Guild Wars 2

From a relative balance stand point, Engineer is really strong right now by dint of being able to abuse the recent buffs to Runes and Sigils the most out of any other class (being strong with Strength, Hoelbrak in Cele builds, strong with Pirate in Turret builds, strong with Balthazar in Rabid builds, etc, etc).

From an immersion/design standpoint I really don’t see how this has any bearing, if at all, in a Profession Balance forum.

Could Engineer Animations and skill cues be improved? Absolutely. Bomb Kit is one of the hardest to read kits – until the bomb explodes – because the Bomb is placed at the Engineer’s feet. The Bomb autoattack is inexplicably larger than the Concussion Bomb – which one deserves better cueing? Rhetorical question.

BK’s power coefficients are also extremely badly spread out; compared to Grenade Kit which has extremely powerful hybrid damage capability due to a combination of high Condition diversity and high power coefficients per individual grenade. But again, your OP is conspicuously absent mentioning such points and instead rants about how Rifle and Pistol animations “look weak”.

Could Engineer do with stronger mainhands? Well, Shield 4-1 will be buffed in November; but Main-and Off-hand Pistol and Rifle still have issues regarding usability (Poison Dart Volley spread, Glue shot projectile speed) and counterplay (Overcharged shot being instant).

In addition, Incendiary Powder is mind-bogglingly stronger and easier to land than Blowtorch now that Balthazar Runes are present. (7 seconds Burn at 6 explosives and Balthazar Runes; which is less dodgeable, unblockable, non skillshot compared to Blowtorch at 400 range. Madness.)

Back in 2012, I posted a thread on how Engineer’s mainhand weapons could be improved. A discussion of what remains of Engineer’s weapon skills to be tweaked as opposed to vehement exclamations of “I want to be like Lara Croft!” would be more constructive.

You are all kittens, each and every single one.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISjD2zAuMAfEKgAQoNNUgR7kVq47vA-TFSBAB3p+Tg7PklSszUCelyjOeAA4pDAgLAAA-w

A little critical reading goes a long way. Obviously stat breakpoints will be different to what OP specified because he was not 100% on the placement of each and every single accessory and armour piece; but it should be close enough.

Traits will vary with the utilities. I don’t agree with Arcane Shield myself as I dislike the long CD – I would favour Signet of Air, forgo the Traveller’s Runes, and go for Strength/Pack/Hoelbrak depending on how much effective power the armour/accessories gave; and the presence/absence of Cleansing Fire.

I also feel that Blasting Staff is no longer 100% required once one begins to run Signet of Earth. Zero travel time Pin Down on a half-cast means that the CC setup required to land staff pressure is lessened. No Blasting Staff also buffs Static Field at the cost of Meteor Shower; which is definitely a 1v1 focus.

Having run a similar build prior to Dhuumfire in 2013 (Running D/D at the time for some truly epic Fire Grab executions; and before Cleansing Wave was moved to Master Tier) the build itself is solid; although significantly weaker to Conditions in 2014 as it is missing 1 cleanse per 10.

A blast from the past to be sure. But arguably still inferior to the standard triple cantrip Might stacking build. The only thing I would disagree with is Traveller’s Runes on Elementalist. If you’re running Elemental Attunement, there are far superior Rune choices open. If you’re not Running Elemental Attunement; again; consider Signet of Air over Arcane Shield. Traveller’s Runes are for classes with terrible IMS choices like DPS Guardian or Necro. Elementalist is not wanting for IMS and indeed, every Ele weapon set outside of Scepter Focus has some form of mobility/Swiftness access.

As for running Staff, I strongly support the use of Energy Sigil over Force. Classes with rushdown like Thief or Warrior will easily body a non-Energy Sigil Staff Elementalist; unless you can rely on allies to peel. A dead ele with 5% more damage is still dead.

I think it’s a great first step to finally step up the frequency of balance patches; whilst sacrificing volume. Incremental shaves as advocated by many on this forum are finally coming to fruition; which is great.

The news that the balance changes would again, be bundled with the feature patch was disappointing; but not unexpected. I have been arguing for the decoupling of balance from feature patches for a while, but in the absence of absolutely gamebreaking flaws the argument is significantly weaker.

The changes to Skyhammer are a long time coming. Even so, the changes do nothing to address the core issue with Skyhammer which is that Control skills are used for pushing people off for instant kills; which is a mechanic that comes to predominate over you know, actual combat.

More map iteration like this is essential to maintaining a healthy PvP scene. Just as Riot has had incremental adjustments to the Summoner’s Rift map; or Valve and DOTA has had map changes, so too should Arenanet always look critically at their own map designs and think of ways to iterate and improve. I still think that the capture points for many of Conquest’s maps are way too small, promoting AoE spam; and AI spam to absorb some of those hits. With Lord Rush/GvG/Fort Aspenwood coming up, map iteration will be essential in securing the future of the game-mode as map flaws are identified.

As for the profession changes themselves, I believe that it isn’t so much the professions these days that are overpowered so much as the Runes and Sigils.

• Celestial by itself is little better than Soldier’s for damage; even in natural Hybrid damage classes like Elementalist or Engineer. What makes it over the top is the combination of Celestial’s relatively high effective health with Might Stacking.

• Clearly the change to allow double sigils should also have been accompanied with nerfs. Namely:
  • Sigil of Battle nerfed to provide 3 stacks of Might on 10-15 seconds duration as opposed to the 20 seconds it was prior to the buff. As it is right now, Rune of Strength or Hoelbrak, with 45% Might duration, already allow any class running just 5% Boon Duration to hit the 50% breakpoint for 9 stacks of Might on Swap. 9 stacks of Might without any interaction from enemies beyond being in combat is a lot of Free stats, and boosts the Might floor significantly enough that classes like Elementalist can hit the Might ceiling practically by themselves.
  • Sigil of Air and Fire have in part allowed classes to build more survivability while sacrificing less damage, the sacrifice made up for in part by these powerful, more consistent sigils. For builds like Sword Dagger Thief, Air/Fire procs can now comprise a significant portion of burst damage; similarly, for Rapid Fire LB Ranger, the sigils allow the Ranger to frontload much of its burst and partially mitigate dodge rolls that would ordinarily cause RF shots to miss.
  • Sigil of Energy again lost some of its opportunity costs (more survivability for less damage potential) with the double sigil buff. I think it would have been smarter to simply make Energy sigil grant 9 seconds of Vigour on swap instead of an extra dodge.
  • Rune of Strength and Hoelbrak should be toned down to 30-35% Might Duration as there is currently little opportunity cost to these runes. Only 5% Boon Duration is required to maximise the potential of Battle Sigil; and the 45% overall bonus to Might Duration with 6 points in Boon Duration makes Fire Field Blast Finishers grant a silly 35 seconds of Might – well beyond the cooldown of many Blast finishers.
  • Condi Engi was considered to be relatively balanced – if undodgeable, unblockable crit-procs can be called “balanced” prior to the April patch. With Balthazar Runes granting again, 45% Burning Duration, Incendiary Powder seems to be hitting the 80% and above uptime again that begins to upset people. Nothing short of a complete rework of how IP works will solve the problem in the long run, but for now, the Rune is the contributor and therefore, the Rune should be rebalanced.

As Xeph said last year and some months ago , the damage, and accordingly the defenses in this game are extreme; thus fights are sometimes extremely binary, and the emergence of insuperable matchups – hard counters trumping soft counter outplay – can be damaging to future build variety.

• See: Cele or Condi Engi vs Thief and Zerker Engi vs Thief matchup – night and day. Or Condi Necro vs Engi and Power Necro vs Engi – again, night and day.
• Tourney play and to some extent Soloqueue is already rife with “counterpicking”. The more binary matchups that emerge with future power creep, the less potential Arenanet has for ever truly balancing this game.

Geiir.7603:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

All former Twitch videos are ready for viewing on the Twitch Guild Wars 2 Channel. Just click the one you wish to watch.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/profile/past_broadcasts

But these ain’t available on mobile devices. Pushing them to a YouTube playlist would help reach more people.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDCvogxNKN3nmdmYoblp6T3Pz44t5bCI4

You’re welcome.

As for Supply Crate; the skill itself just needs Turrets to persist only for ~30 seconds. In addition, the skill itself should not be able to be stow-cancelled so late. It’s possible to make the crate appear to hit the ground before the cancel; thus forcing out a dodge for a paltry “interrupted” cooldown. Failing that, make Crate unable to be stow-cancelled; thus Engineers dropping it must commit to the Crate play.

As for this idea:

Poledra Val.1490:

What would amuse me no end is if Anet changed the Supply Crate elite skill and leaned it towards the actual “player” to micro manage each and every one of those little turrets that they just love to use.

It would increase the learning curve of an engineer by a country mile and in all honesty and it would give players who use the engineer much more recognition rather then “one button does it all” lazy automatons.

I think it would make the skill OP; actually. Supply crate is balanced in an XvX precisely because the Engineer has no control over who gets the Net Turret Immobilise or the Flame Turret Burn. Letting the Engineer control that with a chainskill would be absurd. It would basically make every 2v2 team run Supply Crate, drop it, call target, and burst. Targeted Immobilises in this game are no joke.

Relentliss.2170:

JinDaVikk.7291:

^^ what you just said makes ur post worthless.

Bunker guardian can survive far longer in every situation than engi.

lol GG

No way. I stall 2-3 people for a good minute or two with my Engi. I run out of abilities and die quicker on my Guardian. And I have a lot more games on my Guardian 1000 vs 200.

Look at it this way. From my healing turret alone I can get a 4 sec reflective shield every 15 sec… just from that one turret. That is a lot of ranged damage I am not even taking. I have 3 other turrets and crates that also give the shield.

I can drop Turrets then run behind obstacles. I can keep damage up on people capping and not even be in range. With my Guardian, if I use the terrain I am not damaging. Hence the big discrepancy.

Not to mention I have an AOE blind, Thumper Knockback, Rocket Knockdown, Blind every 10 sec when attacked by a mele, Net on Rifle, Rifle knockback and Net on Crate. So a lot more CC. While these people are CC’d I am not having to mitigate any damage.

Guardian may have slightly more damage reduction and healing, but he is having to mitigate a lot more damage up front.

Is guardian still an effective bunker? Yes. But I would rather roll with a couple Ele’s or Engi’s these days.

I think it needs to be said that Bunker Guardian was never the most survivable Bunker class and indeed, many classes like Warrior and Engineer and the BM Rangers of 2013 could camp a point like no other.

What Turret Bunkers, and Banner Warrior bunkers, and BM or Regen Rangers don’t have besides their point-holding capability is Team Support; and the ultimate in down state control. No class can secure stomps or resses quite like Guardian; nor can any class claim to team-cleanse like Guardian. Is Bunker Guardian survivable? Absolutely. But it’s team based survival; not selfish survivability. A bunker Guard will die eventually in a 1vX – because its design was never to hold a 1vX forever. Instead the best use of a Bunker Guard is to make it follow the teamfight around; rotating with the help of Portal or AoE Swiftness; thus keeping the team up and the enemy stomped. But this is all off-topic.

Moving back to another of the OP’s points about Engineer:

Arachnid.4062:

Turret builds: stack boons and kill your opponents for you? The ultimate passive AI experience

Crate: The “I win” button

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpyq1WxqKseNCdBF6VklQL6j0wR/pAA-TJxHwACuAAn2fYZZAAPAAA

I presume that when the OP talks about the Turret bunker that he is talking about a build like the above; which is one of the tankier, more annoying iterations of the build.

Turrets are problematic in that they destroy soloqueue; and their skill floor vs reward ratio is silly. There’s always going to be that one person that takes it upon themselves to suicide rush the Turret bunker instead of +1 the other 2 points, or to trickle in one by one and eat all the CC in turn. Is the build strong in a competitive game? Probably not; because the abundance of AOE cleave in most competitive team comps is going to devastate the Turret bunker; as would smart rotational play that would turn the Turret bunker into a useless paperweight.

Unfortunately, nothing at this point is going to make Turrets both fun to play as and fun to play against short of a complete re-design. Their current iteration as a long-term immobile summons will always mean that they are forever overtuned, or undertuned. Overtuned because to make them strong enough to stand on their own would make them destroy all 1v1s; and undertuned because to make them provide anything beyond that would let them take over the game; so their effective health will be low; and their applications situational.

There have been numerous threads over the years regarding Turrets in the Engineer forum itself.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/If-it-s-wrong-I-don-t-wanna-be-right/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Turret-Cooldown-idea/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/It-s-time-for-Turret-traits-to-be-reworked/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/PvX-Improving-the-Inventions-line

I suppose a start on evening up the matchup of Turret builds against others is to do the following:

• Make Turrets susceptible to Condition damage
• Make Turrets susceptible to Critical Hits

These two changes alone would pretty much ensure that placing Turrets on point without thought will result in a swift destruction and a wasted cooldown. To compensate; Turrets should be redesigned in a direction mimicking Mesmer Phantasms or Ranger Traps: strong against targets within their range; yet with low, disposable cooldowns. Healing Turret after the redesign is in my mind the perfect example of a Turret; being disposable, having a useful situational utility (healing, cleansing) and yet still fragile .

The main thing that is going to make Turrets fun to play as and against is to take away the Turret autoattacks and put them as a chainskill after placement. Then move the Overcharge to the F1-F4 skills that then chains into Turret Detonate. Thus the 6-6-F1 Healing Turret combo would become 6-F1-F1; and so on.

Putting control of the Turret attacks on the chainskill accomplishes 3 things:

• It gives the Engineer full control over his/her damage/CC
• It gives proper opportunity for misplay; thus raising the skill floor. Engineers running pets should have to micro their pets just as Rangers do.
• It allows Turret attacks to finally be tuned as a skillshot.

The last point is important because it allows the following design:

• Net Turret’s Net Shot can be manually aimed and led (and missed)
• Rocket Turret’s Rockets to be aimed as GTAoE attacks
  and so on, and so forth

The main thing is to take away the summon autoattack phenomenon such that the skill floor is raised.

Chaith.8256:

Arken.3725:

Edit: Just to reiterate again, Runes/sigils are meant to augment your build, not define it. Might stacking runes do exactly that.

This is a thread about Engineers. Engineers that play rifle slap on Battle Sigil and Hoelbrak runes to augment their power with 9-10 stacks of might, once it gets going.

Standard Cele Rifle Engi can’t stack a lick of might on its own. The 9 might stacks are marginally better than going like.. Air Sigil and Ogre Runes or something. That’s simply because Engineer does hybrid damage. A thief/mes would benefit more from the Air/Ogre combo. The 9 might stacks get stripped occasionally, by a steal or shatter, and it’s not like the build gets shut down by that.

I don’t think a smart argument can be made as to say that Nade/Elixir S/Toolkit Cele Rifle builds are defined by might stacking just because they can get 9 stacks up, on themselves only, after a 30s ramp up time.

This is a very good point; and one that should be considered regarding Celestial Engineer. Cele Engi’s strength comes from IP procs to deal its hybrid damage and its good CC output. The build itself cannot stack Might strongly in any respect unless using allies Fire Fields. If anything, Celestial Engi as it is in the meta right now with GK, TK, Elixir S is one of the least egregious abusers of Might stacking. If Bombs were in the meta then sure; I could certainly see where Engi can contribute to the problem.

JinDaVikk.7291:

Monmath – Thats an interesting idea except 1 major flaw. If we are cc’d we CANNOT use tool-belts unless they are instant/ stun break. Which defeats your entire idea’s purpose lol. Tbh PI is better balanced than most other professions cc mechanics as RNG ( or guessing) decides when the cooldown is up. There isn’t a way to accurately guess when the cd is gone where PI is always up unless it just proc’d.

Yes, you are absolutely correct in that only very few toolbelts for Engineer are off the GCD or zero cast. My idea was a kittenisation of an older idea I had for Engineer gaining predictive stunbreaks through gaining the Defiance boon (from PvE bosses) on using a toolbelt. Thus by enabling the Engineer to “block” the Control effect of an incoming CC; the place of PI from being a passive CC mitigator instead becomes an active, predictive CC mitigator.

As an example:
Protection Injection (redux)

• Using a Toolbelt skill grants you 1 stack of Defiance (block the next Control effect, but not its damage). ICD 30 seconds. The cooldown for this trait is halved if a Control effect is blocked.

If anything, the places of Stability and Defiance need to be swapped in this game; with Stability granting skills instead giving Defiance in certain numbers of stacks; and vice versa.

Unfortunately there’s no way that Anet would ever contemplate bringing PvE mechanics over to PvP or vice versa even though it would be an elegant solution that faces the vast inequities of Stability access across the 8 professions.

Chaith.8256:

Arken.3725:

Not so much of a forbidden thing in 1v1 as it’s a crutch to the player who got hit with cc. You’re essentially being rewarded by getting hit, contrary to the games design.

No engineer meta builds are using prot injection anymore. Or protective shield. They’re only worth it vs. Mace or hammer warriors, really, which aren’t hugely concerning. Vigor is decidedly universally better.

Right; with the recent dearth of warriors, the value of Protection Injection becomes decidedly less. That being said, it’s a good tossup between Invigorating Speed and Protection Injection. I would say the only “less flexible” pick in this case would be Backpack Regenerator in Master tier.

Again as I mentioned previously there’s more than 1 viable pick in the current meta builds running 4-6 Alchemy. They’re all good in the context of different team comps you’re facing.

With specific reference to Protection Injection as a passive CC mitigation tool, Engineer is not alone in this respect . Every class can slot traits that can mitigate CC in one way or another; although some traits are definitely better than others.

PI is strong because it offers a low cooldown passive for incomplete mitigation. The counter-CC traits of other classes – especially those that “reflect” incoming CC with CC of their own, have long cooldowns of 40-60 seconds. See: Mirror of Anguish and Reaper’s Protection . Incomplete but strong mitigators, such as Stealth, Shadowsteps, Shocking Aura all have intermediate cooldowns. Engineer’s PI and Warrior’s Last Stand definitely stand tall as one of the strongest counter-CC traits. In terms of absolute uptime, PI is perhaps the highest and for the least opportunity cost (Adept; where most others are Master+ Tier).

Given these things it’s easy to see why Engineers would choose to forsake stunbreaks entirely and rely on PI (Teldo 2012-2013) or instead rely on evade frames – Battle/Energy and/or Invigorating Speed. Vee Wee favours Adventurer Runes. Some Power builds favour Adrenal Implant. But PI is a good perennial pick precisely because it allows Engineer to focus on its best sources of damage mitigation; which is CC output, Block frames and Vigour uptime.

This begs the question then of whether PI is too much. After all it’s the highest uptime, lowest cooldown CC mitigation but again, it’s partial. Prot does nothing against Condi Necro or Condi Engi; nor Shatter Mesmer that will rip the Prot; nor Cele Ele/Warrior that has Burning through Prot. There are so many bad matchups in the meta right now that straight up ignore the presence of PI that like Chaith said, Engis (in NA) are now favouring more evade frames and sustain (BP Regen).

As for my opinion; I would much, much rather that PI be deleted and the following occur:

• Super Speed now breaks snares (Immobilise, Cripple, Chill) and Stun.
• Rumble itself is fine; it’s just coupled to a toxic build at the moment. (Triple/Quad Turret)
• Elixir Gun Regenerating Mist cleansed 1 Condition on Self and the AOE Regeneration reduced in duration to 5 seconds.
• Elixir U reworked entirely away from Quickness. Perhaps 2 frames of reflected CC; or a tool for Down State control.
• Utility Goggles just needs better trait support. In particular, Condition cleanse on Gadgets, and a form of sustain similar to Guardian Meditations – a mini-heal on the most situational utilities in the game to help glass builds.
• Elixir C become a Stunbreak

Barring that, PI should be reworked to grant Aegis upon using a Toolbelt skill with 30 seconds ICD; that resets when the Engineer is controlled. In this way, Engineer can stop the CC pain train by blocking the next incoming attack; but only as long as Toolbelt cooldowns remain. Or just keep it simple and make it grant Aegis on being Controlled for 4 seconds every 10 seconds; so multi-hit skills can get through.

Other changes to Kit Engineer:
In general:

• Move Kit Refinement from Adept to Master or GM. Give KR a lower GCD (10-15 seconds) or individual ICDs for procs (20 seconds)
• Give Engineers more control as to when to proc KR. Replacing the “drop kit” when a kit is swapped to on the utility bar with a Chain Skill that instead drops the Kit and procs KR is what is needed for KR to see the light of day again.

Bomb Kit

• Forceful explosives increases BK radii only by 30 units instead.
• Bomb Kit now throws bombs 120 units ahead of the Engineer and the Bombs are larger and colour coded. Bombs thus become another “melee” kit for the Engineer.
• Power Coefficients for Bomb Kit should be shifted around.
  • BK1 should be nerfed to 1.1 Coefficient – 10% more than GK1 with triple hit. ** Fire Bomb should go from 0.2 coefficient over 4 ticks to 0.4 coefficient over 4 ticks. Burning decreased to 1-1.5 seconds.
  • Concussion Bomb should revert to 3 stacks of Confusion. Now deals 0.8 coefficient base; increasing by 0.2 per snare (Chill, Immobilise, Cripple)
  • This makes Power Bombs an actual thing, whilst improving intelligent play of BK instead of spamming 1-5 on point. You now have motivation to snare people within Fire Bomb to get the full Burn; and to save Concussion Bomb to last.

Elixir Gun

• Cleanse 1 condition on self with the last tick of Fumigate. This raises multikit Engineers cleanses per minute by 4-5…but only if they channel Fumigate fully; which is an easily interrupted 2.5 second cast.

Flamethrower

• Smoke Vent should again, cleanse 1 condition on self. Alternatively, bring back the mini-Cleansing Flame on Kit Refinement for Flamethrower instead of that awful Flame Aura that does nothing significant.
• Flame Jet should have half the number of pulses but doubled individual tick strength; i.e. 5 pulses for the same damage. Which is still retaliation bait, by the way; given that FJ still has the lowest coefficient per second of all of Engineer’s autoattacks

Tool Kit

• Nerf Gear Shield’s block frames by 1 second. 3 seconds per 16 when traited is a little much.
• Fix Magnet desync. Especially the one that throws people 1200 units in the air so they die from fall damage. . Barring that, give Magnet a 60 second cooldown and instead make Magnet do that 100% of the time. Gravity OP. (One of these sentences is sarcasm)

Med Kit

• Packaged Stimulants despite what the trait description says, somehow makes the kit worse than baseline. This is because the 0.5 cast isn’t 0.5 cast – it’s closer to almost 1 full second including windup and aftercast. Add travel time to PS and Med Kit’s tiny, tiny hitboxes and it’s simply bad.
• Packaged Stimulants should heal in an area on impact – say; 180 radius.
• Reduce the windup of Med Kit 1-3.
• Barring that, introduce some actual creativity into the Med Kit so skills 1-3 do different things :
  • Skill1 is now an Autoinjector autoattack. Hitting Allies with it heals them for 400 (0.1 Healing Power scaling) per 1 second in melee (130 radius). Hitting Enemies with it steals 400 health per 1 second (0.1 Healing Power Scaling)
  • Skill 2 is now the Drop Bandage skill on 6 seconds cooldown.
  • Skill 3 is a short gap closer (300 units) to allies that heals and cleanses 2 conditions on them, and 1 condition on self. Cannot gap close to enemies. 25 second cooldown. There needs to be more altruistic skills in this game.

Arken’s points about multiple kits

I think it’s interesting that the multiple kits argument gets brought up a lot; especially by people that have little exposure to Engineer. This is not to say that 1 second kit swaps aren’t strong – on the contrary – kit swaps allow Engineer an unprecedented number of animation cancels and allow Engi to proc on-swap Sigils with zero opportunity cost. But I do think that the argument is made in a vacuum without considering the broader ramifications of Engineer balance:

• Engineer skills have very specific utility scattered across all kits. No single kit functions as a weapon on its own right. Each skill should be comboed with a Utility (gadget, Turret) or another kit skill from another kit to get the most out of it. The only “spammy” kit is Grenade Kit.

It’s also important to note that Grenade Kit stands on its own as one of the last, unnerfed kits the Engineer has. How’s that for build diversity? Let us count the reasons:

• Flamethrower was nerfed from giving Stability on swap to Might on hold. Engineers now take Protection Injection and/or Invigorating Speed and a Stunbreak. Flamethrower also lost it’s AOE Pull Backdraft which was apparently OP; yet Mesmer Focus or Guardian GS have lower cooldowns and greater pull distance. Subsequent buffs have added a Detonate chain skill and blast finisher to FT2 but FT to me is already dead.
• Elixir Gun was nerfed from PBE to make its skills no longer count as Elixirs. Ever wonder why EG skills have the Elixir Tag? . EG lost 3 Condition cleanses from CF409. Now Engi is weak to Conditions, because that is apparently a “designed in weakness”. Not to the pre-release designers it wasn’t. The KR nerf to remove double Super Elixir whilst justified (800HPS is a little too strong) also removed condition cleanse without compensation.
• Bomb Kit Smoke Bomb and Glue Bomb were nerfed, whilst Concussion Bomb was inexplicably buffed to 5 stacks. Now people wonder why Engineer runs around “spamming” Bombs off cooldown. Well, Engineers spam because BK isn’t good for much now beyond its condition diversity. At least with old Glue Bomb you could set up bursts with 2 seconds Immobilise. As it is now it’s just as spammy as GK. I also miss the Elixir X Big Ol Bomb wombo combo.
• Med Kit was nerfed – first a stealth nerf to Drop Antidote to cleanse less conditions (tooltip still read condition*s* until September 2014); then again, with the Kit Refinement nerf that took away the damage on swap (all 0.6 power coefficient of it)
• Toolkit was buffed. Pry Bar, Drop Nails, Magnet Pull, heck, even Gear Shield buffed. September 2014 even buffed the autoattack. It must be said, however, that prior to the buffs, only Gear Shield was worth considering. So is that a buff to build diversity? Debatable.
• GK had its autoattack coefficient nerfed by 33% (from 0.4 to 0.33 per grenade) aand that’s about it.

So the point that “all engineers do is spam Grenades” is well made but! It also is disingenuous because it ignores Engineer’s patch history. Engineers spam because their kits have been successively nerfed in many cases.

In fact the only trait that encouraged intelligent swapping – Kit Refinement – was Smiter’s Booned. At least with on swap you didn’t want to swap to a kit to proc a needless KR spell. Now? Swap all day for fun and games.

If anything Grenade Kit should be nerfed in this way, with the other Kits brought up forthwith:

• Grenade Kit now throws only 1 Grenade at full power. Eliminates GK’s capability to balloon on-crit and on-hit procs out of control due to triple hits. Grenade Barrage now throws 6 stronger grenades. Traited with Grenadier, Barrage also Cripples. Grenades still a 180 radius explosive, but now can be traited up to 210 radius with Forceful Explosives.
• Steel Packed Powder now procs 3 stacks of Vulnerability, but only for BK 1 and GK1. Normalises BK1 and GK1’s Vuln stacking capability but eliminates auto-covered conditions on the rest of the kits. SPP now stacks Vulnerability up to 6 on Grenade Barrage and Bomb Kit Big Ol’ Bomb.

This ends the Grenade Kit specific changes.

More changes – if required

Honestly IP is the only thing that’s making Engineer silly right now. However, the OP did outline wanting to eliminate all of Engi’s toxic mechanics, so here’s more. It must be said, however, that these nerfs should apply to all classes. The power level in this game has never been higher; and the skill floor of this game has never been lower; yet build diversity for many professions have not diverged in any significant way since 2013. When Allie Murdock promised to shake up the meta in 2014 post December Patch; what she really meant was that people would use new sigils and runes instead; and some old builds like D/D ele or LB ranger would re-appear.

So! On to “difficult to counter” mechanics of the Engineer. Not necessarily toxic, but difficult to counterplay.

• Arken brought up how hard Healing Turret was to interrupt. Granted, this is from a Guardian perspective where most interrupts are 3/4 cast or higher; whilst Engineer HT is a 1/2 cast. MoD Mesmer or even Shatter Mesmer, Thief, Mace Warrior, Ele running anything but Staff; Necro all have pretty good ways to Interrupt the HT heal.

• It’s of note that the placement is 1/2 cast, the Overcharge is 0 cast but does have active interruptible frames (Don’t ask me how that works; just know that Cleansing Burst is interruptible even though it’s off GCD)
• The placement of HT is harder to interrupt than the Overcharge. Often it’s my OC of HT that’s interrupted than the placement, which is bizzare; yet strangely okay. Here’s why:
  • The Overcharge of HT is what cleanses, provides the water field, and provides Regeneration. So getting that Interrupted as opposed to a 2.5k heal is arguably more devastating.
  • That said, 1/2 cast of any spell in this game is problematic if it’s not a skillshot. This is because unless you’re playing from North America, your ping is likely to be 150-200+ MS. Average human reaction time is ~200-250MS; with people that have better reflexes having somewhat less than 200MS. This means that the average reaction time + latency makes any halfcast extremely difficult to interrupt.

• A potential “fix” – if even a problem exists – is to increase the placement time to 3/4 cast. But I would argue that there are heals that are far, far more toxic in this game; like:
• Ele Signet of Restoration with stow-cancelled Lightning Whip. Also Ele couples that with extremely high HPS from Regeneration, Water Healing Mist, Water 3, and healing weapon skills in Water. Super strong.
• Warrior Healing Signet (arguably less problematic now with the adrenaline nerfs reducing Warrior’s output but no less passive for that – yet it outcompetes active skills requiring active use (Mending, Surge). Mind boggling.)
• Thief Withdraw. Zero cast with Evade Frames? Sign me up.
• Guardian Shelter. Impossible to interrupt unless using unblockables; but balanced by its long cast time. Makes some guardian matchups extremely binary.

In short, Healing Turret could be nerfed, but I don’t think it’s that problematic right now. Half-casts in this game are generally overpowered. Expect Signet Condi ele to become the new “impossible to counterplay their cast times” with the buff. Half cast zero travel time Pin Down on Earth Signet? Sign me up.

Specific changes to toxic mechanics

I think at this point it should be acknowledged that Engineer as a whole is carried by and by extension tarnished by Incendiary Powder. It’s also not a new thing like IP was somehow a new trait or a new mechanic.

It’s been debated since late 2012, in fact . The conclusion of that was that nerfing IP would also require extensive rejiggering (yes this is a word) of Engineer autoattacks; specifically Pistol 1, Rifle 1 and FT1.

I would also say that prior to the April Sigil/Rune patch, IP was “balanced” – if you could call undodgeable, unblockable crit procs “balanced”. There were no ridiculous Might stacks to push burning up to ~700 DPS; nor was there Balthazar runes to push Burning to 7 seconds; nor indeed, could Engineer run double swap sigils (instead Engi ran the much more balanced Corruption sigil or forewent Energy for damage over survivability). Now the opportunity cost for Engineer builds has decreased – more evade frames, more damage; less bad matchups – so I ask again, is Engi OP? Or Runes and Sigils?

The easiest nerf to Engi would be a nerf to Strength, Hoelbrak, Balthazar runes, and Battle, Energy, Geomancy Sigils. In this climate of double swap sigils, the power level has gone up, but the traits and skills themselves are not in anyway diminished. So it would be easier to nerf the outliers than change the trait.

However! This does not mean that IP is not terrible design. In fact it’s horrible, lazy, despicable design that carries Engineers harder than individual skills, but Engineers run it because without IP Engineers have no pressure. As I mentioned before, even eating an entire GK spell reel – all grenades to the face – in a condi build – is ~ 500 condition based DPS. Only when you add IP to the mix does Engi become scary. (1100-1200 condition based DPS; the variability being Sharpshooter/Shrapnel procs or Pistol1 or EG1)

A nerf to crit procs like IP – and this is a design template that could be applied to all crit-procs could be like this:

• Incendiary Powder – Critical hits grant you an Incendiary Powder charge. Charges last for 5 seconds and stack up to 2. When you use a toolbelt skill, inflict Burning on your next attack for 2 seconds per stack of Incendiary Powder. You cannot build up more than 1 charge per second. ICD 10-15 seconds. (debatable)
  • This mechanic decouples Critical hits from the actual proc; thus ensuring that Blocking, dodging, Aegis, heck, even side-stepping being hit by the Engineer means that Engi cannot build up his stacks.
  • Tying it to next attack again, means that IP can now be blocked, dodged, etc. If anything, the TB requirement makes IP even weaker and it could even be Adept tier after this.
  • For telegraph reasons, make the IP empowered skill have a fiery trail like the Predator’s Grenades and Rifle autoattacks; just with a different colour and particle effect. The important thing is fire; and telegraphing that Fire = Bad

A charge mechanic also decouples IP from being strongly influenced by +Condition duration mechanics. This is an extremely important “future-proofing” of the trait against further, future power creep.

• Burning damage is all about hitting +Condition Duration breakpoints; because more ticks hit harder than trying to scale up the power of individual ticks as Burning does not scale with intensity.
• As IP got “nerfed” it became easier and easier to hit % +Condition Duration breakpoints.
  • With 2 seconds per 3 seconds, 50% was required to get full burning uptime; yet required a high Precision investment as well. Thus Teldo’s build would also put 20 points in Firearms, plus Rabid, plus Sigil of Accuracy.
  • With 2 seconds per 5 seconds, again, 50% and more was required to get an extra tick out of IP. In my opinion, IP could have been left like this at this point because it’s extremely difficult to hit extra breakpoints beyond 3 seconds outside of WvW’s obscene food bonuses
  • The “nerf” of IP to 4 seconds per 10 seconds again made hitting extra ticks of Burning super easy. 25% (easily achievable with 30 explosives) was easily reached for 5 seconds; IP may as well have read – inflict burning for 5 seconds on Crit. Balthazar runes let people hit 75% – 7.5 seconds – that’s 3 extra ticks; or a bonus 1800-2100 damage over time (!!!).
  • With Charges individually locked to 2 seconds, balancing becomes a lot more granular. You now must hit the 50% breakpoint, just like 2013 Engineers did, to get a bonus 2 ticks out of IP; yet IP’s growth beyond those 2 extra ticks is impossible barring WvW Food – but is that an IP problem, or a WvW Food problem?

Having read through the thread there is a lot of hyperbole and unconstructive hostility that really doesn’t make the discussion any better. I might just make a new thread at this point; but here’s my 2 cents.

For those that will TL;DR: yes, engi has toxic mechanics, but it is not alone. Specific toxic mechanics need to go; but if Engi was middle-tier before the rune and sigil changes; is it Engi that is OP? Or the April Sigil/Rune changes?

It’s a travesty if the thread needs to take 3 pages before even a single build is posted. Below are the current “meta” builds for Engineer (disclaimer: some variations may exist between NA and EU; and there’s more than 1 good choice for certain traits/sigils/runes in certain slots)

NA Cele Engi: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpErlcx+KseNCbBNqxI6N2xq85IEgkC-TJxHwADeAAa2fAwFAoYZAA

EU Cele Engi: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpErlcxdLseNCbBNyx0GRuxq85IEgkC-TJxHwADeAAa2fAwFAoYZAA

NA Rabid Engi: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqalUUpErlcx+KseNCbBNyx0GRuxq85DEgkC-TJhHwAU2fAwJAAZZgAPAAA

EU Rabid Engi: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpEr9ZxdLseRCbBNuxAGR2xq85GEgkC-TJhHwAU2fAwJAAZZgAPAAA

Obviously variations exist but these are some of the builds I’ve observed being played.

Keystone utilities of note:

• Toolkit with its 3 second mobile block frames and Pry Bar’s strong damage and strong Confusion.
• Backpack regenerator being favoured for its on-point sustain for both Cele and Rabid builds that intend to fight on node and thus will take a lot of ancillary damage

Traits of note:

• Prot Injection and/or Invigorating Speed – Evade frames or defensive procs on a class historically weak to stunlock
• Incendiary Powder – universal to Cele and Rabid Engi; although a few run Enhanced Performance; then Shrapnel instead.
• Grenadier, Grenadier, Grenadier (and the associated Steel packed Powder minor for auto-covered condis)
• Speedy Kits – du jour on Engineer as the mobility is appreciated without ports or low CD leaps.

Keystone Runes of note:

• Balthazar Runes being favoured for Rabid Engi. I’ve also seen Krait Runes run in EU especially with Geomancy. It’s a pretty strong Bleed stack combo.
• Strength Rune being run by both NA and EU for Cele Engi; but I’ve noticed that NA also runs Hoelbrak and Leg Mods (4 in Tools) now for the decreased snare duration in Cele Engineer; especially Chaith, Vee Wee and others.

Keystone Sigils of note:

• Battle, Energy. The typical apex predator on-swap combo.
• EU also might run Battle, Doom or Geomancy, especially in Rabid builds.

I think it’s important to note several things that people need to acknowledge before decrying Engineer as a zero-skill class:

• Spamming Grenades on point is definitely the most toxic mechanic of Engineers. But is this a problem of Grenades; or a problem of conquest, where most AOE skills eclipse the tiny size of points?
• Incendiary Powder is one of the strongest crit-procs in the game. It’s been nerfed 3 times: from 33% for 2 sec every 3 seconds, to 2 seconds every 5 seconds, to 4 seconds every 10 seconds and moving Napalm Specialist to Grandmaster. And yet without it, Engineer doesn’t have the pressure from the bleed stacking capability of Necro (since Pistol 1 nerf of PBE) nor the “burst” condition application of Condi Warrior or Condi Ranger with sharpening stone.
• GK Spam has ludicrous condition diversity. Bleed, Poison, Blind, Chill. IP adds Burning, SPP adds Vulnerability. But consider the actual damage of GK’s condis without those traits: 3 stacks of Bleed (~300 DPS), Blind (no damage), Chill (no damage, but is a powerful snare), Poison (~140-200 DPS).
  • In no way is eating an entire Grenade Kit’s spell reel going to be dangerous. Except! if you then get an IP proc (~600-650 DPS). So is this a GK problem, or an IP problem?

If you actually played Warhammer Online, then you’ll recognise that Turrets in WO were not in fact, area control but as part of a DPS spike. Turrets were dropped in the enemy’s face, then CC from other skills were used to keep them there for more shots.

In GW2, the opposite is true; turrets being CC machines with APT and Thumper, Rocket or Net Turret having repeatable control whilst the Engineer himself runs through the Rifle mainhand skills. Not to discount the damage of Rocket Turret, of course – that thing does a lot of damage – but I would say that Engineers in GW2 have in fact made full Turret Engineers a better “bulwark, trapper, and gauntlet creator” than WO.

Unfortunately, fighting against a Turret Engineer 1v1 is the epitome of anti-fun without long range cleave or Stability.

The problem with Turrets is that they have been stuck in this limbo between long term summons (as in MM necro) and disposable boosts (as in Mesmer). The current trait design favours the long-term summon; whilst the actual turret skills (Detonate, Turret Toolbelts, Overcharges) favour disposable boosts.

Turrets need a lot of work to improve their counterplay and active play. I strongly believe in making:

• Rocket Turret simply having no autoattack at all and instead a GTAOE skill that launches the rocket with a cooldown. This might increase the skill floor somewhat. The latest change to add auto-tracking to Rocket Turret OC really didn’t make the spec any more to fight against.
• Thumper Turret needs a better telegraph to its AOE launch. Perhaps recycling the Cave Troll AOE Knockdown windup ground effect would help; or the Elementalist Churning Earth Windup. It could autoattack for all I care; the Launch is what is problematic because it’s very difficult to distinguish Overcharged Turrets in the maelstrom of particle effects.
• Net Turret can contribute to the stunlock combo which makes builds running it a potent 1v1 spec; yet utterly useless in 1vX or even 2vX. A way to improve its 1vX+ prospects is to take away its autoattack, again, to make it a skillshot like another Rifle 2. Only this time, the Immobilising projectile pierces. There should be no Stun component because Immob+Stun is impossible to fight against in all but bunker builds.
• Rifle Turret and Flame Turret aren’t used that often in Turret bunker builds, and their damage is fine. To keep up the active play requirement, simply remove the autoattack and replace it with their OC skills with a cooldown. Flame Turret’s attack skill in this context would generate the smoke field and fire the flame burst.

Afterwards, Traits should be reworked to remove the passive survival – they’re problematic because they’ll only ever be too strong or too weak – and concentrate on active survival:

• For example, making Fortified Turrets repeat the reflect bubble with every turret attack skill but with lower uptime (2 seconds per attack skill, for example).
• Making a new GM that teleports Turrets and heals them to the Engineer’s current location (replaces Detonation chainskill) whilst still generating a blast effect. As a caveat, Turret Cooldowns could be increased by 10-20% to make them less abusable with APT.

The traits Autotool Installation and Metal Plating should be replaced with:

• Detonating a Turret repairs your other Turrets
• Using a Turret’s attack skill reduces the attack skill cooldowns of your other Turrets by 5% (up to 20%)

Now you have a build that requires a lot of active play and pet management; whilst having inherent opportunity costs:

• Fortified Turrets vs the new teleporting GM – teamfight utility vs dueling longevity
• Disposable turrets vs being able to trait for long term summons that require more management
• Experimental Turrets should be reworked to proc their boons only on attack skill activation.

There should also be some thought paid to the potential of Deployable Turrets with the reworked design. It might actually pay to take the trait now with the new GM.

As a final addition, mobility can be introduced to the Turret Engineer by adding a Teleportal Turret (not actually a Turret but part of the Turret skill type) – a Shadow Trap like utility (but reusable) with a long (40+ seconds) Cooldown and a caveat (both ends can only be placed within 900 units of each other). The attack skill is instead replaced with a Teleportal Exit chain skill that chains into “use Teleportal” with a 20 second CD. Comboing it with Deployable Turrets now allows Engineer to make the same port/shadowstep plays with a twist – yet the counterplay is there as only 1 of 2 exits needs to be destroyed to remove that from the Engineer.

coglin.1867:

snip
The second you would say something like this, you lose most credibility with reasonable players. Any time you are going to insult part of the community for using the traits they want, you alienate yourself from them in any future discussion. The fact that you would add this to any post, simply to make a personal jab at another poster for having a differing opinion.

The trait is not a bad one at all. It literally buffs all 3 of the professional oriented elites.

I find it difficult to engage when people respond only to tone. See below attachment. I also find it intellectually dishonest that you quoted me out of context (in what way other than as a straw man could you construe my argument against changing Elite Supplies as an ad hominem against Ceimash?)

It’s also disingenuous to say that it buffs “all 3 of our profession’s elites” when Elite skills by definition can only ever be taken singly.

MonMalthias.4763:

snip It also just so happens to be an OP trait in the right setup in…you guessed it, Turret builds; turning Supply Crate into an “I win” button for any duel or even 1v2; even if the stun itself is missed. It’s a terrible situation all around, but replacing it isn’t the answer.

I did say in that post; how and why it could be potentially OP.

To begin, let’s step through why, in my opinion it is a bad trait.

• It competes directly with Power Shoes in the same slot, which is one of the prime reasons one goes into Inventions – to mitigate the loss of mobility when running without Speedy Kits.

• It introduces potential balance issues by directly augmenting our strongest skill (and arguably the strongest Elite Skill across professions: Supply Crate).
  • Remember when Grenades took a 33% Power coefficient hit to “compensate” the fact that Engineers could now have Sigil effects applied to Kits?
  • How about when Grenadier was nerfed because of 100nades, then HGH?
  • Let’s look a little more recently, at Poison Grenade’s individual tick durations being reduced due to triple-stacking Poison fields.
  • Or when Incendiary Powder was nerfed – twice – when Teldo popularised the Rabid IP Engineer?
  • The point is that augmenting traits like Grenadier, like Incendiary Powder – and also with Elite Supplies – is that the mere presence of these traits puts a hard cap on the baseline capabilities of a skill. Look at untraited Grenades now after all the changes and try playing them against a human player or heck, try running without Grenadier/Steel Packed Powder in PvE dungeons in a speed clear group and see where that gets you.

The point is that augmentation poses problems from both a balance standpoint and a design standpoint.

But let’s set all that design talk aside and talk specifically, what the problems of Elite supplies entail:

• The baseline Supply crate, properly timed and landed, is already a duel – or teamfight – turner. With Elite Supplies, you get:
  • 1 extra Rifle Turret
  • 3 extra Bandages
  • That’s…pretty desultory. For a Turret build (bunker or Turret death decapper), one would rather take Autotool Installation (turret bunker) or Power Shoes (Turret Death decapper, because one needs mobility to push far point)

• The baseline Elixir X, properly used, is situationally powerful in a Power Build to get an extreme boost to one’s CC capabilities with Rampage or Tornado. Also, Big Ol’ Bomb + Tornado = fun ; although that’s getting nerfed.
  • With Elite Supplies, you get extra duration on transform that does not stack with Potent Elixirs of Alchemy. Now, in an Elixir Build that runs Elixir X, one could get CDR from Fast Acting Elixirs – in Alchemy Adept Major. But doing so means taking out 10-20 points worth of Offensive traits; so instead, Elixir Builds with Elixir X just run without Elite Supplies to instead focus on the elixirs with better uptime; i.e. the rest of the utility skills.

• The baseline Mortar is…problematic. As a controllable “Turret”, Mortar:
  • Cannot crit
  • Attacks have a Global CD (!!!)
  • Have longer flight time of projectiles than Grenades
  • Forces immobility where Grenades do not; yet the Mortar itself is supremely fragile for a 2 minute cooldown.
  • Abandoning the Mortar loses you the Stability; it is not reapplied.

• Adding 20% range and 20% CDR doesn’t even begin to address these issues. Heck, Mortar used to have a shorter range than Grenadier Grenades with all of the above caveats; which says something as to its viability.

Silinsar.6298:

snip
And now back to the point I actually wanted to make:
I think minor adept traits should mostly belong to the first category. Effects of the second one should mostly be found in major traits or at least at master/grandmaster level.
Also, minors in general should have effects that will more or less help you in any fight. They shouldn’t be something that doesn’t help you at all when you’re fighting build xy and they shouldn’t result into disadvantages (hello last refuge…). Taking a look at the traits ingame they’re mostly (not close to 100% though) distributed/designed that way.

So that’s why I’m not too fond of your initial idea being implemented as minor adept trait. It’s a CD, situational and potentially very powerful.

I think there’s been a little misreading here; I was intending Stabilised Armour to still be an Adept Major trait to avoid CC locks instead of the passive CC damage mitigation as it is now.

When stacking up Stabilised Armour against Protection Injection its clear that Prot Injection has a a lot less opportunity cost; protecting against damage even when triggered against Dazes or setup skills like Pushes. Instead of that crucial 2-3 seconds of Stun or KD, Prot Injection also works beyond the Stun frames; so it’s better in builds that pack a Stunbreaker; whereas Stabilised Armour is probably better in no- or long-CD Stunbreak builds.

My aim of redesigning Stabilised Armour to be a predictive CC mitigator was intended to make even no-stunbreak builds have a chance to outplay instead of out-passive stunlocks. I’m not sure if you’ve played fighting games or not, but certain moves in games like Street Fighter and others – EX Armour moves basically allow a very short window for players to force their attack through incoming attacks without being interrupted. The same idea applies here, providing a short window where the next incoming CC is instead “Armoured through” .

Imagine seeing an incoming Earthshaker, for example; having no Dodges left, and popping Stabilised Armour. You’d still be stunned and take the Earthshaker damage, however, that Hammer Warrior cannot then chain into Backbreaker and chain CC you to death; leaving you with a window of opportunity to pop a Stunbreak and apply some counterpressure of your own. The same thing applies for Necro Fear chains or whatever other CC lock is possible.

The whole design is intended to buff very specifically, Engineers with single, long CD stunbreakers without Stability (Slick Shoes Super Speed, Utility Goggles, Elixir U, Elixir Gun Regenerating Mist); in a high CC environment; without resorting to true CC immunity.

Another reformulation without resorting to such clunkiness could be:

• Gain -33% incoming CC duration for 2 seconds for the next incoming Control effect when you use a Toolbelt skill. Stacks in intensity up to 3 times.
  • Again, it’s a predictive “stunbreak”. However, in this context the trait then specifically buffs Static Discharge builds; which is (probably) both good and bad.

Eh, I was just spitballing.

Regardless, Necro really does need something outside of Staff or (next Tuesday) Dagger for cleave (It’s not even a real 3 target cleave!). Tying something to a DS skill like TS or DP makes it relatively agnostic of builds.

The design goal for Necro cleave should ultimately be:

• Moving Necro away from single target focus (and single target survivability, since DS doesn’t scale too well) although a Necro should be able to build exclusively for the 1v1. That’s called build diversity.
• Making DS less anti-synergistic with Siphoning mechanics. I understand its removal was necessary in BWE due to the horrific endless DS siphon tank, but to not re-explore the mechanic at all? In 2 years of the game’s life? That’s a little too conservative.

A few points:

they definitely need more cleanses with the removal of the free heal from kit refinement it’s pretty much absolutely necessary to get 3 points into elixirs for any build anymore.

• All builds (not classes!) should have their weaknesses, and Triple or Quad turret Engineer should definitely have one, considering that Turrets themselves are immune to Conditions. Also, the statement that people need Transmute to be viable is hyperbolic.

tigirius.9014:

I’ve spoke at length about how turrets are nerfed to oblivion and uselessness because for some reason someone over there actually thinks it’s an advantage. I’ve compared the turrets to traps on ranger and certain kinds of summons from sigils and from the necro pet builds. our cooldowns do not correctly reflect the usefulness (or lack thereof) of these skills and are not on par with those similar skills in other classes.

• First off, if you’ve actually been playing the game and following the updates, Turrets have not been nerfed. In fact, exactly the opposite. Look a few posts above on my retrospective on Turrets since late 2012 and you will see that Turrets are pretty kitten strong right now; especially after the April 2014 patch that not only buffed Turret Nest engineers (Experimental Turrets) but also Turret Death engineers (Fortified Turrets)

• In Fact if you’ve played a round of Hotjoin or Soloqueue then you’ve most likely seen a Triple or Quad Turret Engi being extremely annoying at Far point on the enemy team, or pushing to Home point and trying to nest up there. Without a Staff Ele or Grenade Engineer, they are extremely difficult to shift.

tigirius.9014:

The cooldowns thing for example is entirely too long when we look at comparable AOE skills in other classes having a 6-8second cooldown. When I pickup my thumper turret I expect it to have a short cooldown like this because A: it wasn’t destroyed and B: it was turned off by me. Meanwhile my ranger can popout fire trap after fire trap with better dps yet the skills cooldown on that without any traits to enhance them is exceedingly low.

• With regards to cooldowns, 10 seconds were taken off Thumper Turret (from 60) and Rocket Turret; whilst Rifle Turret was 30 seconds CD at launch. If you think our cooldowns for Turrets are long, try Necro MM where the average cooldown is 30+ seconds – similar to Turret Engi

• Why are you comparing Traps to Turrets? What kind of non-sequitur is this when the closest equivalent is clearly Ranger Spirits?

tigirius.9014:

Just like companies have been doing to healers for years now, Engineers are punished for their diversity, it’s not right and they need to have a serious sitdown hashout to make the Engineer skills on part with other classes in this manner, we shouldn’t have to pay for being different.

• Are you even playing the same game? Engineer has roles in all 3 arenas of the game right now:
  • In PvE, 30 30 0 0 10 fulfils the role of Vulnerability stacking. Engineer has also been tested (and confirmed) by the likes of Guanglai Kangyi and Nike of DnT to be one of the highest DPS outputs in game, second only to Lightning Hammer ultra-glass Ele, and Engineer running Bomb/Nade has less tradeoffs.
  • In WvW, Engineers are obnoxious roamers, especially with Perplexity Rune and Dire. With the inflated damage stats of WvW, even Power Engineers are strong in roaming, popping insane burst damage enough to body Soldier’s Ascended Warriors. In the zerg, Grenades are king condition applicators, whilst BK Engineer stacking some Toughness gear and supported by Stability can join the hammertrain with the rest of Warrior and Guardian
  • In PvP, both Condi (Rabid Grenade/TK or BK) or hybrid (Celestial Rifle TK/GK) are supremely viable builds and featured eminently both in the Tournament of Legends recently, and as a regular fixture for many teams in the Mistpedia league in both NA and EU.

Really the only thing missing for Engineers right now is a truly viable Gadget build, and to raise the skill floor and skill ceiling of Turret builds. That’s it. For everything else, only the Traits need addressing, but that’s the same across all classes.

tigirius.9014:

Mines are the same problem, they scatter all over the place there is no rhyme or reason, and then their trigger zones are so tiny mobs dance all over them often. It’s time for a change folks.

What do Mines have to do in a Turret Thread? If anything? At all?

Post some sensible Turret suggestions, or leave feedback on mine or anybody else’s suggestions, or take your hyperbole elsewhere.

Silinsar.6298:

MonMalthias.4763:

Stabilised Armour stuff
snip

First impression: Interesting but too specific and a bit clunky. Minors, especially adept ones are better off with little but more generally useful effects. It seems more like a possible counterpick for fighting chain-CC’ers.

My suggestion for Stabilized Armor as 5/1pt minor: +160 toughness while not moving.

I think that with the universal failure that was Scope providing bonus precision while not moving should have been enough of a lesson to Anet to not emphasise Immobility in an action MMO.

If we must get into unreadable passives, I’d be happy with:

Stabilised Armour

• Gain 50 Toughness for every Toolbelt Skill on cooldown. (Detonate Turret does not count as a Toolbelt skill on cooldown)

Now I’m not really happy with unreadable passives like this, but builds like Gadget and Turret Engi are quite a bit more dependant on their Toolbelts than Kit Engineers, so this could be the way to go for an Adept Major, or Minor.

But I do think that there needs to be a lot more predictive play in this game to replace all these 25% HP passives or literally just randomly “On Hit” passives that just bloat the combat with unreadable procs.

Having, say, Transmute proc a 2 second “next incoming Condition converted to Boon” on Heal or Toolbelt skill, with the Engineer having this oily sheen when it procs would go a long way towards making the game a lot more readable and predictable. I intended the same thing with Stabilised Armour as well; with the visual cue being perhaps a blocky glow around the Engineer’s legs that simulates a pillar in shape – to call upon the Stability boon; yet somehow different, whilst warning opponents of impending Stability.

Its a lot better than stunning an Engi only to notice you are dealing practically no damage to him, no visual cues aside from Protection popping up from Prot Injection. And again, it’s intended to address stunlock combos like Necro Fear chaining or Warrior Hammertime or (impending) Mesmer triple Mantra of Distraction in AOE.

It’s clunky, to be sure. Perhaps a better way would simply to make it give the unique buff, then apply Stability for 2 and prevent the CC; which essentially turns Stabilised Armour into a predictive stunbreak.

Silinsar.6298:

MonMalthias.4763:

Cloaking Device

• Gain Stealth when you attempt to Stomp a foe, or Resurrect an ally for 3 seconds.
  • Not sure about an ICD for this one. As it is, however, it already kind of treads on Thief’s toes; but Thief has far more tools to enter Stealth for Stomping anyway.

Should stealth (only) the ally when you are ressing and stealth yourself when stomping. Definately needs an ICD.

Fair enough. Somewhere in the realm of 20-30 seconds would be good. Given that the original Cloaking Device is 25 seconds ICD anyway, may as well go with that. The point is to have a way for Gadget Engi that typically lacks Invulns or Stealth to be able to secure a res/stomp without being bodied by cleave (To be technical, Stealth doesn’t protect from Cleave, but it’s a lot better than nothing at all). There’s a reason why even Gadget builds still run 1 kit or Elixir S in any PvP aspect of the game. This would go a long way towards helping.

Silinsar.6298:

snip
It isn’t like you don’t pick up other things too with these 50 points. Imo Power Shoes isn’t in a bad spot, it’s just that Speedy Kits is more available and in a more popular traitline. Also, there are barely builds without kits so kitswapping is a requirement that is easily fulfilled.
Power Shoes is not in need of change. It’s a plain unconditional unremoveable speed increase that does it’s job.

That’s quite true. As a class we are pretty spoiled for permaswiftness; whilst other classes like Necro or Guardian don’t even get a traiting option; they have to run Runes of Speed or Traveller. Fair enough.

MonMalthias.4763:

I think what should happen for Adept Tier (in my opinion at least is):
Move Energised Armour to the 5 point trait, to replace Low Health Response system. 15 Inventions already doubles down on the 25% HP reset heal and this functionality is redundant considering how many sources of Regen we can get through our utility skills anyway

Silinsar.6298:

Agreed. Any ideas what to do with the major LHRS then?

LHRS is problematic in that it’s kind of just there. Unlike other classes like Mesmer and Metaphysical Regeneration ; there’s little synergy further down the line (Illusionary Membrane or PU) I think that with Alchemy using Boons for Survival as its theme, so too should Inventions use Toolbelt skills and the Toolbelt mechanic for its survival. It also ties in very nicely with adding utility to Toolbelt skills for Turrets and Gadgets or Elixirs ; whilst Kits have traditionally had longer cooldown TB skills or are less dependant upon them.

To that end, there should be a few design goals set for LHRS:

• It should be leveraging the Toolbelt system
• It should be “good enough” for an Adept trait to justify taking over other powerful proposed effects like Stabilised Armour or Protective Shield; yet “weak enough” to prevent doubling down causing unbalancing synergies later on down the line.

One of the major things that are missing from Inventions as yet is Gadget traits. Now, I’ve proposed Counteragent Autoinjectors earlier on in the thread that counters condis across all Toolbelt skills, so that’s out of the question. Gadget builds right now lack sustain; and this is mirrored across practically every Gadget; even the A.E.D heal that promotes spike healing over sustain.

So for Gadgets, I believe that LHRS could tie into that line of utilities, and address sustain. How about:

Low Health Response System

• Activating Gadgets heals you a small amount. The amount healed increases with decreasing health:
• 75% + HP: 100 base, 0.2 Healing Power scaling (300 HP per activation at 1000 Healing Power)
• 50% – 75% HP: 200 base, 0.2 Healing Power scaling (400 HP per activation at 1000 Healing Power)
• 25% – 50% HP: 300 base, 0.2 Healing Power Scaling (500 HP per activation at 1000 Healing Power)
• 25% and below HP: 400 base, 0.6 Healing Power scaling (1000 HP per activation at 1000 Healing Power)

Obviously the brackets and scaling could do with some work but again, the trait is intended for sustain over spike healing as it is for a Med Guardian or a Shout Warrior. It might even be better to simply have a 50% plus bracket and 50% and below bracket for simplicity of tooltips. Regardless, the Healing should be on the level of Regeneration; but instead scaled upwards as Health decreases. The last bracket being such a huge increase in healing (double vs the third bracket) is intended to really emphasise its importance at low health than it is at high health.

insanemaniac.2456:

power shoes is good enough to keep as it is.

To be honest, Engineer really lacks good traits in the Adept tier of Inventions. It’s hard to justify putting points into the otherwise “okay” Inventions line for the Master Tier because the general non-turret traits outside of Power Shoes and Reinforced Shield just aren’t that good.

Moving Power Shoes to Adept basically reduces the opportunity cost of not going Speedy Kits. Right now you can run Power Shoes/Adrenal Implant for almost equivalent functionality as Speedy Kits/Invigorating Speed; yet one costs 20 points, the other costs 50 (!!!). Reducing some of that disparity; even if only by 10 points would help diversify builds.

I think what should happen for Adept Tier (in my opinion at least is):
Move Energised Armour to the 5 point trait, to replace Low Health Response system. 15 Inventions already doubles down on the 25% HP reset heal and this functionality is redundant considering how many sources of Regen we can get through our utility skills anyway

Stabilised Armour needs a different mechanic to differentiate it from Protection Injection; and also to prevent “doubling down”. -53% damage on stuns is kind of broken, if hilarious

• Honestly it’d be good for Engineers to actually get some Stability and use the name of the trait. I was thinking about Predictive trait mechanics the other day and here’s something I’ve been spitballing:

Stabilised Armour

• Gain a unique buff – Stabilised Armour – for 2 seconds after using a Toolbelt Skill. If you are struck by a hard CC effect during this time, gain Stability for 2 seconds. (ICD 30 seconds). Does not block the initial CC effect.
  • The goal of this trait is to essentially prevent stunlock combos for Engineer. However, the initial CC isn’t blocked, so if you don’t stunbreak, you’re still liable for big damage.
  • One could make it more powerful by simply making Toolbelt skills stunbreak every 40 seconds; which is more reactive than predictive. It kind of invalidates Regenerating Mist and Rumble though; and at Adept this kind of thing is quite strong; whereas a predictive trait can be counterplayed by enemies simply with-holding their Ckittenil the telegraph ends; just like Block frames are dealt with now.

Cloaking Device used to be taken when people were all running Pistol/X due to Rifle having horrid aftercast on Jump Shot and Blunderbuss having awful tracking. Now that Rifle is fixed, no-one takes it anymore. Instead of having a passive mechanic there should be something better.

• Engineer outside of Elixir S has a really hard time getting secure stomps or secure resses. Therefore:

Cloaking Device

• Gain Stealth when you attempt to Stomp a foe, or Resurrect an ally for 3 seconds.
  • Not sure about an ICD for this one. As it is, however, it already kind of treads on Thief’s toes; but Thief has far more tools to enter Stealth for Stomping anyway.

Protective Shield again, doubles down on all these passive defensive traits all at adept Tier. There needs to be some differentiation, somewhere instead of all these passive defensive procs.

• How about something offensive? Something that uses the offhand shield for more offense, just as Shimmering Defense for Guardian allows it to Burn enemies while blocking, or for Warrior, to deflect missiles.

Discombobulating Shield

• Gaining Aegis, or Blocking grants Retaliation for 3 seconds. Interrupting foes with a Shield skill strikes them with a bolt of lightning (0.5 coefficient of Power) and causes 2 stacks of Confusion for 3 seconds.
  • At Adept Tier, this would make offhand shield into a powerful offensive tool rather than being taken for its Blast finisher. If new weapons come online, and mainhand shield happens to be one of them, this trait just got atrociously strong.

Explosive descent is meh. It’s “okay” in WvW when you could 100nades people from jumping off cliffs; but fall damage traits are really, really bad.

• Honestly, since every class’s fall damage traits are terrible, I won’t suggest anything.

I think a useful trait; perhaps in the vein of Volatile Inventions would be something like Path of Exile’s Concentrated Effect where instead of this 240 radius traited kiting cleave, BK was instead transformed into a true “melee” weapon in its own right. (Skill Coefficients from Casia) :

Shaped Charges

• Your Bomb Kit attacks now damage foes in an arc, but are stronger. In addition, you now roll out Bomb attacks that explode upon contacting a target.
• BK 1,2,3,4,5 now affect foes in a 120 degree arc
  • BK1 is still 1.25 coefficient, which seems like an overall nerf due to smaller area but:
  • BK2 now pulses for 0.5 coefficient per second (seems low, but keep in mind the Burning)
  • BK3 now deals 1.0 coefficient and cleanses up to 4 Conditions on a foe. Now deals _bonus 0.25 coefficient per condition cleansed. (Reaping!) Confusion left intact but duration shortened to 3 seconds.
  • BK4 unchanged; retains its circular smoke field
  • BK5 now immobilises in a 120 degree arc for 2 seconds on detonation and pulses Cripple for 1 second per second. The glue itself rips 1 boon every 3 seconds (i.e. 1 on detonation, 1 on last pulse)

What this does is turn BK into a strong melee kit that still relies on Skill Shots, as actually hitting an enemy with the rolling bomb is now important; just as it is with Grenade Kit. I envision the casting animation to be like a nice sedate round of lawn bowls, with more explosions.

Right now I feel that BK is a somewhat spammy, hard to counterplay weapon kit, because a lot of its surprise factor comes from the fact that bombs are dropped at the Engineer’s feet, with little tell as to which Bomb it is. They’re not even colour coded. At most, Fire Bomb and Smoke Bomb have different smoke effects, but Concussion bomb, arguably the strongest bomb out of the kit in a Condi build, looks almost the same as the autoattack.

BK is also pretty brain-dead in PvE as its strong autoattack allows Engineer to just sit and cleave targets (when not Grenade autoattacking for Vulnerability uptime). Loading practically all of the Power coefficients into the autoattack is also pretty terrible design because it makes BK a lot harder to justify in anything bar a condition build; thus limiting build diversity.

This kind of trait also flips the Bomb Kit base design on its head, turning it from an area denial kiting condi focused weapon to a melee weapon that scales off of power.

Then again, this kind of Explosives focus makes it more of a trait in that trait line than Inventions; but I really do feel that BK needs to be better not only for Power builds overall, but have better counterplay; and supersede Grenade kit where it matters: Melee Range

Hm, it’s certainly an interesting concept, but again, it doesn’t really reward Engi with better followup damage; it just buffs Engi where Engi is already strong, which is CC “setup” skills. It just feels redundant to me, is all.

On the other hand, if Engineer were to be rewarded with say, a guaranteed Crit on Interrupting a Target, now that would be something of note. It’s readable because people expect Engi to followup things like Magnet Pull with big damage; even without looking at the Buff bar or another visual effect like big glowing red hands.

On the other hand, taking away Elite Supplies to only buff CC setup skills that are already strong just seems like a recipe for the baseline skills to be nerfed instead; because now with a trait the potential for stunlock is stronger without stability uptime. And given that Thumper Turret with Rocket Turret on point +/- Net Turret is already part of the Turret Engineer’s stunlock combo it could very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Turret point holder builds. At the very least, Big Ol Bomb is well telegraphed and time-able; whereas Overcharges have no discernible tell aside from that tiny glow and sparking on the Turret, easily lost in the visual noise of a full Turret build itself; let alone the visual cacophony of an actual fight.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept of the trait, it’s just that I don’t think it really adds anything new to the Engineer. CC Engineer is already strong; it just lacks consistent damage without resorting to Static Discharge or Air/Fire Sigil.

Dirame.8521:

MonMalthias.4763:

snip

I understand everything else you said but I never said it would affect turrets. I specifically put in when you drop a kit or use a gadget. Just kits and gadgets. I wouldn’t want a trait that made the turret engie more powerful, that would be atrocious

Sorry, I think you misread a little. I was specifically referring to Elite Supplies already being taken in “Turret Death” builds that run short CD Turrets like Rifle or Flame Turret with the Fortified Turrets and Accelerant Packed Turrets trait; cycling in and out Turrets for high Reflect Uptime and CC. Elite Supplies is taken over Autotool Installation because in Turret Death you don’t need your turrets to regen, you want them to be dropped, fire once or twice for a few seconds, then be killed or picked up to cycle the Reflection.

In that context, Elite Supplies is huge because it not only allows a fight reset with all the bandage pickups, it also drops an additional turret for more DPS and shields and APT detonations.

I was specifically talking about what the current context of Elite Supplies was rather than your Volatile Inventions trait.

With regards to Volatile Inventions itself I think it might be fine if the damage was delayed, although then it isn’t really that much different from Bunker Down in that context. It’s not really differentiated enough from Bunker Down to be useful in its own right.

I’ve been wanting to have a viable, true “melee” Bomb Kit build for a while that doesn’t exclusively focus on the BK 1 autoattack and that which specifically made not only the BK 2,3,4,5 skills more viable in a Power build, but also more telegraphed for Counterplay reasons.

Wolf.5816:

My dream:

The trait Deployable Turrets has been changed. You can now equip turrets as Environmental Weapons and use them manually.

• I can walk up to my Rifle Turret.
• Press (A different Key than F to pick it up because there is too much clutter that involves The F Key) and literally pick up my Rifle Turret in my arms.
• Picking Up my Rifle Turret replaces my Weapon Skills with 2 new Skills:
1)Fire Turret: Manually Fires your Currently equipped Turret.
2)Throw Turret: Toss your currently equipped Turret.
• Your Overcharge/Detonate skills remain in their respective locations and can be used at any time.
• While holding Your turret your Fire Turret skill will have a slightly reduced rate of fire. Allowing you to manually fire your turret at a increased rate in exchange of loosing your weapon skills.
•Overcharging your Turret while it is held, will allow you to manually fire your particular Turrets Overcharge at your target with reduced rate of fire. The Ammo (or number of shots) will remain the same.
•Stowing Your Weapon or Swapping To a Kit will cause you to drop the Turret immediately where you stand.
•While Carrying a Turret, it cannot be damaged.

Can you imagine this mechanic in general? Would be good stuff. Now imagine taking the trait Accelerant Packed Turrets and picking up your Healing Turret, holding it over your head and sprinting at some poor bloke, detonating it on him like some kind of crazed Bomberman. Who needs condition removal, or reliable stability!

Completely Amazing and innovative Turret Gameplay. Now that would shake up the meta…… ;P

Ritualist Ash spells by any other name?

Sign me up.

Given that we already have things like:

• Blind was Mingson (Flame Turret OC – Smoke Screen)
• Destructive was Glaive (All Turret detonations, Static Discharge)
• Pure was Li Ming (Healing Turret Overcharge)
• Anguished was Ling Wah (Inertial Converter)

In game, this would be one step closer to Activating Skynet further differentiating Turret builds.

I like it.

I, for one, would love something like Order of Pain to be back in the game; although we already have Ranger Frost Spirit for that, as GoogleBrandon has mentioned.

I do think that GoogleBrandon’s point of an implementation of Mark of Pain would be a better implementation of things; especially in teamfights.

Similar to Zilean’s Time Bomb from League of Legends, having a well telegraphed debuff over an enemy’s head that screams “get away from me!” to his allies would really add a new dimension to Necro and add a new combat mechanic that forces enemies to disperse over a marked target; thus isolating it.

It’s something that the Mark design should have been in the first place instead of these zero travel time condi-applying AOE attacks we have on Staff Necro and add that offensive support that Necro doesn’t really get outside of Wells.

A design like:
Order of Pain

• Your Tainted Shackles and Dark Path inflict a unique debuff on foes called Order of Pain for 10 seconds. Each stack of Order of Pain stacks in Intensity.
• Attacks on a Foe marked with Order of Pain cause an AOE pulse of unholy energy centred around that foe. (180 radius, ICD 0.5 seconds) The foe itself does not take damage from Order of Pain, unless another foe in the area is also marked and attacked.
• Having Tainted Shackles thus apply Order of Pain – on up to 5(!) targets could well be a fight turning Wombo Combo; especially when allies cleave to double down on damage.
• I think in this case the damage should be flat without possibility of scaling; yet ignores Toughness and Protection. The damage formula instead would be 100+5 damage per level (500 damage per 0.5 seconds at level 80, per hit which is 1000 DPS without any investments in stats) which is pretty kitten strong for armour piercing damage; yet it can only ever peak at 10000 damage.
• Obviously, doubling down with Tainted Shackles in teamfights would be quite strong. Presuming 2-3 targets, each marked and cleaved every 0.5 seconds, all standing within 180 units of each other, that’s 3000DPS per target for 10 seconds, armour ignoring, peaking at 30000 damage total. If that isn’t enough to body someone (healing excepted) then the targets would have been running away instead.

On a trait, this already sounds strong, as a Dagger wielding Necromancer can Dark Path to a target; with Order of Pain causing the cleave that the Necro so craves; yet in itself not damaging the target any faster. This kind of offensive support that the Necro so lacks may therefore be somewhat reduced by this trait; yet the trade off is that the Necro must enter Melee range, which is a risky proposition. The flat damage ensures that balance can be highly granular, with no possibility of altering durations, or coefficients, or scalings that could throw it out of whack.

Wolf.5816:

This thread is practically bloated with creativity. I like it.

I’m glad the principle behind my concept was understood, and in retrospect I see I forgot to add to Turret Grid that all turret damage is reduced to players by 25%.

This way, the damage reduction could be mitigated by taking the existing trait Rifled Turrets to only a 10% damage reduction and a heavy trait investment in a more intended (defensive) trait line. If the particular player wished to truly optimize their long lasting turrets.

The idea here is trying to make the players who want to maintain turrets have to sacrifice the raw damage/sustain turrets currently bring at the base line. (Not that their current damage is legendary) but they shouldn’t be any near as potent if given the ability to survive and act more as support totems. Someone who plays turrets this way should feel a great loss when losing one of their Turrets.

As apposed to the Disposable Turret Engineer who would use their turrets more for sudden utility and temporary pressure.

Right, because that was the intent of my thread late 2012 – early last year; a way to make Engineers be able to play Turrets in another distinctive way than simply putting them down and camping an area.

I believe that there are far too few traits in the game at the moment that emphasise augmentation over differentiation and balance through generation of apex choices and apex predators is suffering as a result. The worst excesses of the current balance approach can be reflected in Elementalist being pigeonholed into 0/0/10/30/30 since last year in any competitive aspect; with only Fresh Air generating 1 single new build that was predicated on zero counterplay quartercast or instant cast burst damage.

The same can be said of Turrets that have run the same exact trait setup since launch and only just now differentiating due to the emergence of new Turret GM traits – yet their stunlock potential is still as prevalent and just as toxic since launch.

The aim of this thread was not only to create new ways to play Turret builds, but new ways to counterplay them as well; in the end creating a healthier, more diverse gameplay possibility for Engineer.

Dirame.8521:

MonMalthias.4763:

I think that there’s a lot of potential for abuse in this one; especially in combination with Magnet pull; as Magnet would now not only generate a positional advantage, but also have guaranteed CC frames after the pull; whereas opponents could previously Stunbreak even relatively late into the pull and mash dodge to avoid getting wombo comboed.

You should still be able to stun break and dodge out of it if they just make it an extension of the skill rather than another skill applied a second after the pull.

MonMalthias.4763:

I appreciate the balance intent in buffing things like Magnetic Bomb for KR or Throw Mine; but there’s a ton of things that would have to be reconsidered if this trait to exist. The most pressing would definitely be the existence of _Accelerant Packed.

The idea is to have the trait only affect pulls, knockdowns and launches, skills that already leave the enemy on the ground for a few seconds. Push backs like Mine, or APT don’t knock you down, they just push you back.

I really don’t think it will be all that powerful since, like I said earlier. It’s mostly going to add 1s to most knockdowns and launches. And it’s not like it nullifies stability or stun breaks and it’s also not like you can’t chain CC someone right now with the same level of devastation.

Hm, from that perspective, it sounds practically underpowered. It’s definitely something that would require playtesting more than theorycrafting. I do think, however, that this is pretty much a Sigil of Paralyzation by any other name; and it doesn’t really do anything to change Engineer’s matchups in any way aside from making it a living hell for classes with limited Stability access like Necro or Thief or Ele; and of those classes, only Necro in a Power build (which already is ~50/50) would be significantly changed in matchup; with Engineer bodying Thief in most instances, and the matchup being essentially unchanged for Engi vs Ele assuming both are running Celestial (Engi Celestial Rifle Control, Ele Dagger Dagger Celestial).

In addition, with it only affecting essentially Magnet Pull and Magnetic Bomb significantly, (since as you said, pushes like APT or Magnetic Inversion don’t count) would make it a pretty hard ask for Engineers to slot in any build. KR is already borderline unusable outside of single kit builds; whilst the problems with Magnet pull don’t lie within its CC frames but rather its propensity to cause horrendous desync issues. Having any trait only affect essentially 2 skills in a Major slot is horrendous, and was the prime driver for Anet to change Lightning Rod for Elementalist and take its skill floor away without instead giving more Interrupts to Ele.

Dirame.8521:

Volatile Inventions (Replacing Elite Supplies): Every time you drop a kit or use a gadget, you create an explosion at your location. 180 radius

I was watching CmC’s stream one day sometime around last month when he off-handedly mentioned that “weapon swaps are the least counterplayable thing in the game” on the subject of On-Swap sigils like Battle, Hydromancy, Geomancy and Energy. It was kind of a revelation for me because I hadn’t looked at it in that way before.

Now, in this time of Celestial/Strength/Battle sigil setups that pervade the post April Feature Patch era, the statement has never been more relevant. Battle Sigil in particular grants 9-12 stacks of Might across 30 seconds; able to be carried over to the next rotational fight due to the stacks lasting ~30 seconds or so with Strength Runes…by itself. Which works out to be ~306 bonus Power and Condition damage, no counterplay in sight barring Boon rips. 612 Bonus stats is no joke.

Remember when Guanglai Kangyi posted that video of “Engineers do no DPS” when Kit Refinement had yet to be nerfed, Med Kit swap had an explosion, Bomb Kit swap dropped a 1.25 coefficient Bomb, Grenade Kit swap dropped Grenade Barrage, and Guang played the kits like a piano to kill the Risen Giant in seconds? I can’t find that link for the life of me at the moment, but this is what the trait promises a return to. I think that when Anet chose to nerf KR in the way it did, they had seen that video.

The trait design is also entirely passive as well; providing “free” damage without counterplay or opportunity cost at melee range, a range where Engineer already excels with BK autoattacks with 1.25 Power Coefficient in 240 radius per 0.6 seconds (2.09 coeff. per second autoattack, pretty much the highest in game).

I just don’t see how this is a positive trait design; being just about as passive as Bunker Down (Literally trash) or Modified Ammunition (the bread and butter of PvE players). There’s no play, no counterplay, no differentiation, just damage.

Now, Elite Supplies is a bad trait, and people should feel bad for taking it, but replacing it with a passive melee DPS trait isn’t helping things either. It also just so happens to be an OP trait in the right setup in…you guessed it, Turret builds; turning Supply Crate into an “I win” button for any duel or even 1v2; even if the stun itself is missed. It’s a terrible situation all around, but replacing it isn’t the answer.

dancingmonkey.4902:

MonMalthias.4763:

Counteragent autoinjectors, Master Tier, displaces Power Shoes (Power Shoes moves down to Adept)

Using a Toolbelt skill cleanses 1 condition. Cooldown: 15 seconds per Toolbelt skill

My problem with this is the ICD. In my opinion that is the one thing that makes kit refinement worthless too. I cannot stand making a trait effect multiple skills, then simply adding an ICD to it so that it does really make a difference if it effects multiple skills.

The other thing is, all you are doing, is essentially adding another, weaker version of transmute. Except this one doesn’t convert it too a boon, and takes1 more trait point worth of investment. Personally I do not see too many players wanting to invest 4 more trait points to get one more condition cleanse when we have one that does it for 3 already, that also converts it to a boon.

You read it wrong. 15 seconds per individual Toolbelt skill is in fact quite strong, because at minimum it guarantees an extra 4 cleanses per minute; and activating TB skills on cooldown could peak at 16 extra cleanses per minute. That’s huge for SD builds, and is tantamount to Cleansing Ire levels of Cleanse (Which peaks at 21 cleanses per minute, assuming every Adrenaline burst hits at triple bar each and every single time). SD Builds with an average of ~15 or so seconds CD on their bar (with the occasional 40 second Analyze or 60 second Toss Elixir S) could expect to see ~20-25 seconds averaged cooldown across all TB skills, which is approximately 9-12 cleanses per minute where none had existed before; and before factoring in additional cleanses.

If you factor in:

• Overcharged shot, which cleanses snares (Immobilise, Cripple, Chill)
• Healing Turret (6-8 cleanses per minute)
• Med Kit Antidote (4 cleanses per minute; and in the future; also cleanses Immobilise and another Condition)
• Super Elixir (3 cleanses per minute)

Even running even just Healing Turret with this trait means that Engineer is already at a cleansing output of ~15 cleanses per minute…on the low end for your average SD build. On something like Triple Kit, it would be running on an additional 6 cleanses per minute. On something like Triple Turret, one kit, again, something close to almost an additional 6 cleanses per minute. That’s all without the opportunity cost of running anything that inherently cleanses conditions; with anything that does being just gravy.

Not having a GCD is also less restricting; and in fact is almost too strong with the right setup of low CD toolbelt skills. Running something like Healing Turret, Rifle Turret, Toolkit, Elixir Gun, the average CD is (25+10+20+40)/4 = 23.75 seconds. Factor in Tools 20% CDR for an SD trait setup and the average CD is ~20 seconds and per minute one would expect to get an additional 3 cleanses per minute per Toolbelt skill or 12.

If you don’t consider that “strong enough”; and this is before factoring in Inertial Converter, or the 30 Tools bonus which would push it to 13 cleanses per minute – and this is with a “long CD” TB skill of Regenerating Mist dragging the average down – then you might be better off using Elixir C.

Dirame.8521:

Gravitational Disparity (Replacing Power shoes): Every time you knock down, launch or pull a target, they are knocked down for at least 3s.

I think that there’s a lot of potential for abuse in this one; especially in combination with Magnet pull; as Magnet would now not only generate a positional advantage, but also have guaranteed CC frames after the pull; whereas opponents could previously Stunbreak even relatively late into the pull and mash dodge to avoid getting wombo comboed.

I appreciate the balance intent in buffing things like Magnetic Bomb for KR or Throw Mine; but there’s a ton of things that would have to be reconsidered if this trait to exist. The most pressing would definitely be the existence of Accelerant Packed Turrets. APT and this trait would turn the Turret Engineer into the bane of everyone without Stability; and would actually make Turret Engineer a potent CC force for teamfights. Imagine the Hambow Warrior with a 180 Radius AOE Backbreaker…every 10 seconds (Rotating Healing Turret and Rifle Turret exclusively; but weave in Flame Turret or Throw Mine and you get ~7 seconds average time between KD for a ludicrous 30+% uptime of hard CC. That’s a little much.

Having said that, there really needs to be an on Interrupt trigger for Engineer that isn’t Synaptic Overload; because the whole design of that trait is trash. Right now the reward for Engineer landing his CC is the ability to combo it into more damage; whereas classes like the Mesmer and the Warrior both can have Interrupt-based builds and be rewarded with damage (Distracting Strikes, Halting Strike) to supplement their lockdown – which Synaptic Overload completely fails at doing.

I think a slightly stronger – yet more counterplayable – implementation could be:

Gravitational Disparity
- Inflict 5 stacks of Vulnerability for 5 seconds when you Control a Foe (Stun, Pull, Knockdown, Daze, Launch). Interrupting a foe, causes your next attack to have 100% Critical Chance and decreases the cooldown of your Toolbelt Skills by 1 second. (No ICD)

This kind of implementation again, is a buff strictly designed for Static Discharge Engineer, or Rifle Toolkit Throw Mine Control setups. It makes for a very potent burst combo by guaranteeing SD or Rifle Crits; yet as those burst skills all have windup or travel time they are counterplayable. It also emphasises closing the gap for Engineer; as Engineer’s most potent CC skills and setups work from sub-600 range (Magnet Pull excepted).

At Master Tier, it would directly compete with Counteragent Autoinjectors so there would have to be some opportunity cost. Alternatively, it could be placed in Adept, because Adept Inventions is pretty trash. In this instance it would be best to displace Energised Armour. Energised Armour could instead be put into the 5 point slot to displace Low Health Response System, because not a single percentage stat conversion should ever be a Major slot trait; they’re just too passive and by extension limited in power.

Dirame.8521:

snip
Toolbelt Cleaning device (Replaces Cloaking Device):
You lose 2 conditions when you activate a toolbelt skill GCD 10s.

snip

I think that adding Condi cleanse to the Toolbelt in Inventions is definitely the way to go. Right now Engineer lacks Condi cleanse outside of Alchemy’s 409 and Transmute; relying almost entirely upon Healing Turret. Positioning Condi cleanse in the Inventions line definitely powers up builds previously considered having too many tradeoffs like Static Discharge Engineer to be a little more viable.

Having said that, putting a GCD on Toolbelt Cleansing Device at Adept level is a little problematic in my opinion, because whilst it makes balancing it easy, it also buffs all builds; especially when placed in Adept. I believe that a cleaner implementation could be:

Counteragent autoinjectors, Master Tier, displaces Power Shoes (Power Shoes moves down to Adept)

• Using a Toolbelt skill cleanses 1 condition. Cooldown: 15 seconds per Toolbelt skill

This implementation is important because it is very specifically buffing Toolbelt skills that have historically low cooldowns; namely, those of Gadgets and some Turrets. Kit Toolbelts by contrast have relatively long cooldowns outside of Tool Kit’s Wrench Toss.

I believe that this design goal is important to consider because it enables diversification of builds by putting in inbuilt tradeoffs inherent to the Toolbelt design. It also allows some depth of play to the trait rather than simply upping cleanses per minute – the Engineer can blow all his TB skills for a 4 clear; or against steady pressure, he can eke them out.

The individual cooldown per Toolbelt skill also buffs Gadget and Rifle Turret builds more as they have shorter CD on their TB skills; which opens up build variety without opening up the spectre of another apex predator. It’s also notable that all of the high utility toolbelts, like Grenade Barrage or Big Ol Bomb or Toss Elixir S – all these TBs have long CDs that would have little destabilising effect on current meta builds. Indeed, trying to slot the trait in the current meta builds would be of a great detriment due to losing not only Invigorating Speed and Backpack Regenerator; the 20% Boon duration would also be a significant loss for the current Might stacking focused builds.

Wolf.5816:

Disposable Turrets: Your Turrets Overcharge is reduced by 20%. In addition when a Turret is destroyed it reduces the cool down of all (stowed) turrets by 20%. However Overcharging Turrets now costs 45% of the turrets health.

I like the intention of this trait overall; encouraging an almost Shatter-mesmer like playstyle of constant clone (Turret) generation and destruction. A more refined implementation:

• When a Turret is destroyed, reduce the cooldown of stowed Turrets by 33%
• Turrets may not be picked up upon being Overcharged.
• Turrets have additional effects in an area when overcharged, but detonate immediately on overcharge ending:
  • Rifle Turret – Ballistic Whirligig: Overcharge causes Rifle Turret to whirl rapidly, firing shots in all directions and damaging foes for X amount each second in a 240 radius. Combo Finisher: Whirl
  • Flame Turret: Thermobaric Backdraft: Overcharge causes Flame Turret to generate a Smoke Field, Blinding foes for 2 seconds per 2 second pulse. At its end, Flame Turret explodes, dealing damage, burning foes in an area, and knocking foes down in an area for 1 second
  • Rocket Turret: Missile Barrage: Target an area for Overcharge. Rocket Turret fires a stream of 10 missiles that rain down in an area. Rockets inflict Daze for 1 second and inflict 2 stacks of Vulnerability for 5 seconds. Rockets fired in this way are 100% Projectile combo finishers.
  • Thumper Turret: Call of the Wurm: Overcharge causes Thumper Turret to thump out a steady beat, damaging foes in the area for X damage every second and causing cripple. After 4 seconds, a great Wurm is called to the surface, causing massive damage to a single foe on emergence.
  • Net Turret: Smart glue filament dispenser: Target an area for Overcharge. (600 range, 240 radius. Net Turret spits immobilising glue in an area. Foes affected are Immobilised for 1 second every 2 seconds. Allies affected gain Stability for 1 second every 2 seconds.

Wolf.5816:

I always wanted there to be two different grandmaster traits that summarize the two different types of turret play.

-One trait could encourage maintaining turrets. Letting their functionality revolve around high Turret Life spans and player support at the cost of damage. This trait would generally be take in PvE as this trait would allow turrets to survive in PvE longer and grant boons or skills that are defensive in nature.

-Another trait would encourage using disposable Turrets that are designed for Quick Skirmishes that favor control/pressure with shorter cooldowns at the cost of the turrets life and any defensive mechanics. These turrets would be deployed quickly for special purposes.

Ideally these traits would give each turret two different functions. However these traits need to work against each other so that they would be unappealing to take together.

Perhaps something like:
Turret Grid: Your Turrets now link with other turrets you control dividing damage they receive amongst other active turrets. In addition Overcharging Turrets also grants nearby allies Aegis. However All Turret cool downs are increased by 20%.

I think this is a great idea, as it really differentiates turrets into two new styles of play; one that’s closer to Mesmer illusion shatters, and one that’s a little more defensive.

Regarding Turret Grid, Turrets are already tanky enough as it is, with many classes that lack strong 900+ range having a lot of trouble even on Power builds as closing the distance invites the stunlock combos. It’s also entirely passive, encouraging Engineer to simply place his turret nest and wait. The damage division also works against focusing one turret to death, which further makes the build a hard counter to single target hard hitters.

So, presuming that Turrets are destroyed after Overcharge (and Overcharge over-riding skill queue) as a baseline, with players controlling the Turret attacks, we then can create a new trait that lets Engineer save Turrets under threat in a different way:

Experimental Teleportal Beacons

• Your Turret Overcharge skills no longer destroy the Turret.
• Turret cooldowns increased by 20%
• Overcharging a Turret now Teleports the Turret to your current position. (1000 range)
• The Turret is fully repaired after Teleporting. The Turret’s attack skill goes on cooldown. (for counterplay reasons; but can be 50% raw cooldown instead)

The intended design of the trait is to still encourage Turret nesting, but require a closer management of Turrets against foes. In addition, the Draw Spirit effect has counterplay in that foes can threaten Turrets with damage to force the port, then lay down AOE on the Engineer’s (and now Turret’s) position. On the other hand, the Engineer can consolidate its power into one smaller area – both Counterplay and counter-counterplay inherent in the design.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Shrapnel + Incendiary Powder + Steel Packed Powder + Doom Sigil – This is just BS. If someone hits you with freeze grenade, it’s totally possible that you’ll get five conditions on you (Bleeding, Burning, Poison, Vulnerability and Chilled). That’s way too many conditions for every grenade to possibly cause. Its even annoying with just pistols, as now an auto attack can hit for way more conditions than they are suppose to. It may feel like the issue is grenades or pistols, but in reality these are the real culprits.

I came to the realisation soon after the Dhuumfire patch that “OP” for GW2 comes in sets of 3. As an example:

• Necro Scepter Auto 1 puff to include Poison, then Dhuumfire procs, then the addition of Condition variety through Torment
• Crippling Dissipation, Confusing Combatants, Debilitating Dissipation for Clone Death Mesmer, again having huge condi variety
• Warrior Cleansing Ire, Burst Mastery, Healing Signet buff (only getting shaved just now, 12+ months in)
• Elementalist Renewing Stamina, Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana (since 2012, still going strong, and Ele unlikely to budge from Arcana line any time soon)
• Ranger merge of Spirit traits (vigorous spirits), Storm Spirit bug, Renewal spirit regen bug
• Thief Sleight of Hand/Bountiful Theft interaction to prioritise Stability, Precasted larcenous strike into pre-nerf Infiltrator’s strike

It’s trifectas of synergies like this that are exciting for theorycrafting, yet so annoying to play against in practice, and IP is no exception.

Another way to nerf IP, and thus taking into account this trifecta of Steel packed Powder, Incendiary Powder and/or Shrapnel or other crit-procs; is to attack condition application priority.

• Right now the Burning of IP triggers first on Crit. This means that Burning from IP is always covered, unless the triggering attack had no Conditions associated with it.
• Steel Packed Powder’s Vulnerability applies last, which auto-covers any underlying Conditions and is why Grenade Kit is so kitten strong for Condition application
• Grenade Kit’s triple throw lets you roll the dice 3 times, even in a low-Precision setup; whilst multiplying effects like Shrapnel or Sharpshooter to proc

A really smart (albeit very minor) shave to this unholy trinity is simply to reverse the application priority of IP and SPP:

• IP’s burning now applies last on Crit, which means it is exposed to cleansing unless another condi skill is used
• Steel Packed Powder’s Vulnerability now applies first on Explosions, which invalidates SPP’s ability to auto-cover conditions

This makes IP a lot easier to cleanse, whilst retaining its steady, impossible to dodge nature. Personally I would prefer IP to simply be tied to the Toolbelt and be done with; however if absolutely nothing else was to change on the Engineer, then this would be it.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. I have no idea what to do with doom sigil.

I actually think that Doom Sigil is great, because it allows classes without access to Poison a way to rein in those Healing Signet Warriors.

• What needs to change is telegraphing the Doom proc; by adding a green tinge to weapon slashing trails or projectile trails. More simply, a green glow can surround the hands of a person with a Doom proc, and no particles have to be modified. It’s otherwise a pretty balanced proc, relatively speaking, compared to things like Battle Sigil providing a silly 9-12 stacks of Might in a Boon/Might duration setup (and by extension a silly 306 – 408 extra Power and Condition damage (612-816 total bonus stats!) in a fight.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Increase the placement time of turrets to 1s. Yes, this includes healing turret. Remember that for a 1/2s cast time, you are getting a knockback, a reflect, a passive boon, some damage and some overcharge ability.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Clearly I’m not talking about Healing Turret when I refer to a turret build

Sorry, just had to be pedantic here. That was why I responded in the way I did yesterday. But you’re right, everyone was confused, let’s move on.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Shrapnel + Incendiary Powder + Steel Packed Powder + Doom Sigil – This is just BS. If someone hits you with freeze grenade, it’s totally possible that you’ll get five conditions on you (Bleeding, Burning, Poison, Vulnerability and Chilled). That’s way too many conditions for every grenade to possibly cause. Its even annoying with just pistols, as now an auto attack can hit for way more conditions than they are suppose to. It may feel like the issue is grenades or pistols, but in reality these are the real culprits.

I mentioned this very same thing last year . The conclusion a lot of posters and I came to after some discussion was that IP as it stands is propping up a lot of Engineer’s sustained damage in both Power and Condi builds, and that taking it away is going to make Engi’s place in balance very tenuous.

I think (and I’m putting words in Anet’s design team here) that the original intent for Incendiary Powder was for Engineer to have a powerful “hybrid” spec by slotting this trait; that obtained good direct and condi damage by tying some sustained condi damage (on Burning, which has relatively low scaling) to Crit-procs. This kind of design intent can be more clearly seen in earlier iterations of IP where it was 33% chance to Burn on Critical Hit for 2 seconds.

Also keep in mind that this was when the game was very young and people hadn’t even begun to explore Condition builds as of yet. It was Teldo that really popularised the Condi Engi as a powerful “bruiser” and by extension IP due to abusing Sigil of Smouldering and Napalm Specialist. Anet recognised this and subsequently nerfed IP and Napalm Specialist through successive patches to its current state which is very much a “designed in” way for Engi to easily get steady condi pressure. Unfortunately, IP is now back in the “OP” spotlight due to Balthazar Runes and newly buffed Sigil of Smouldering allowing nigh-90% uptime of Burning without using cooldowns that directly cause Burning.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Tie shrapnel to Grenade Barrage and Big Ol Bomb. Condi engis never use Grenade Barrage, so it’d be nice if there was a good reason to use it. Big Ol Bomb = 4 stacks of bleed, grenade barrage = short duration bleed per nade that hits (like 1-2s?)
2. Tie Incendiary Powder to Grenade Barrage and Big Ol Bomb. 5s of burning with Big Ol Bomb, 1s of burning with Grenade Barrage (Maybe give it an ICD on GB so that you don’t get 8s of burning)
3. I have no idea what to do with doom sigil.
4. SPP is actually fine, it’s just kinda scary to see 5 conditions at once.

• I think that whilst IP can and should be nerfed, it shouldn’t be nerfed in such a way as to turn its design on its head and make it a Condi-burst trait. Engineers already have a lot of Condi-burst thanks to Blowtorch, Concussion bomb/Prybar and the GK grenades; it’s the steady output that would be lacking if this was to go forward.

• Honestly this isn’t even that bad of a change, however, there are 2 big problems with it:
  • It ties IP to strictly Bomb-Nade, which doesn’t do anything for build variety
  • It hurts hybrid engi (Celestial Rifle triple-kit) more than Condi engi (Rabid P/x GK TK Elixir S) which kind of further pigeonholes Engi into a Condi role

I think a smarter nerf would be to do this:

• Your next attack after using a Toolbelt skill causes 4 seconds of Burning. ICD: 15 seconds per Toolbelt Skill
  Alternatively,
• Your next attack after using a Toolbelt skill causes 4 seconds of Burning. GCD: 10 seconds

Making the mechanic proc off next attack like Thief Venoms would already do a lot to increase the counterplay of IP; whilst its repeatable nature offers a steady stream of condi DPS. On Next Attack can be blocked, Blinded, dodged, etc; and given that so many Engineer attacks are projectile reliant it will do a lot for counterplay.

Holy thread necro, batman.

I think it’s certainly interesting to look back upon Turrets as they are now – with how they were viewed back in late 2012-early 2013. The retrospective certainly has quite some significant changes; namely:

• Turret health buffs
• Various improvements to Turret toolbelt skills – Rocket, Thump → Rumble stunbreak, Throw Napalm Fire Field, etc.
• Healing Turret’s Cleansing Burst changes turning it from trash to meta for every Engi build
• The biggest change being a change to Turret AI that improves their responsiveness
• APT moved from Explosives Master to Adept
• 2 new Turret GM Traits

Put into that kind of context, it’s clear that Anet has wanted Engineers to want to pick up Turrets; if only for Healing Turret heal. I think that over time Engineers have come to use them and given the existence of Turret builds in lower level PVP where they become the ultimate 1v1 stunlocker build I think one could even argue that some of the buffs like APT to Adept were ultimately un-necessary.

Having run 2 Turret builds, sometimes even 3 Turret builds in the past I’ve switched back to Kits in the end because it’s really hard to justify all those losses in mobility and general utility to gain those powerful CC abilities.

I think Turrets as they are now are extremely difficult to justify buffing in any way short of taking their Autoattack away, to be honest. The Net Turret/Rocket Turret overcharge wombo combo is already 6 seconds of overlapping stunlock (more if Rifle Skills and APT are comboed with it) and until this kind of Overcharge mechanic changes I foresee the Turret Engineer being as passive as the worst AI builds; if not even more toxic due to huge CC potential.

The Elementalist Summon and Guardian Spirit Weapon changes show that Anet is willing to forge onwards regarding summons; finally giving players the ability to actually control summon ability activation.

I’d like for Turret Overcharges to get the same treatment of skill queue reset; then the Overcharge durations reduced to firing only 2 overcharged attacks as a beginner’s step towards full control; with the ultimate step being reworking Overcharge into a Chain skill on the Toolbelt and Turret “autoattacks” as a chain skill on placement. By then Turrets could possibly be accepted as a legitimately active playstyle.

From there, changes to Traits are then necessary to emphasise summon control and positioning over passive, bunkery play. My mention of a Draw Spirit equivalent obtainable through traits to combo with Deployable Turrets last year, along with other changes like decreased Turret health for lower cooldowns, would do much to make the build have an overall higher skill floor and therefore; greater potential reward in damage or utility. Letting the Engineer save dying Turrets by summoning them to the Engineer’s position would add a lot of mobility without having to introduce a turret movement mechanic; retain counterplay and most importantly emphasise a skill floor.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I think they have plenty of ways to do this (CC, Line of Sight, Blinds). Not to mention engis already have a lot of passive abilities to keep them alive (Protection Injection, Stabilized Armor etc). I realize 1s cast time on healing turret is a dangerous game to play for engis, but it might make them a bit more skillful.

There’s quite some conflation here of Turret Engineer builds with meta builds (although no meta builds run Stabilised Armour because Inventions is trash) which confuses the issue.

I think it’s also noteworthy to remember previous heals that were 1 second cast time (without special mechanics like Block i.e. Shelter) that were (not) used because their cast time was too long to be viable:*

• Engineer A.E.D: 1 second cast time on a reactive heal was trash. 0.75 cast is good, and removing damaging conditions post September patch is also good, but no-one took it before at 1 second.
• Elixir H: 1 second cast time, limited utility without traiting. Not taken over HT. I wonder why?
• Bandage self: Taken only in Static Discharge builds for 15 tools reset and Fury on Med Kit 5. Not meta. I wonder why?

• Elementalist Arcane Brilliance: Not taken at 1 second cast.
• Glyph of Harmony: Not taken at 1.5 second cast. Now with Signet of Restoration, not taken anyway.

• Warrior Mending: Not taken even in days of Condi meta post Dhuumfire. I wonder why?
• Healing Surge: Post Adrenaline nerf, who will take it?
• Defiant Stance: Not taken at 1 second cast. I wonder why?

Anyway, I’m belabouring the point in that 1 second cast time for Healing Turret doesn’t somehow make our other heals (Med Kit, AED, Elixir H) any less problematic. Nor does it somehow make Turret Bunker builds any less strong; because the problem of Turret Bunker does not lie within the heal. It lies within Rocket and Net Turret’s CC Combo; and within APT; and APT is getting nerfed by 50%.

Onto something more constructive:
I’ve been calling for a Turret re-work for a long time and I feel that the current design as it stands has several flaws; being that:

• Turret play is quite passive (I concur with you) in that it relies upon kiting people around Turrets, letting them do most of the work.
• This leads to the design problem of Turrets being potentially OP if too strong on their own (and in 1v1, Turrets are OP presuming no summons)
• It also leads to Turrets being useless as soon as more than 1 target presents itself.
• With little player control over the Turrets, passive play is enforced

So with that in mind, I have a few ideas to make Turrets more active:

• Turrets no longer autoattack. Instead, Turret placement chains into:
  • Rifle Turret: Turret Shot – Fires a shot at your current target (CD: 3 seconds)
  • Net Turret: Net Shot – Fires an immobilising Net at your current target (CD: 10 seconds)
  • Thumper Turret: Thump – Thumps the area, dealing damage in an area (CD: 3 seconds)
  • Flame Turret: Flame Burst – Fires a gout of flame, burning your target (CD: 3 seconds)
  • Rocket Turret: Rocket launch – Fires a rocket at your target (CD: 4 seconds)
  • Healing Turret: Cleansing Burst – Heal in an area, producing a Water Field and cleansing 2 conditions (CD: 15 seconds)

This implementation allows players full control over who and when their Turrets fire.

Overcharge skills are then moved to the F1-F4 skills, that then chain into Turret Detonate. Overcharge skills over-ride the Turret’s current Skill queue to afford players the full control over when OC skills trigger.

As a downside, Overcharging the Turret will now force the Turret to self destruct after the Overcharge sequence is over. Picking up an Overcharged Turret will give you a Cooldown reduction for placement.

This change in mechanics:

• Decreases Turret uptime when Overcharged, which is the stickler in 1v1s vs Turret Engi
• Affords Turret engi full control over their damage which improves 1vX scenarios

If Turret skills were then telegraphed by the player; as in:

• A voice quote i.e. “Net Turret, Fire!”
• Or by the Turret’s “clicking” noises presaging fire as they are now, then the spec overall becomes more telegraphed, better co-ordinated, and more active.

I think a lot of the posts here are quite knee jerk, to be honest. Sadly, the original post itself contains some hyperbole and it does not help matters.

Let’s begin with the first point:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Turret Placement – Turrets themselves are extremely passive, easy to place, easy to overcharge and can sometimes be difficult to kill (especially if placed even moderately well). There is little risk of a turret placement being interrupted. This feels really backwards to me. Turrets are kind of like setting up a fort.

About the only thing “unfair” about Healing Turret is that its two-stage activation mitigates a lot of the risk an ordinary 0.75 cast or 1 cast heal has. At 0.5 sec cast it is difficult to interrupt, to be sure. Given that the majority of fight outcomes revolve around the interruption or poisoning of the heal barring stunlock or focus fire, a half-cast heal is a pretty big deal, and it’s why HT is meta over Med Kit and Elixir H; both of which have longer activation times.

Having said that, HT isn’t “passive” or “difficult to kill”. I recognise that I’m being pedantic here, but HT is one of the more active heals in the game, requiring a higher skill floor as players can choose whether to detonate for that extra 1k or not at the cost of 5 seconds longer CD. Conflating the other “passive” turrets like Rocket or Flame or Thumper Turret with HT is hardly fair.

The design of HT is fine. As for increasing the skill floor, keep Overcharge activation off player GCD; but increase the placement cast time to 0.75 as it is with other Water Field heals like Healing Spring of Ranger; and call it good. It’s otherwise a really well designed skill.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Increase the placement time of turrets to 1s. Yes, this includes healing turret. Remember that for a 1/2s cast time, you are getting a knockback, a reflect, a passive boon, some damage and some overcharge ability. The heal removes 2 condis from EVERYONE in a huge radius, heals and is a blast finisher + water field.

There’s quite some conflation going on here. For one, you presume a full Turret bunker build (Accelerant packed turrets, Fortified Turrets, Experimental Turrets) which is:

• Not meta in PVP unless you’re talking about hotjoin or low-level soloqueue
• In itself a 1v1 spec, which Anet refuses to balance around (PU, permastealth Thief) as they have little impact in the PVP gametypes due to extant shortcomings
• You presume that activation time of Turrets should be globally 1 second, which is balance-wise, inflexible. After all, Elixirs can get different activation times, as can Signets, or Survivals, or Glyphs, or any other class of utility – based on their strength vs cast time.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I think this warrants the ability to stop this from occuring. If the turrets are already down before you get there, you are being a risky (as you are putting all your cards on that location), yet possibly smart turret engi. If you are setting up once the person gets there, it should be risky as well. With Healing Turret going to 1s, engis would have to be smart about their healing skill usage.

Full Turret bunker engi already places all their turrets down around point when bunkering with the exception of Healing Turret. Yet the majority of player complaints centre around the stunlock combo of Overcharged Rocket Turret with Overcharged Net Turret and Rifle skills – 2 out of 3 of which can be nullified by AOE if the Engineer simply places them close together.

In PvP, and I presume we’re talking PvP here because Turret engineers suck in WvW (no mobility) and PvE (mob cleave, no mobility); Turret bunkers would beeline for close point to set up and have little contribution to Mid or Far fights due to their Build’s 1v1 nature. The only class that could potentially reach close point by the time Turret engineer gets there is Thief, burning Steal, Shadow steps, and most of their Ini on Shortbow skills. And Thief puts Turret Engi in the dumpster due to no stunbreaks and easy engagements without risk of being fired upon by Turrets. So:

• Which part of those plays were “smart” by the Engineer, holding on to their Turrets until the Thief arrives without setting up? Is that “risky” play, or just being dumb?
• If an Engineer sets up by the time any other class gets there (and we are presuming non-Thief classes that push Far, with low Stability Uptime so the Stunlock is possible i.e. D/D Ele, non-stance Warrior (a truly rare beast), Ranger, Mesmer – which should be the case, then Engineer has a favourable matchup. Is that truly “risky” for the Engineer?

Wolf.5816:

I must agree that a change should be made to this trait to make it more active.

But I’d much rather see them Rework Kit Refinement. Making it less unruly and to have it make sense in the flow if battle.

You can run KR, just not in any build that uses more than 1 kit and not with Speedy Kits. Otherwise, you’re fine. To compensate requires Power Shoes or Traveller’s Runes. Like This.

Even so, the trade-offs for going zero Alchemy are massive. Invig Speed and Speedy Kits are just so superior that it’s quite difficult to justify. The above build focuses on a lot of CC to draw out the fight so Might can stack up. Throw Mine can be substituted for Rocket Boots as a 1500 escape when comboed with Super Speed as a double gap closer. Having said that, with so much CC it becomes quite trivial to wear down low stability uptime classes like Ele, whilst the low CD boon rip of Mine Field abrogates the Might stacking.

Magnetic Bomb is good to drop in anticipation of bursts as a rupt, or in anticipation of a heal when other CDs are down. For more Might stacking, replace IP with Enhance Performance; but with 3 low CD blasts with almost-harmonised cooldowns you probably won’t need it.

On topic, Automated Response is trash. It was trash before as a complete immunity, it’s trash now with it bugfixed to reduce condi duration additively so it can be countered by >100% condition duration (which you would only find in WvW anyway). The passive proc nature of it takes control away from Engineer, whilst its presence in Alchemy, arguably Engineer’s most universal trait line, has partially justified an Anet moratorium in not raising Engineer’s cleanses per minute beyond 6-8 on most meta builds due to the risk of Engis “doubling down” on Condition mitigation.

The entire mechanic ought to be scrapped and made anew; proccing Condition cleanse/transfer/conversion on Toolbelt skill use; or something unrelated to Conditions entirely with some cleanse moved to Inventions instead. As it stands, it combines both semi-hard counter with passive play and is every bit lazy design as it is bad design in providing little fun to play with; or against, the trait.

That people would call for it to be buffed and keep its mechanic in the first place is mind boggling to me. Condition immunities and other hard counters should have no place in this game; yet Anet insists upon their inclusion in lieu of upping profession cleanses per minute (or in Warrior’s case, add both Condition immunity and up cleanses per minute, but Warrior was truly trash before CIre was merged).

If anything, a redesign of Automated Response is necessary. Adding a Condition cleansed upon successful dodge requires a skill floor and yet it would add enough Condi cleanse to Engi for the Necro matchup to be far more even. Tying it to Toolbelt use I feel should be reserved for Inventions or Tools as Alchemy’s Formula 409 is already extant for Elixirs.

In the end, many of Engi’s passive proc, zero self-control mechanics could be replaced by those requiring active play, if only Arenanet would only take the time to add a skill floor to half the trash traits in the game. But since that isn’t a priority due to balancing taking apparently 6 months per iteration (working hard at hardly working); I doubt something like this would ever see the light of day.

tigirius.9014:

I’m not worried so much about an expansion as I am about getting NCsoft to infuse this game with the money it needs to get them going on these problems. It’s going on 2 years now and it’s obviously NOT happening from the amount it’s receiving right now. So it’s less about the content we’d see in an expansion and more about the list still on the wiki page.

coglin.1867:

The game is fine chicken little. This is an engineer thread about the explosive line. Take your doom and gloom, pretend, and made up problems and go to the appropriate sub forum to spread your made up propaganda, this isn’t the place.

I have to agree with coglin on this one. Ranting about the state of the game whilst proposing unrealistic changes that completely upset the established design of Engineer like:

tigirius.9014:

I think they need to add a serious number of traits even if they double them up (no more of this locked XIII trait additions thing until they fix the ones that are there) and they need to exchange the locations of where the crit condition damage and condition duration locations are on the trait lines to make them more in line with what a typical build calls for.

But you see we’ve written about this multiple times and it still falls on deaf ears.

…doesn’t exactly contribute constructively to the discussion.

Again, I’ll just reiterate my previous points that currently the best way to shift Engineer from Explosives is to buff the Firearms tree to give the mainhand weapons greater damage potential and utility such that Engineers aren’t inferior to Engineers taking points in Explosives.

Note my emphasis on non-inferiority; because you only get real build diversity when you no longer have apex choices like IP or like Steel packed Powder+Grenadier.

After offense, there comes defense, and the Inventions line is clearly outmatched by the choices in Alchemy, which are more reliable and have easy placement and synergies. What synergies there are are dedicated towards Turrets, which makes builds trying to run non-turret builds leery of putting points in.

I believe that a lot of missing utility from using the Toolbelt skills can be put into this line, and certain triggers in Tools could also bear looking at. Engineer at present lacks certain key functionalities:

• Condition mitigation outside of Alchemy
• Stability access outside of very specialised utilities
• “Clutch” mechanics like Aegis on reliable triggers

Just about the easiest one is to put a Master Tier trait into Inventions to cleanse a condition when a Toolbelt skill is used (15 seconds ICD per Toolbelt skill), replacing Reinforced Shield that then moves down into Adept tier; which in turn displaces Energised Armour that becomes the new 5 (1) point Adept Minor. %Conversion traits should not deserve a Major trait slot in any profession. Leave those effects to Runes like Undead and Wurm and Exuberance instead.

Armour Mods in Tools should simply be gain Aegis on using a Toolbelt skill with 15 seconds ICD. As there is now a cooldown cost to Armour Mods, a lower ICD may be justifiable.

These 2 changes alone would be useful in making new builds possible. As I said, I don’t believe a complete rework of Engineer is required. Traits need to be consolidated and clear design goals set and met for key functionalities, that’s all.

Dirame.8521:

GW2 is all about reactionary combat. Yes they have a bit of RNG inside it but the very nature of the dodge mechanic is all about reacting to what you can see so I really can’t say that this is missing from GW2.

There are also plenty of Riposte-ish skills and traits in GW2 and you did mention quite a few of them. I guess exploring them more in traits would be a good idea.

There’s also a distinct lack of punishment in GW2. With the overwhelming focus on the positive only, Anet has neglected some triggers that could absolutely act as “punishers” for greedy plays. The current Riposte system as it stands has several flaws:

• Often melee-centric, such as Counterblow and Counterattack applying only in melee. Against Ranged attacks they are merely Block Frames.
• Often single target focused, which is fine and dandy in duels, but terrible everywhere else
• Lack CC for followup damage on the punish.

So here’s a few extra triggers that reward skilled, defensive play:

• On successful dodge, gain X effect.
• On successfully Blinding an attack, gain X effect
• On losing Aegis, gain X effect – would have to apply to cooldown-based skills that apply Aegis instead of something like Guardian Virtues
• On interrupting an enemy attack (as in, something that deals damage, not just a heal skill)
• On striking a Stealthed Target
• On Destroying/Deflecting projectiles

A lot of these triggers can replace the passive RNG procs or “on being critically hit” or “on %HP” to bring in a skill floor to using these traits.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

This sounds good in theory, but would be VERY powerful with Arcane Power producing a 2s daze 5 times. However, were it made such that only the first attack produced a daze, this would sound like a pretty good idea to me and also makes the current iteration of Lightning Rod fine.

Right, I should have clarified that it would affect Arcane Power differently in that only the next animation after casting would Daze. Again, the beauty of the change is that it:

• Creates an entirely new build (Rupts) for Elementalist to fit an entirely new role
• Is powerful enough that it justifies running both M and GM traits for opportunity cost reasons; yet
• Situational enough that it isn’t overly strong; as Interrupt based builds are quite dueling centric.

Moving on to Earth

• Earth Master Minor – Earthen Blast: In addition to its current effects, this trait now causes attuning to earth to be a blast finisher centered around the player.

• I actually don’t mind this trait when running D/D in the Rock Solid variant as it allows a lot of anti-kite or kiting potential. It’s actually quite good; just not on par with Healing Ripple or Electric Discharge.

Pretty much the easiest way to buff this is to boost its defensive potential, like this:

• Gain Aegis for 3 seconds and Cripple foes in a 240 Radius for 3 seconds when you Attune to Earth
  • This re-emphasises Earth Attunement as something to switch to when a burst is anticipated to be incoming. If Elemental Attunement’s Prot is split into Earth, this becomes even stronger, as beyond the Aegis there is now Protection as well.

That being said, Earth really lacks offensive options due to poor autoattacks (except for Staff Earth 1), (generally) more utility based skills with lower damage potential (due to being CC setups, or Blast finishers) and it could do with a better Minor to prop it up. How about this? (Skill Data From Zelyhn’s thread

• When you Attune to Earth, deal damage (0.3 Coeff.) and Cripple foes in a 240 Radius for 3 seconds. Foes that had attacked you in the past 2 seconds take bonus damage (0.3 → 0.7 coefficient) and receive 5 stacks of Vulnerability.
  • This is a huge melee boost; as 0.7 coefficient is identical to that of the Electric Discharge trait – except this is AOE. Add the vulnerability onto that to setup future damage and this becomes a massive counterpressure trait.

Obsidian Focus
One of the traits I feel that you did ignore (and for good reason, as I have seen very few people take it) is Obsidian Focus. It’s outcompeted for the simple reason that Protection is so much better. 33% Damage reduction from Prot is worth ~800 Toughness from the 1804 base Armour, is easier to obtain from Boons as Elementalist, and scales with diminishing returns to a lesser degree than simply stacking Toughness alone.

For it to supply 290 toughness; and only on Channelling skills and not much else, it’s clear why Elementalists shy away from it. Keep in mind that this is also the buffed version as well; it was previously only 170 toughness prior to the Dhuumfire patch.

• At this point it may be better to forgo the Toughness mechanic altogether and instead make a mechanic around Aegis instead.
  • Obsidian Focus: When channeling a Skill, gain Aegis for 2 seconds

This forces people to autoattack before interrupting, thus decreasing the risk of high-impact skills like Meteor Shower.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Earth VIII – Rock Solid: Add 4 seconds of aegis to this trait in a 240 AoE affecting 5 allies along with the stability. This would allow attuning to earth to be a skillshot block in order to block that pin down or suspected incoming backstab.

• I don’t know if you’ve ever played with Rock Solid before, but Ether Renewal → Earth Attunement is huge.
• In the PvP / WvW setting, Stability is king for securing stomps, denying stomps, and negating CC chains. Rock Solid by itself makes D/D quite strong against Hammer Warrior and allows you to negate CC within the cooldowns of the Hammer weapon set. Rock Solid is also AOE, in case you haven’t noticed, which makes an RS ele one of the best team support with regards to down state control. There’s a reason RS was once Grandmaster.

I’d argue for no changes to RS.

Dirame.8521:

Did this topic get deleted or something?

EDIT: There was a bug, I fixed it by commenting.

Oops, sorry, I didn’t mean to hit the post #49 bug by double posting.

Dirame.8521:

The thing I noticed about GW2 and I think they mentioned this at some point, is that, they are going for a very free-handed skill interaction system. What this means is, they don’t want to dictate the way you combine skills like they did in GW1. Where most builds dictated the order in which you pressed buttons.
Most of the fights were not reactionary, just press buttons in a sequence and kite whilst the Monk does the real reactionary combat.

One thing that is definitely missing from GW2 is reactionary combat. Whilst the “no monk/healer” system in GW2 is quite groundbreaking and interesting, I feel that Anet dropped the ball in regards to putting in reactionary combat in other ways into the game for the professions. Mechanics like Ripostes/Blocks, Reflects, Walls, the Protection boon, Aegis and such; as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, aren’t fully explored by the Trait system. Nor is there a proper “riposte” system for Boons, Conditions or CC/Interrupts. I feel that traits that enforce reactive play can replace a lot of the RNG or passive %HP trigger or %on hit or %on Crit triggers to create a more transparent, easier to play/counterplay system.

As an example, let’s take Engineer’s Transmute . Previously, it was an RNG trigger that “rolled the dice” more often the more conditions were spammed. As of the December 2013 patch, Transmute is more reliable in that it guarantees a Conversion per 15 seconds, but is also less reliable in that you cannot convert multiple conditions into Boons with a good dice roll.

Let’s put all that aside in favour of a mechanic that promotes reactive play:

• Transmute: For the next 2 seconds after you use a Toolbelt Skill, the next incoming Condition is converted to a Boon. ICD: 10-15 seconds.

What does this mechanic mean? Well for one, it enforces player prediction – to “read” the situation and judge when it is best to use a Toolbelt skill to “block” that incoming Condition. It’s also potentially extremely strong, as it converts the first incoming condition.

• Therefore, high application priority Conditions, such as Incendiary Powder Burning that is applied first, also happens to be Converted. Warrior’s Pin Down Immobilise gets converted instead of the covering Bleed. Necromancer’s Immobilise from Tormented Shackles gets converted instead of some crit-proc Bleeding; and so on, and so forth.
• Note that pre-existing conditions keep on ticking. Transmute therefore becomes a tool to stem the attrition by acting as a “riposte” of sorts against potentially life-ending Conditions like Immobilise, Burning, Chill, Fear or Chill. Used skillfully, it can turn a fight. But used thoughtlessly on a Bleeding autoattack it’s useless.
  • This then leads into play, counterplay, counter-counterplay as now an Engineer with Transmute up has to decide when to pop a Toolbelt. On the other side, opponents up against Transmute can elect to keep pressuring with just autoattacks, or use a “junk” condition applying skill to bait out the Transmute.
  • The downside to this system is that there needs to be a slight delay pending a telegraph that Transmute has been activated. Instant cast skills like Surprise Shot suddenly become extremely powerful if Transmute were to be activated instantly, without delay, as a clutch against conditions like Immobilise or Fear. It may be necessary to have a Transmute “windup” before it kicks in after using an Instant cast skill; so the skill fires without a problem, but the Transmute is only active 0.25-0.5 seconds after the TB skill was cast.
  • Even so, implementing a proper telegraph – even without regard to an ICD timer – would do much to make the trait a lot more readable when it does kick in.

Arcane Lightning
I also note that you skip through Arcane Lightning on your way to the GM Traits. Any reason why?

• In my opinion, this trait is easily outcompeted by the trifecta of Bolt to the Heart, Air Training and Fresh Air – even in a triple Arcane burst build as the damage is far more consistent and less situational.
• 10% Critical Damage isn’t bad, it’s just that other traits are better. So how about we don’t try to make yet another DPS increase trait in the Air Magic line and try for something different?
  • Ele at the moment is missing a few things: Boon Hate, Condi cleanse outside of water (put it in Fire or Earth, not Air), CC/Interrupts with better uptime, and defensive counterpressure outside of Auras. We’ll get to Boon Hate in Earth or Fire.

So at a stroke, let’s create a new build just by putting in this mechanic:

• Arcane Lightning: Your Arcane Skills inflict Daze for 2 seconds. Inflict 5 stacks of Vulnerability if you Interrupt a foe.
  • We have just created an Interrupt build if we then combo it with Lightning Rod
  • Alternatively, combo it with Tempest Defense, allow TD to proc its damage increase with Daze as well, and all of a sudden you have a huge counterpressure build.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

Air XIII – Lightning Rod: Change to deliver damage and weakness on delivering a critical hit with a 10 second ICD. As it is, ele only has like 2 interrupts at most per weaponset with generally long cooldowns, making this trait a pretty poor performer.

• This change is not needed at all if you simply make Arcane Lightning a rupt-based trait.
• Interrupt builds have a skill floor of forcing yourself to play to the opponent’s rhythm, not your own, to interrupt key skills. To lower the skill floor to mere on critical hit is an insult to the intelligence of the profession and a blow to skilled play.
• If there is anything the game needs less of, it’s on-crit procs.

Instead, how about this:

• Lightning Rod: On successfully dodging an attack, your next attack inflicts Daze for 2 seconds. If you interrupt a foe, strike it with a Lightning bolt that does damage and causes weakness for 4 seconds
  • This turns Lightning Rod into an extremely potent alternative to Tempest Defense as a counterpressure build. It’s also attunement agnostic, which is hilariously strong.
  • For counterplay reasons, a verbal quote like “Charged up!” or “Get Zapped!” should be said by the character; or a storm cloud should form over the character’s head on a successful dodge so enemies know what’s coming. There needs to be more telegraphs in this game.

Moving on to Air.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Air Adept Minor – Zephyr’s Speed: Movement speed increased to 20%, or even 25%. This would only work while attuned to air, so it would mainly be useful for travel. My thoughts when boosting this trait revolve mainly around the focus – does anyone else enjoy being a turtle in WvW just to use the (severely underused, mostly due to mobility issues) focus? I don’t.

• S/F builds – at least those that try to run in WvW – incorporate Traveler’s Runes . Your proposal echoes the old One with Air where IMS stacked over time to maximum of 25% – but was not taken due to being awfully underpowered for a Major Slot.
• In my opinion, Zephyr’s Speed should have had the old One with Air effect put on, buffed to 10% per 10 seconds; first tick on Air Attune, max 25%; and called good. This puts X/F at 25% IMS after 20 seconds, which is more than fine as it forces a camped attunement. Unfortunately, this has some negative Synergy with Fresh Air but let’s be real, it’s a 5 (1) point Minor.
• On the other hand, if you make split Elemental Attunement’s Boon effects into each 5 (1) point Minor, then this wouldn’t even be an issue in the first place.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Air IV – One with Air: Increase superspeed duration to 2 seconds and add 4 seconds of blindness when attuning to Air in a 240 AoE affecting 3 targets. This would allow attuning to air to be a skillshot blind in order to stop that earthshaker or suspected incoming backstab.

• Pretty strong for an Adept tier trait, considering Evasive Arcana requires not only a dodge, but for enemies to be around you when your dodge completes. It’s also difficult to counterplay, especially for Fresh Air specs. I can imagine a lot of Warrior hate incoming if this was to be implemented.
• Just make it so “your next attack inflicts Blind for 4 seconds” after attuning to Air and add a Buff icon for transparency. Air is traditionally single target focus, and a way to limit its power level is to make it single target.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Air V – Soothing Winds: I honestly don’t know anyone that uses this trait, so change it to Vigorous Auras: Auras granted by you last an additional second and grant 2 seconds of vigor.

• I could only accept this if Anet had gone through with the Renewing Stamina nerf despite all the protests – including mine at the time. With the evade frames on Burning Speed now, along with double Sigils for Energy, I’d be for this change.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Air VIII – Inscription: Increase might granted while using a glyph in fire attunement from 1 stack to 3 stacks and decrease base duration from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.

• A fine change, as it encourages use of Glyph of Elemental Harmony instead of that lazy Signet. However, Glyphs in general do need a lot of tweaks. I’ll get to my review of your Glyph proposals in time, though.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Air IX: Aeromancer’s Alacrity: In addition to reducing the recharge rate of attunement-based weapon skills, this trait would now also increase the recharge rate of air attunement by 20%.

• I made mention of this in my Fire Trait review of how this would further incentivise Arcana so people could “double dip” Attunement recharge. I think the principle is sound, I’m just not so sure that people will move out of Arcana given the implementation as you propose.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

It’s really hard to reasonably get us out of water. Having Cleansing Water and Ether Renewal at our disposal kind of makes it so that any more traits/skills that would remove conditions would push us over the top. I think the only thing that could have condition removal reasonably added would be a grandmaster trait in a line (probably fire or earth) that would make auras produced by you remove one condition. This would give signet builds some sort of condition removal and still be able to run the signet heal over ether renewal, which would instantly make a signet build FAR more viable.

However, as outlined in my opening posts, I think getting us out of arcana is pretty easy. The “mancer” traits in each line could have attunement CD reduction added, vigor uptime from renewing stamina could be halved, elemental attunement could be nerfed a bit (and made baseline, if you’re in favor of that) and more defensive options could be added to the other lines. Bam, 4 points in arcana is no longer a requirement for most viable builds.

And if you had read my responses, you would have seen some of that in my proposals. With regard to Elementalist “double dipping” in condition cleansing – it is precisely that mentality that pushed Anet to make Cleansing Wave Master tier. What players then did is not move away from Water, but instead put 20 (4) points into Water instead of 10 (2) post Dhuumfire patch – because that functionality did not exist anywhere else.

By situating Condition cleanse at Master tier in Fire, tied to Blasting Combo Fields, Elementalists can “combo into” their Cleansing which is:

• Slower, and therefore more liable to interruption
• Less mobile, which exposes the Ele to AOE pressure – at least until they Blast the Field
• More telegraphed as there are now 2 skills going off to get the effect – and therefore more counterplayable (stack a different Condi)

I don’t see how this would somehow push Ele’s cleansing through the Roof without sacrifice. In fact, due to the fact that you’re actually burning cooldowns on the ground – NOT the enemy – you’re probably giving up far more to cleanse using the trait than simply by Swapping to Water attunement. It might even be underpowered when looking at it from that perspective.

As for Fire Aura removing Conditions, this is nothing new; and was proposed by DiogoSilva under his Suggestions for Focus and in fact his proposal was much stronger.

We tread and re-tread the same ground only for Anet to forge its own path, it seems.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

But, by proper usage of the above factors, as well as a wide diversity of effects, it is easily in the realm of possibility to make a game that works in positives.

Remember that Caveats don’t just have to be about inflicting negative conditions on oneself, or having some major cut in survivability in one area for a gain in another – it can also apply to what situations empower a skill to be strong, and then allowing players to create those conditions to power that skill up.

There is not enough differences in kind (i.e. diversification of specific functionality such as condition cleanse, boon output etc.) whether by addition of new triggers for the same effect or by implementation of new trait synergies to drive innovation. There is no innovation because what’s explored is superior to what’s innovated. Arenanet wanted players to drive their own meta, and then concentrated specific functionality – without means of access to similar functionality by different mechanics – into specific trait lines. (Water Magic, Defense, Explosives, Wilderness Survival, Valour, etc)

On the one hand this prevents “double dipping” overspecialisation to result in new synergetic hard counters; on the other hand, the build variety will forever be hobbled because internal imbalance will happen with such an implementation. On the flipside, if you then implement caveats to these traits to offset double dipping, then:

• The skill floor is raised as players must use new mechanics to exploit them
• Greater build variety is possible as it’s no longer as clear which choice is superior
• Stronger effects are possible as they are offset by their conditional requirements (i.e. Target is burning, target is CC’d, On Heal, On Elite, On Profession Mechanic, X seconds before incoming CC or Condition, On Boon, Lose Boon for X effect) .

That we are 2 years past launch into the game and the new Grandmasters still play off of the following:

• RNG, because we all know RNG is great design towards active play, transparency of action, and empowered player agency
• Single target ICD, because taking a GM trait for duels grants it broad base applicability
• Weaker mechanics than traits at lower tiers, because your build can be defined by how much less you do than the meta spec
  - speaks much about the depth of creativity Anet has plumbed to bring us these new mechanics.

Seriously, there is a dearth of the following mechanics in the game; all of which can be exploited by Anet to remove the RNG (Engi!) and allow players new ways to build:

• On Profession mechanic use (looking at Engi)
• On Elite (most Elite traits are junk)
• Target is Conditioned (Burning, Bleeding, Poison, etc.) – the greatest depth here is %increased damage and not much else
• Target is Interrupted/CC’ed (Most notable is Unsuspecting Foe and Chaotic Interruption; then most other classes don’t exploit it much, if at all)
• On Heal (Not much in the way of defensive counterpressure traits)
• On Utility X use (The most recent is Survival of the Fittest; but many utility skill categories lack anything beyond CDR)
• X seconds before incoming effect (CC, Condi) – this would open up an entire avenue of reactive play that encourages player prediction i.e. for 2 seconds after using Profession mechanic X, incoming Condition is converted to Boon
• Lose X Boons, gain Y effect (An entire class built around this in GW1, conspicuously absent mechanics in GW2)
• Sacrifice X health, gain Y effect (GW2 Corruptions don’t count because they’re barely a sacrifice at all)
• Draw conditions to self, gain Y effect (Save Yourselves! ; yet Necro has no control over Plague Signet as the Condi Master)
• Replace Weapon Skill with X (saves on Anet inventing new weapon sets for classes, reinvigorates a weapon set. Win-win)
• On Evaded attack (Imagine actually being rewarded for dodging correctly; then look at Feline Grace and despair)
• On Block/Missile defense (Only Defender’s Flame and Missile Deflection here; yet Mesmer, Engineer, Ranger GS / offhand Axe, Ele Earth Shield/Magnetic Aura etc have these mechanics; and nothing to reward them in the way of traits)
• Resets/Cooldown reduction with X trigger (Imagine being rewarded with lower cooldowns when X trigger is reached. Playing well i.e. interrupting target is rewarded with a lower CD on X skills)

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I wouldn’t call a system of caveats and costs a solution as much as a beast with a host of different problems than the one we are facing. I’ve heard this debate in many different forms, from other MMOs to Yugioh and other card games, and there are multiple sides to it.

The thing is, caveats are already in the game; it’s just that actually using them is sometimes inferior. I already compared Fire Grab against Phoenix ; and one of these skills are clearly superior to the other in terms of opportunity cost; is less conditional to deal its full damage, and is easier to execute.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

First and foremost is that caveats aren’t an instant resolution to stale gameplay. Diversity is from creativity, and diverse gameplay can exist in a system of only positives. Adding detriments to abilities will just add another layer of imbalances and flaws to the system, unless it was done just right.

Again, the mere fact that apex choices exist in GW2 serves as a chilling effect against innovation when one choice of Trait, Weapon, or Rune/Sigil is clearly superior to another. Sure, a system of only positives can work – if every effect had a duplicate with a difference in kind. But internal imbalance ensures that players will gravitate towards the combinations that have the least execution for the greatest reward, leaving others behind.

• We see Strength rune dominating the Power and Hybrid setups; propping up Celestial.
• We see Air/Fire become another tool for spiking classes.
• We see Lyssa runes dropped after the nerf to only 5 conditions converted to boons where previously it was dominant in Thief, Mesmer and Warrior specs.
• We see Necromancer fall by the wayside (again) now that Elementalist has come back when Cleansing Water’s ICD was removed
• We see 2012 Ele 0 0 2 6 6 running triple Cantrip back in full force since nothing significant has happened to other trait lines to make Eles gravitate to them.
• We see that the April Feature packs’ new Grandmasters have done little indeed to shift the meta; instead creating a new host of “off-meta” specs; and the dominant trait lines of each class remain unchallenged.

More.

• Fire IX – Fire’s Embrace: Increase fire aura duration by 1 second.

Honestly the whole Fire Aura mechanic needs work, and I don’t think that Duration is the answer. The Signets grant Fire Shield mechanic is fine, however, Fire Shield itself isn’t combat significant enough due to providing no defensive mechanics at all. How about this?

• You gain 3 seconds of Fire Aura when you activate a Signet. Gain 10% damage reduction while under the effects of Fire Aura. Cleanse 1 condition and Burn foes in a 240 radius when Fire Aura ends. (Reapplying Fire Aura, or applying another aura, ends Fire Aura)
  • What you have now is a tradeoff when running a triple signet build (and presumably, Written in Stone). It also makes Leap Finishers for Ele suddenly extremely valuable because now you have a cleanse and a Burn. You can burn cooldowns for 1 cleanse and a Burn, or wait until it ends to keep the 10% damage reduction up.
  • 1 cleanse is probably too weak for something you need utility slots for, but keep in mind that Leap Finishers also apply Fire Aura. Magnetic Grasp just got buffed, and Dagger Focus got 1 step closer to being not terrible in the PVP setting. Fire Aura (the weapon skill) could be stronger by providing damage on top of burning, and cleansing more conditions; whilst retaining the 10% damage reduction.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Fire X – One with Fire: Completely remove current effect and create new effect: burning applied by you deals 20% increased damage.

• I feel that this trait is a little too strong, to be honest. However, given how limited the scope of the trait is, it would be strong in a condi-specific build, and combined with Ember’s Might, that’s 2 potentially useful utility trait slots taken up for offense, so I guess it’s fine.

One of the traits that I feel you did skip over was Burning Fire ; which as a trait is pretty terrible in a few ways:

• It’s passive, which means you have no control over it
• It raises cleanses per 10 seconds to 0.75 for a Master trait in a line that has Adepts of limited usefulness; whilst Cleansing Water or Evasive Arcana outperform it by leaps and bounds for less opportunity cost
• It’s currently bugged with Cantrip traits; so it doesn’t even have synergy with Spell Slinger or Soothing Disruption . Cantrip Mastery doesn’t count because CDR traits have not usually had synergy with passive procs.

One of the ways I feel would reinvigorate it would be this:

• Blasting a Fire Field cleanses 1 condition on up to 5 allies and inflicts Burning for 2 seconds on foes in a 240 radius.

So, what does this mean?

• It adds 2 cleanses per 25 to double Arcana Staff builds that would previously have to run 6 in Water just to not die, 1 more to Dagger mainhand, 1 to dagger offhand, 2 to Scepter and 2 to Focus.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Fire XII – Pyromancer’s Puissance: Remove and replace with new trait Retaliatory Fire: Attuning to fire grants 4 seconds of retaliation (NOT in an AoE.) Retaliation granted by you deals 30% increased damage. Along with flame barrier, this would make striking an ele who has just attuned to fire a potentially dangerous prospect.

• I feel that Pyromancer’s Puissance is fine, to be honest. I proposed a buff in my previous post that emphasises Fire Attunement rather than forcing Elementalists to stay in Fire Attunement.
  • I also feel that until Retaliation becomes a percentage based damage taken mechanic that stacks up to 25 like Might etc it’s either going to be too weak against single big hits or too strong against many small hits.
  • That said, I can see the utility of this in a mainhand dagger build, so there is that.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Fire XIII – Blinding Ashes: Either make it so that AoE applications of burning now blind all affected targets if the trait is off cooldown -OR- make the ICD individual to each enemy (the latter being more powerful than the former.)

Blinding Ashes should have been this mechanic in the first place:

• Your Fire Fields now pulse Blind for 2 seconds every 2 seconds.
  • Done! Now skills like Ring of Fire, Lava Font and even Burning Retreat now have a defensive counterpressure role.

• To increase its offensive pressure, you can add this mechanic:
  • Foes Controlled (Push, Knockdown, Stun, Daze, Launch) onto your Fire Fields begin to take damage (0.3 coefficient of Power per second) and Burn for 2 seconds every second in the style of Bed of Coals

30 Fire X/Dagger Elementalist never sounded so scary; and Gust for Staff just became legitimate damage when kiting after Burning Retreat.

There’s a lot to go through here – far beyond the scope of 5k chars, but I’ll do my best.

Overall I did like a few of the changes, however, what I did not like is how none of your changes truly increase build diversity. Underused traits are universally buffed, yes, as are poor weapon skills, but none of them address:

• Poorly designed trait mechanics in the first place (i.e. passives, RNGs, etc.) or poorly thought out skills
• The preponderance of Ele to invest 40-50+ points into Water and Arcana; now made even more optimal given that Cleansing Water’s ICD has been removed in PVP. There’s no significant condi output in PvE so that doesn’t matter; and WvW never had ICD due to split.
• The lack of diversification of Ele away from Boon dependancy and away from concentration of certain mechanics – condi cleanse, general utility, CDR – into certain trait lines.

The good points, however are within:

• Echoing ele community changes by calling for a new Glyph of Auras as a stunbreak
• Making Elemental Attunement less necessary
• Addressing longstanding ele gripes with certain weapon skills

Onto the specifics.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

Starting with one mechanic change:
Make elemental attunement boons baseline to the class with the following changes and durations:

• The boons are NOT AoE baseline.
• Fire: 3 stacks of might for 5 seconds
• Water: Regeneration for 2 seconds
• Air: Swiftness for 2 seconds
• Earth: Protection for 2 seconds

I feel that nothing should be baseline, ever, for Elementalist, or for any class, for that matter. Traits and effects are there to require investment to enforce the concept of opportunity cost, and baseline effects erode this concept. How about this instead?

• The 5 1 point minors in each tree (Flame Barrier, Zephyr’s Speed, Stone Flesh, Soothing Mist) now grant the individual boons associated with each trait line, at full duration.
• 10 2 points in Arcana now grants the trait Powerful Boons to replace Elemental Attunement which states:
  • Boons you gain are shared with allies (targets 5) in a 240 unit radius.

• It would be an overall nerf in terms of absolute variety of boons, but it would be a buff in terms of specific Boon uptime – the most important of which would be Protection, then Swiftness, then Regeneration, then Might.
  • Let’s be real, the only reason why EAttunement was taken was for Prot, and this is a massive buff to builds that wish to escape Arcana.

Onto Traits.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

Fire Traits:

• Fire Adept Minor – Flame Barrier: Boost trigger chance from 20% to 50% while attuned to fire.

This does nothing to make Flame Barrier somehow less terrible. How about this?

• Renamed to: Stoke the Flames:
  • Burning ticks on a foe gain 1 stack of Might for 6 seconds. Cooldown: 2 seconds.
  • Note emphasis. What this means is that Might is gained not when it is applied, but when it ticks over. Obviously, 1 second of burn grants 1 stack of Might. But a long duration applied Burn from a long cooldown Weapon skill or utility still gets the benefit.
  • Peak Might output is 3-4 stacks assuming a foe is Burning consistently. Pretty strong for an Adept Minor, but you’ll have to find a way to keep that Burning up.
  • In the event of multiple foes, the ICD keeps peak Might from spiralling out of control. On the other hand, proccing off ticks instead of applications means that you will still get a benefit even if 1 foe cleanses; as others will still be Burning.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Fire Master Minor – Sunspot: Add 2 seconds of burning to this trait in a 240 AoE. Increase the damage radius to 240 to be more in-line with other attunement effects. Reduce affected targets to 3.

• I don’t mind this change. Has good synergy with my proposal for the 1 point minor, actually. Serendipitous.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

• Fire VII – Pyromancer’s Alacrity: In addition to reducing the recharge rate of attunement-based weapon skills, this trait would now also increase the recharge rate of fire attunement by 20%. Without any points in arcana this would provide for a 10&3/4 second fire attunement recharge time; with 6 points in arcana, the recharge rate would be 8&3/4 seconds.

• This implementation is fine, although I fear it would drive people deeper into Arcana if they ever wish to run an Attunement specialised build. I feel that there needs to be a “Fresh Fire” type trait that resets Attunement CD so that people feel comfortable running just 2-3 specialist attunements over the 4 that are danced across right now.
• How about a rejiggering of the Pyromancer’s Puissance GM trait to reduce the cooldown of Fire Attunement by 2 seconds (minimum 8 seconds) when Burning is applied by Utility skills (Glyph of Greater Elemental, FGS, Cleansing Flame, (hopefully) Glyph of Auras, Flame Axe, Fire Signet)?