Guild Wars 2

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just so you guys know:

There was a time in balance when #1 skills across the board were said to be “too ineffective” by many players to be used. So we made an effort to bump them up and make them more impact-full on the game, so that they didn’t feel like a waste of the #1 slot. There was also a time when most skills had higher recharges, and longer activation times/aftercasts.

Thanks for all the great ideas! We’re definitely listening.

I think it may be better to go half-way with regards to nerfing auto-attacks:
For those auto-attacks that currently do not have a chain skill, add a chain.
Currently many weapons, especially those that are used at range are extremely flat in design with regard to auto-attacks. With melee weapons, chain skills encourage risk reward by discouraging dodging while the chain is executed. Ranged weapons do not feature chain skills and so their safety at range is compounded by even safer auto-attacks.

One way to change this is to make chain skills for ranged auto-attacks, to discourage dodging while the chain is executed.

• Then make the first and second skill in the chain useful, but only useful for poke.
• In this way, ranged weapons are on the same footing as melee, and some lackluster ranged weapons can even be given a boost to their capabilities given that there is now more risk involved.
• The third chain skill can be slow in execution but higher damage so that most capability is backloaded into the third strike to discourage dodging

Skills without chain as auto-attacks:

• Ricochet
• Rending Claws

• Explosive Shot (nerfed into ground shortly after launch, this auto is only good to proc Incendiary Powder and is very shallow)
• Vital Shot

• Elementalist Dagger mainhand attacks (Elementalist Lightning Whip is strong without being OP, and this is the level to which other Attunement auto-attacks should strive, especially if given chain skills)

• Orb of Wrath
• Elementalist Scepter mainhand attacks (Most auto-attacks for this weapon are pretty weak which makes Scepter a burst weapon. I think only Arc Lightning and Stone Shards are relatively well designed.)

• Spatial Surge (This reverses the Risk-Reward by making a safe range more damaging . Not sure why.)

• Dual Shot
• Long Range Shot

• Bleeding Shot
• Hip Shot

• Crossfire (Honestly one of the most boring skills in the game on the most boring weapon)
• Trick Shot

• Elementalist Staff auto-attacks (I hear there are some buffs coming to staff so I won’t comment too much; but Staff is once again, a very “flat” weapon.
• Wave of Wrath (Good for crit-procs on Sigils…otherwise boring)
• Winds of Chaos
• Necrotic Grasp (Kinda meh to be honest)

By changing these “flat” skills and adding chains, higher risk can be implemented and thus a split can be avoided between PVP and PVE.

• At the same time, being able to individually tune 3 chain skills allows for more granular balance
• Auto-attacks can then truly be “poke damage”, but can still hurt if the whole chain is allowed to execute.

Daecollo.9578:

You can’t reduce condition damage without reducing the damage of every condition attack in the game.

I am taking it literally, because honestly this post offends me.

@Daecollo:
What? How is Knote being offensive?

The aim of this thread is to put back some risk and reward mechanics into offense and open up the possibility of punishment.

One of those ideas is to put more condi stacking into 2,3,4,5, with auto-attacks only being good for “poke” condi application. Simple as that. By tying condi application more to 2,3,4,5 skills that actually have a cooldown, you can have equivalent or almost equivalent condition application; whilst raising the skill floor.

The result is this: You actually have to land your skills to land your conditions. How exactly is that a bad thing? What’s wrong with shifting Ranger’s Bleed stacking to other skills on Shortbow, or shifting Poison/Bleed stacking on Necro Scepter more into Grasping Dead?
Or at the very least, backloading most of the Power damage/Condition application for autoattacks into the last attack of the chain that has a longer cast time, but longer duration to allow for dodges but still allow for Condition stacking?

I get the feeling you’re not reading the thread fully and just responding on your gut feeling. Which is also fine, but it kinda undermines your point.

Daecollo.9578:

You can’t reduce condition damage without reducing the damage of every condition attack in the game.

I also find it interesting that you would conflate “reducing condition damage” with “reducing the damage of every condition attack in the game.” when the discussion has revolved around risk/reward, not condition application. When was it brought up that condition application should have been nerfed across the board? Please elaborate with quotes.

Anyway, Condition application and Power damage of auto-attacks is part of the discussion, certainly, because right now condition application is pretty easy when you can stack up condis with auto-attacks and pressure someone down that way. An entire Engineer build that relies on conditions gleans much of its Burning pressure just from Incendiary Powder, for example. Other Conditions like Vulnerability, Bleed, Poison, Chill and Blind are just there as “cover” for it.

Critical-hit procs like Dhuumfire and Incendiary Powder also make it a lot more viable to put things like Burning or Bleeding or Vulnerability and so on through RNG crits. When something as powerful as Burning is accessible through RNG, of course you’re going to spam your lowest cooldown attacks (autoattacks) to “roll the dice” as often as you can. It’s the reason why Dhuumfire was met with almost overwhelmingly negative response from players playing against it – when even an autoattack can put 2k worth of armour ignoring Burning damage on a target, of course you’re going to want to dodge even auto-attacks.

It’s basically “poke damage” turned into actual pressure thanks to a crit-proc. And herein lies the crux of the problem; you don’t have to sacrifice your safety when even your auto-attacks have the potential to hit for 2-3k.

@Obscure One:
I’d argue that Reserve Mines is actually the weakest of every one of our 15 pointers, with Inertial Converter and Automated Medical Response being the best. Reserve Mines deal insignificant damage enough to act as counterpressure and disperse randomly, so you can’t rely on them hitting someone.

It should also be noted that the Reserve Mines proc can actually be suicidal as well because it is counted as a spell cast and therefore procs Confusion. That 25% HP with a Reserve Mines proc can quickly snowball into Downed state just because of something beyond your own control. It seriously needs to be removed from the game.

@Lightsbane:
I’m surprised that more Necros aren’t taking Foot in the Grave given the predominance of CC Warriors, because it’s pretty strong and can break the stun train; something that Engineers still can’t do.

With regards to Elementalist; its survivability previously was through boons, 2+ Cantrips to shut down CC trains, and the OP Signet of Restoration. Now that Boon hate is so predominant – Corrupt boon will destroy you – and condi-burst places so many different condis on you that crushes cleansing capability – Ele survivability is very low. Previously Ele could stay engaged in the fight with all those Cantrips and Boons with the possibility of escape if RtL was held in reserve, but all the changes combined have made it very difficult to live.

The only counter-build I’ve seen is CmC running Soldier’s amulet with Rock solid and 20 in Earth to get Stability to combo with Ether Renewal in a D/D setup. Even so, that is not reliable because it is such a long channel, one can easily take more damage trying to heal than Renewal restores.

The comments made about Warriors by Daecollo are also interesting because the complaints about Warriors were never about their lack of boon based survivability or their damage – it was always their poor condition management and the propensity for melee to be easily kited through Chill, Cripple and Immobilise; if not outright Pushback, Stun, Launch and other control effects.

The latest round of changes introduced Cleansing Ire – the strongest condition clear in the game. With the right build – assuming you take either AoE to get hits off on multiple targets to gain lots of Adrenaline; or multi-hit skills – you can easily cleanse 3 conditions ~10-15 seconds. Added to that Berserker stance and the 400HPS healing Signet, it is clear that Warriors do not need Protection. Their Stability uptime is also amongst the best in the game, short of Guardian.

You can bet that as soon as Healing Signet is nerfed – and you can bet that it will be “shaved” – Warrior survivability will go down significantly because they will begin to feel the effects of chip damage from auto-attacks and incidental condi application once again; and the low uptime of Stances will begin to show its weaknesses.

With regard to Necro, its survivability after the changes was due to the addition of massive massive counterpressure. Dhuumfire procs being then covered with a Signet of Spite usage into a Terror empowered Fear chain +/- condi burst through Marks ended up with overwhelming Offense overtaking Defense. Protection uptime through Spectrals didn’t hurt either. You don’t need Vigor and dodges or escapes if you can simply turn and kill your assailant. The only weakness was overwhelming CC, which Warriors brought, and which is now coming to the forefront.

So at the end of all this it should be clear that “survivability” is not a function of health, but a value of defensive power through Condition clear, healing, CC mitigation and/or overwhelming offense.

Buffing Engineer’s HP addresses nothing of the above 4 parameters and in the case of overwhelming offense – it can put Engineer out of balance to have extra HP as a contingency when running something very glassy.

To be honest Engineer really isn’t that hard to pick up and level, even with Flamethrower. In fact I recommend that everyone level with Engineer because it actually teaches you mechanics: Skillshots, dodging, spacing, timing cooldowns, getting your rotations and combos down, animation cancelling. Even theorycrafting for Engineer is deeper than any other class because a single utility can change your playstyle – your traiting is then predicated on what kit or weapon you want to boost.

The class is literally a tutorial for nearly all aspects of the game except for Z-Axis teleports (we don’t have any). And for that, you have Thief or Mesmer. I’m surprised by my friends always falling down first in dungeons and WvW when I’m usually the one tanking the damage (I only build 1300 of each of Toughness and Vitality).

I would go so far as to say that Engineer is almost the best designed in the game as well, aside from those RNG traits that were obviously put in at the last minute. Lots of skillshots, lots of manual timing and aiming of abilities. Really, the only time you can truly automate your damage is when you’re running Turrets, and even then, you’re scrambling to keep them alive, time their Overcharges, deciding whether to detonate or pick up. The class is so manual and so active it’s great. The only other class that is as manual is probably Warrior, but recent changes have lowered its skill floor massively (having the best armour and HP in the game didn’t hurt either).

Really the only thing that is problematic for Engineers is actually the automated stuff. Turrets, Flamethrower 1 (I refuse to slot it, I have to detarget to hit anything with it; but then I can’t see their HP or condis or boons) all have their problems that have been enumerated time and time again.

With regards to the OP, my only advice is; use more skillshots. All of them. All the time.

@Noss:
Engineer heals are the some of the best in the game, hands down. The only heals that come close are that of Ranger, but they’ve received nerfs in the past whilst our heals have only had buffs by and large. Aside from that stealth nerf of Drop Antidote.

Med Kit is the highest HPS in the game for raw healing i believe, and comes with free Fury and Swiftness. Healing Turret is a really good spike heal and since its changes it is now “good enough” at condi clear that CF409 is no longer mandatory. Elixir H has always been good and is the best spike heal for the Engineer that also has RNG boons. (Bonus!)

The only changes I’d like to see to Engineer at this point is adding Master level + traits for Turrets and Gadgets to give them the option of condi clear or at least some interaction with condis, and for the access of Stability beyond Elixirs and Elixir X. Perhaps through a GM trait that replaces some of the really really bad ones we have.

@Maskaganda:
My god, Dire is broken as kitten.

How many 1vX have you won off the back of that? I’ve seen OstrichEggs crush fools with it on stream, but seeing the stats is something else.

@Adamantium:
I would 100% slot a Pry Bar kit that only had Pry Bars for 1-5 and put Pry Bar into the Toolbelt as well. Would crowbar to death/10.

It would actually give Engineers a legitimate 100% melee option as well.

It’s not often you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone, or should I say, Pry Bar.

@NevirSayDie:
I’m just going to assume that when you say “fun” you actually mean “really really stupid”. Transmute is not fun to play with and not fun to play against. You can’t count on it to save you, and enemies can’t counterplay it because it’s just there and they also have no idea you’re taking it.

RNG does not skill make, contrary to what Jon Sharp once said claiming that “actively reacting” to RNG procs increases the skill floor.

What would be good instead is this:
Using a Toolbelt skill converts 1 condition to a boon (Internal cooldown 20 seconds).
Decently strong for a 15 pointer, and rewards active play, and rewards use of the class mechanic.

Not some RNG proc that doesn’t save you from a true condi-burst and which frustrates opponents when their Fear turns into Stability and they have no idea why.

I’m going to agree with @ArmageddonAsh. Only Elementalists need more HP since their healing was nerfed and boon based survivability is now highly counterable.

@VIVorcha:
I’m going to say no.

More health does NOT equal to more survivability.

Look at Warrior and Necromancer before the June 25th patch that pushed it over the edge and tell me that having the most health in the game makes you any more survivable. It simply is not true.

More dodges, more protection uptime, more condition clear and more heals does make you more survivable. June 25th introduced the possibility of Protection uptime for Necromancers for Spectrals and added changes to DS to turn them into tanky monsters. Warrior’s Healing signet was pushed through the roof at 400HPS + Adrenal Health which is ~300HP/3sec or ~100HPS along with buffs to their condi clear. Look where these classes are now and tell me that having high health before these changes made them mad tanky.

Right now Engineers have a good amount of dodges and mobility (Speedy Kits/Invigorating speed), excellent heals (best in the game), but poor Protection uptime (Unless you’re CC’d, but then you die to pressure anyway) and poor Condition clear outside of Elixir builds (This needs to change).

If anything, traits should be introduced that give the Condition clear that was lost to multikit builds through Kit Refinement back. Multikit lost Cleansing Flame and Super Elixir when KR was nerfed into the ground and 4kit has been weak to condis ever since.

As for condi clear through heals, Healing Turret was buffed, but the current state of condis means that if you can only clear 2 every 15-20, you’ll likely die anyway unless you have other methods of condi clear or can escape. Medkit sucks for condi clear because it only clears 1 and can’t be used when immobilised. Elixir H clears 2 but only with CF409 at which point you should be running 2+ elixirs anyway.

I’d be in favour of Transmute being turned from a stupid 8% RNG proc into Transmuting 1 condition into a boon with Toolbelt ability use once per 15-20 seconds; and Gadgets receiving a trait that makes Gadgets clear 1-2 conditions on activation as well.

As for Protection, something other than Elixir H should be able to generate it. Perhaps a trait that gives 3-5 seconds of Protection every time a turret is destroyed or Detonated at Master level.

Engineer also lacks reliable Stability ever since Juggernaut was crushed. Elixir S and B changes in October will do much to bring this back but once again it seems that all the good stuff goes to Elixirs. Thumper Turret’s 1 second Stability is only good for a reprieve from stun chains – but Skullcrack comes back up in 8 seconds whilst Rumble comes back in 45 seconds. Gadgets still lack a source of Stability through skills or traits; whilst Kits are way too versatile to justify giving them the most powerful boon in the game to the most CC vulnerable class in the game.

@Daecollo:
The main reason why combat is so spammy at the moment is because autoattacks are so strong, whilst some weapon skills are so weak/have too long cooldowns for what they do. Ranger is a good example: Shortbow 1 does too much, whilst 2,3,4,5 are entirely too situational. Compare that with Thief Shortbow where you have useful skills for 2,3,4,5 but your 1 is only good to finish someone off; not pressure someone down like Ranger Shortbow 1.

Weapon skills being poorly tuned is just one part of the problem. As for Elementalist, Daecollo, if you “spam” as you so generalise then you will die. Simple as that. There are set rotations and combos for each situation and knowing them is as elemental (pardon the pun) as comboing in fighting games. It is true that Elementalist auto-attacks are in general pretty bad, but that sidesteps the issue.

Condition damage meta is only a problem because of crit-procs inflicting conditions, and auto-attacks being able to stack up conditions all by themselves, like Necro Scepter 1. You can put 3 conditions on someone just by spamming Scepter 1 with Dhuumfire. If you’re Engineer, which I also play, a Grenade “autoattack” puts up to 3 stacks of Vulnerability with possibility of Burning and Bleeding on crit when running the standard 30/5/0/20/15 Grenadier build.

Your response reflects a lack of understanding of why the condition meta exists and persists. Power builds have been viable not because of auto attacks, but because the best skills are on 2,3,4,5 and require comboing to get the most out of them. Arguably the best power class of them all, Warrior, doesn’t do the best damage by spamming GS1, but by comboing CC with 100b, Bolas with Killshot (most entertaining trash build), or Mace 4/5 into Axe Eviscerate. I could go on, but with so many power builds I’d run out of word limit.

The difference here with conditions is that conditions with autoattacks in some classes and builds are actually too strong ; not the other way around. You don’t need to land your Necro Scepter 2,3 when you can just auto them for Dhuumfire (well you’d be doing a lot better, but you still stack up Bleed and Poison pretty well with Scepter 1).

You’d see a lot less crying about Necro and Engineer if Crit-procs were removed in favour of something more active, that’s for sure. Maybe if Dhuumfire was tied to DS, or Incendiary Powder tied to Toolbelt use. I don’t know. And Ranger Shortbow to have its condi stacking put on 2,3,4,5 and 1 to be steady pressure with little possibility of Bleed stacking.

The other thing about Power damage needing (???) auto-attacks is also false. Engineers have a ridiculously strong auto-attack in Rifle 1 (pierces without trait, better Power coefficient) but it’s not used as much because comboing 2 with 3, 5, then 4 is better. As strong as Rifle 1 is, it’s relegated to finishing people off and as poke damage. As it should be. Same with Warrior’s Hammer/Longbow. Hammer 1 is ridiculously strong, but it’s only used as poke or to finish someone off after a Stun combo. Longbow uses Dual shot to poke, but we all know the best deeps is in Combustive Shot and Arcing Arrow.

What you’re describing Daecollo – “weak” autos in Power builds – already exists.

Weakening them further and buffing 2,3,4,5 simply emphasises the actual skills instead. You could also go halfway and backload most of the damage for autoattacks into the second and third strikes of the chain skill and increase the third strike cast time.

Are Warriors crying because their Weapon skills are too weak? No. Elementalist? No. Their autos are actually weak aside from Lightning Whip. Thieves? Nope. Well, certain dual skills have too much and 4,5 for Dagger is questionable but that can be improved. Rangers? Shortbow 1 is too strong and 2,3,4,5 is situational and look at the way they’re played now. Engineer? The only weak autos are Pistol 1 and FT1. Guardian? I actually like Guardian autos, especially Staff 1. Mesmer? Only Scepter is questionable. Necromancer? Scepter 1 is best auto in game for condi builds.

@Rieselle:
I really like the concept of making the game a little more “actiony”.

It’s also interesting that you mention Risk vs Reward by incorporating Endurance, because the old design of GW2 actually incorporated it. And you can see it when looking back at the history of Charge skills . In the case of Charge Skills, these skills did more damage the longer they were charged. In the case of the “old” Arcane Blast and Churning Earth and Obliterate (replaced with Crushing Blow); these skills actually did consume Endurance/Energy and therefore made Offence a necessary sacrifice of Defense.

You can see the legacy of some of these skills in Churning Earth and Killshot today – long channeling, highly obvious animations that root you in place for a return of terrible terrible damage . I believe that the game can be much improved by bringing back some of these mechanics that were originally discarded, if only in a reduced state.

Obviously right now players have learned to combo these high-risk high-reward skills with CC (Bolas → Killshot) or Teleports (Churning Earth → Lightning Flash) but making more skills a Charge Skill would do much to bring back some of the skill floor.

One side effect of making more skills Charge skills is that Interrupts are suddenly more important as well. For classes like Mesmer, we could finally see a return of a lockdown Mes in a Charge Skill meta.

It should also be said that many skills are way too automated right now. Certain gap closers like Savage Leap or Rush or Ranger Sword Pounce or Thief Flanking strike have automated tracking on target instead of using something like the Whirlwind attack reticule to manually aim it. Ride the Lightning, too, has automated tracking.

When you then look back at the Thief forums and the complaints that Flanking strike received it was largely to do with its auto-tracking. The fact is that many manual aiming skills and skillshots are already in the game and fully exploited by players. Rush and Fiery Rush are already used when de-targeted; you just can’t use the slash component. I hit Net Shot more frequently as Engi by de-targeting and manually leading my shot. I feel that removing some of this automation can improve the skill floor and open up plays that are only possible with manual aim.

Whilst I agree that Ele burst is probably one of the better balanced burst builds out there – its reliance on long cooldowns for initiation through CC and use of utilities to compete for slots otherwise reserved for condition management and stunbreak – I don’t believe that the core concept of burst Ele is what the game should use as a benchmark for so called “balanced” burst builds.

Fresh Air Ele is predicated around the use of instant cast or proc-on-attune effects to deliver its damage. In addition, the damage that is delivered via Fresh Air is largely undodgeable – there are no projectiles for the Lightning Strike proc to dodge, and it comes out without telegraphing.

This is not to say that Fresh Air is OP, rather, the way that it delivers the damage offers little chance to counterplay. Instead, players fighting the spec need to dodge predictively (difficult) ; or just spam dodges as soon as they stunbreak the Earthquake (easy).

It once again plays into the “metagame” that GW2 is played around of having spammy damage, spammy dodges, and spamming cooldowns to come out on top of a Mexican standoff – and kill the other guy before he kills you. There’s no baiting out cooldowns, key dodges of key skillshots, or phases of initiation, burst, followup and disengage. It becomes a matter of executing your input combination (or using a macro, if you’re cheap) in as short a timeframe as possible and hoping that the other guy falls over.

@MrBig:
Your response to eles “spamming” AOE is facetious at best and does not reflect an understanding of why Eles die so easily to Thieves. Elementalists cannot “spam AOE” unlike a Necro or Engineer, because their only AOE autoattack is D/x Lightning Whip. Everything else is on longer cooldowns, doesn’t deal enough pressure, or too telegraphed for Smart thieves to let hit like Dragon’s Tooth. Arcane Shield is also of little use because of its 75 second cooldown and 3 second duration. When popped, the thief can simply disengage, wait out a mere 3 seconds, and come back; having had some initiative recharged in that time.

Thieves playing with Stealth and/or Refuge do not only have these tools for breaking contact, disengaging, then re-engaging either. Shadow steps through Infiltrator’s Signet, or Infiltrator’s arrow are also excellent tools to step in and out of fights.

Compare and contrast this with the Burst ele where once Ele commits, it’s stuck there. Even if the Ele holds the RtL in reserve for escape, you know exactly where they go (kinda hard to miss that bright ball of lightning). In addition, there’s no Z-axis component to play around because Ele escapes don’t have that – aside from Lightning Flash, which will often be burned to engage not disengage .

Previously Elementalists had the tools to stay engaged thanks to the admittedly overpowered Signet of Restoration, the overwhelming defensive power of Cantrips, and boon-based DPS and survivability. Now that Boon Hate is very prevalent, Signet of Restoration not only had its bug fixed but its healing nerfed, Cantrip stunbreakers shifted, the flaws of the Ele staying engaged are now very very obvious now that the tool to disengage (RtL) has been so strongly changed.

RtL still retains the bug where if blocked it goes on full cooldown of 40 seconds, by the way. Even though Arenanet promised that it would be on a short CD if blocked – as long as it “hit” it would be the short CD – this is not the case.

I believe that one of the solutions here is to maybe look at making RtL unblockable (easy); or fixing the bug (harder). The full cooldown could maybe be looked at – 30-35 seconds if no target is struck would be highly appreciated by PvE or WvW; and in PvP, some of Elementalist’s escapability returns.

In addition, Elementalist’s Focus really needs a rework to turn it into a tool that can be used to stay engaged. I was honestly hoping that the changes to make Elementalists less able to escape would have come hand in hand with changes to Elementalists being able to stay engaged with x/Focus, but sadly this is not the case.

Without as strong CC of x/Dagger (Comet/Gale vs Updraft/Earthquake), or its spike damage (Magnetic Wave vs Ring of Fire/Fire Grab/RtL/Churning Earth), x/Focus needs a skillset that differentiates it from x/Dagger and offer stronger sustained DPS/CC/Chase and bunker potential than x/Dagger.

Engineer is a hybrid class with mid-range capability – that is, it is progressively more dangerous to fight as distance closes, and DPS is predicated on a combination of both Conditions and Direct damage. Contrast this with Elementalist where conditions play a significantly smaller role and Burning is not used to condi-burst someone, but as a % damage multiplier for skills like Fire Grab, and most of the Elementalist skill-shots are close range or even PbAoE.

With that over, it’s easy to realise why Arenanet is so cautious about changes to Engineer. Playing Engineer is exploiting all the little niches and nuances and having lots of skills at hand even when playing something that’s theoretically passive like a triple Turret build.

Unlike Elementalist which will always be limited to the 9 second minimum Attunement swap, and then spamming cooldowns on set rotation chains because of it’s class design and is mechanically challenging to hit those skills, Engineer is all about improvising the rotation and knowing what to switch to and when.

The purported upcoming October changes reflect a lot about the plan Arenanet has for the Engineer moving forward. Bomb kit and Turrets are all about controlling space, and they’re getting buffs next patch; whilst the changes have not mentioned anything about Weapons, FT or GK.

I feel that Arenanet is using the current Grenade Kit as a benchmark right now for the Engineer’s power level – skillshots that require mechanical skill to predict, that become more and more effective as the range decreases. Perhaps the patch after this we can probably see Arenanet finally address Gadgets, and then sometime in the future, trimming down the fat in our Junk traits. One day, Kit Refinement will make its resurgence and then Triple Kit will be top dog once again. I can only hope.

This thread has been remarkably bullish regarding the state of Engineer and I feel as though it’s downplaying the buffs to Engineer. June 25 was a huge buff to Rifle and it’s almost viable to 100% Rifle now which is something that could not have been said 6 months ago. The shuffling of Stunbreaks have also brought CC mitigation to Triple Kit, Triple Turret and triple Gadget – something unprecedented amongst all classes. The only class that can come close is probably Warrior and we all know where Warrior has always stood.

However, I have said this many times and will continue to say that Engineer has a long way to go.

• Many of our traits are junk – some of these after rework – Acidic Coating and Acidic Elixirs spring to mind.
  People seem to have forgotten that Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, Modified Ammunition, Rifled Turret Barrels and Healing Bombs, Automated Response and finally Armour Mods – 6 out of our 10 Grandmasters struggle to compete against our Master and even Adept traits.
  Part of the reason why Build variety is so bad right now isn’t actually because players are bad at innovation, although Arenanet has claimed this in the past. It’s because short of using the “meta” builds with variations for taste, there isn’t much else because what’s there sucks.
  Warrior has been the class with the most rework to traits, general design and changes to utilities, and it’s clearly on top right now with significant variegation thanks to this tuning. Arenanet needs to repeat this same thing now to every other class, and there’s only so many Dhuumfire patches you can put out without driving everyone away with potentially unbalancing changes.

• There is still too much RNG in Elixirs, although apparently Arenanet’s upcoming October changes may mark a shift in their prior stance that RNG is apparently “high skill cap”. When traits like Chaotic Interruption exist that guarantee a certain proc along with an RNG proc exist, one wonders why a similar attitude was not applied to Elixirs. Elixir B guaranteeing Might on being tossed alongside an RNG boon was something that should have been put in 6 months ago.

• Certain skillsets are still languishing since beta nerfs, most notably Flamethrower – losing Stability and Backdraft along with a nerf to FT1 damage has relegated FT to a mob tagging kit with Utility given the existence of GK and BK which are objectively superior.
  Arenanet should also take a stand for Elixir Gun being utility condi-based Power DPS oriented, or condi-oriented with its covering conditions Vulnerability and Poison. I believe that EG Fumigate still has a 0.15 Coefficient per second with Power as well. And Toolkit 1 and 2 really need a good looking at to determine what makes TK extremely inefficient at fighting whilst 3, 4 and 5 are just so good.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Engineer-Bugs-compilation/first#post2804305

@Foxpaw, @Hvaran:
There’s now a new thread in the Game Bugs forum. With regard to Static Discharge, that was on the list and apparently has been escalated.

@Hvaran:
With regard to Healing Bombs, it has literally the worst scaling in the game at 0.1 healing power scaling : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir-Infused_Bombs . It is no surprise then that stacking Healing Power yields little return.

It’s why you see so little use of it. In theory it should have been a good bunkering or tanking trait, but in practice it is terrible and no-one should invest gold into Cleric gear to go into Healing Bombs.

If you want to heal, go 7 blast finishers and take Healing turret instead:
P/S, Healing Turret, Thumper Turret, Elixir Gun, Bomb Kit, Supply Drop. You’ll get healing in a much larger radius (300 vs 180); better scaling (0.4 vs 0.1), and stronger burst healing which is far superior to the almost Regeneration level of healing.

Elixir Gun definitely fits into any build ever since a stunbreak was moved to Regenerating Mist. The synergy E-Gun has with Inertial Converter is huge and can allow you that crucial counter-CC that let’s you turn a fight around. Not only that but the presence of both a field and a finisher and soft CC (Elixir F) makes it fit in with a lot of other utilities you can take.

Triple Kit, Healing Turret and Rifle work very well together; or you can run 1 DPS kit, EG and another utility for whatever your build lacks.

In terms of damage, Berserker’s Armour gives the most, but the most intriguing thing is that Celestial Armour is only a 9% difference in damage thanks to the higher % Critical damage, which is the hardest stat to fit into a build. Don’t get Celestial Trinkets though.

In terms of then min-maxing your stats, the most pressing issue is the lack of Power and Precision in your Trinkets. Aim to get the highest you can whilst sacrificing as much survivability as you are comfortable with. When building Effective HP, get enough Vitality to equal 10x your Armour, then increase Armour and Vitality equally after that. Engineer is very fortunate in that Alchemy is such a strong line that getting that headstart for Vitality is very easy. In contrast, Inventions has little to offer unless you’re tanking, so Toughness may be a stat you find yourself short of when minmaxing. Keep Knights and Cavaliers in the back of your mind when looking to round out the last couple of stat points.

In terms of Runes, Engineer does well with pretty much anything. If you’re looking to exploit Enhance Performance and Med Kit for Might stacks, 2xAltruism or 6xNoble make it difficult to go wrong. If you’re looking for Precision runes, Lyssa works very well, but only with Elixir X at the moment because Supply Crate still doesn’t proc Lyssa . I personally run with 5 Scholar 1 Divinity because it rounds out my stats perfectly at 45% Crit rate and 70% Crit damage and over 2k Power while still having 2.5k Armour and 17.8k HP (HP a little low, but I have traits for it)

In terms of making plays, Toolkit with Rifle for their combination of CC and active defense offers the greatest opportunities for kiting, pressure and counterpressure. I find that the problem of the Power builds for Engineer are that it has very little teamfight presence in small group WvW or Solo roaming unless running Grenades and Elixir R. You end up building very selfishly and with no Stability or reliable Protection or Aegis it’s very difficult to keep teammates up unless you sacrifice 1/3 of your build to Elixir R.

In terms of autoattacks, Bomb Kit, Grenade Kit and Rifle are probably the best ones worth spamming in an Engineer build. I’d advise against doing it for too long though because as Engineer you can do so much better by rotating off your kits than spamming AA.

@Lupanic:
Net Turret counters Stability as it is a condition and not a stun.

@ArmageddonAsh:
I believe that Turrets as they are may very well go down in CD given that it is the easiest way to bring them into viability without any consideration to their AI or HP values. A low CD makes low HP less of an issue; whilst losing a turret isn’t the end of the world as it will come back up very soon. I think 20-30 seconds should be the benchmark for most Turrets – and Healing Turret, Flame Turret and Rifle Turret already set this precedent. If Thumper, Rocket and Net Turret were brought down to this level then Anet wouldn’t even have to fully address shonky AI or hitboxes – players would simply drop them in melee closest to their target and go ham.

@Conix:
What you described may well be possible with the new Turret AI changes. Turrets have always been strong in 1v1s however. They are extremely strong against single targets and a Turret build – if its AI didn’t fail – could keep a target locked down for a very long time.

I will say this however:
You can expect the QQ to come soon especially when Engineers start to incorporate more Turrets into their builds where previously there were Elixirs or another Kit instead. People underestimate the trolling potential of Net Turret/Rocket Turret wombo combo and when more people start dying to it you can bet there will be calls for the nerf bat.

IMO, Turrets should never scale with player HP or Toughness or Power and instead their CC abilities should be emphasised and their fragility turned into an advantage like Mesmer shatters.

All “shatter” Turret Engineers are missing is Accelerant Packed Turrets moved to Adept tier and Deployable Turrets moved into Inventions along with a general CD reduction of our strongest CC tools; Net Turret and Rocket Turret.

If buffs instead increase Turret durability I think the QQ train will go the same way as Spirit Ranger and Necro MM before the Vampirism nerfs. It will be interesting to see how Anet handles this difficult topic.

@Swagg:
You really should link the “charge cast” skill to this page:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charge_skill

Back in beta, certain skills like Churning Earth were Charge Skills and were really interesting. Hold to charge, release to fire. Longer duration channels increased damage. It’s unfortunate that many of the beta Charge Skills were later reworked into long channels. In the case of something like Arcane Blast ; the skill actually consumed energy back when the original design incorporated it.

With Energy changed to Endurance for dodging and other major revisions, such things disappeared. It’s always interesting to trawl through the “history” of versions of skills to look back on what the old design crew cooked up – and you can still see echoes of their work in Trebs, Catas, and other seige weapons although they are conspicuously absent from the bars of players.

Signets in Guild Wars 1 were essentially energy cost-free spells that had a myriad of uses. No passives here. The trend for Signets in general in GW1 was to make them highly situational and usually with a long cast time.

Unfortunately in GW2, there are no energy costs, so this design has been discarded in lieu of granting a passive effect that goes away when the Signet is used. The problem with the GW2 design of Signets is that the majority of them are largely unimaginative and are either useless as a passive and no better than any other utility, or too strong as a passive and should be held in reserve always.

@GeneralBama:
The problem with Signets has been, and will ever be, overtuning of Signets. Make the passive too strong, and people can’t counterplay it (Current Warrior Healing Signet) . Make the active too strong and it just is another spell – look at Signet of Rage for Warrior and how almost no Warrior uses it for Adrenaline generation and instead burns it for Lyssa procs and Might/Fury/Swiftness on long durations.

The key is in finding the right passive that’s strong without being un-counterplayable. Healing Signet is not one of those. Contrast this with something like Signet of Undeath which was almost universally taken for LF generation and as support with Ressing team-mates; or Signet of Spite which drew conditions to the Necro from allies.

Unfortunately, as of the Dhuumfire Patch, Spite is merely being used as an addition to condi-burst. What should have happened instead was Spite being used to send condis to foes, or to deal damage equal to the amount of the Necromancer’s missing health; kind of like Spoil Victor from GW1. But that is off topic for Engineers, so I’ll stop.

The key here is to find a mechanic that is interesting and strong while allowing counterplay due to opponents drawing out the use of the Signet; or as a conscious choice by the Engineer to add to their rotation. To be frank, the whole design framework between Signets is highly flawed, but that is neither here nor there.

Adding passives to Gadgets would be the closest thing Engineers have to a Signet. Once again though, the Gadgets that we do have don’t really allow the creative latitude to make nice passives without being related to – CC (Slick Shoes/PBR/Throw Mine) or Speed boosts (Rocket Boots) or as a soft counter to Blind (Utility Goggles).

Personally I think that strong passives should only be the domain of Traits; especially in the case of Engineer where the design of Gadgets is already set in stone. A triple Gadget build can gain its utility through Trait support just as Elixirs do and be strong that way; rather than being reworked into yet another ersatz Signet that will once again lead to overtuning and madness.

Any Signets that would be added would therefore have to be added as a new skill category entirely – something that may have to be left to Expansion material. I will say this: With Engineer and its toolbelt ability, Signets will be very hard to make work without running into balance problems.

That said, if Arenanet is creative enough – of that I have little doubt – Signets can probably be made to work for the Engineer. The most important thing I must stress is that the Signets should have a long cast time and be situational, just like GW1 in terms of actives, and provide a nice passive that isn’t available through traits to differentiate its design.

If Arenanet can make something really interesting like Signet of Undeath, other Signets deserve the same treatment. Unfortunately we are now way past beta phase so real Signets – interesting, situational actives married to untraitable passives – may never see the light of day.

There could also be Traits that leverage Turret Detonation and Toolbelt skills as well.

Accelerant Packed Turrets is a good start, but it’s too high up in the Explosives line to justify the 20 point cost on top of 30 points for an all-in Turret build.

I’m thinking something like;
Turret Toolbelt Adapters (Name doesn’t matter)
Your Turret Toolbelt abilities have additional effects. Your Turret Detonation skills deal extra damage and Daze nearby foes (240 radius) for 1 second.

• Surprise Shot inflicts 5 stacks of Vulnerability for 5 seconds
• Net Attack also Dazes a target for 2 seconds
• Rumble also Pushes foes back to the edge of the radius (240 units)
• Throw Napalm also applies Cripple to foes struck in its radius for 3 seconds
• Regenerating Mist also cleanses 1 condition in a 240 radius AOE
• Rocket also Burns the target for 3 seconds

Alternatively, there could also be a trait like:
Turret Rescue System

• Picking up turrets grants a bonus to cooldown reduction equal to % missing health on top of the 25 % pickup bonus.

Or

Overcharge Refinement
Overcharging Turrets grants them 25% bonus damage reduction and 50% AOE damage reduction. Overcharged Turrets self-destruct after overcharge completes. Turrets self-destructed in this way have 25% placement CDR.

TL:DR:
There’s a ton of ways to make Turrets a complete kit, as it were, without having to make them Mobile. Making them mobile doesn’t solve their underlying issues; which is niche application in a utility slot starved profession, fragility in PVE and single target lockdown focus. They are absolutely disgusting in duels, but fall over in PvE and in the presence of more than 1 target. Changes to their toolbelt to complete their kit and to leverage off existing utility can go a long way.

I will not want to see yet another MM Necro or Spirit Ranger enter the fore of low skillcap high reward play for Engineer builds, because that way lies nerfs and madness.

Now, if you actually treat turrets as fully disposable gadgets, you will have a lot better time with them. Elixir Gun, Bomb Kit, Net Turret and Rifle gives you a good start to a DPS/CC build. Have you seen the length of Immob on Net Turret? It’s basically 3/4ths of a Warrior Throw Bolas ; every 10 seconds; and you get a Toolkit Immob with it as well.

Or you can put Rifle Turret, Toolkit, Utility Goggles/Rocket Boots together for your typical Static Discharge 100-0 build.

If you’ve watched Steamhawke stream lately (pandacache on Twitch) on his teamQs with VVV (Vision Valour Victory, one of the top teams in NA), you’ll note that he actually incorporates Thumper Turret into his Static Discharge Grenadier build because the Overcharge can launch people off point, the Toolbelt is a Stunbreak, and fighting around it just gives him good steady DPS.

To make some of these things mobile would almost immediately evoke cries of OP and Nerf, 100%.

Trait consolidation of Autotool Installation and Metal Plating would go a long way; along with a rework to Rifled Turret Barrels to increase Turret Mobility.
Perhaps something like

MonMalthias.4763:

Remote Redeployment

The Engineer may select a turret to be recalled from range. Recalling a turret reset’s the turret’s placement cooldown, such that it may be placed again. Recalling a Turret reset’s its attack cooldown, so that it will immediately fire again when placed. Once per 60 seconds per recalled turret, the Overcharge cooldown is reset.

Or just something that will give a bigger CD reward than a mere 25% when Turrets are picked up.

VIVorcha.7853:

mistsim.2748:

actually, youre thinking of rangers. engie is at least fun to play. for example, ranger has NO viable builds for higher tier WvW.

Rangers are insanely fun to play. Engineers have some viable builds but are a chore to play, especially with the lame mechanic they got.

I have fallen asleep at the keyboard playing Ranger, the skill floor of it is so low and the autos so strong that I can literally 1 spam things to death. I will say that GS is great fun though.

I guess it’s… refreshing? To have something so easy? I don’t know. I just can’t get over playing Double or Triple or even quadruple kit and having so many options available at hand. Playing with my friends, I will almost always be the last one to go down in Dungeons and WvW – and I often play without stunbreaks or strong condi clear or any access to Stability.

But yeah. To say that Engineer gets no attention is kind of facetious.

Elementalist is still waiting over 12 months after launch to finally get buffs to 2/4 attunements for the Focus; whilst their Glyphs, Conjures and Signets remain almost universally awful; and Arcane skills are little more than off-GCD damage bonuses. They have received nerf after nerf (bug fixes almost universally nerf Elementalist) to the point where Ele is almost too squishy and too anaemic in DPS without gimmicks like Lightning Hammer in PvE, or abuse of invuln frames from Focus to kill or be killed in a S/F Zerker glass cannon that burns 40 second utilities to initiate burst in PvP.

Engineer in contrast is “merely” waiting on Turrets and Gadgets to come to the fore, and junk traits to be reworked. We have had Juggernaut and Coated bullets be moved down in tiers, Stunbreaks shuffled out of Elixirs to other categories that lack it, and Rocket Boots reworked to actually be good. All I’m waiting on is a few QoL changes to Mainhand Weapons, bugfixes to Static Discharge to improve build variety for it, and QoL to Bomb Kit to make Forceful Explosives less mandatory.

I’d say that Elementalist is the class that’s been left behind; although the patch preview brings me some hope that I can use Staff without having to bring triple stunbreaks, and brings the possibility of using Conjures other than LH without killing myself.

I would rather not see another Spirit Ranger or MM Necro clone as homogeniety does not strong design make.

Trait condensation and buffing base values (whilst nerfing Traited values) can do much to reduce the reliance on Traits. That said, there will always be so-called “mandatory” traits because it is those that bring builds together, or form the basis of one.

Things like Evasive Arcana, Cleansing Ire, Halting Strike, various Weapon CD/DPS traits, Ritual of Protection, Invigorating Speed, Empathic Bond/Shared Anguish are too good not to take.

On the other hand for say, Engineers, there will always be the real build defining traits like Juggernaut, Grenadier, Static Discharge.

To say that they are “not fun” would be kind of false, because your whole build revolves around them.

That said, for Engineer, there are some things that really shouldn’t exist as Traits, but are taken anyway because without them a build just won’t work:

• Forceful Explosives in a Bomb build because you can’t hit bombs without it
• Metal Plating for a Turret build because they don’t live long enough without it
• Fast Acting Elixirs for an HGH build because you’ll lose out on peak Might stacks without it; or be without cooldowns under pressure without it
• Speedy Kits because Swiftness outside of Kits is really bad

On the topic of Forceful explosives, hopefully the October patch can come some way to reduce the efficacy of Forceful Explosives and bring up base values; and Metal Plating and Autotool Installation finally consolidated to reduce some of the trait bloat for Turrets.

Ostrich Eggs has been using Elixir X to big effect in his soloqueue games and I can attest to its efficacy in WvW also for the massive amounts of CC that it brings, along with much needed Stability. Against Warrior Stun Trains sometimes Elixir X would have saved you whilst Supply Crate would have little impact due to Crate’s design aim being centred around dueling.

That said, I agree with you in that the RNG aspect detracts from the overall usefulness of it and the fact that it recycles Elites from other classes is lazy.

If the Power Suit/Mech Suit/Power Armour Elite were ever added to replace the Rampager aspect of Elixir X you can bet that it would be much better received. As it is, new skills are a while off and although you can say we are “stuck with it”, Elixir X does have a place in both competitive play, PvE (rezzing due to massive EHP and Stability), and in WvW (diving Zergs, counter CC in duels, inciting chaos in small group fights)

@VIVorcha:
I really like the signet ideas you have proposed, and the effects are actually really interesting and strong which is something that a lot of signets lack; so kudos on achieving what Arenanet could not for things like

• Guardian Signets: Signet of Judgement, Wrath, Bane, Mercy
• Warrior Signets: Healing Signet, Stamina, Fury, Might
• Ranger Signets: Renewal, Stone, Wild
• Thief Signets: Assassin’s Signet, Agility
• Elementalist Signets: Earth, Fire, Water
• Mesmer Signet: Domination
• Necromancer Signet: Spite

All of the above provide boring stat boosts that don’t add to the design flavour of the class, whilst Gear Signet does; although Signets of Iron and Steam are Melandru Runes by any other name. That said, the Toolbelt actives are very handsome and whilst their balance is arguable, they are undeniably useful and fill gaps in the Engineer support inventory.

However I will have to echo Penguin on why we can’t have Signets:

Penguin.5197:

I would love signets but realistically we would not get them for one simple reason: We can overcome the choice dilemma of either using passive or active signet effects simply by playing with our tool belt skills. 99% sure its because of our class mechanics that we are the only class who werent given one

I would love to see traits supporting Gadgets, or minor passives added to Gadgets that would echo some of the niche applications you have laid out though. Things like Toolbelt Recharge are poorly supported by our Gadgets and Gadget traits; whilst Turret Toolbelt skills are often uninspired and simply provide extra damage without extra utility.

Things that exploit our unique class mechanic such as:

• Condition cleanse on Toolbelt use
• Resetting Toolbelt CD
• Targetted Toolbelt skills cause Daze
• Additional toolbelt skill effects such as Power Wrench adding Cripple to Throw Wrench
• Moving some RNG procs to Toolbelt use

are sadly lacking in our arsenal and can do much to increase class depth through the Trait system.

Actually, I submitted a bug compilation to the bug forum and it was responded to within 24 hours.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Engineer-Bugs-compilation/

Feel free to contribute bugs you have encountered yourself about the class.

I’ll enumerate what should be done to turrets to make them high damage, low cooldown, low uptime % .

The goal here is to make them fully disposable gadgets, like Mesmer Phantasms: highly fragile, but with high damage potential if left unchecked.

At the same time, they can be put down and left to die if necessary. However, mechanics should also be in place to encourage players to save their turret, if only to ensure that the turret damage or CC gets through. The sort of play this encourages should be relatively mobile, and require tactical thinking on the fly as to where to place these immobile utility machines to get the most out of them. I’ll start with the skills themselves and how they can be rebalanced to fit the goal.

Rifle Turret

• Damage: 476
• Rate of Fire: 2 seconds
• Range: 1000
• 20% projectile finisher
• Cooldown: 20 seconds
• HP @ level 80: 7470

Overcharge: Automatic Fire

• Rate of fire increase: 50%
• Bleeding: 3 seconds
• Duration: 10 seconds
• Adds piercing to shots

In a way, the Rifle Turret’s patches have made it disposable already. I like to think of it as a Projectile finisher per 10 seconds, and a Blast finisher per 20 seconds. The key is to make me want to keep it on the field, and the key is utility ; whilst keeping enough disposability that losing it is no skin off my nose.

Changes I’d make:

• Damage: the same, 476
• Rate of Fire: 1.5 seconds
• Range: the same, 1000
• 100% projectile finisher
• Inflicts 2 stacks of Vulnerability for 8 seconds (potential for 10.6 stacks of Vulnerability)
• Cooldown: 20 seconds (still)
• Self destructs after 12 seconds
• Pickup recharge: 10 seconds
• HP @level 80: 5000

I think that the Engineer has already too much RNG, from Projectile finishers to Elixirs to Traits. Turret builds also suffer from a massive overabundance of Blast Finishers, while having too few of any others, and a dearth of combo fields. The Vulnerability, although relatively low, peaks at 10-11 stacks at full duration, and sticks for 8 seconds before starting to fall off again if not cleansed. The HP is lowered to compensate for the increase in DPS potential thanks to Vulnerability, and self destruct at 12 seconds to ensure less than 100% uptime even if picked up; although picking it up grants a big reward of 50% CDR.

Overcharge: Automatic Fire

• Increases fire rate to 1 shot per 0.75 seconds (50% increase)
• Inflicts Cripple for 2 seconds with each shot
• Shots bounce between 3 targets (instead of piercing)
• 25% more damage per shot (total 75% increase in DPS on overcharge factoring in firing rate)
• Overcharge duration: 4 seconds
• Turret is invulnerable during Overcharge
• Turret self-destructs after overcharge

Here, the intention of Overcharge is to give a little counterplay to Turrets being cleaved down; whilst ensuring their destruction after giving an enhanced performance. Making shots bounce between 3 targets turns Rifle Turret into something with mini AoE potential; and its 100% combo finisher status ensures the application of useful effects when used in concert with Combo Fields. The power of Overcharge is balanced out by forcing the turret’s self-destruct, which means full 20 second cooldown. At the same time, picking up the turret gives 50% CDR which allows picking up the turret to give a better reward for time invested. To really minmax things, you can Overcharge just before the turret times out and get even more Vulnerability stacks.

Since the Turret now has less than 100% uptime, the Toolbelt ability must now also be more compelling because you will be caught at times without your CDs.

Surprise Shot
Fire a bullet out of your belt.
Damage: 122
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 1,000
Cooldown: 10 seconds

is now:
Surprise Shot
Damage: 122
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 1000
Cooldown: 10 seconds
Daze: 1 second

People underestimate the power of Daze for interrupting channels or long animations. Having a 10 second CD Daze off the GCD essentially gives you a mini stunbreaker that can interrupt 100b or Earthshaker, for example; or prevent that stomp. It’s also Surprising. Hence the name.

Sylentir.8913:

Drawback #4: They have significant cooldowns.
This is most painful when seen in conjunction with drawback #2. I feel that the changes in #2 would help somewhat, but there are other changes I feel would be useful.
My Idea:
Give all turrets their current CD when destroyed, but give them all a CD of 10s + 1s per 5% of missing health. That way, a near-death turret would have roughly a 30s CD, which seems reasonable to me, while an engineer that creates a turret nest in a dungeon can keep up with the party.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on the topic?

I think that this mechanic is too intransparent; although mathematically sound. One must take into account that we cannot see the actual number for HP of turrets; never mind other players. To implement such a mechanic would introduce a lot of confusion and you can bet there’ll be more than a few threads created in response if such a change was to be implemented asking how it actually works.

In addition, given the hitboxes of turrets at current, it is highly likely that turrets will be taking a lot of incidental damage due to the overabundance of AoE in this game. The mechanic of increasing CD to %missing health on pickup will punish Engineers for deploying turrets where they are needed most – in the thick of combat. Indeed, picking up a turret in a “clutch” manner is actually punishing as the CD is increased. Past a certain point (50 % HP) the CD increases; so you may as well let it die or just detonate it. That doesn’t encourage clutch turret saves at all.

Anyway, the easiest way to make picking up turrets rewarding is to simply further decrease the CD of turrets when they are picked up from 25% to more than that; perhaps 50%.

Alternatively, a trait can be introduced that rewards pickup of turrets to grant an extra utility to the Toolbelt ability; like adding 1 second of Daze to Surprise Shot after picking up Rifle Turret, for example; or adding a Fire Field to Throw Napalm after picking up the Flame Turret; or making Regenerating Mist cleanse a condition after picking up the Healing Turret.

My point is that whilst %health or %missing health triggers are mathematically sound, understanding them requires mathematical analysis and thought that adds needless complexity to the game while not adding any depth.

In my view, Arenanet needs to take a good hard look at Turrets and fully commit to one design objective over another.

There are 2 ways that Turrets can be designed:

1. As Low cooldown, high DPS/CC entities with low uptime and that are highly disposable (Mesmer Phantasms, Necro Bone Minion)
2. As High cooldown, medium DPS/CC entities with high uptime (Thumper Turret, Necromancer minions that aren’t Bone Minion)

Right now Turrets are in this unhappy compromise between both of these conflicting design goals, and harmonising Turrets one way or another will finally bring closure to this problem. I believe that the rumoured change to Turrets targeting what the Engineer is targeting will force Arenanet’s hand one way or another; and this conversation will be important in deciding the fate of Turrets as we know them.

(Full disclosure: I personally believe that Turrets should be low CD, High DPS/CC, low uptime, fully disposable because this encourages active play, retains good mobility, and actual thought rather than setting up a Turret nest and camping away. I don’t want yet another MM Necro or Spirit Ranger build to see the light of day)

In my next few posts I’ll outline a possible design of turrets that could align with either of these design goals.

1. High cooldown, medium DPS/CC entities with high uptime
2. This design of Turrets would see cooldowns of Turrets raised significantly; i.e. we could probably see Rifle Turret CD being 40 or so seconds to justify their tanking capability and potential for good DPS over time.
3. This design goal could justify Turrets scaling with Player stats to reflect their damage and survivability; although we all know that if this were to be implemented, that tanky builds would emerge that rely on Turrets for CC and pressure.
4. This kind of design goal is especially sensitive to balance and can lead to overtuning. Leave durability too low and Turrets become useless, high CD utilities. But leave them too tanky and complaints about yet another “passive noskill build” will surface.

1. Low cooldown, high DPS/CC entitieis with low uptime
2. This design of Turrets would see cooldowns of Turrets be lowered significantly; i.e. we could probably see Rifle Turret CD being 15-20 or so seconds with high DPS potential
3. This design goal would likely implement turrets without player stat scaling, but flat health values that are relatively low so that something with such high DPS or CC pressure can be easily eliminated for counterplay. It is likely that something like this would have Turrets self-destructing after overcharge.
4. This kind of design goal is still sensitive to balance, however, balance is more easily granular because the flat HP values can be easily tweaked without regard to player scaling; as can DPS and CC. The most difficult aspect of balance for this design is getting the damage values and CC just right. Too low and Turrets become just another Phantasmal mage, but too high, and we get complaints, just like Phantasmal Duelist.

(Post continued, field too long)

Enter the boon-hate patch that left HGH and Elementalists (and to a lesser extent, Guardians) out in the cold. Larcenous Strike and Corrupt Boon and to a lesser extent, Destruction of the Empowered (Warriors still could be too easily kited due to little snare mitigation). Various nerfs to Elixir S, R followed in subsequent patches to essentially make HGH Engineers a lot more vulnerable.

For elementalists, the 0/10/0/30/30 build had hits to Bountiful Power, Cantrips, RtL, and Evasive Arcana (again). Boon based mitigation and DPS is now a lot riskier than ever, because of boon hate. In fact if you have even read the Elementalist forums recently you will find that the forum there is now largely toxic because they feel that they were overnerfed in survivability whilst the Fresh Air trait that was supposed to bring in some damage was insufficient to compensate their fragility. Balanced builds like D/D can no longer be run safely because the TTK is too long before D/D eles can be condispiked and killed, or stunlocked and killed.

Arenanet seems to want to be driving towards a game where everything has a soft counter, and these are good first steps. Obviously in the case of Elementalist, there can and will be mis-steps; although in the Elementalist’s case, the mis-steps here emerged as a fundamental flaw in the trait design of the Elementalist that will take a long time to fix.

Be glad that Engineers are not in this situation right now.

Engineer is a class right now that features:

• Okay reward for skill invested
• Okay survival that is predicated on timely skill management
• Pretty good build variety because our design is such that our utilities dictate our traits and playstyle, rather than the other way around.

On the other hand, the current “meta” Warrior CC triple stance build features:

• Excellent reward to skill invested ratio (If you miss a skull crack, you don’t lose Adrenaline, so wait another 7 seconds to hit another). Most of this reward comes from the bugged Sigil of Paralyzation – something that is already slated for bugfixing.
• High active and passive defense (Signet of Healing has too much passive regen loaded into its passive, whilst triple stance offers long periods of immunity (8+ seconds) to various forms of damage (Zerker stance and Endure pain) and CC (Balanced Stance)
• Poor build variety because Cleansing Ire and Burst Mastery are too necessary not to take, and that’s 50 points already. Mace and/or Hammer are central to the build and that dictates the last 20 points.

What I’m inferring from your suggestions, VIVorcha, is for the reward aspect to be buffed to “Warrior level”, and perhaps even the skill floor lowered to “Warrior level”. I believe that the backlash against your posts stems from the fear that we will be given the Elementalist treatment, where successive nerfs will expose fundamental flaws with our Trait design that will leave us too fragile in survivability or too anaemic in DPS.

VIVorcha.7853:

A more skilled player should always beat a less skilled player.

A less skilled warrior can beat a more skilled engineer.

And no. Our toolbelt is nowhere near as amazing as all the diehard Engineer fans claim it is.

Our toolbelt skills are much weaker than normal utilities. The toolbelt would actually be useful if it gave four skills that were as powerful as utilities.

So the whole thread’s purpose was for Engineer to get better results for skill; or better reward for the risk.

There’s been a lot of talk about that recently especially with builds in the PvP meta – that will soon propagate to the WvW and PvE meta – that have featured vastly lower skill floors with good reward – Spirit Rangers, Mace Warriors and Terror Necros.

In fact Terror Necros and Mace CC warriors have already made it into the WvW “stun train with Epidemic bomb” WvW zerg meta so there is that.

I’m just not sure whether buffing Engineer to lower its skill floor is the way to go

I believe that the class is cheapened and left the worse for wear whenever a low-skill, high reward build emerges. Look at the nerfs Dhuumfire received shortly after the Aetherblade/Dhuumfire patch as a result of community backlash. Necros then received nerfs to the way their life force pool worked that left the Necro community in a tizzy because they felt that their survivability that was lacking was nerfed in favour of buffs to damage, which most Necros felt were sufficient.

Would you want that happening on the Engineer class also?

Because similar things have happened to the Engineer class in the past.

When HGH builds were popularised by Ostricheggs, there was also an explosion of people using Engineers in PvP and elsewhere. This was because HGH finally offered a relatively “safe” build with boon-based survivability and DPS, whilst touting a relatively low skill floor – if you could hit your Grenades, the rest of the build is just mashing Elixirs on CD and reserving Toolbelt elixirs for condi cleanse.

Knox.8962:

Bombs are still attacking 20% slower on land than they do under water. (0.75s vs. 0.9s)

@Knox:
The same can also be said of Grenades. However, I believe that this is an animation issue, which will be non-trivial to fix. That said, I will add it to the compilation posts.

Firearms

Modified Ammunition
Damage is increased by 2% per condition on the target, when wielding a rifle or pistol .

There seems to be a trend in various subforums to ask about whether the %damage multipliers triggered by #conditions on target affect the damage done by DPS conditions or not. Obviously the answer is no, it only affects White damage, not Red ticks, but a new player can’t know that. The description should instead read:

• Direct damage is increased by 2% per condition on the target, when wielding a rifle or pistol.

• (Balance opinion) This does not make for a worthy Grandmaster, build-defining trait. Surely something more inventive than a DPS increase is warranted for 30 points.

Alchemy

Automated Response
Condition duration is reduced by 100% when health is below 25%.

This tooltip was changed from the original text as of the Aetherblade/Dhuumfire patch and I would argue that the new description is even more misleading than the original text; which read as follows:

Become immune to conditions when health is below 25%.

The tooltip text should instead read:

• Become immune to newly applied conditions while health is below 25%. Pre-existing conditions remain.
  or
  At 25% health, gain immunity to newly applied conditions. Pre-existing conditions are not removed.

Tools

Inertial Converter
When health reaches 25%, your tool belt skills recharge.

The tooltip should instead read:

• When health reaches 25%, your tool belt skills recharge. 90 second cooldown

Kit Refinement
Equipping a kit creates an attack or a spell.

When this trait was “reworked” (nerfed into the ground), the tooltip was left neglected and was not updated to reflect the new global cooldown. The description should instead read:

• Equipping a kit creates an attack or a spell. 20 Global Cooldown.

One last thing:

Various Traits of the Engineer have poorly worded tooltips that imply something else entirely. It requires actually knowing the class and fully testing a trait to know what it does instead of trusting the tooltip. This can be a trap for newer players. One shouldn’t have to visit the forum or test things extensively in the Mists before pickup up and playing with a Trait. Internal cooldowns are also poorly enumerated.

I’ll start in Explosives and work my way down.

Shrapnel
Explosions have a 15% chance to cause bleeding.
Tooltip description should instead read:

• Explosions have a 15% chance to cause 1 stack of Bleeding for 12 seconds.

Forceful Explosives
Bombs and mines have a larger explosion radius.

This is the vaguest trait description ever. Tooltip description should instead read:

• Bombs and Mines have their Area of Effect increased by 50%
• (Balance opinion) I personally believe that this trait increases the radius too much, whilst the base radii of Bombs and Mines is largely useless without it. A middle ground between the two should be found.

Accelerant-Packed Turrets
Turrets explode when killed. When your turrets explode, they push back foes.

Putting aside how badly placed the trait is and how narrow the application is, it does seem to imply that Detonate Turret would trigger the pushback. It doesn’t. The tooltip text should instead read:

• Turrets explode and push back foes when killed.

Josh Davis.6015:

I’ve escalated multiple issues from this list.

Thanks for the compiling these bugs, MonMalthias.

@Josh Davis:
Thanks for acknowledging the bug list!

When playing Engineer one gets used to the bugs and plays around them. I know I have been for the past year.

@Terminal Gaijin:
Whilst the kit is still visible to you, it is actually invisible to foes while stealthed. Doing Leaps and Blasts into Smoke Fields will still grant you fully working Stealth.

I agree with you in that it’s a cosmetic issue, but it really doesn’t matter that much in the overall scheme of things – the Stealth is functional, which is really all that matters when doing Stealth plays.

@Brew Pinch:
I’d completely forgotten about the range and animation of Flame Jet, even though I use Fumigate all the time.

After a while I just got used to it and forgot about it.

I’ll add it to my other posts.

There are few traits in the game as bad as Reserve Mines .

The Mines do nigh on no damage, scatter randomly, and are highly visible so opponents just skirt around them anyway – not that they need to do so in the first place.

Seriously. I don’t think it is possible to find anything worse.

It also procs Confusion damage on you if you are afflicted with Confusion. So that 25% HP can quickly snowball you to 0% HP.

@Julius:
Another issue I’d like to bring up and in my opinion drives the incentive to find builds with extremely low TTK (Time to Kill) is the ticket system in Conquest.

Right now as long as you are holding a point, you are earning points towards victory – even if you have a minority of points.

• Conversely, if you hold a majority of points, you can easily snowball a teamfight into an overwhelming surfeit of points.
• This heightens the pace of the game; but also makes complete blowouts possible.
• This reduces the tension of runaway games because victory is almost certain once you reach a certain surplus. There is simply no easy way to claw yourself back.

You actually see some of this when watching the GuildWars2PvPTV Stream. Complete blowouts of games happen all the time – whether it’s due to an unluckily snowballed stomp – and even if the losing side concentrates on the secondary objective, it’s often not enough to claw back into the game.

The ticket system thus promotes 2 things:

• Extreme bunkering, because time you spend wasting an opponent’s time means points for you.
• Extreme damage builds, because the faster you can kill an opponent, the faster you can decap and stem the haemorrhaging.

In fact, I’d almost say that half the balance issues and the pace of play is as a result of the flawed ticket system.

So, how to fix this?

Simple.

• Make it so that points only tick up when you hold a majority of points, just like Company of Heroes, or UT2004’s Onslaught, or Mechwarrior Online, or whatever sort of competitive gametype that involves holding an area.

This pushes gameplay away from extreme builds that feature exclusive Bunkering or exclusive Big Damage, and turns the battle into more of a “push” rather than a “scattered series of 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3”.

• It’d also make the game far easier to spectate as fights are likely more concentrated around a contested point that is going to provide a majority

• The pace of the game is slowed down and more balanced builds that don’t require such a swift TTK or such hard Bunkering can emerge – greater build variety.

• Games are much less likely to be complete blowouts because the bleeding can be stopped as long as you only hold 1 point and you keep the third neutral.

• Secondary objectives actually matter, well, they matter more, because they can supply points when a battle is deadlocked.

@Evan Lesh:
I think a good solution would be something like Daishi has suggested. However, the option for Hotjoin should remain – it just should not be incentivised at all. As for Ranked Soloqueue, the rewards need to be substantially upped if it is to have any hope for competing for population compared to Hotjoin.

• Remove earning Rank points from Hotjoin. As a casualised environment it should remain as an instant action option to test builds

• Institute Unranked soloqueue. Still a casual environment as there is no leaderboard ranking to care about. More structured environment to learn the ropes. Rewards like Rank points should be about the same as farming Hotjoin at present.

• Ranked solo queue should have rewards significantly increased to far beyond that which farming Hotjoin provides. Greater skill requirement and co-ordination should bring greater rewards, not less.

The Leaderboard system is pretty bad at the moment and incentivises not playing due to the risk of actually losing ranks from a single loss being greater than winning a majority of games.

The solution here is to institute a League system similar to that of the competitive Starcraft scene or League of Legends. Players all start in Bronze or equivalent when playing ranked.
Once they reach a certain point of victories that earn them Promotion Points, players are put up for a Promotion series of games to be put into the next league. If they win their series, they are promoted.

• A League system promotes self-improvement whereas a single ladder does not . Psychologically speaking, players at the top are always disincentivised to play no matter how good the matchmaking system is due to the risk of losses making their rank drop precipitously. Similarly, players at the bottom are disincentivised to play when they enter the leaderboards and see thousands on top, and every victory only makes them climb a minimal number of places.

• A League system allows for Seasons and Resets – both of which promote a flurry of activity at the beginning of each Season and which also allow the creation of new Achievements and Titles – both of which are significantly scarcer in PvP compared to PvP.

• Titles and achievement points should be awarded for reaching certain leagues. If players reach the top league, they should be given a title also. There is respect to be gained here – and a competitive spirit – both of which are lacking from the current scene.

Rewards

• Right now the Zenith weapon skins, Radiant and Hellfire armour skins are only unlocked when reaching a certain Achievement threshold.
  One way to shortcut this for PvP players that already have a paucity of Achievement points due to not participating in Living Story Releases is for League unlocks also unlocking a Zenith, Hellfire, or Radiant skin.

This would accomplish 2 things:

• Allow PvP players that have a paucity of Achievement points to bypass the system that disadvantages them.

• Re-use existing assets – no additional development time save for scripting their unlocking.

• This is also done whilst being able to “recycle” existing assets

Shield 5 – Throw Shield – is not a 100% Projectile Finisher.

Couldn’t be demonstrated any more clearly than in the above Youtube video.

Originally posted by Brew Pinch:

Flame Jet
Animation is 600+ range yet the skill is only effective to 425 range.

Fumigate
Animation is 600+ range yet the skill is only effective to 425 range.

This bug affects all auto-attacks which use the flame jet animation. This includes a few ‘pick-up’ weapons found around the open world

Similar cone AoE skills are effective to 600 range, therefore I assume that the bug is in the effective range of the “Flame Jet” type skills, not in the range of the animation.

Knox.8962:

Bombs are still attacking 20% slower on land than they do under water. (0.75s vs. 0.9s)

This is an animation issue where Bombs and Grenades have a 20% slower cast time on land than under water.

The animation for the underwater casting of Bombs and Grenades is very smooth and very fast. It actually appears as though Bombs and Grenades underwater have no aftercast delay, which would explain the slower casting times.

Another explanation is the fusing time of Bombs in particular on land vs underwater. Bombs have a longer fuse on land than underwater and as such detonate slower than underwater bombs. It makes landing finishers underwater with Bombs a lot easier than on land.

A fix for this could be either to

• Remove aftercast delay of Bombs and Grenades (introduces balance issues due to increased DPS) or

• Reduce fusing time of Bombs in particular or

• Reducing the frames for the bomb placement animation (non trivial)

Kawloon Fuathach.3807:

There is currently a bug with the “Deployable Turrets” trait allowing turrets to be detonated whilst they are in mid air, and then once again when they land on the ground.
The Mid-air detonation does not cause a Blast finisher, nor does it deal damage like a normally detonated turret does, however it does proc the “Static Discharge” trait; Allowing for a double discharge if turrets are detonated right before they hit the ground.

I’m also going to go ahead and re-link Anymras’s Turret Bug list, for completeness purposes. That list has been acknowledged, however, when it comes to fixing Engineer bugs it seems that only when a bug is posted on the PvP forums ; or when it potentially nerfs us, that it is fixed in a timely fashion.

Turrets also suffer from firing rate issues as related in this thread .

It appears that Turrets have firing rates far slower than advertised on tooltip, which is causing Overcharges to go “missing” (Their duration times out but Turret does not fire due to firing rate too low) .

Hi all.

So recently I’ve noticed that the Engineer Bugs thread that was originally posted on our profession page has actually been locked; despite being stickied. Given that there has been no bug fixing occurring to our class since the June 25th Patch (Dhuumfire if PvP, Aetherblade if PvE) ; it’s safe to assume that we are once again being ignored.

The new thread is in the Game Bugs forum and may be found here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Engineer-Bugs-compilation/

Please feel free to make your own contributions to keep the thread bumped given the ludicrous number of people posting PvE issues – and getting developer attention – whilst profession bugs remain 12 months after release.

Wolf.5816:

The Detonate Turret Tool belt skill is not instant when activating another Tool Belt skill.

Explanation: It has no cast time like other instant Tool Belt skills except they can be activated simultaneously with other Tool belt skills, This is not the case with Detonate Turret. You must wait until the current tool belt skill animation is completed before the turret detonates and the skill can be activated. You may also cast Detonate Turret simultaneously with any other action you preform except your Tool Belt skills..

Side note: (Also you cannot activate detonate turret from downed state, Which is probably intended but I feel it should work similar to the Rangers pet skills being available while downed.) My opinion is that Rangers already have very powerful downed state abilities, the ability to use pets when downed is even more of an advantage where Engineer down states are very poor, arguably one of the worst.

I’m just going to quote this from the other page.

Right now if you are running multiple turrets, say, Healing Turret and Rifle Turret , you are unable to do something like this Consistently :

• Cast Regenerating Mist , which is a 1 second Water Field
• Then Instantly do Combo Finisher: Blast by executing Detonate Rifle Turret

This is because activating Regenerating Mist introduces a casting animation that also has aftercast . Detonate Rifle Turret is queued up for casting ; but does not execute until the whole Regenerating Mist casting is completed.

If playing on relatively high latency, say, 200+ms ping, this introduces issues where it is nigh-impossible to do an Area Healing Combo without spamming Turret Detonate.

Given that Turret Detonate skills have no cast time ; they should be taken off the GCD just like any other Instant Cast skill. To keep them on the GCD further reduces the combo field potential of the Turret Engineer, which is a build that suffers enough from shonky AI and a host of other problems.

Fast Acting Elixirs
Fast Acting Elixirs provides no benefit to Thrown Elixirs on the Toolbelt, nor does it affect Elixir Gun skills that are demarked Elixirs, such as Elixir F or Healing Mist or Acid Bomb or Super Elixir .

• Despite being listed on the wiki page as a bug, this is more of a Tooltip issue associated with the trait. Hopefully Karl’s tooltip fixes outlined in the GW2Guru September SOTG will encompass this issue to bring more clarity to Engineer’s skill tooltips.
  In a class that is already designed to feature a high skill floor, the skill floor should not be artificially increased by bad tooltip information.

Drop Antidote
The tooltip implies that conditions (Plural) are cleansed when in fact only 1 is cleansed.
In addition, the hitbox of Drop Antidote is so small that it does not prove to be of any use when Immobilised .

• The tooltip implying that plural conditions are cleansed should be altered to “Cleanses 1 condition”
• The hitbox of Drop Antidote should be altered or its dropping position changed to be truly at the Engineer’s feet.

Static Discharge
Static Discharge procs on toolbelt skills without a target fly straight into the ground.
Toolbelt skills without a target include:

• Thrown Elixirs B, C, H, R, S, U

• Certain Kit toolbelt skills without a target include: Incendiary Ammo, Healing Mist, Grenade Barrage , Big Ol’ Bomb , and Bandage Self

• Turret toolbelt skills without a target include: Throw Napalm , Rumble , Regenerating Mist.
• All Turret Detonate skills have no target.

• Gadget skills without a target include: Mine Field, Detonate Mine Field, Super Speed

• As far as I can tell, the Static Discharge proc flies at a highly exaggerated camera angle into the ground, which forces one to aim the camera upwards towards the sky to be able to land the skillshot. The target’s feet must be at the Engineer’s head assuming the ground is perfectly flat to be able to strike true.

A fix could be such that the skillshot always emanates parallel to the ground, as is with Net Shot . Alternatively, an offset may be applied to the z-axis component of the Static Discharge skillshot such that such an exaggerated upwards camera angle is not required.

So it’s been just over 2 months from the day the Aetherblade patch hit. The Balance team decided to freeze the meta in preparation for the PAX Tournament for nearly 2 months, but as a result, there have been little to no changes with regard to profession bugs and other issues.

I also couldn’t find another thread that had moved the outstanding Engineer bugs and issues to the Game Bugs forum. Hopefully this thread can compile most of them and bring some QoL to this unfinished class.

Magnet Pull

Magnet pull has been bugged for a fair while now, with no
acknowledgement or fix in sight.
The key issue seems to be that Magnet Pull becomes highly buggy when on uneven terrain; although sometimes it bugs out regardless.
The bugged pull can:

• do a 1 second Knockdown on foes but leave them at their position
• throw an enemy high into the air, then rubberband them until they hit the ground
• pull only half the distance, then stop

This is despite balance changes to Magnet Pull that prohibited it from being used against targets not within the Engineer’s “frontal” LoS; whilst increasing its range . Surely at some point during the balance changes there must have been a bug introduced; and this should be fixed.

Flamethrower isn’t worth using FT1 for, but 2, 3, 4 and 5 are pretty nice. The Toolbelt ability has too long a cooldown, but hey. At least it works.

Thankfully, fixing FT1 is easy:

• Make it non-tracking like Drakes Breath or Cone of Cold to fix the targeting issues caused by the FT1 “skillshot” trying to track a target and missing due to insufficient lead.

• Halve the number of hits, but double the damage inflicted with each pulse. This will reduce the efficacy of FT1 proccing on-crit effects, but let’s face it: You’re not going to use FT1 for Sharpshooter procs, nor are Precise Sights procs going to stack up Vulnerability as well as Grenadier and Steel Packed Powder unless Precise Sights gets some sort of Duration buff or stack increase in the future.

• Halving the pulses and doubling the damage also makes FT1 less of a Retaliation trap.

As for the direct damage from FT1 being abysmal, that was because the damage was nerfed thanks to the global damage nerfs after beta. In addition, Flamethrower still had Backdraft back then, which also had a damage component and Burning. Coupled with Juggernaut granting Stability on equip, FT was clearly OP.

However:

• After nerfs to Backdraft (now has no damage, does not Burn, pushback),
• The Flame Blast fix that removed double damage at max range
• And removal of Stability from Juggernaut and replacement with Might stacking ,

The damage values deserve looking at again.

If the FT1 missing issues are resolved by turning it into a true skillshot without tracking ; then it may be parsimonious to give FT1 the Arc Lightning treatment with scaling damage the more pulses are landed on an opponent.

• This rewards players for hitting with the full length channel and can justify a damage buff whilst not overly disrupting balance due to it now requiring increased skill to land the last ticks of the channel.

@Raijinn:
There were no changes to Automated Response:
OpticsTV did a build video featuring it and later had to mention a retraction on AR granting Condition immunity because it only granted condition immunity to new conditions applied after the 25% health trigger.

It is now 12 months to the day that video was released.

As NevirSayDie has said, it’s still the same.

I think that making the character avatar bigger would be fine and dandy – but only if everyone was of standard size such that having Stability was differentiating in the first place.

Perhaps, similar to the Protection generating a “shield” symbol that fades into the blue-grey “arcs” that denote protection, a similar “pillar” symbol can accompany the onset of the Stability boon that then fades away along with the avatar growing in size.