were even wrong in that regard (super elixir wasn’t actually buffed at a certain patch, despite the patch notes, for example; or some fixes that weren’t actually working).
But the most annoying part it is regarding hotfixes: we must wait several months to see harmful bugs to us solved; but if it is something beneficial to us, it will be fixed in a couple hours – because we’re probably annoying some other class in pvp by having something like that (see: bugged glue bomb).
So, yep, we’re quite being ignored – as long as we aren’t annoying some other class.

I was in an overflow, and i couldn’t use skills at all, even if enemies and people moved around me – and i was moving as well. I even counted the time needed for a skill to activate (grenade kit equip) – 69 seconds.
Near the end i think the entire overflow even crashed – cause i was booted to the character selection after some seconds where nothing moved at all.

What if instead of giving you a coin at the end chest, you’re given different items per checkpoint – as in, the coin is composed while you’re progressing in the level. So at the first checkpoint you get a piece of coin, at the middle of the level you’ve got an item called an “half coin” and so on. The same item get basically upgraded until you’ve got the full coin.
By doing so, the program should just see if you’ve got one of those items in the inventory; if that happens, the game can recognize your last checkpoint by the coin’s current upgrade – thus sending you at the correct checkpoint. Even if you got disconnected – after all, the item is still in your inventory.

Killface.1896:

If they change it so only one person need to unlock the checkpoint it would be much better going in multilayer,right now you can only go as fast as the slowest party member,,,,

And then you would find people selling Tribulation runs to get the skins.
Nah, the current system is fine, after all – apart from the disconnection issues.

Lianu.1390:

The problem with tribulation mode, at least in my opinion, is that it punishes group play. Waiting at the next checkpoint for a party member to catch up will kill you. In areas where there’s a tribulation cloud it generally becomes that much harder for more than one person to clear an area because it will hit the 2nd or 3rd person while chasing the 1st.

Yep. And it takes longer because all the people will have to pass some difficult points.
And taking longer also increases the risk of disconnections. And you can’t get back anyway.

I’m fine with doing it with some friends – we also speak via voice chat and mock ourselves over, so even if we take longer, we’re still having fun.
But i see no reason to do it with other people beside those.

Seems nice and all, but i still don’t see the known turret bugs fixed in those patch notes. And until those are fixed, they can’t properly balance them.

Now try doing that with some latency.
Seriously, it may something you can put on an offline game, where it all depends on the player itself. But a similar thing in an online game would require a perfect connection – you can’t afford to lag or to be killed due to latency.
And especially this isn’t something that should be put on a temporary event.

I think as well the lesser partecipation is due to the change on rewards. And people farming materials for ascended weapons.
And imho, Josh was an example for good community interactions. Especially since it actually answered when we asked something (see: drop rates of weapon skins in SAB).

Would be nice indeed. Also, due to tribulation mode, we also have a rather large quantity of rewards to acquire. Not being pressured by time constraints would make it better, imho.

I would rather have the possibility of binding it on a single key as an ingame command option than having to rely on an outside macros that may not even be permitted by the policies.

Zaxares.5419:

I feel your pain. If you’re in a group, you can rejoin the instance, but at the same time, if you don’t have friends who are willing to spend 3+ hours in SAB while you hunt for every single bauble/secret, you’re out of luck. I got disconnected once while doing W2Z1 Associate of Secrets/Baubles at the same time, right before the last boss. SO. CLOSE!

You can’t do that, in Tribulation mode. Once you’re disconnected, you can’t rejoin your party.

Disconnected.
After having done 3 hours on the last level of the second world.
I have to redo it all, again.
For a kitten single disconnection.

It is extremely frustrating, especially since it is already quite difficult.
It is the same exact problem that fractals had when they were introduced.

Split the party, make people start on the normal checkpoint, create some way to do it.
But do something.

Words cannot explain about how much i’m angry.

Tribulation Cloud Mini thanks.

arjeidi.2690:

Some people are having difficulty reading.

OP isn’t saying conditions are balanced in pvp. OP is saying conditions are weak in PvE so if they’re going to be nerfed for pvp, that change should only be for PvP.

They are different game modes, with different situations, that must be balanced differently. Because trying to balance them together just makes both of them awful.

Well, i was in party, we were proceeding together. Then i got disconnected.
Upon relogging, when i tried to enter again the whole program crashed.

Quite annoying, for both the crash and the lost progress.

It also happened when a friend tried to enter in an already started zone, by the way.
And obviously if i exit the party the other people get booted out as well. Quite problematic.

Julius.1094:

You shouldn’t risk being at low health when you can help it.

Except that build-defining trait has that exact use – it does nothing above that threshold and works only under that threshold, while doing nothing to remove conditions applied above said treshhold. So yes, it is based exactly on putting yourself at risk in exchange for that effect.

I’m not sure you get the point of the trait: it’s meant to make you harder to kill if you get low by lowering condition damage and slows/imobs, which direct dmg classes often rely on to land a lot of attacks.

First, it has no effect on previous existing conditions; so, unless cleansed, you’re still bursting the engineer down. Second, even with your 50% reduction, it is the total damage that is halved…on an enemy that is at less than a third of his health anyway. In most cases the reduction would be useless – the damage dealt in the first few seconds, along with the direct one, would be enough to kill anyway, and the remaining duration would be wasted in any case. But most of all, this isn’t anymore a build-defining trait, cause unlike the one we have now, you cannot build for it and use it reliably – your cleansing abilities are limited, after all.

It’s a “oh kitten” proc, not a “I’m low but I’m not gonna use my heal so i can stay immune to entire builds indefinitely,” that’s bad design.

An highly specialized build that counters a specific highly specialized build by putting the user at risk. If anything, it is a gamble. Especially considering you fight in teams, not alone, and the game isn’t balanced toward 1vs1 anyway.

Julius.1094:

Cutting condi damage and movement impairment duration in half whenever bellow 1/3 health is not “useless” by any stretch. It’s a passive proc with potentially pretty high uptime and no ICD.

Daze, stuns and other CC effect still work even with the current one. But beside that, the comments i’ve made above are still valid. It is useless, and even more useless in a condition meta – where you get literally spammed with conditions and a reduction like that would be made useless by sheer numbers.
You have no reason to stay below that threshold voluntarily, cause you risk getting bursted by both conditions and direct damage – there isn’t even a decent tradeoff. Building for it is useless – even getting high vitality won’t help, as the class lacks passive condition removals and there is just a single full one (and we have already to share our slots with kits/weapons).
It wouldn’t be a build defining trait anymore. Just one that is useless for the class it is applied on.

But those are all arguments we’ve already discussed, as i said above.

Julius.1094:

Reduce hard counters
1- Increase duration of Berseker stance to 12 sec base and make the engineer’s Automated Response trigger at 33% health BUT make them reduce condi duration on you by 50%, not 100%. It should be a defense against condi not completely neutralize certain builds entire offensive ability with their current fairly high uptime. Specially if other anti condi measures previously listed were implemented.

And it would make Automated Response completely useless.
Why should you even risk staying at less than 33% hp – making you extremely susceptible to burst damage – if you’re getting the same damage from conditions, just with a shorter duration?
You still don’t get the point of that trait – exposing yourself to bursts in exchange for that condition shutdown. Something me and other people explained and argumented in a lot of threads before this one, anyway, and i won’t spend any more time on the matter.
Especially since there aren’t armies of engineers using that trait even with a condition meta – where it should shine.

I still have to find players that actually stay in the area when i put down a super elixir, by the way; still, if they would do that, the enemies would probably aoe that area as well, ruining any reason of staying there for healing purposes.
And while we’re good at condition removals, aside from the Mai Trin fight, i don’t remember a single situation where i can say that those were really useful. Especially since you need your allies packed up together, due to the AoE of those effects and having to aim them yourself (something that almost all our support skills have in common, unlike other classes’ shouts, and that imho greatly decreases their usefulness – especially with tossed elixirs like B and H…trying to aim for an ally during a battle means you’ll probably waste them).

Was there some other dialogue i had to read in the place that you got into when you did what the genie told you to do? Cause i accidentally exited from the place after said cutscene.

That also means you’re spending all your daily rewards on continue coins, though.
And being SAB a limited time content, such rewards are limited as well. Thus…quite a waste.

We were warned about items with MF having a compensation as well.
And MF was in celestials since the start – triforge amulet had it, the ancient karka accessory had it, and so on. They were balanced about them having all of those stats -MF included.
And even if we knew about the removal, they still introduced celestial armors and weapons with that stat. Again, while we still trusted about a compensation.
Introducing a gear to nerf it (and without it even being overpowered or such things) a month and half later is just a scam.

Those events at southsun weren’t a returning content, though. Whileas SAB was created with that exact intent.

And why should i’ve got a backpack i can’t even see, being an engineer?
I was – i’m still waiting – for the devs to solve our cosmetic issues. And i assumed that a returning content had its rewards returning as well, especially since i wasn’t even able to have some related weapons right then (i could have used only the shield, but the pistols and rifle have been added just now – and only because they didn’t have enough time to create them back then).
And if i wanted to get the pistol now, i must necessarily buy the shield via TP, with inflated prices.
Also, according to your argument, there shouldn’t be neither weapons and backpacks for the next release. So, what should they put? Armors? And nothing in the fourth release and subsequent ones?
Returning content should have its rewards returning as well.

Guess the kits at ascended power were exploitable too, seeing how fast they’ve “fixed” them.
Again, anything beneficial to us gets promptly fixed, and the bugs are all still there…

Had this issue as well – on all the component of the party, obviously. Dunno why.
Edit: it gave me Academic as well for those levels, though, now that i notice.

subcarpaticu.7836:

Guys.. I opened ~100 bags and I got NO piles of bloodstone dust.
Patch notes say that they replaced drips of liquid karma.. but I got none of them. What the kitten happened?

Were those exotic, champion loot bags? Cause i’ve received some stacks from opening around 100 of those.

According to the patch notes, turrets haven’t been fixed this time neither…

Crise.9401:

kokiman.2364:

skullmount.1758:

kokiman.2364:

Delvoire.8930:

Have you played SAB? Continue Coins are quiet easy to get. You also don’t even need them as you can just wait a day and play again without the coin….

Sorry, they removed that grind. You can open chests/dig up baubles only once a day (accountwide).

What a weird change especially with the introduction of the hard mode.

Yeah, I’d really like to know their reason for that change. Maybe so you can’t get as much bauble, so not as much continue coins, which means more pressure to buy the infinite coin?

Also, I really hope the infinite coin isn’t soulbound. They better let us move it to different characters.

The reason behind this? A.Net needs/wants to monetize every LS Update, that’s the reason.

You might be right, but more likely the reason for the change to baubles is to prevent people doing what they were doing in April which is run with a throwaway character delete, recreate and run again… rinse and repeat for easy infinite baubles from World 1-1.

As pointed out, if continue coins work the same way they did in April, you need exactly 0 continue coins to play SAB as many times as you want. Yes, you only have 5 lives per run like this, but for someone who knows the levels this is not an issue in the slightest.

We didn’t have Tribulation Mode in april, though. A mode especially tailored to make you die a lot.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

and the trip towards P2W is one step closer…

Want to do trib mode… sorry you will need to buy this “convenience” item or spend 99% of your time grinding coins and only 1% of your time actually getting to play.

It kinda sounds like that, yup. And i don’t like it at all.

Imho, the class is too centered on kits. Problem is, kits aren’t even the main mechanic of the class, and the class shouldn’t be balanced about using them or being condemned to subparness.
If we are so based upon them, then they should scrap the toolbelt and make kits the primary mechanic (the tool line could add a “kit slot” on F buttons per every 10 points, and maybe also give small buffs per point spent). Or rebalance the whole class so that kits aren’t a forced choice.

Super Riceman.8702:

I feel that Incendiary Powder should go on the attack after toolbelt. Burning is pretty good but the enemy has no way of telling if your attack will crit. If it is given a signet like effect the player and their target have a way to know that the trait will trigger so both can react to it accordingly.

Some of them like Sharpshooter should stay on crit so that condi users use another stat but like w/ IP there should be some way to indicate to the player and target when it will trigger. It would help w/ learning the traits and help players counter it since there is an indication of whats causing the extra bleed.

Since Go for the Eyes already has an ICD I think it should affect other things like flame thrower and rifle turret (if they allow it to crit) so its not too niche to be useful but still requires a dif stat. Or they could just make it trigger after toolbelt use.

TLDR: If the traits stay on crit there should be some visual/audio effect to show it will trigger

I doubt they can do that – i would assume that the game calculate such things when you’ve already hit the enemy. At most they could put some indication that a such a trait can trigger (as in “it isn’t in cooldown”), probably via the UI.
Still, it would mean you would have to check the UI for that player repeatedly…as in, “playing the UI”.

azurrei.5691:

People made entire builds around Celestial gear – MF has no effect on said build – simple, really…

People have used extensively explorer’s and such items as well. MF had no effect as well.

They’re nerfing an item thas was balanced around having all its stats – by removing one of those. If so, they should rebalance it by giving it something else to compensate for the lost stat.
Simple, really…

Unlike skills, rng in traits does make sense in most cases.
The “on crit” traits are there to give more importance to the precision stat – if it weren’t for those, its use would be limited only to power builds. With on-crit traits, instead, it makes sense to have some precision even in a condition build.
But it can also be a way to give limited bonuses – like with shrapnel. By putting small bleeds with long durations it forces the player to attack repeatedly with explosives to maintain/increase those stacks. Something you can’t do with a large stack+internal cooldown – one could inflict that, and then switch to some other weapon.

I second this thread. Even if i’ll probably insult him quite many times when i’ll be raging for cheap deaths in tribulation mode. But, well, it wouldn’t be a platform hell otherwise. :-)

So…thanks for your hard work, Josh, and also for all the replies about our concerns about the contents you have developed.

RNG is bad indeed – especially when it is applied to situational boons. And half of our tossed elixir are like that (H,B and S specifically).
Regarding Elixir X, i don’t like it being a recycle of other elites. It lacks personality.
Still, before touching those matters, they should fix what is broken right now. So let’s see if they’ll finally fix turrets with the incoming patch.
Albeit, being one of the least played classes, they won’t necessarily spend much time about us.

Gnat.9405:

BLACKACE.2701:

My story is as hereunder:

I made six baskets of some vegetable from my work-done at certain cost.
One day, the governors take one kind of vegetable from each of my basket without any price.
They said it is the new rule.
Ok, you are the Gods of this tiny world.
Ok, I think I have the freedom begging your kindness to make me-us easy?

Good luck to our Gods.

Thanks for reading.

As far as celestial goes, I think this is a more appropriate analogy:

I make six baskets of vegetables and have some odd fruits also.
The governor takes my odd fruit and leaves me my vegetables.
Vegetables go unchanged.
The Governor then gives me riper fruit.

Giving more effective stats in place of MF is not balanced.

Except it was balanced to have MF as well – exactly like the other MF items. Thus removing it without giving anything else makes it subpar.