Let’s see…me. Flamethrower/elixir gun user. And elixir S, before the nerf.
Seeing as warriors can heal, area heal/area cure conditions as well via shouts (thanks to the rune of the soldiers), i don’t really see the balance here. If they nerfed elixir S because of the added effects we had via traits, they should do the same with endure pain as well.
If they nerfed it because it was stronger than other effects, then make all of them equal.
Yeah.
With the right traits.
They are an added bonus. By itself, elixir S is quite useless now.
It was strong before? Oh, sure. One of the few skills we had that was better than other classes.Still, i can’t see why we are the only class that gets constantly nerfed whenever it excels at something.
The healing turret is nice just in theory.
In practice, especially in high level fractals, any enemy WILL destroy it before its effect can even recharge.
And the radius isn’t that good anyway. People aren’t going to stay near that turret while enemies cast aoe and such things.
That was kinda the point. And every time there is a decent build for this class, they nerf it, either directly (grenade and kit refinement nerf) or indirectly (this patch).
While still buffing almost all the other classes. So, yeah, they definitely hate the class.
Still, i can’t find a proper way to use the healing turret for might stacking purposes while still having a full heal. Guess i can’t do that near instantly now, meh.
We can say we weren’t nerfed too much in quantity. Yet, the elixir S nerf is kinda heavy. The incendiary powder is simply nonsensical.
And many other classes have been buffed, so…in the best case, the situation is the same as before.
It would seem like it is responsive, so it isn’t actually that bad.
Still, for pve uses, they should make these turrets more resiliant…
thieves and warriors have no access, none, to protection by themselves. The only way for thief to get it is from rare steals and teamates where warriors just have teamates. At least warrior gets block and endure though.
Are you really telling me that “a chance” of getting protection is that good? With this update, if the chance goes wrong, we’ll actually get more damage.
Our whole alchemy tree is based on elixirs, conditions and boons. Just see the minor traits.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hidden_Flask
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmute
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Energy_Conversion_Matrix
Hidden flask by itself gives 4 boons at 75%…that means, 12% more damage. And you can’t disable it anyway.
Well, they don’t even comment in the bugs section regarding engineers anyway. I had done a thread about the missing super elixir buff (or either, wrong patch notes) and it got completely ignored. I was even infracted for bumping it, and still it hadn’t got a reply for a dev (at least to correct the patch notes…it gives false informations about the class, after all).
This is the thread, by the way.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Super-elixir-buff-wasn-t-applied/1713932
Heh, at least guardians have got protection. Engineers haven’t even got a reliable way to get that (we can get it at random with elixir h and toss elixir h) and still should support themselves and other via boons, especially with an hgh build.
And this is after people whined about the engineer hgh builds in pvp.
Seems more like a nerf toward engineers than other classes, actually.
Regarding the incoming patch:
“Riddle me this, riddle me that. Who’s afraid of the big nerf bat?”
(The Riddler, Batman Forever, 1995)
Imho, they should rework the last skill into something alike the old juggernaut effect. Something like 6s protection, 6s stability, movement halved, 40s cooldown and you lose the effects if you switch the kit.
Or some skill could give a buff that makes you see stealthed players for a while.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa there. That’s a pretty overpowered idea mate. Be careful where you swing that mind of yours.
It depends on how is applied. Take something like this skill (that is quite crappy by itself).
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Utility_Goggles
It would make sense for it to give, say, 5 seconds where you (and only you) can see stealthed enemies.
As long as the cooldown is high enough, a class hasn’t got more than a couple of skills with this effect and they’re restricted to two, max three classes, it would be balanced.
(and if someone is really taking two utility skills just to counter a single mechanic, well, he will probably be beaten by any other class)
They are introducing boon hate to indirectly nerf some classes, so…why not change some skills as to counter stealth? Like, pet/turrets could be immune to that (turrets haven’t even got eyes, after all). Or some skill could give a buff that makes you see stealthed players for a while.
I second this. It doesn’t make sense for it to do the animation and not actually put the elite down.
The funny bit is, I find my Engineer to be awesome in the open world, particularly with regard to farming, using the bomb kit. You pull a bunch of guys in with a rifle or pistol, switch to the bomb kit and kill like everything at once, while healing yourself and blinding them. It’s silly easy.
In dungeons you have to play completely differently but in most of the open world, the engineer is awesome. Oh and underwater, using the grenade kit, it’s also one of the strongest professions.
And both of these examples involve the use of grandmaster traits and specialized equipments. Grenades without grenadier (and steel-packed powder) are kinda crappy, bomb kit without the elixir-infused bombs trait lack survivability (and since you need to go near melee range, well, it isn’t that good).
And that’s the problem in the concept of the class. We are taxed for being versatile, but we’re mediocre at best if we try to do so, since we strictly depend on traits. And when someone makes an extremely specialized build (100 grenades, hgh condition) we get nerfed all across the board.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
Actually, it is written on the items themselves. The Unique property.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unique
Basically, you can’t use two items with the same name if they’ve got the Unique property. I may assume you got two rings with the same name, then.
That’s also why there are more items with the same stats (and different infusion slot).
The problem with balancing them is that we’ve got kits competing for those slots too. Either they give them effects on par with an entire kit and with relatively low cooldowns, or they aren’t worth it.
And as things stand now, many aren’t worth it.
But you can heal with that, and if you use soldier runes, also cure conditions with a shout. Also, its duration is slightly longer.
After this update, we won’t even be able to heal ourselves. Basically, we will just be able to walk for a couple seconds and our enemies, well, will simply wait for us to be vulnerable again. Especially with the automatic activation (especially if it interrupt whatever skill we were casting).
And now ele and engineer’s invulnerability will be near useless. Oh, sure, we will be able to move for 3 seconds while doing absolutely nothing, sure that’s useful. Especially when it activates automatically at 25% due to a minor trait (engineer – Self-regulating defenses). Enemies won’t be ready to kill us after that, since we couldn’t even heal ourselves.
Seems like taking this trait – and you can’t avoid it if you go for that line – could give quite a bunch of problems, if they are really changing the skill. If so, maybe they should change this minor trait entirely. Dunno if they thought about that. Still, can’t do much. Between this and the boon hate, our minor traits are getting kinda screwed…cause they seem to hurt us instead of helping.
I wonder why they didn’t nerf Endure Pain as well, by the way.
Oh, right, warriors…
Giving them signet-like passive effects is the only way they can make them useful. As of now, there is no reason to take them instead of a kit or an elixir. The cooldowns are far too large for their current effects, by the way.
Oh, some nonsensical nerfs, as always.
Every month a surprise, how delightful.
Add weapons with that stats, or something like that. The counterpart of the berserker’s equipment, basically. Cause the only weapon that gives condition duration – giver’s – doesn’t give condition damage…and it doesn’t feel that good as far as stats go, since it lacks condition damage.
I mean, as far as the current selection goes, it is quite nonsensical. It would be like if we hadn’t any weapon with crit damage outside of, let’s say, toughness/vit/crit damage.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
In pvp. In pve, they’re kinda meh. No use having control when every champ in dungeon has got defiant. And conditions have got their share of problems-
Doesn’t fast hitting abilities pretty much negate one-off blind abilities? Even black powder have a interval between blinds if people for some reason decide to stand in there.
Indeed. But if we’re talking about autoattacks, we aren’t talking exactly about a large gain…
Fast hitting abilities also allow those vigor-on-crit procs without having to invest a lot in precision
Regarding the four skills listed above, the only class that can directly gain vigor on crit is the elementalist. Even then, i doubt people are doing so, since they would probably lose in dps overall.
Anyway, whileas the crit food nerf did stop the unbalanced situation of high dps warriors healing themselves a lot…it has also weakened some other classes that weren’t doing good damage anyway and would have used those heals to be a bit more tankier (like i did with flamethrower).
And the game itself is designed about dps in many situations anyway. Basically, every time there are infinite adds (Hodgins’ path in AC is quite a good example about this…try doing that burrows without a good dps, yeah). Even when there aren’t, toughness can’t negate enough damage to be able to “tank” and even vitality isn’t helping much, cause healing skills don’t scale with vit (and scale pretty badly with healing power anyway).
So the only way to properly defend yourself is by dodging and using invulnerability…and you can do it with dps gear anyway.
Goodbye trinity, hello berzerker.
Basically, this. There is no trinity in this game…because dps is all you need, especially in pve. And sometimes it is the only feasible approach.
As someone said above, the defensive stats should have more importance. Change invulnerabilty in vitality*x damage avoided, blocks parry for toughness/y seconds and so on, or something similar. Make healing power matter, instead of the near-useless stat that is now. And find a way to make condition damage on par of the direct one. Then we can have some variety, while being efficient.
Imho, either they put a smaller internal cooldown on those food or they rework those fast hitting skill entirely. Crit foods and sigils and traits have cooldowns, while retaliation works per hit. Basically, there is no advantage on them being hitting many times and due to retaliation, it is actually harmful for yourself. Imho, it doesn’t make any sense, especially when we are talking about autoattacks (ele scepter and engineer flamethrower).
Changing skills for food would be one of the dumbest move ever. THAT would be “use this food or don’t play”. Right now is how it should be, “if you need a little help, here are some food/potion/etc.”.
As i said, the matter applies to traits and sigils, too. It isn’t just related to food. And on top of that, the internal cooldown is on the player, and not per enemy.
So if you use flame jet toward two enemies with retaliation, you will get, like, one or two crit processing per food/trait/sigil and 20 hits from retaliation. Seems hardly fair.
Well, i did wrote about an elite (turret-based or kit) skill for engineers.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Engineer-elite-skill-force-field/1860145
It would be quite versatile in the kit form, just like the engineer should be. And we lack an elite kit anyway.
But yeah, they should rework quite a number of them. Many don’t feel “elite” at all, just mediocre skills with long cooldowns. Especially almost all the racial ones (and while i can understand why they wanted people to use the skills of the profession, making racial skills near useless just means no one will have a single reason to use those)
Imho, either they put a smaller internal cooldown on those food or they rework those fast hitting skill entirely. Crit foods and sigils and traits have cooldowns, while retaliation works per hit. Basically, there is no advantage on them being hitting many times and due to retaliation, it is actually harmful for yourself. Imho, it doesn’t make any sense, especially when we are talking about autoattacks (ele scepter and engineer flamethrower).
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
Uh, please note that while the turret one does that AoE dome, the kit invulnerability/damage reduction would work just on the wearer.
Imho, the kit one would be quite interesting in its use. You can either choose to go full defense (by not doing anything at all), do an AoE burst (using overcharge as soon as you activate the kit), support the party (using time distorsion) or apply pressure to the opponents with the “normal” skills of the kit.
Basically…it would be versatile.
Well, the whole matter is that you trade invulnerability for skills usage. Albeit, now that i think about it, you could revive other players in the meantime.
Anyway, values can be tweaked, it is the concept that matters (it would also work with three stages – invulnerability, 66% reduction, 33% reduction).
Edit: regarding that thread, you could link the first post in the meantime; unfortunately i haven’t played with the other classes enough to give reasonable ideas for them as well).
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
I’ve got two ideas regarding the implementation, so i’ll explain both of them.
- Turret force field – 120 or 180 sec. cooldown (depends on the intended duration, as in, the resistance they want to give to the turrets)
Four turrets are placed around the engineer and cover the area around him with a force field. Enemies can’t enter the area or damage the engineer (and eventually, other people inside the field). The turrets can’t attack and can be damaged by enemies.
To get rid of the field, the turrets must be destroyed. After two of them are destroyed, the field is weakened, making the targets vulnerable but still halving the damage received.
Eventually it may be done so that you can’t destroy all of them with a single blow (like, only two of them are vulnerable at a time, and they’ve got a good bit of hp and toughness to resist a bit)
If you’ve got the Elite Supplies trait, the turrets could have some kind of short range attack (like thumper turret) or some buff could be applied inside of the force field.
- “Force field” kit, 180 seconds cooldown
Ok, a better name would be needed. Something like, armored kit. It has got a cooldown because it needs some time to recharge.
Unlike the other kits, this one would have a certain number of charges. Let’s say, 15.
You lose a charge per second. The skills of this kit cost charges to be used.
As long as you’ve got more than half of the charges, you’re invulnerable. If you’ve got less than half, the damage inflicted to you is halved.
Basically, you can choose to either prolong your defense bonuses, or sacrifice them for the skills of the kit.
The skills should be relatively worthwhile to use to spend charges on them, obviously.
Gatling arm (channeled, 1 charge per second): release a burst of bullets from the arm. 1000 range.
Plasma burst – 2 charges: shot a ray of plasma from the other arm in a cone. Average damage and 2 sec. burning to all the targets. 3 seconds cooldown. 600 range.
Shoulder cannon – 2 charges: Shoot with a cannon located above the shoulder. Heavy damage in a small AoE (got to aim manually). Long range (like, 1200 or 1500, too). Maybe 1 second daze, too. 3 seconds cooldown.
Time distortion – 4 charges: area quickness for 3 seconds, 5 seconds cooldown. 900 range.
Overcharge – all the charges: the force field explode in a glorious blast. AoE damage around the engineer (the amount depends on the charges remaining) and knockback. The engineer is stunned for 2 seconds. The range could be,like, 300 or 400. Or even dependant on the charges.
Elite supplies could give this kit 20 charges instead of 15.
Notes: Time Distorsion is basically a reduced Time Warp; you can use it up to two times (since you spend charges with time too) for a total of 6 seconds area quickness; so that it shouldn’t be as powerful as the mesmer one, but still a nice buff for the party.
Most of them were bug fixes which shoulda been done 9 months ago
turrets got buffed, now they can hit for 317 dmg on a mist dumie
the rest were nerfs, and 1 of them was that they destroyed a core trait from the class, Kit Refinement.. it was very popular, like clones on dodge for mesmer, or evasive arcana on ele.. this affected every kit build engineers had, so people have been migrating to HGH build
if you ask any Engi, 99% of them would tell you, we wish that update never happened.
By the way, despite what the patch notes say, there was no Super Elixir buff. I had also made a thread about that in the bug forums, but no dev replied, so i don’t know if they pasted the wrong patch notes or they didn’t apply the buff. As the KR Super Elixir got removed, this kinda crippled our support capabilities as healers.
I could say our profession page is quite misleading too.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/engineer/
I mean, those aren’t exactly what i would call “medium armors”.
And neither we can “pack up and move turrets at will”.
It would really work as a support weapon then. Unlike the current one.
I still wonder why they didn’t remove that “Elixir” tooltip if they don’t want them to behave like ones.
Oh, and the buff listed in the patch notes to Super Elixir still doesn’t apply. I had made a thread about that in the bug section, but, well, it hasn’t got any reply from devs.
I realize i’m a bit OT, but since we’ve got the occasion to talk with a dev, i could ask a couple things.
1) There was an elixir gun buff in the patch notes (but not applied ingame). So…are the patch notes wrong, or is the buff not working?
2)Regarding Kit Refinement, what about changing it to buff toolbelt skills instead of having effects on kit swap? I even made a suggestion thread about that, dunno if any dev had read it.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Revamp-Engineer-s-Kit-Refinement-Yes-again/1730150
Imho, either they remove global cooldowns or they change it entirely. I even made a thread about that in the suggestion forums after the patch.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Revamp-Engineer-s-Kit-Refinement-Yes-again/1730150
Basically, instead of an effect on kit swap, it would buff kits’ toolbelt abilities. It would be coherent with the tree the trait is located in, it would make the effects reliable (as you trigger them yourself and don’t depend on kit swapping) and would help us in some regards (giving some little condition removal in multikit builds, for example).
Patch notes
Basically, buffs that weren’t the ones required to make those skills useful (cause turrets are still squishy and thus easily destroyed by whatever enemy that comes around), traits nerfed to oblivion thanks to their unreliability (yes,KR,despite what you think about it), things like an SE buff that isn’t even applied (and when you ask about that in the bugs forum devs simply ignore you) and new bugs like with deployable turrets that make you understand how they didn’t even test those changes.
Meanwhile, thieves get traits hotfixed in a maintenance while i’m still waiting for a response about that SE “buff”.
April fools come, and all the other classes get nice weapons. For us, just the shield.
And then you have people asking why we are grumpy. Well, we are in a game where either devs don’t care about us or don’t even seem to know what the problems with the class are.
It isn’t like we use EG for damage purposes anyway.
You really should integrate Acid Bomb into your rotation if you have the Elixir Gun on your bar.
I use it, obviously. But i’ve got EG for support, not for doing damage. If i wanted to do more damage, i would have gotten other kits.
3) The Double/Triple Cleanses from FT and SE’s double proc was in no way “OP” or broken. ANet knows this. I have a feeling that the issue stems from their desire to buff Super Elixir’s healing. KR’s heal was balanced, but for anyone not using KR, the effectiveness of Super Elixir was half its max potential. If they wanted it to be effective, they’d want to double it. However, doubling it would give KR users 4x the original healing power. This is likely what they wanted to stay away from. So instead, Super Elixir’s healing effectiveness is buffed for users who don’t use KR. KR users still have the same amount of heal but lose 1 instant-speed Condition Remover in exchange for a immobilizer. I’m not as angry about that change since the immobilizer has both offensive and defensive uses. But that GCD makes me unable to use it the way I want.
They didn’t buff it in the end, though, despite what the patch notes say. I had also made a thread regarding that in the bugs forum, but devs haven’t replied yet.
I wonder if they will ever apply elixir traits to the elixir skills in the elixir gun. With the cleaning formula it would work well for condition removals, since it has 3 skills labeled as elixir (healing mist, super elixir and acid bomb). Sure, it is a master trait like deadly mixture, but if one wanted the EG for support purposes, DM isn’t that important. It isn’t like we use EG for damage purposes anyway.
Truth be told, i never understood why they labeled them as elixirs and then never made the traits work with it. I mean, they could have simply removed the label, then.
I second this. It is awesome and it would be a waste to remove it.
Mh, i’m sorry to bother, but that response would be nice. We already lost some support capabilities due to the KR nerf, so knowing if we’ll have that buffed super elixir or not is pretty useful.
1) KR is unreliable now, thanks to the global cooldown. That means that it is often wasted while swapping, being many of the effects highly situational.
2) It punishes multi-kit builds due to that cooldown. We already have to give up utility slot for them (and toolbelt aren’t good enough to compensate) and we can’t get traits for all of them, so having a trait that could work well with all of them was a blessing. Now you just risk wasting their effects if you have more than one kit.
3) Two thirds of those effects aren’t even related to the kits at all.
I even proposed a revamp of KR in the suggestion forum by making it buff toolbelt skills instead of the current effect, yet it saw no response.
Uh, that was clearly an hyperbole, though.
Problem is, they’re addressing the wrong things. Even if turrets could destroy entire cities, they are still useless if you can obliterate them in a couple hits. Especially in dungeons, where enemies have got AOE and such things (and control is severely limited by defiant stacks).
Not to talk about fractals.
They didn’t even care to reply about the super elixir “buff” when i made a thread about that (and i’m still bumping it every now and then). And fixing that would require either changing two variables or editing a post.
So, nothing surprising here.