Guild Wars 2

ArrDee.2573:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Yes Vee Wee knows all these suggestions have been mentioned before many times! But repetition is the mother of all learning! Vee Wee just hoped maybe a dev would come in and say these things are being worked on! Vee Wee just hoped a dev would come in and say, “Hello my frand Vee Wee! Don’t you worry your pretty little face you thilly bear! We are actively working to make our game better! And we are doing it in a reasonable amount of time! And we are taking your suggestions to heart! And we are going to buff Engineers to be thuper OP and we are going to give them a turret or gadget that works exactly like Flesh Wurm!” Gosh Vee Wee can only dream!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Flesh Wurm for Engineer aside, what really needs to change is putting the word “Soon!”™ into the dumpster. At this point, there have been more than enough missed windows for action and indeed, Anet has demonstrably delayed action many times, such as with-holding the Sigil of Paralyzation bugfix, and in more recent memory the Ranger Spirit of Nature bugfix to be folded into feature packs even as they announce changes weeks, sometimes months ahead of implementation.

I don’t know who does PR for Arenanet but there is clearly something silly in promising something, stating that it is fixed and then dithering on delivering it even as there are demonstrable negative consequences for ongoing balance. The upcoming PVP Feature Pack for September finally delivers on the Asura issue, which is great. The only problem is that we’ve had more than 2 official publicly broadcasted tournaments where this was clearly being abused by practically every team, and more than that besides – all the while players were making mention of it since late 2012. There is a clear and growing disconnect between promise and delivery and I can only attribute it to Living Story’s voracious demand for resources preventing Anet from properly iterating on game systems.

Back in February when I made the Balance, Iteration, Wrongdoing thread, which Allie Murdock responded to, I was hopeful that the feedback would percolate and that more frequent changes in terms of balance and systems iteration – no matter how small – would occur.

But now that Karl McLain’s great Tooltip Fix project is over, there is yet another feature freeze; and the clearly OP setups that were predicted in early April when the Previews were coming out are now dominant like Celestial/Strength Rune/Might stacking in general. There was a 2% damage nerf and the heart of the problem – the fact that 45% Might duration is possible – was never addressed. Air/Fire was predicted and not addressed. Anet needs to recognise that 1 tweak per 6 months is not going to be enough and it never will be. Yes, one could argue that the game is more balanced than it ever has been, and it is true to a degree. But to then take that as a sign to rest on one’s laurels and allow “perfect” to become the enemy of “good enough” whilst running QA on minor changes for 5 months will never get the game to reach its peak potential unless Anet follows the footsteps of LoL, Smite and DotA and tweak and tweak and tweak again, farming out those man-hours of QA to the community itself and iterating off of mistakes using a PTR. Since neither case is happening, we get threads like this where the same things are rolled out time and time again.

Stallerenox.1295:

ArrDee.2573:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

First, transmute does not work on CC! Not like Shared Anguish that Rangers have! Do you know how many immunes I’ve gotten when I try to Magnet them! Rangers truly are the worst class in the game! Mash 1 all day while sitting in a perpetual state of evasion and protection! Truly the worst!

Second, transmute does not work on CC! Learn the class before you start making thilly accusations!

Third, like I’ve mentioned in previous posts there needs to be a visual indicator of these passive skills! Shared Anguish, Transmute, Reaper’s Protection! A boon icon! An aura surrounding them! Anything Anet come on!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

What I wonder then, is why do I arbitrarily gain 1s of Stability when fighting Claw of Jormag, conveniently at the exact same time everyone else is running away in fear?

Go on, try it. It happens to me every morning when I do that boss.

Fear converts to Stability, because Fear is a Condition as well as being a hard CC. The more you know.

Hardly an Immunity to CC in any case, because in the PvP and WvW setting everything else works just fine. Necros running Terror might have trouble, but a proper Necro never leads off with a Fear anyway as that is a guaranteed wasted cooldown because the opponent will have stunbreaks.

If anything, getting the “Resist!” popup is more than likely due to the Automated Response trait more than the Transmute trait as AR reduces incoming condition duration when it procs. It’s also notable that AR sucks.

If you’re getting “Immune!” when putting CC into Engineer, it’s most likely due to throwing cooldowns into Throw Elixir B Stability, or Elixir S Invulnerability. In either case, it is again, not the fault of the Transmute trait.

Precise Sights on a 3kit build is terrible because if you’re running Grenades then Steel Packed Powder will give you all the Vulnerability you’ll ever need as long as you can hit your skillshots.

If you’re running P/P then the loss of Hair trigger is more devastating than the loss of crit-proc Vulnerability. Same with Rifled Barrels, because it makes hitting things like Blunderbuss and Blowtorch significantly harder. If you’re running P/S then I guess it’s not too bad but then again, why run 2 in Firearms at all when you can run 4 in Tools for the Egun stunbreak reset at 25% health with a view to getting Power Wrench; or heck, even putting 6 in Alchemy so you can have the unholy trinity of Invig Speed, Prot Injection and Backpack Regenerator.

ukuni.8745:

oxtred.7658:

Do you understand we’re talking about contest where the goal is to cap points and sitting outside the point is useless? Having 1 point saved from any cap without at least 3 people pushing it ( assuming the engi is good) is the problem. The spec itself isn’t strong in 1v1, everyone knows that. Hammer stuns all have animations, the only tricky one is hammer 4 because it’s a fast cast, but it’s totally doable. Hammer wars are strong, but they can’t deny a point from 3 people assuming an average level.

cant beat a turret engi 1v1 on point? ill take that challange

Hardly a challenge considering Grenades. The standard Bomb/Nade Engi puts Turret engi in the dumpster, as does Celestial Rifle/nade. Heck, even Celestial Rifle Triple kit that doesn’t run grenades has tools to win and if all else fails, drop Crate. Even HGH Engineer has a good run against Turret Engineer, which says something about just how unwinnable the matchup is.

nearlight.3064:

Hi all.

I play a variety of builds on many different classes bit my current favorite at the moment is glass S/F ele. I do well against most turret engis, mainly due to the combination of burst and projectile hate, and dragon’s tooth actually one shots most turrets, so when they’re close enough together it’s almost a non issue.

The things that irk me are that turret engis are so common at my level of solo q, and that the game mode encourages such kittenty tactics, so that I lose frequently despite being able to outplay specs like this one. The other issue I have with turret engis is that when you’re so glassy, the turrets can easily kill you if you don’t blow an involved on the stomp, bit that’s more of a minor inconvenience.

Anyway that being said im much more afraid of D/P and S/D thieves in terms of duels.. it’s just I feel like turret engis make it harder for whatever team im stuck with to deal with, and I lose ultimately because they bunker a point and much on people who aren’t that experienced.

Glass S/F ele actually has an easy tool for dealing with Turret engi, and that tool is called Dragon’s Tooth. In a power build it’s enough to one-shot or almost one-shot a Turret. Follow up with Air Attunement → Lightning Strike or if against Thumper Turret then use an Arcane skill on it first.

All of a sudden you’ve burned a 6 second cooldown /- an Attunement for an Engineer’s 30. In addition, Magnetic Wave and Swirling Winds completely negates a Turret Engineer’s entire suite of tools and when they’re down, there’s still Obsidian Flesh.

I find that the reason most players fail to utilise their glass builds properly and get blown up is that they lack patience and get murdered for it. As glass you should never venture into the range of more than 1-2 Turrets of a Turret engi. If you don’t have your defensive cooldowns, even more so. Don’t just Lightning Flash in and try to blow out a Soldier’s Amulet in effective HP and ignore the Turrets because that is precisely the thing to do to get rekt.

There is absolutely no excuse for playing a matchup badly from the beginning and then complaining about it. Your response sounds more like a complaint against Player vs Point or the classic Bunker vs Burst dilemma. The thing about conquest though is that you don’t necessarily have to assault that point. Or if you do, then you don’t have to do it alone. Turret Engineer’s greatest weakness more than AOE is more than 1 target. If you want to solo, run Glyph of Greater Elemental, but otherwise, all you need is just one other person and the Turret Engineer is nullified because every single skill of every single tool the Engi has is single target focused.

If anything, S/F ele shouldn’t be pushing Far point, which is where Turret Engineer is most likely to park him/herself. You lack the mobility to rotate back to mid in time, you lack the tools to score a quick decap if you can’t blow up the defender (and let’s be real, every single backpoint holder is going to be at least semi-tanky) and your damage is best utilised in teamfights where there’s going to be CC setup for your burst and your teammates can peel Thieves off of you.

If you can’t deal with a Turret Engineer, rotate between mid and close and force outnumbered fights until the Turret Engineer is himself forced to rotate to assist – and then he will be utterly useless because Turrets do absolutely bugger all in teamfights. It’s one thing to run a build and another to run it in the right role. All too often players complain about the power level of this, that, and the other when the problem is that what they are running simply is not fit for purpose for what they want to do. GW2 unfortunately is a game about apex choices and until that design paradigm changes there is not much you can do except for play the role your build was designed to do. And not just play the role, but play the rotations.

In the words of GMan, the right man in the wrong place can make all the place in the world. Put your S/F ele in the opposing team’s hardest place to deal with and you will find more success.

Skyhammer should have every single area that people can be knocked off of fenced off. Reduce the number of Glass panels around each point and the Skyhammer.

Then, underneath all the remaining glass panels, add a second underlevel with jump pads at specific points so people can use the bottom floor to traverse the map in ways that aren’t otherwise possible; such as a shortcut from point A to C that the Hammer can’t touch.

Then, make the Skyhammer Blocked or Dodgeable like the Trebs on Khylo.

You now have a map that has interesting verticality, interesting ways to rotate, a counterplayable cannon, and multiple areas that players can confront each other and have an actual, real fight without resorting to cheesy knocks for instant kills. Where knocks are abused, players simply gain a way to rotate to other points without fear of the Hammer, so there’s a real tradeoff between denying enemies access to a fight to possibly losing other points.

You now have a place that is actually fun to fight in and around, promotes smart rotations, and isn’t the source of solo queue player’s ire and is possibly even team queue worthy again.

The problem is and remains the distinct lack of iteration on clearly flawed PVP maps, with the majority of content designers seemingly pushed on the non-stop Living Story train.

What Anet needs to realise is that there is only so much the community can do to grow the PVP scene in the face of poor map designs leading to blowout matches or unfun play (Skyhammer), a borked leaderboard that rewards not playing more than actually spamming games, and promise after promise that has so far failed to deliver.

Anet was announcing Leagues and/or leaderboard changes, new game modes, map improvements and a system to mitigate AFK/4v5 nigh on 1.5-2 years ago. There has been window after window for them to implement them: WvW seasons ending, Living Story Season 1 ending, the feature freezes leading up to the Feature packs, and their change in balance patch schedule from the once per month strategy in early 2013 to once per 6 months.

There is a saying that you need to spend money to make money. Strong PVP scenes are grown because they are tended to by the developer, and languish without it. If anything is a threat to the longevity of this game, it is the stoic apathy Anet has for actually reinvesting into their PVP infrastructure.

I don’t see Rangers being strong until Pets cease autoattacking, Ranger’s Power Coefficients restored, and Rangers receiving more control over Pet skills so the choice of Pet becomes a second Utility Bar. Notable amongst the changes is that there is a significant lack of making F2 skills reset the pet’s actions so they can be activated reliably. Rangers have been clamouring for improved Pet AI and action queuing for the longest time and until that changes Ranger will always be second rate due to their class mechanic, having to rely on passives to carry them.

I think there was some Anet response to the Ranger CDI in that the Weapons LB and GS were buffed, but let’s face it. These are easy changes that hardly touch core flaws with the class – reliance upon AI and passives that really mar an otherwise creative class design. But until Pets change, the ranger will stay where it is. It may wield different weapons or slot different utilities, but it won’t be at its full potential.

The minute someone pulls out L2p is the minute they step down to the level of ad hominem and cease to become respectable in my eyes.

As for the OP’s question, which is extremely loaded, people play cheese specs for the simple reason that they are efficient. They exemplify high reward for little risk in terms of skill floor or counter-play.

Now, thankfully, the Accelerant packed Turrets nerf is coming which will halve the knock distance from 300 to 150, which is going to make the decap combo significantly harder to pull off without also requiring a Rifle cooldown so there is that.

As for Engineers spreading turrets out instead of concentrating them into a ring, that’s actually the optimal way of playing Turrets because it saves them from AOE. That you then died to it speaks more to being unable to judge a situation correctly than to Turret Engineer being that much stronger. The build is strong, for sure, but it lacks in many areas, such as vulnerability to CC and Conditions. Turrets themselves are also trivial to take out from range and their attacks are slow and avoidable. It’s when people insist upon walking into the range of multiple turrets that issues arise.

It’s also notable that the Turret skills themselves have not received any significant changes in terms of their damage output and in fact have received some nerfs like Surprise Shot being nerfed, Net Turret immobilise being nerfed, and Flame Turret’s Smoke Field being nerfed. Thumper Turret got stronger with the new traits, but still remains largely the same in the way of usefullness – limited. Only the upcoming change to Rocket Turret receiving tracking on overcharge will significantly buff Turret Engineers but the turret itself is quite fragile; so killing it is easily a 50 second cooldown out of the way.

Short of that I don’t really have any more advice to give without an idea of your spec, and to wait for the APT nerf.

Zaviel.1245:

Wolf.5816:

I agree that Hair Trigger should be fused with Rifle Mods. The new Rifle Mod could be:
• Rifle Mod: Your Rifle Skills now have bonus effects when hitting foes at 200 range:
-Hip Shot:Inflicts Bleeding
-Net shot: Dazes for 0.5 seconds.
-Blunderbuss:Applies 5 stacks of Vulnerability
-Overcharged Shot: inflicts 3 stacks of Confusion.
-Jump Shot: Inflicts Blind

I really like that idea, though instead the bonuses being attached to Rifle Mod I believe attaching it to Modified Ammunition makes more sense. This mean that if you want to use the rifle alone, with no kits, you have to go 30 into Firearms, not just 20.

All those effects are nice, but the Blind on Jump Shot should only apply the the initial jump, not the landing. The landing already does great damage and it makes for sense as when you jump you leave smoke and dirt behind, also more reason to use the skill in close-range.

In my opinion, Go For the Eyes (Trait) should make all Rifle weapon skills cause Blindness (not the autoattack) without internal cooldown. It would be a great boon for Engineers using Rifle to have some form of active defense (and Immobilise cover) and it competes with traits like Rifle Mod, which forces opportunity cost decisions. As Blindness stacks in duration, blowing every cooldown at once for burst is less optimal, but really, when Rifle bursting, having Blind on the target already takes away so many counter options on the opponent’s part that it’s unlikely to be hit in return.

• An example of this is already in game with Thief’s Shadow Shot which allows D/P Thief to engage on targets without fear of the opponent going for a CC skill immediately for lockdown. It makes the weapon set surprisingly survivable especially in combination with its other skills.
• To make the trait more offensive, a % damage boost could be tacked onto the trait, but the resulting defensive options are already quite strong. Extremely few classes can overload 1 blind per second (presuming Rifle burst) and when the trait is used optimally (spread out rifle cooldowns so Blind can be removed and restacked) it allows for some clutch defensive counterpressure play; timing Rifle skills to hit before an opponent’s skills do.

Dirame.8521:

MonMalthias.4763:

snip of own post

It would be pretty funny to play against. It would be a race to get rid of your conditions before you got bursted down.

Having done some more calculation, I think that having Reaping scale with Condition damage, then also having a Power coefficient for baseline damage would be better as this would already require a diversification in stats that sacrifices Vitality or Toughness for scaling than simply Power replacing Malice.

As this is pretty much generating an entirely new mechanic from scratch, let’s puzzle out some design goals to begin:

• Reaping ameliorates risk for condition builds, trading in burst damage for less total damage than if the condition were to tick fully. I think this would be essential to prevent the creation of new apex choices. Therefore, condition reaping should not scale with multiplicative damage such as Ferocity as total possible damage could be a runaway if people simply ran Berserker then stacked condition diverse builds.
  • I think it might be best if the Reaping damage did not have a possibility of critting. The base power coefficient of the Reaping skill should, in line with any other skill.

• At the moment Precision is an underleveraged stat in Condition builds, being present for crit-proc condition applying traits as the design of conditions at present does not require Precision inherently once conditions are applied. We could throw in some scaling there.

• Stacking large amounts of a single condition is far riskier than spamming out diverse numbers of conditions, so there should be some reward for that. Stacking large amounts of a single condi then reaping should still be less rewarding than letting it tick over as it is more risky.

So we could make the reaping mechanic:

• Scale with number of remaining seconds of condition applied. This rewards early reaping for more damage, and prevents reaping late to “double dip” damage.
  • It is therefore a designed-in trade-off for the reaping mechanic as neither choice of reaping early for more frontloaded damage or letting it tick out for more total damage is an apex choice.

• Scale with Precision as well as Power at certain coefficients to reward builds investing Precision in Condition builds without resorting to crit-proc condi traits.
  • As the reaping component of skills cannot crit, there should be some compensation with investing Precision, and the Precision coefficient is the answer. All hail Rampager and long may it reign.
• Scale with number of stacks reaped, with a greater reward on reaping large stacks than large numbers of single conditions.

So with the design goals and mechanic puzzled out, let’s figure out a formula.

• Reaping skill X: (Condition-specific power coefficient) * Power coeff. * Precision coeff. * (Number of seconds remaining of each stack of condition reaped) * (Number of stacks reaped) + Reaping skill X’s baseline power coefficient

As an example, let’s take 10 stacks of Bleed, each with 10 seconds remaining per stack, on a character of 1500 Malice, 1500 Power and 1500 Precision and 1500 Condition damage

• Bleed: Currently does 0.05*Condition damage + 42.5 per stack at 80 per second. 10 stacks for 10 seconds at 1500 condition damage yields: 11750 total potential damage left uncleansed.
  • Now, let’s reap it. For the sake of calculation, let’s assume that our weapon damage is ~1000, and our reaped target has 2600 armour for the direct damage component. As it is a condition based attack, we’ll set the very modest baseline power coefficient at 0.3, which yields 173 direct damage before reaping damage to be added on.
  • We’ll set the condition specific power coefficient to 0.02, 40% of the Bleed damage condition damage coefficient
  • We’ll set the Malice coefficient to 0.1 and Precision coefficient to 0.15.
  • We’ll presume that the number of stacks (10), duration remaining (10 seconds) are the same; i.e. instant Reap at time of Bleed application. Totally unbalanced, but calculating for optimal conditions as a baseline lets one see the peak damage.

• The result is 6923 damage, of which 6750 damage is from Reaping, and 173 from direct damage without crits. This is just under 60% of the total potential damage, which sounds like a lot, and it is.
  • Obviously animation/cast time would have to be balanced accordingly. For more granular balance, Reaping could instead go by individual stack rather than reaping individual conditions; although damage calculation would then be quite complex.
  • It does, however, prove to be quite problematic in the user’s prediction of how much damage they will do when reaping. In the event of reaping the conditions of multiple people on a single target each with their own Malice, it becomes very difficult to determine just how much damage a reap will do.

Assassin X.8573:

i stand corrected.

serves me right for believing non-updated tool-tips!

By now you should know not to trust tooltips whatsoever, regardless of profession, weapon, mechanic, trait, sigil, rune, or even the damage numbers. Damage is especially deceptive as it is calculated from average weapon damage vs 2600 armour target, which makes newer players reading the wiki presume there are “baseline” numbers for skill damage values when it’s clearly not the case – There’s only weapon damage x power x coefficient / armour value.

Anyway, I think a good starting point for players to counter their own condi-spam would be to (re)-introduce skills like Crystal wave from GW1 or Reap Impurities to Traits. It allows players to frontload their condi damage to reduce risk, but at the same time, players lose the control effects of condis like Immob, Poison, Chill, Cripple and Weakness; so there’s a real tradeoff.

Scaling should be Power based instead of Condi damage based to encourage hybrid (and this means true hybrid, not Might stacking) builds and to reduce players “double dipping” their condi damage stat whilst reducing their risk as condi gear already incorporates defensive stats as part of their backloaded escalating damage design. This has the potential to:

• Reduce Engineer reliance upon Incendiary Powder for sustained damage
• Allow more cerebral play rather than simply spamming all condi skills for diversity of condi cover. The order in which conditions are applied matters more than ever to the aggressor rather than the unilateral, anti-fun FILO condi watching on the defender’s part.
• Make professions that rely upon conditions for their Control component (Necro, Engineer) have to trade off kiting their opponent against going for the throat (carpe jugulum)

As an introductory idea, Necro’s Feast of Corruption could receive even greater LF and damage reward; same as with Necro Staff Necrotic Grasp .

Engineer could receive the same reaping through Acidic Elixirs ; Evasive Powder Keg ; Concussion Bomb ; and Jump Shot .

Other classes could have various skills and utilities and traits updated with the new Reap Mechanic – or even have new skills created – to take advantage of the mechanic.

Wolf.5816:

Coated Bullets could also use a review. Perhaps if:

• Coated Bullets: Your Pistol Shots pierce, in addition Some of your pistol skills have bonus effects:
-Static Shot: Bounces an additional time.
-Blowtorch: Is now Unblockable and deals bonus damage to foes with Protection.
-Glue Shot: Will now detonate causing damage and inflicting Burning on nearby foes when striking a target suffering from Burning. (Also creates a Combo Field:Fire)

• Some solid suggestions here, although I disagree with Glue Shot creating a Fire Field. Combo potential aside, it’s not good design to mix CC and high damage in the one skill. Spread out? Sure. But together in one is like Pin Down/Combustive Shot for a Condi Warrior; or Pistol Whip for Thief; and we saw what happened to Pistol Whip. (Anet needs to make Initiative skills used more than once per X duration incur increasing initiative costs; then make S/D, S/P and P/P skills combo together better like D/P, but this is off topic)
  • Why not make Poison Dart Volley give the bonus damage on Burning Foes? Base coeff 0.4 × kittens; but put it up to 0.6-0.7 × kittens (3.0-3.5 if all kitten) and you have a viable hybrid weapon – if you hit your PDV. Increase the caveat to Burning and at least 1-2 other condition(s) to give appropriate investment for reward, and you now have PDV that no longer sucks.
  • Glue Shot should become a Combo Field, but I agree with Dirame in that the closest is probably Frost for its snare; but Cripple should remain as Chill is ludicrously strong. Chill should only be applicable with Combo Finishers in the Glue Shot field. And besides, it would be all the stronger with Cripple covering Chill.
  • Static Shot is already rewarding enough, but rewarding its clutch nature would be to make it Daze for 0.5 seconds, then increase its damage from 0.4 coeff. to 0.7 if a foe is interrupted.

Wolf.5816:

snip, Rifle Mod talk
I’d also like to see a Trait that would do something along the lines of: After your opponent Reaches 5 Conditions from you or a source you control they explode after 3 seconds consuming your applied conditions dealing X damage for each condition on them at the time of detonation.
(Damage per condition: 5%)

This would create an alternative and interesting way to play with conditions. You would have to manage them in the sense that keeping several high damage conditions to burn them down or try to load them up for a burst but risking losing your condition pressure if mitigated. Giving it, a three second “primer” count down would introduce some very interesting counter play as well. As a foe realizing they have a chemical reaction about to erupt on them would make them rush to attempt to cleanse the self softening the blow. Or attempt to mitigate the blast with damage reduction/invulnerabilities essentially giving you a free cleanse at the Engineers expense.

There is a Greek saying that goes, “There is nothing new under the Sun”; and none moreso than in this instance. Your proposal is essentially Crystal Wave from GW1 rehashed into a trait. Personally, I think it’s great design; because the only play/counterplay around conditions at the moment is simply application/removal via cleansing or transfer etc.

• Adding a Condition Reap to Engineer is a great idea as it utilises Engineer’s Condition diversity to promote a hybrid playstyle, instead of Might stacking (broken mechanic) or relying on Incendiary Powder (propping up awful sustained damage of profession by single RNG trait is bad design)
  • There is one caveat, however, and it is that the greatest condition diversity lies within Kits, not mainhand weapons; and especially Rifle lacks diversity. The trait would have to be Master + tier in Firearms; and this incurs massive opportunity costs. Alternatively, such a trait could be located in Inventions or Tools (preferably Tools); or not be a trait at all; and be the new Personal Battering Ram mechanic.
  • That being said, Sitting Duck just became OP.
  • Given that Engineer relies upon conditions for CC – Immob, cripple – there would be real trade-offs between controlling the opponent and dealing damage. This is great because it forces more cerebral play and trade-offs.

Wolf.5816:

Dirame.8521:

Wolf.5816:

I always wished for Modified Ammunition to: “Increase your damage by 2% for each condition on your target. Increases damage by an additional 2% when wielding a Pistol in your off hand.”

Well Malthias and I agree that a direct boost in damage isn’t adequate to get people to use that trait. A more functionality driven change would really give Modified Ammunition the attributes it need to drive people towards it.

In other words, new builds that don’t require explosives.

I must admit I am wearing the biased blinders for this trait. As I have always wished to make a competitive Power Pistol/Pistol Build as well as a Condition Rifle build but this trait (with my suggested buff) would simply help my agenda Heh.

I know it’s foolish to bother with changing the intended roles of a weapon. But it’s my opinion that there just simply shouldn’t be a defined role for a weapon. Particularly for a Profession that only has 2, I think that weapons should be more versatile letting your traits/skills/gear/sigils/tactics define how your weapon performs.

• Weapons have roles in this game, because it’s good to promote different gameplay styles by influencing condi application, power coefficient and utility kit alone.
• For the sake of balance, it is important to remember that every weapon that has a “defined” condi or power role has their durations and coefficients set accordingly, bar a few weapons that are so-called “designed” for the hybrid role
• Unfortunately, these hybrid weapons invariably have glaring weaknesses. Warrior Rifle gives up coefficients for some worthless Bleed stacks, Necro Staff fuses a Power autoattack with condi applying Marks; Ranger Shortbow has awful Power coefficients for desultory condi application results; etc.
• The only “true” hybrid weapon in this game at this time is Warrior Longbow, but then again, all of Warrior’s weapons are strong, so it isn’t exactly a contest

Modified ammo just needs to provide Engineers with strong enough weapon skills that the opportunity cost of not running Explosives is ameliorated. This means:

• For Modified ammo to provide a good alternative to Incendiary Powder by buffing mainhand autoattacks to the level of Kit autoattacks with IP.
  • This would be achievable by adding an autoattack chain skill to Pistol and Rifle 1. For Rifle 1, decreasing range should be rewarded with Vulnerability stacking and increased damage/cleave to emphasise it’s “shotgun” design. For Pistol 1, decreasing range should be rewarded with increased hybrid damage with longer Bleed stacks and higher Power coefficient (0.4 coeff. on a 0.8 cast could go up to 0.6-8 coeff. on a 0.8 cast – if sub 200 range risk was rewarded). However, Pistol 1 should never receive condition diversity, because 2012 Dhuumfire Necro spamming Scepter 1 should have been lesson enough; and we Engineers have the pre-nerfed Dhuumfire.

• Modified Ammo then has to be supported enough by ancillary traits to reward use of the Toolbar – the one thing that Engineers turn to in lieu of Kit skills.
  • This means: Traits that cleanse condis on non-kit Toolbelt skills use; Traits that decrease cooldown of Toolbelt skills on crit; and folding in “utility” Firearms Traits like Go for the Eyes and Sitting Duck to provide Toolbelt skill benefits – as Kit skills usually have long cooldowns, and non-kit skills shorter ones, it then makes sense for the Trait lines Firearms, Inventions and Tools to support Toolbelt utility as they hold more non-kit skill traits.

• By this point, Engi mainhand weapons would be strong enough, and Explosives is de-emphasised; although no lesser or greater. Build diversity should theoretically improve.

Warning: Math below. Sources for frame data (Aftercast) and coefficients courtesy of Casia.

Wolf.5816:

On the regard of improving Kitless Build diversity-

Infused Precision would make an excellent candidate for change. Perhaps if:
•Infused Precision was renamed to Infused Momentum: Critical hits have a chance of increasing your run speed for 3 seconds. This effect stacks 5%/15%/25%/33%/50% On the Fifth stack of Infused Momentum you gain 3 seconds of Quickness and lose all stacks of Infused Momentum.(10 second Cooldown)

• Quickness is absolutely awful on Engineer unless running BK, GK or FT, where the strong autoattacks inherent would hardly make Engineers flock towards Mainhands. In my opinion, this change would only reinforce reliance on kits. In addition, Engineer is already plagued by RNG, from traits in Firearms to IP to Elixirs. I hardly think that this is good design.

• A few calculations:
  • Hip Shot: In a 10 second period, assuming Hip shot is the only skill cast, (0.75+0.15 after cast = 0.9 sec per cast); one can cast 11 Hip shots for 11 chances to crit. In your average ~40-50% crit rate Zerker Engi build +/- points in Firearms depending on gear breakpoints, let’s assume perfect statistical crit rate of 0.4-0.5 and so you get 4.kitten crits. We’ll call it 5 for ease. Infused Momentum has the strange mechanic of increasing in chance per crit from 5% to 50%. For the sake of ease let’s take the average of 25% to assume 50% combat uptime of Momentum. Therefore, out of 5 possible crits, 1.25 stacks of Infused Momentum are generated in 10 seconds. This averages to combat uptime of Quickness procs of 1 proc ~40 seconds. At this point, the 10 second ICD is all but redundant.

• Bleeding Shot: In a 10 second period, bla bla bla, 12 casts possible due to 0.8 casting time etc etc. 40-50% crit chance = 4.8-6 ~5.4 average crits. Assuming 25% average Momentum chance, 1.35 stacks are generated in 10 seconds, average uptime Quickness procs 1 proc per 37 seconds. Again, the ICD is redundant.

• Grenade Kit 1: In a 10 second period, etc. 10 casts possible due to 1.0 casting time. 3 hits per cast with Grenadier. 30 hits of 40-50% crit chance = 12-15 crits; average 13.5. 25% average Momentum chance = 3.375 procs per 10; or 1 Quickness proc per 14.8 seconds

• Flame Thrower 1: In a 10 second period, etc. 4 casts possible due to 2.5 casting time. 10 hits per cast. 25 hits of 40-50% crit chance = 10-12.5 crits, average 11.25. 25% average Momentum chance = 2.8125 procs per 10; or 1 Quickness proc per 17.7 recurring seconds

• Do you see what I mean when this proposal reinforces kits? Sure it’s powerful enough that it might make people put points into Firearms, but not deep enough into Firearms that people couldn’t simply run 30/6 Explosives, run GK and Infused Momentum anyway.

• Grenadier + This is going to become the new PVE DPS god. In PvP, big explosions have never been more guaranteed, and cries of lamentation are unending amidst relentless blasts.

• If I wanted to be statistically rigourous I would be using Binomial Distributions but I can’t be bothered; the results are significant enough that I would expect the numbers to turn out approximately the same.

I think it might be worth thinking about moving Power Shoes at this point; or giving Adept Inventions traits that aren’t terrible. Introducing Infused Momentum sounds like a terrible terrible idea.

Dirame.8521:

Assassin X.8573:

Do better research first. Torch skill 4 sets the guardian himself on fire. This will work synergistically with inner fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZlCx3ZdD8#t=447

Heh, this reminds me of GW1’s Burning Speed where you could set yourself on fire and become Sanic for 7 seconds.

That gives me an idea for making Torch Skill 4 both supporty and strong,_ yet still counterbalanced by its caveat:

Zealot’s Flame
Set yourself on fire, emitting periodic bursts of Zealot’s flame.

• Gain unique buff – Zealot’s flame.
• Once per second for 2 seconds, emit Zealot’s flame in pulses in a PBAoE of 180 radius. You gain the Condition Burning for 3 seconds every pulse.
• Each pulse cleanses 1 condition on allies and Burns foes for 2 seconds. Target limit: 5.
• Conditions cleansed on Allies grant them Burning for 2 seconds on their next attack. (Basically a Virtue of Justice proc)

• In total, this skill puts Burning on oneself for 4 seconds, and on foes for 6 seconds (Initial pulse + 3 pulses per second). Up to 3 conditions are cleansed on allies, and up to 3 allied attacks inflict burning for another 2 seconds.
• This buff to allied attacks, which is basically 3 Sun Spirit procs in a row is counterbalanced by applying 9 seconds of Burning to oneself. In a condi build that is a lot of self damage, but thankfully, there’s Smite Condition for that; and at most one only has to take 4 ticks before cleansing.
• In a support build, the cleansing will be appreciated against condi-cleave, which gives Torch a defined role when facing things like GK Engineer or a Necro running Staff marks. Whilst it pales in comparison to the other traditional Bunker guardian weapons, this one is no slouch either.

ICD tracking was supposed to be “on the devs’ radar” something in the order of April 2013. With luck, we’ll see the first hint of things Soon™ in Q1 2015.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Juggernaut – You move 25% faster while using flamethrower. Gain might (15s) whenever you use a flamethrower skill.

• I like the concept behind this new Juggernaut in that it’s basically a better version (due to IMS) of Pyromancer’s Puissance.

• This is actually a really strong buff to the Juggernaut trait, as you are now no longer capped at 6 stacks before Boon Duration but instead limited only by cast time and Cooldown.

• I think it works out to be ~11 casts (6 FT1, 2 FT2, 3 of FT3,4,5 = 11) in a 15 second window for 11 stacks of Might whereas original Juggernaut would peak at 6 stacks (15/3 sec interval = 5 + 1 instant on swap = 6). With Strength Rune providing a ludicrous +45% duration, it’s easy to sit at ~16 stacks before Boon Duration.

• Adding Battle Sigil’s 9 stacks at 45% Might Duration means that 25 Might is now easily attainable assuming casting on cooldown before any Boon Duration or even Enhance Performance. That’s pretty nuts; and this alone would more than double Juggernaut’s efficiency even before the Toughness or IMS. Something would have to give at that point.

• I think Juggernaut just needs its own FT unique functionality besides Might stacking. Given that Burning is Engineer’s primary condi DPS, why not make it so that Smoke Vent, Air Blast and Flame Blast also apply Burning to increase FT’s Burning uptime? Could make it 2 seconds; then increase the Burning of FT1 from 1 to 2 seconds. The combo with Air Blast to extend Burning duration by 2 more seconds would allow for very long durations indeed – but also allows for counterplay as there is little condi diversity within FT1 itself.

• A sillier implementation would be to instead make Juggernaut apply burning to oneself for 1 second every 2 seconds; whilst burning foes in a 180 PBAoE for 2 seconds every 2 seconds. The synergy with FT1 should be self-evident. Keep the Might stacking so you’re doing more damage to yourself the longer the FT is held. Add a passive buff of 10% bonus damage to Burning Foes. Now we’re cooking with gas, and also, we are cooking. Stack with Runes of the Flame Legion for a silly 17% damage boost. Added to the 10% base boost of FT1, we may finally see FT1 deal “good damage”.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I agree that Hair Trigger and Rifle Mod should be combined, but I don’t think that those traits are the ones to put in it’s place. The thing is that if you want true condi, you are limited to a few things:

1. Pistols
2. Grenades
3. Bombs

If you don’t have at least one of those, you aren’t condi. Thing is, the traits for these are all stuck up in explosives (Forceful explosives, Short Fuse, Incendiary Powder, Grenadier, Shrapnel). The only good traits for pure condi builds are Sharpshoot (5 point minor) and hair trigger (Adept trait). Thus there’s no reason to go into that line!

I think that there’s actually plenty for condi Engineers within the Firearms line, it’s just that so much of it is predicated upon RNG that Engineers don’t take it. In addition, Incendiary Powder alone makes a condi build for Engineers, as Engi cannot stack bleeds, nor apply poison, nor stack up Torment as efficiently as the classes with inbuilt condi functionality in their design (Necro, Ranger). That alone ensures at least 4 in Explosives, not Bombs, not Grenades.

Onto some of your proposals:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Coated Bullets – Pistol and Rifle skills cause bleeding for 1s.

• I don’t think that a Master tier trait for any class, in any line, should “only” provide Bleeding for 1 second. In the absence of traits that increase bleed duration and autoattacks and weapon skills that stack up Bleed very efficiently, 1 stack of extra Bleed by itself for such a short duration does very little.
• That being said, making Coated Bullets the “Incendiary Powder” equivalent for Engineer in the Firearms line might have some merit. How about this?
  • Coated Bullets – Bleed duration is increased by 20%. For the next 5 attacks after you use a Toolbelt Skill, inflict 1 stack of Bleed for 3 seconds. In the event multiple foes are hit, Bleed is applied randomly. (as with Incendiary Powder and GK/BK)
  • This trait makes it so that players are able to “Bleed burst” after using a Toolbelt skill. Whilst it sounds infinitely abusable with Flamethrower, it also is easy to avoid. A strong telegraph, such as tinting projectiles with a red trail (and FT1 with red haze instead of the bright yellow) will be needed.
  • The single target focus is to reduce its power level, however, if multiple targets are to be hit, then only 3 attacks should be empowered to Bleed – basically it turns FT, BK and GK into a mini-Shrapnel Grenade, which isn’t very efficient by itself.

Foefaller.1082:

MonMalthias.4763:

Reposted from the youtube comment thread:snip

Fun fact: When it was first introduced, Modified Ammunition used to affect pistol and rifle damage only. People said it was too limiting however, so Anet made it apply to all engi weapons and kits, and so the 6/6/0/0/2 (or 6/6/0/2/0) build was born.

Having played the game since launch, I am fully aware of what Modified Ammunition’s original incarnation did. The Dhuumfire patch introduced or emphasised a lot of anti-fun mechanics without much counterplay; and I count Modified Ammunition amongst them.

The problem with Modified Ammunition is that it doesn’t do anything in terms of adding utility, or different functionality, or pretty much whatever is required to make Engineers actually favour their mainhands more. It’s just a straight damage boost. What’s worse is that the boost procs better off of Pistol mainhand as there is a lot more condition diversity therein. The frontloaded damage of Rifle does not apply conditions unless taking Sitting Duck or crit-proc condi traits, which makes traiting for a proper Rifle build running MA problematic without also running Explosives; since BK and GK are the better condi application tools. It is therefore the logical progression for PVE players to gravitate towards 6/6/0/0/2.

Having dug up my own old thread, I’m reminded of what is needed to bring Rifle and Pistol to the forefront and by extension, de-emphasising Engineer’s staid reliance upon Explosives.

The key points from that thread boil down to:

• Autoattack improvements, to reward Engineers for taking the risk of taking their ranged weapon (Rifle, Pistol) into sub-600 range without then itching to switch to Kits as Kits cover this range better.
  • By that, I mean making Rifle 1 autoattack chain to deal damage and cleave targets more powerfully as the gap closes; and
  • To reduce or eliminate the aftercast on Pistol 1 to make it more efficient at stacking Bleeds by itself without having to rely on Elixir Gun 1
  • Streamlining traits to normalise damage output and CDR into the Master Tier as it is with most other classes in game
  • Removing the crit-procs of Firearms 1 and several Master traits to instead emphasise closing the gap and being rewarded with bonus damage, Bleed and Vulnerability stacks
  • Using or creating Master or Grandmaster traits that alter functionality of skills that allow Pistol, Rifle and Shield to stand on their own in a kit-less build with an emphasis on Utility to reduce the opportunity cost of 4 lost cooldowns when a Kit is not run.

Reading some of the other posts in this thread it is heartening that at least some of that discussion some 12 months ago has entered some of the (forum-going) Engineer consciousness. I still believe that Engineer has significant room to grow within its design; even now, 2 years post release and when most ground has been trod and re-trod, Anet can re-invigorate the profession by offering an alternative playstyle that is no worse or better than running kits, whilst retaining the option to forgo mainhand weapon functionality and emphasise Kit usage. In my mind that would be the best of both worlds and allow Engineer build diversity to flourish beyond 6 in Explosives.

As an example of building to counteract caveats in GW1, here’s one for a PBAoE elementalist (and no, it’s not viable as in meta as skilled opponents will focus you down, but it’s fun to play):
Star Burst – for that PBAoE Burning
Flame Djinn’s Haste – for more PBAoE and rushdown
Glyph of Restoration – to sustain through the inevitable incoming damage when running in
Yeti Smash -Hilarious naming aside, this is PBAoE knockdown – on Burning Foes.
Renewing Smash – for that single target Execution factor
Conjure Flame – for armour ignoring Elemental damage; but can be replaced with Mark of Rodgort for Burning damage instead.
Fire Attunement - for Energy management
Resurrection Signet - to help res, but can be replaced with None Shall Pass! for more Knockdown as anti-kite by moving points from Hammer Mastery to Tactics.

PBAoE Builds in GW1 had a short run when people discovered that Ride the Lightning being a teleport was a great opener and escape for some “meleementalist” builds, but lacked soft or hard CC to keep up once RTL was on cooldown.

By exploiting that Star Burst causes Burning, then that Yeti Smash causes KD on conditioned foes, and also that Flame Djinn’s Haste being a good movement speed buff as well as a strong PBAoE skill once in melee range, whilst using Renewing Smash as an Execute once a target is Knocked Down and other skills are on recharge. General utility skills made up the rest for sustained DPS and sustain through combat in terms of energy and health.

In GW1, practically every skill had a caveat that required setup. Accordingly, their power levels were high: Hard CC often lasted 2-3 seconds, Conditions like Burning could degenerate 7HPS out of a usual 500HP health pool, and damage output routinely did 25% or more in a single hit for spells and 10% or more for weapon skills before factoring in Monk Protections . This allowed Anet latitude by making skills be more situational and thus require players dedicate more skill slots to meet the requirements for powerful damage or CC or healing effects, or tune a skill’s output to a fine degree by altering other skills in the combo as well.

That so many skills in GW1 were altruistic as well – as in, dealing either insignificant damage by themselves, but buffing team-mates, or directly buffing team-mate’s defenses without self-benefit at all – required greater team co-ordination and synergy. This is not to say that a return to the GW1 days where running without a team was suicidal if one wanted to have any chance of winning PvP is called for, but it certainly speaks to an under-leveraged aspect of GW2 where the extent of support is AOE boons, some reflects, but skills like Plague Signet’s passive are practically insignificant in terms of team support as the player has no control as to how many condis are drawn and when, which nullifies any possibility of clutch play.

I think it’s time that Anet looked into the possibility that maybe the reason why GW2 PVP lacks individually distinguishable plays unlike GW1 is because one can spam cooldowns in GW2 and still have some modicum of efficacy; whereas this is not the case at all in GW1.

Tim.6450:

This sounds all interesting but I do have some questions:

“Do we have enough room to make this happen”. I mean from what I hear in the forums (I never have played GW1) in GW1 every class had around 200 skills and weapons with swapable skills. GW2 is far more restricting then that in skills and weapon choices. So do we have enough skills/traits/runes to make this happen while maintaining (viable) build diversity and class diversity?

The question, “do we have enough room to make this happen?” is easily answered with “Yes.”; because the essence of trade-offs kicks off the concept of perfect imbalance . You can have a build be strong in terms of CC output, but itself have little burst damage. Or have ridiculous Condi output, but itself be weak to CC. It’s when builds emerge that reduce or eliminate these tradeoffs to combine several aspects like Hambow for damage and CC, or Celestial Strength rune Dagger Dagger ele for sustained damage and group support that things begin to unravel.

I would argue that Anet’s balance team has no easy way forward unless they begin to explore the concept of tradeoffs as the GW1 team had done so well with their skill designs. By only leaving the positive of each skill, rune and trait, there is nothing to increase variety without also introducing the possibility of power creep.

Look at it this way. Right now, would you say that viable (and by viable I mean meta, or slightly off- or close to-meta) build variety is truly extant in GW2’s PVE and PVP?

In my mind, the answer is absolutely no, not at all. When I list builds like Hambow, like Celestial Strength Dagger Dagger Ele, like pre-nerf Spirit Ranger, like D/P and S/D Thief, like 6 Explosives Engi with Balthazar Runes and Incendiary Powder, do trade-offs for what they bring to the table come to mind? No, because each and every single one of these builds are only there because they have the minimum of all trade-offs. They each incorporate some degree of CC and Condi mitigation, are (relatively) tanky and sustainable in rotational and team fights, and are generally self-reliant in terms of positioning, self-peel and self-setup of burst (direct or condi) damage.

The observation that these meta builds also exist to outcompete others in PVE also holds. The 30 Fire LH Conjure Ele with FGS, the GS Axe/Mace Warrior, the Consecration Guardian with Reflects and GS/Hammer, the Grenadier/Steel Packed Powder/Modified Ammunition Engi; all running Berserker, stacking mobs in corners, all spamming Boons and Vulnerability to shorten PVE encounters to bare seconds as a result of multiplicative damage and the insane scaling that Boons offer. You can choose to bring a Condi build, or run full Soldier’s or even run off-the-wall specs like Interrupt or Minion or Traps or whatever else – but every single one of these specs is outcompeted due to lesser efficiency of exploiting the brain-dead mechanics in dungeon encounters.

The recent skill bar changes and the April Feature patch have brought some variety to the table, but again, clear internal imbalances such as Strength rune outcompeting most others; and the fact that multiple rune and sigil sets are clearly superior above all speaks to Anet’s failure to take into account the power creep of certain combinations leaving others in the dust.

Trade-offs force players to really think about and plan out their moves, tactically and strategically. I would argue that the latest Warrior Skill bar changes to adrenaline is a great example of Anet finally utilising this avenue of attack for balance by making Adrenaline harder to sustain. In the end, greater build variety is possible once players figure out how to build to counteract their trade-offs. There’s already talk of the upcoming Adrenaline nerfs pushing warriors away from Cleansing Ire and towards things like Sharpened Axes or Warhorn Quick Breathing or Shouts because the Adrenaline nerfs make frequent Burst skills harder to push out in the absence of more generation besides CI alone.

In the end, applying tradeoffs to all things – not just the opportunity cost of Trait tiers, or ICDs, or efficacy of traits, will be what drives build variety. This kind of building to turn tradeoffs into strengths is one of the reasons why Magic: The Gathering is so enduring; as the depth of play explorable deepens when you don’t just stick to the positive and allow some controlled sacrifice on the player’s part to produce results above and beyond straightforward attack and defense.

Runes, Sigils, Counterplay, Caveats

Right now Runes and Sigils are universally positive, which limits the avenues of attack Anet has in balancing them. Some combos are simply stronger than the rest – Strength, Pirate, Balthazar, Forge, to name a few.

Triggers are also similarly leashed; such as 25% HP triggers, or on hits, or %chance procs. Making, say Strength rune also inflict Weakness on oneself when a Boon is removed allows boon-less classes running Boon Hate to limit the power of Strength Rune users.

There’s no downside to Runes, no -75HP as in GW1, or negative effects as in the Jewels of Path of Exile. It was part of the reason why players elected to run sets like 2 Strength, 2 Fire, 2 Hoelbrak and although the new stipulations of only being able to run 6 of 1 set are helpful, it simply magnifies internal imbalance that some runes being less situational than others are stronger simply by dint of being useful in the most situations.

Strength, Pirate, Balthazar and Nightmare Rune are the latest offenders here, incorporating RNG into their design with very little sacrifice for their non-situationally powerful effects. How do you counterplay an RNG proc? The answer is, you don’t. And combat is significantly less readable as a result.

Then there’s the RNG procs.

Random Fear when you attack a condi class, thus forcing a stunbreak just because they slotted Nightmare Rune? Hilarious, except it’s not funny, it does not increase the skill floor and it does not promote skillful play other than sitting there and taking hits.
Everyone remember Rune of the Air before the nerfs where people autoattacking you suddenly fell over? That’s some quality gameplay design right there.
How about Sigil of Rage, where suddenly you crit someone then you are able to dump cooldowns in half the time and make them fall over before anyone knew what was happening?

The preponderance of RNG procs that still permeates the Rune and Sigil designs smacks of a lazy nod to old-school RPG and MMO mechanics where the dice gods, not player skill or player smarts decided fates. It makes for combat that is explosively unreliable and calculated plays practically impossible.

All the while, triggers like on-heal, on-elite, on-profession mechanic, on-utility type use are underleveraged and in fact the most reliable runes such as Lyssa for its On-Elite trigger or Scholar for its damage have been nerfed; either directly as for Lyssa, or indirectly due to the Ferocity nerf as for Scholar.

There is room for Anet to seriously improve the play and counterplay here of certain runes and here’s a few examples:

For Rune of Balthazar or Flame Legion, should have their % Burning procs reworked to require self-burning; then, to have the Rune also apply Burning to oneself.

• Balthazar could have its 4 rune trigger for Quickness instead trigger from On Heal, but then one also sets oneself on Fire and foes around oneself on the 6 rune trigger.
• Rune of Flame Legion could be similar; setting oneself and enemies close by on Fire and thus gaining a damage boost against them.

For Rune of Strength and Pirate, the 4 bonus of %on being struck to grant Might or summon a Parrot could be reworked to requiring the activation of an Elite to trigger.

• The 6 bonus of Strength could stipulate that having a Boon removed would inflict Weakness on oneself of 20 seconds AND to lose 3 Might Stacks, with other Boons ending also reducing one’s current Might Stacks by 1. Thus it is difficult as a boon-spamming class to justify spamming more than 2-3 covering Boons as their ending would reduce one’s damage output, and Boon Hate classes and Builds are extremely potent against Strength Rune users. It also makes Strength rune less universally applicable, as one would need at least 1 other Boon to cover it, lest even 1 Boon removal landing also require a cleanse to counter the Weakness.
• The 6 bonus of Pirate could again, require an On-Elite trigger, with the 4 bonus being On-heal. The caveat here is that the Parrot disappears if the Might stacks originating from the 4 bonus only end. Thus one needs to Heal constantly if one wants to maintain the Parrot.

Rune of Nightmare simply needs a trigger that reflects its counterpressure nature.

• The 6 bonus of Nightmare could trigger only when one is interrupted while casting an Elite, or casting a skill that would heal (as in, Med Kit swaps don’t count, but Bandage self would. Similarly, Mantra of Recovery’s initial cast counts, but not the use of the mantra charges)
  Accordingly, Nightmare’s ICD is lower. However, the caveat is that snare Condition durations (Chill, cripple, immobilise) and CC durations on oneself are longer. Thus, one is disabled for longer, but disables others when key skills are interrupted.

Opportunity cost
One of the biggest issues with GW2 right now is definitely the lack of downsides to skills. There’s no punishment in terms of lost energy or even negative triggers when a skill whiffs aside from the cast time and cooldown.

Accordingly, every skill is theoretically high impact, with the skills that require too much effort to land for their cast time like Warrior Whirling Axe or Ranger Whirling Defense or Ele Churning Earth seeing less play outside of more organised teams that can set them up. Even then, there are skills and setups that outcompete them; that offer higher return for less risk and so these cooldowns are thus ignored.

Thus, GW2 combat is a maelstrom of individually low impact skills leading to an opponent going down, maybe, let’s hope for crits oh wait he’s popped a heal.

Then there are the traits, that are almost univerally positive without any downside besides internal cooldowns. Thus, the traits that offer the greatest utility for the least opportunity cost, such as War Cleansing Ire, Ele Evasive Arcana, Gurd Inspired Virtue, Rang’s Companion’s Defense or Engi Incendiary Powder – are taken to the exclusion to many other traits, as their situational nature or lower power level makes them inferior.

Anet has definitely hobbled themselves in balance terms by sticking to nerfing trait efficacy or internal cooldowns or by moving tiers. Simply making traits more situational – as you mentioned as with Gurd’s Inner Fire – then allowing players to “break” these traits by letting them trigger the negative effects by themselves – definitely raises the skill floor and opens up the balance team’s avenues of attack.

The fact that an entire class was built around this concept of self-buffing, then removing those buffs for another effects – the Dervish – attests to the levels of risk-reward achievable with such a balance mindset. Later skills like Crystal Wave or Reap Conditions or Foul Feast – these are skills that play with conditions beyond simple application and self/ally removal and instead have specific triggers or support elements to them that are altruistic – something that is extremely under-leveraged in GW2 and as such every person is unto themselves, which erodes team play.

As for Necro’s Corruption Skills in GW2; they are a pale imitation of what GW1’s Corruptions were. Blood Is Power involved actual HP sacrifice, not a mere 1k worth of Bleeding out of 18k base vitality in a Condi build – and it was fully altruistic. The Mind Wrack/Aneurysm Mesmer combo gave foes Energy back – yet made them take damage for all that was gained. The caveats that powerful profession skills had in GW1 were great, and accordingly their power level could be all the greater. In GW2, almost every aspect of every meta build aims to minimise any caveat or opportunity cost, offering easy damage, easy defense and easy setup to land.

What caveats that do exist in Profession skills are easily outcompeted by others – some, even within the profession itself. This kind of internal imbalance has ramifications for not only the skill ceiling achievable but also the choices players make in creating builds.

As an example, take Ele Fire Dagger 5 – Fire Grab. 1.7 Coefficient going up to 2.8 if target is on fire, on a blisteringly fast 45 second cooldown. Compare it to Warrior’s Axe F1 – Eviscerate. 1.45 Coefficient at 10 Adrenaline going up to 2.18 at 30 Adrenaline; on a desultory 10 second cooldown. One of these skills is easier to land, is less conditional, and has less opportunity cost. I’ll let you guess which one.

In case the “but you can’t compare across professions!” card is played, let’s go over why Scepter Focus burst Ele is increasingly favoured over Scepter Dagger burst ele.

The reason is Phoenix. Quarter cast, 0.7 coefficient on flight, 1.7 coefficient on Blast, plus another 0.7 coefficient if Phoenix manages to hit twice when going through the target. Total coefficient, 2.4 to 3.1. Longer range, Blast Finisher, removes a Condition, and grants Vigour on return; on half the cooldown of Fire Grab. No caveats, no conditionals, no worries. The advent of Fresh Air magnified this internal imbalance something fierce, as now Ele could also have access to Air Magic 15/3 Lightning Strike, Scepter Air 2 Lightning Bolt, and the least-awful autoattack of Scepter, Arc Lightning more frequently.

There’s a clear internal imbalance here where one skill clearly supersedes the other in terms of opportunity cost vs damage output.

The death of synergy
Self-reliance in GW2 far, far outcompetes altruism. There’s no Foul Feast into Plague Sending . Every profession builds to be an island unto themselves, which erodes the Support role and de-emphasises team play.

What teamplay there is in PVE revolves around blasting Fire Fields for max might, someone stacking Vulnerability, and everyone DPSing when a party member goes down to tag for rallies. If that is the only extent of demand for Damage, Control and Support in GW2 then clearly something has gone wrong

In PVP, teamfights in GW2 boil down to targets being called, a CC/damage train happening, the target going down/escaping, and resses or cleave being dropped. High preponderance of AOE and ports minimise positional plays, whilst simplistic and cramped map design lead to team splits being the most viable play in Conquest and thus further diluting the spectator experience of a real, ebbing and flowing teamfight.
There are less team plays as there are individual plays – what teamplay there is being focused into AOE pressure and Condi cleave. Whilst the action and flow of GW2 combat is great, the need for co-ordination is virtually zero outside of rotating to be in the right place at the right time to win fights.

There’s no clutch Enigma Black Hole into Invoker Meteor at mid lane that wins a fight and takes 2 towers as it is in DOTA, or the Thresh Death Sentence + Lantern that drags the jungler over into the Baron Steal as in League of Legends, or even the Blood Spike of a Blood Magic Necro GW1 team. Instead one observes the occasional Sanctuary to res a downed team member, or the Thief diving the Mesmer with ports and downing the Mesmer with Air/Fire procs. If that is the maximum depth of play possible – plays that require little to no team execution, then the skill ceiling for GW2 will forever be depressingly low and accordingly, its competitive scene forever hobbled in growth potential.

Reposted from the youtube comment thread:

I think the main aim of Modified Ammunition should be to make its effect more enticing to those looking to forgo Explosives entirely – or at least, have its effect in such a way that the added condition duration of Explosives does not have an excessively strong benefit when combined with Modified Ammo. I can see Modified Ammo + Incendiary Powder being pretty silly, for example, when combining them in a P/P or P/S build.

Adding conditions via a trait is a relatively simple way to add pressure and in the Precision/Condition Damage line it does make sense, but I feel that effects like Jump Shot causing Knockdown or snares is a better way to go.

I feel that adding utility rather than damage is better – whilst things like Bleed on Net Shot or Vulnerability on Static Shot don’t really alter the gameplay of the weapon – they just add condi cover. That said, it’s a great idea to expand upon.

- Static Shot could Daze the first target struck, and now you have a rupt + Blind if you mistime, making SS an extremely strong defensive skill. Pity Engineer doesn’t have any on-Interrupt triggers – its CC potential is baseline for many builds.

- Poison Dart Volley could act like Necro Scepter 3 (Feast of Corruption), dealing bonus damage per shot per condition on the target, and extending the duration of damaging condis on target by 2% per hit. This makes PDV less of a condi cover skill and more as an “execution” skill for condi engi. Alternatively, Modified Ammo could make every dart a 100% projectile finisher, which lends PDV to comboing with Fire fields and the like.

- Glue Shot simply becoming a Frost Field would be enough, even without pulsing Chill. P/P sorely lacks Fields and Finishers and the potential for Frost Armour adds defense to an otherwise 100% offensive set.
As for Rifle:

- Net Shot hitting should chain into “Reel it in” – an effect practically identical to Ele Dagger Earth 3 chain skill for a second gap closer. The longer range of Net Shot and thus the longer leap range does pose problems with the leap/latency desync issues though.

- Blunderbuss should chain into “Double tap” – a second blast for more damage at the cost of 50% longer cooldown on Blunderbuss for a true “execution” skill that doesn’t lie within the landing damage of Jump Shot. Alternatively, it could instead deal bonus damage or be guaranteed to crit disabled targets – Immobilise/Hard CC’d targets – for that combo potential.

- OC Shot is extremely strong already and making Modified Ammo buff this skill is risky. I’ve always felt that OC Shot should be split into 2 chain skills, with the Snare-break + Self KB being the first of the chain and the Launch being the second of the chain. It would be an overall nerf, but if this was the baseline OC Shot then the Modified Ammo trait could replace the self KB with a straight retreat – Evade frames optional. I feel that AOE Ranged launches – especially those that pierce – would have negative consequences for the rest of the Rifle toolkit as that kind of power level especially with regards to downstate control is ridiculous.
- I really want a KD on the Jump Shot landing. Too often I feel that I need to gap close enough using things like Rocket Kick before using Jump Shot as Blunderbuss doesn’t have the execution impact that the 1.9 Coefficient of both hits of Jump shot provide. Adding a KD sets up so many plays like JS -> Blunderbuss that going kitless becomes viable in its own right.?

One of the ideas I’ve had for attacking that 30/6 points in Explosives trifecta of Incendiary Powder, Steel Packed Powder and Grenadier is condition application priority. The combination is so effective at generating condis and self-covering that landing a single GK skill can apply something in the order of 3-4 conditions; which is quite insane.

The problem is that the self-covering is only there because of application priority.

It seems as though Incendiary Powder’s Burning procs are applied first, THEN any other condis from other crit procs or traits i.e. Sharpshooter from Firearms 5 or Shrapnel from Explosives 10 THEN the condi application from the GK skill itself.

In a 1v1 situation, where condis like Blind/Confusion or Poison or Immob/Cripple from the Pistol set or Bleeding and Vulnerability from the Rifle set are the rule, Incendiary Powder again has first application priority, making condi coverage trivial.

In the case of re-application, IP procs are almost always applied first before other condis, which again, makes IP procs very difficult to counteract short of extremely frequent cleansing.

You can test it out yourself in the Mists and it really shows why IP is so dominant in both WvW and PvP modes of play – with extreme potential to self-cover Burning it becomes difficult to remove. Making Burning from IP be applied second last to last would thus require landing additional skills – thus restoring the conventional application → cover pressure of other condi builds. Most importantly, I feel that Steel Packed Powder should have the Vulnerability application shifted forward in priority to perhaps first or second; thus reducing its condi cover potential.

These changes do not alter the overall condi DPS of engi and indeed TTK would be effectively the same as neither duration nor application have been touched. It does, however, alter matchups like Engi v Mesmer or Engi v Guardian or Engi v Thief towards the less favourable for the engineer, as these classes often rely on utility-based cleansing rather than trait based (Ele, Warrior) where the matchup is essentially unchanged.

When all is said and done, however, I feel that having such procs in the game are toxic to the concept of counterplay, as these RNG mechanics muddle the readability of the game and introduce unnecessary complexity whilst offering only minimal increases in depth of play. It is these RNG mechanics that, whilst a staple of the MMO and RPG genre, fly so far in the face of good PVP design that keeping these vestiges is proving to be doing more harm than good in the long run.?

No bombs, no nades, condi heavy, final destination goooo

Burning is the primary form of pressure for Engineer; with all other condis being cover for it. With P/P, Hair Trigger and Rifled barrels make the Blowtorch easier to land and less punishing if it misses.

Use APT on Healing Turret and Flame Turret as interrupts and to counteract melee pressure. The damage is nice too. Elixir S is for stomps and rezzes.

The desultory, almost harmonised cooldown of Flame Turret’s Toolbelt Throw Napalm and the Turret itself let you apply burning outside of the Incendiary Powder ICD for even more pressure. Against ranged opponents, close the gap with Elixir Gun Acid Bomb, Elixir F or Glue Shot, then Throw Napalm and Blowtorch. Drop Flame Turret if you want to at this point for even more burning.

Cover the Burning with Elixir Gun autos (Never use Pistol autos, the Bleed stacks are unviable and the Weakness of Tranq Dart auto-covers IP procs and Bleed while stacking higher). Interrupt Heals with your Turret detonations or at the very least Poison them with Fumigate or Poison Dart Volley.

Against Melee opponents, the aim is about the same: Try to land your Burning Skills when they close the gap, counterpressure with APT Turret detonations. The difference here is that you now also have Static Shot to counteract incoming melee burst skills like Eviscerate. Against Thieves, drop and Overcharge the Flame Turret for Blinds, but it’s better to reserve it, drop Throw Napalm and Glue Shot, cover the burning by Fumigating, then Acid Bomb out when the Thief Stealths. Drop the Flame Turret when the Thief commits to threat overload the Thief and kite him around it whilst spamming Elixir Gun autos – the Weakness will cut the damage output significantly, especially crit-reliant classes like Thief.

Sigils are standard Battle/Energy, although one can choose Geomancy or Hydromancy as well, or even Generosity in a Condi-heavy environment.

One can even choose Smouldering for even more Burning Duration for a disgusting total 75% Burning Duration in PVP or a potential 125% total Burning Duration in WvW with Toxic Focusing Crystals and Condi duration Food – which is effectively 100% uptime of Incendiary Powder procs and is truly disgusting. Even with that kind of Burning uptime, it is still good to use various Pistol skills to cover and extend the Burning.

Are you sure that Static Discharge does not have burst damage?

There’s also 100mines which definitely has burst damage and can still easily 100-0 people.

The problem is that SD and 100mines are very much 1v1 builds and they have very little teamfight presence; and their utility is eclipsed by Kit builds which require less traiting to be effective and in general have less opportunity cost. Other than that, Engi burst is still very much alive, just as Bearbow double melee Ranger is alive, or Killshot Warrior or 1-hand strength Med Gurd or Zerker Fresh Air Ele with double/triple Arcane is alive.

This build is closer to a true bunker due to the presence of Stability; although you give up the utility of triple or quadra kit as a result.

In any case, Med Kit is not an ideal “bunkering” set, as whilst the overall HPS is higher and 15 points in Tools gets a reset at 25% HP, one lacks condition cleansing and the additional utility Healing Turret brings with Accelerant Packed Turrets for even more knockbacks and area control. Even with the upcoming nerf to APT, a well timed knock as a rupt has massive down state control and point control that Med Kit lacks. In addition, 15 points in Inventions then allows the reset at 25% HP anyway.

Elixir B is core simply due to the fact that Stability is king in down state control. For rezzing, for stomping, and for general CC trains. The buffs to Throw Elixir B’s projectile velocity and casting time now let you throw B on reaction to incoming CC – although point blank Earthshakers or other half- or zero-cast CCs will still be annoying to deal with. But that’s what the Regenerating Mist from EG is for.

Damage pressure comes primarily from BK and EG. Acid Bomb from EG and the other bombs from BK give zone control. However this build will take a while to kill the enemy, especially evasive melee classes like Ranger. It will also lose to ranged pressure – something that Tool Kit traditionally is used to ameliorate; but cannot be taken as Stability is required to be a true bunker.

The build has 3 potential variations.

• One can give up the knock from HT by taking 10 from Explosives and putting it into Alchemy for Vigor from Invigorating Speed – although Energy Sigil and Adventurer Runes should give equivalent invuln frames overall; they do have more of a skill floor than simply spamming 60% uptime Vigour. One gives up zone control as a result and therefore one should make every effort to contest the point as soon as possible before the opposing bunker arrives.

• Another variation is to forego Protection Injection due to Protective Shield in Inventions, then run Invigorating Speed and Backpack Regenerator whilst keeping the HT knocks from APT. Useful when facing only 1 Warrior on the enemy team, and facing high damage threats like Mesmer where more invuln frames mitigates damage more effectively than Protection.

• Kit Refinement is taken for the CC potential of BK and EG – both procs of which are arguably the strongest for the nerfed KR. The GCD of KR takes some getting used to, however, learning the timing to leverage the Glue Trail or the Magnetic Bomb allows one to set up combos and plays not previously possible. It does, however, change the playstyle to be more reliant upon Pistol/Shield when the CD is coming up. In addition, one should endeavour to save key cooldowns like BOB, Glue Bomb or Acid Bomb in order to make full advantage of the extra CC utility KR brings when it procs. The build can be run without KR; just run Leg Mods instead as Immobilise is the deadliest condition against Engineers not running Rifle mainhand.

Overlooked cooldowns:

• Elixir F: Elixir F is often overlooked by many Engineers as the projectile speed and tracking of this skill is quite inadequate. However, in a melee build like this, Elixir F not only becomes a useful snare to land bombs with, but also does not insignificant damage when only yourself and the enemy are within bounce range.

• Fumigate: Fumigate is one of the strongest altruistic support skills in the game, with auto-covered Poison for when you cannot rupt enemy heals, and a whopping 5 friendly cleanses on a desultory cooldown of only 12 seconds. Due to the repositioning ability of Acid Bomb, it is quite alright (although slightly unsafe) to leave the point to aid allies under condi pressure for a few seconds, if the contestation isn’t too far gone.

• Acid Bomb is good down state cleave. Animation cancel it by dropping bundle/switching weapon, then either Poison Dart Volley or Fumigate the body to deny rezzers. If they continue to attempt to res, BK Autoattacks and free Fire Bomb ticks should be enough dissuasion. Shield skills are also practically guaranteed rupts against rezzing but in the case of Stability, BK and Poison is usually better. Unfortunately BK will never have the down state pressure of Grenade Kit; but that’s the way it is.

Bomb Kit: A lot of Engineers simply spam bomb skills on cooldown without really looking into the combo potential of BK. BK is best leveraged not by spamming all your bombs on cooldown – as that eliminates nearly all your zoning threat – but instead by following up with CC and snares from EG and Pistol/Shield.

Low uptime, moderate-high impact, short cooldown; scaling with Power or Condition Damage. Mesmer phantasms are already a tried and true model; Turret Detonate and strong Toolbelt skills would seem to point towards a design intention of such; it’s just that the cooldowns don’t reflect that kind of design.

Healing Turret’s drop and pop is already there; as is Rifle Turret, in a way. What remains is just bringing the rest of the turrets up to speed and making them scale. Trying to split the difference and making them just as viable at 100% uptime as they are at 10-20% uptime when under AOE pressure is an exercise in futility.

evilapprentice.6379:

snip snip snip
…I’m not? Stealth remains completely untouched. Shadow arts is changed. You’re going to need to decouple those in your way of thinking to grasp the goal here.

I had the same exact problem with my Stealth as a Boon thread and it’s going to be a hard uphill slog. I wish you luck.

constantLogic.3486:

dukevonart.2691:

@constantLogic

snip

There needs to be way more work done on pve to bring more people back to it other than simply “make it more like pvp.” You have to account for people soloing, or very limited parties that don’t include a main DPSer like war, for example. There’s a reason why the only honestly viable options left to most are guard, ele, and war. It’s a depressing state that could be band-aided by upping the damage even further on things not flat-dps (condis) to compensate to some degree for the larger health pools, or providing a decent flat dps build for every class while they worked on a better solution, but like I’ve said over and over, it would require a split of pve and pvp balance, which I still firmly believe is necessary., if not permanently then until real progress to provide balance across all modes is made. Not once have I argued the need for a better AI, but I will also stand by what’s being proposed here is near absolutely out of the question as it would require a rewrite of the AI, or at the very least a very good, hard look, and that’s just not something they’re going to do. The game is out, and has been out for a long time now, and I see people asking for work on things that would not immediately generate revenue.

Here’s the thing. In PVP, every single profession has a role. Even Necromancer and Ranger – oft-maligned – they play roles and can run builds that provide a team with the tools they need for success. That Rangers and Necromancers are niche in PVE is because the mechanics they were designed for – sustained hybrid direct/condi DPS with survivability through range control (or evade frames in melee) for Ranger; and Condition manipulation as well as strong support and/or damage through Wells for Necromancer. Indeed, Ranger and Necromancers have had an entrenched place as the fourth and fifth member in most teams since Quickness was nerfed as combat has shifted to a slower pace.

constantLogic.3486:

With all that being said, I can tell I’m not getting anywhere as far as discussion, so I’ll respectfully agree that the AI and skills need to be looked at, while respectfully disagreeing that such drastic measures will ever be taken on this game. I’ve watched as they continually moved further and further away from what made this game enjoyable for me, and I can say with some reasonable degree of certainty that they don’t give enough of a care to do much more than what I’ve suggested, if even that as they haven’t even cared a wit as they pushed, for example, necro further and further out of ever being viable in pve to the point that it’s become a punchline and grimace more than a respectable class (please remember I’m speaking strictly pve here). I wish they did, but you’re all honestly expecting too much from them.

May I be pleasantly surprised, and at the very least receive a cleave.

At the risk of going off topic, I will say this: Making PVE closer to PVP will actually make classes like Ranger and Necromancer have greater impact. Part of doing that means reducing the huge health pools of mobs to be replaced by heals, boons and other active defenses. That Ranger and Necromancer have extremely high sustained damage – often hybrid between direct and condition – will only be supplemented by these sustained damage outputs over-riding mob boons, heals and active defenses instead of huge health pools emphasising huge Critical Damage hits to reduce in appreciable time. Indeed, full DPS Warriors, Thieves died with the end of the Quickness meta as the loss of Quickness meant that Warriors no longer could 100blades or Heartseeker everything to death before active defenses could kick in. This is what is meant by bringing PVE closer to PVP.

As for Necromancers receiving cleave, that is a thread all of its own. I would suggest that you start one; I know that there are more than a few PVE Necromancers out there that would be ecstatic at the implementation of such. Having said that, the whole stack-and-cleave phenomenon is something that can only be eliminated – and for good reason – if the mechanics of dungeons change from being a slog (or a skip) through rewardless trash mobs on the way to the boss; to something closer to Path of Exile where every mob has potentially useful loot; and fully clearing maps is always more rewarding than just skipping to the boss.

Carighan.6758:

jportell.2197:

snip

*snip

My personal favourite is this:

• Make conditions much stronger.
• Make boons much stronger.
• Make both much less common.
• Makes cleansing personal-only and very very rare.

snip

kitten , Carighan, and here I was about to make a new thread called Conditions, Immunities, Crit-procs raising just that issue. I’d like to say that you stole my idea but since you got it down first, I can only say nice work.

On topic:

There is merit here in Carighan’s points about making individual conditions and boons a lot stronger whilst limiting the output of them – to every class. Right now it is possible for many builds to easily output extreme amounts of boons or conditions (sometimes, unfortunately, both) leading to combat that is quite “spammy” for lack of a better word.

The combination of individually low impact but extremely diverse outputs of Boons and conditions has led to gameplay that is significantly less thoughtful than the original designers of GW2 may have intended (though I make no claims as to what the intents of those designers were). That some builds can have access to nearly every condition in the game or to nearly every boon in the game is a little out of control at this point. Crit-procs and traits and attacks that passively apply conditions even on autoattacks has led to a battle of cooldown vs cooldown – and in many cases, the condition build that spams the most conditions to overwhelm cleansing, will win. This is a zero sum arms race that will not end until a strong re-evaluation of conditions in general occurs; and indeed, has led to Arenanet implementing condition immunities as a stop-gap hard counter – each of which has led to a negative balance outcome.

The solution is to do as Carighan has mentioned: Make individual conditions a lot less accessible whilst raising their individual power. Poison should be about as good as interrupting a heal, for example, but extremely short duration – 2-3 seconds at most. Burning should be as threatening as burning was in GW1 where that -7 health degeneration was something you had to cleanse soon or die – yet last only a few seconds. Similarly, Bleed stacks up to 6 should be life ending without cleanses. Torment should actually discourage moving; and so on.

The diversity and ease at which one can apply multiple conditions just through autoattacks needs to disappear. Every single attack that can apply a condition should require a cooldown. In addition, the skill that applies a condition should never have base duration that exceeds the cooldown of the skill. Shrapnel Grenade comes to mind. Dotting someone up should require as much investment in timing dodges and cleanses and utilising CC as direct damage does.

Finally, there needs to be a system where players can see their future health. Although the condition damage floaters implemented recently did a lot to improve player awareness of just how damaging DoTs applied could potentially be; there does need to be increased transparency communicated through the UI of just how much damage the player could potentially take without cleansing. An implementation of the white health bar of Killer Instinct that shows potential max damage after combo Enders has merit here. Whiting out the part of the player’s health globe that could eventually be wiped out over time with conditions left uncleansed would already do a lot to teach players and also open up the opportunity for easier player calculation of when to escape.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Truthfully, most of Scarlet’s armies are pretty well-designed on the NPC front. Aetherblades use boons, CC, and even invulnerabilities, Toxic Alliance hit rapidly, use/cleanse conditions, and evade attacks/use reflections, Twisted Watchworks use a mix of CC, conditions, and direct damage, and Molten Alliance compliments buffs and vuln stacking with damage and blinds/CC.

The biggest issue is that most of the bosses are not like this. Reworking just the bosses is much easier than reworking all of PvE, but enemies that do these things need to become more common.

Drarnor Kunoram has the right of it here. Aetherblades in particular were a refreshing change of pace from the traditional GW2 punching bags – and it’s kind of sad that I would call them punching bags in the first place – but with their uses of Boons, Static Field and Shocking Auras along with Immobilise and followup rapid attacks – these were appropriately challenging. Still not to the degree to require Support and Control in any way – but challenging still. I might have actually needed to heal up sometimes.

The problem remains that older content such as in dungeons have not been updated to this – albeit interim – standard at all. Bosses in particular seem to follow the good old punching bag with big slow attacks concept and the Wurm is sadly not too much different – albeit with new mechanics that require greater co-ordination; specialised Control and Support still have little role. Indeed, full DPS classes can still grant good Support simply by dint of Combo Fields and Finishers whilst the attacks hit super hard; which marginalises any role Support players may wish to play.

One major thing that I also find is missing from PVE is that a lot of monsters have no heals in lieu of simply having a massive health pool. This is despite the fact that most outcomes in adversarial combat (PVP, WVW) are decided largely upon the Poisoning of, or the Interruption of, the Healing skill. Without a heal skill to Interrupt, even Defiance-less bosses have no susceptibility to Control; as there is no reward for shortening the encounter by applying Control effects.

I believe that the best lessons to be learned here by the designers of PVE content is simply to look to the PVP map Legacy of the Foefire. An analogue of the Fort Aspenwood GVG battles of yore , the map features 3 control points but more importantly, it features a keep on both ends of the map with a Guild Lord, 2 Casters, and 2 Guards. The Guards have an Immobilise and Stun skill; whilst the Casters have Projectile destruction (Swirling Winds). Most importantly, the Guild Lord himself has a heal skill you can interrupt to shorten the fight significantly. This is tech and scripting already in game for PVP yet conspicuously absent from every other area in PVE. Implementing mob heals for certain encounters would already do much to port that essential adversarial flavour needed over to PVE and most importantly, teach players essential mechanics related to Poison and Interrupt in the course of their normal play.

The biggest reason why PVE is so divorced from the rest of the game is because most of the time, the mechanics are nothing like the adversarial modes at all in any way, shape or form. Bringing the two sides closer together not only has the potential to make a better, more interesting game – it also obviates the need for widespread skill splits – because making a skill weaker in adversarial modes will always be felt in PVE if both were similar in overall mechanics.

constantLogic.3486:

MonMalthias.4763:

snip

Sorry, but I’m not certain at all what that had to do with anything I said? I mean, sure, of course, I already agreed that the AI could use a bit of work, but let me just repeat everything I previously stated (bolding the part where it would take time and money, not to mention a complete AI rewrite) without typing my post in its entirety again.

Plus, with what you’re saying, what you want is both shoehorning people into the traditional trinity roles, which this game does not support, and thus closing building diversity, which was something the devs wanted from the beginning (and lost their way about). I’m really not for that happening. If anything I want more builds for more classes which, at present state of things, requires different balancing. This also doesn’t mean that I want only flat dps to matter, but again, we’re talking everything I mentioned before, and ease of incorporation. With simply changing AI, and doing nothing to balance the classes, except expecting to hole them into traditional roles they can’t fill because the game wasn’t made for it, that’s asking for a world of pain.

I think there’s some misinterpretation here regarding the changes needed to bring Control and Support roles back to PVE by making it closer to PVP. At no point did I mean to imply that I wanted a return of traditional trinity roles of DPS, Healer, Tank – nor did I wish for build diversity to somehow be limited to these three roles; however mistaken. What I meant to say is that in PVP, there do exist roles besides DPS – and they are, indeed, Control and Support as originally delineated in GW2’s “alternative trinity” claims; albeit hybridised somewhat.

By bringing in CC, by bringing in Condition and Boon output to mobs, the need – but not the requirement – for Control and Supporty builds rises. By increasing the rate of boss and mob attack whilst decreasing damage output, active defense becomes less effective, and Support becomes more critical in mitigating damage.

In no way did I mean to imply that I somehow wanted a return to original trinity roles. I’m not sure where you got that from, but I would like to see a direct quote from a post of mine demonstrating that.

dukevonart.2691:

@constantLogic

I feel like your talking about much the same things as MonMalthias, but are coming at it from a different angle. If I’m understanding correctly, what your saying is that PvE and PvP are not compatible in terms of balance currently. In this point both you and MonMalthias are in agreement.

You recognize this and seem to advocating a greater separation between the different game modes in order to create more balance within each mode. MonMalthias instead advocates that there should be less separation between the different game modes, achieved primarily by unifying the mechanics that occur within those game modes.

I generally agree with MonMalthias on this one in that making PvE closer to PvP will create a greater build variety within PvE apart from dps/dps/dps that is currently seen. I do agree with you that it will not be easy to achieve this, but it would also be difficult to achieve and maintain balance with three completely separated game modes.

This is pretty much what I was trying to get at with my posts regarding mob AI, condition, CC and Boon output.

DiogoSilva.7089:

1. The shaving balance philosophy works best in faster balance cycles. I think Anet should go back to the 2-weekly cycle that they started the game with, or at the very least, the monthly cycle they later moved to.
2. One of the main concerns that Anet’s designers raised about their old balance pacing, is that it didn’t always have enough impact in the meta. Well, that’s true, but that comes with the nature of their shaving philosophy: you have to keep shaving, and shaving, until you hit the spot and it starts having an impact. That’s why the 2-weekly cycle is so important for this approach: when a patch is not enough by itself, the following patch is just around the corner to take thigns a bit further, and so on.
3. Big balancing patches (new skills, redesigned skills/ traits, buffs to underpowered stuff, attempts to bring new playstyles into the meta) every few months are still important to exist, especially because they demand more testing, and because they build up more excitement from the playerbase.
4. Thus, I propose that Anet should split shaving balance patches from big balance patches. They should co-exist together instead of coming all into a single package. Small shaving balance passes should take place every two weeks (or every month), and sweeping balance and redesign changes every quarter of an year or so.

Pretty much what DiogoSilva said. Balance “shaves” should be decoupled from big patches as their effect on the meta will be lost in the wake of huge changes. Yes, new content and features are always welcomed, but to delay essential bugfixes and emergent balance issues in the wake of feature patches frustrates players and diminishes goodwill.

The most important patch and its timing is not this patch on April 15th. It is what comes after, and when. Will it be several months before new apex predators are shaved? Or will the lessons of Dhuumfire be learnt and Arenanet issues changes instead of waiting for the “meta to settle”? Frequent balance changes keep the meta constantly in flux and fresh; whilst “waiting for the meta to settle” has brought little to the game bar entrenchment of abusive builds.

If you’re looking for numbers and aftercasts, here they are:
Casia’s skill coefficient list
Sentinel Ark’s coefficient list

Without accounting for aftercast, many of the theoretical DPS calculations are extremely inflated. Pistol and Rifle in particular – these numbers and condition applications are seriously out of whack. Pistol’s aftercasts take total cast time to closer to 0.8 whilst Rifle is 0.9. You can tell where the math doesn’t line up with the numbers where you calculate 4 theoretical Bleed stacks on Pistol where it should be closer to 2-3 (0.8 cast leaves 2 and a bit Bleed max stacks).

In terms of Turrets, the numbers look sound, but that’s because they have no Power scaling. The correct firing rates for some turrets may be found on the wiki; 2.73 for Rifle Turret, for example. Again, the theoretical DPS calculation is out.

Hopefully the April 15th patch will bring turret firing rates closer to stated values and we can re-evaluate damage output from there. If the turret fixes incorporate fixes to firing rate bugs, we may well see Turret DPS get a small but significant buff across the board. Until then, the only Turret I will ever run will be Healing Turret.

Dirame.8521:

ThiBash.5634:

Dirame.8521:

At least stone heart has a caveat, Diamond skin didn’t and we’re still not sure if it’s been changed.

True, but it’s still a hard counter against a certain build style (burst thieves and warriors) so it’s not any better.

It’s a timed counter that doesn’t entirely neuter the build, yes you won’t do exponential damage but, if he’s on low health and he takes 2k pure damage, that’s still 2k pure damage, there’s no changing that.

Just to touch on Stone Heart, because it’s clear that not everyone here knows what the trait is about.

Stone Heart is 100% a counter-Thief and other burst DPS trait. It may have niche applications against tanky DPS, but Stone Heart is significantly weaker against sustained, high direct damage due to the way Elementalists are played.

1. Elementalists are constantly switching through attunements all the time, as no single attunement can carry a build on its own.
2. Elementalists have the lowest base HP and Armour in the game. This lowest EHP in game is tempered by good access to Prot and cleansing (cleansing significantly nerfed recently) to prop up this low EHP.
3. Elementalists will never want to stay in Earth, because Earth has the weakest autoattack damage and is littered with skillshot CC setups. Trait support through Elemental Attunement and the Earth Minor traits emphasise defense.
4. Therefore, Elementalists will switch to Earth to mitigate bursts with Protection uptime or snare/cc opponents. Staying in Earth is suicidal because you have no counterpressure in damage and no way to reproc Protection from Elemental Attunement until you switch away and back.

The immunity to critical hits is 100% a counter-burst DPS trait because it can be combined with Elemental Attunement to turn Big crits into normal hits and normal hits into 67% damage hits. With the nerf to Boon Duration runes, this aspect of Earth Attunement becomes even more important due to lower Protection uptime and tanky sustained DPS builds will be significantly stronger as Elementalists cannot stay in Earth forever.

Indeed, Tanky DPS builds will have the advantage over Elementalists running Stone Heart, as these builds often use skills with big base damage coefficients. Hammer for Warrior comes to mind; as does Scepter Mainhand for Guardian, and so on.

The Power Engi matchup is harder now, Condi engi matchup unchanged (Incendiary Powder not proccing its ICD until crits are triggered means you have all the time in the world to bombard Ele from range and trigger Burning as soon as Earth Attunement is left), Thief matchup in particular is much closer to 50/50 with Stone Heart, and Shatter Mesmer now has to play better and watch for Ele’s attunements rather than just going for Shatters all day. Ranger in particular will laugh over the corpses of Elementalists that run this trait as their best damage is sustained.

Back on topic, I do hope that the nerf reveals flaws in Engineer’s active condi cleanse outside of Elixirs sufficiently that Arenanet will look to reinstate several key cleanses that have been removed over the years; or left in an unviable state due to the presence of AR representing a risk of OP potential arising when combined with cleanses.
In particular:

1. Cleansing Fire for Kit Refinement: Flamethrower. Kit Refinement needs to have individual CD back, or to trigger with more player control, such as only when player uses skill from kit.
2. Replacing double Super Elixir with a single self-cleanse on last tick of Fumigate. Adjust which tick self cleanse triggers to shave skill up and down.
3. Reducing Toss Elixir C’s cooldown now that HGH has been nerfed through nerfs to Elixir S Invuln and Elixir R not stunbreaking.
4. Making Transmute proc on Toolbelt use, GCD 12 seconds instead of a 15 second single conversion
5. Replacing Scope in Tools with Cleanse on Toolbelt skill use – individual toolbelt skill ICD of 15 seconds to bring up Power build condition cleanse into viability
6. Reworking the proposed Gadgeteer Grandmaster into converting Conditions to Boons instead of simply providing Boons as full Gadget builds are supremely vulnerable to Conditions – even Turret builds have up to 8 cleanses a minute, whilst Gadget builds have zero (well, up to 9 per minute if you count Rocket Boots cleansing 3 snares every single activation)

Manuhell.2759:

snip snip snip

And engineers’ condition removal along with them. Not that it is a problem, the least played class is always an easy target.
Whereas they have no problem taking their time with warriors, carefully shaving healing signets and, as now, doing nothing about adrenal health and cleansing ire, even if there are a lot more people complaining about those traits than the few ones that whined about AR.
But it is understandable, they’re a lot more customers.

I would just like to touch on the point that nerfing AR somehow nerfed Engineer’s condition removal. There is a significant difference between condition removal and condition immunity (Or in this case, condition duration reduction, which is a mitigating stat as opposed to a condition eliminating trait or skill). AR Does not remove conditions, it makes one (pre-nerf) immune to newly applied conditions which is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Engineer’s condition removal was left essentially untouched. The AR Nerf does not alter our active condition removal at all. Indeed, with AR’s mechanic of not even cleansing pre-existing conditions on activation that is mirrored across to Berserker’s stance and Diamond Skin – many engineers back in 2012 dismissed AR as unviable because the prevailing builds back then did not stack a lot of Vitality to fully abuse AR. In addition, the threats faced by Engineer back then were direct damage based; which simply stacking Vitality without Toughness does not mitigate very well. Also keep in mind that this was before Stabilised Armour was buffed and before Protection Injection became standard in many Engineer builds to mitigate Thief.

Fast forward to now where conditions are rampant and of course some Engineers are going to pick up AR. That doesn’t alter the fact that our condition removal has been somehow removed with this change because AR is not condition removal. Indeed, if you were really exploiting the trait to its fullest potential then you would actually be stacking Healing Over Time to hover around that threshold of immunity – without cleanses of pre-existing conditions you are still under threat without the sustained healing to back it up. One of the reasons why Med Kit instead of Healing Turret is so good with AR; and also why Backpack Regenerator is quite absurd combined with AR also.

That you are somehow spinning the nerfing of AR as a great catastrophe of the loss of the last vestiges of Engineer’s cooldown-based condition removal is facetious and misrepresents the issue. That Engineers are somehow this underdog class with active developer bias against it is also false, because this shave had extremely low impact on every other Engineer build other than Decap. Condi Engineers didn’t run AR, nor did Power Engineers. Even triple kit bunker (RIP Kit Refinement Quad/Triple Kit Bunker) does not run AR because Backpack Regenerator/Invigorating Speed/Protection Injection mitigates so much more at higher percentages of HP than AR does.

I’d actually argue that with this shave, Triple Kit bunker with Healing Turret will make a resurgence where AR decap was previously far outcompeting all other viable Engineer bunker builds.

With regard to Pro-Warrior bias, do keep in mind that 5% from Merciless Hammer, 15% from Arcing Arrow will do much to reduce the peak damage output of the Hambow triple stance build; which were the outliers for something built so defensively.

Combine this with the proposed increased cast time and visibility of Pin Down and the Hambow build is now a lot weaker. That being said, I maintain that the problems reside in Healing Signet as triple stance Hambow is significantly weaker when running Healing Surge or Mending, yet absurd with HS. #8%notenough etc. etc.

Your propensity for pointedly ignoring significant changes to extant apex predator builds whilst spinning shaves that do not impinge on the majority of other Engineer builds as some kind of apocalypse undermines your position.

constantLogic.3486:

MonMalthias.4763:

I strongly disagree with the sentiment that proper balance requires a separation of PVE and PVP, that widespread splits are somehow better for the game. snip

You can disagree, but you can equally ask the unreasonable. What you’re talking about would require not only a complete rewrite of the AI in the game, but also a lot of time, both planning and development, a lot of testing, and a lot of effort in general between multiple teams, which equates to a lot of money in the business world. Not to mention quite a bit of the things you suggested do not work outside of paper, unless you know something we don’t and can successfully create real artificial intelligence to place inside a video game. You’re asking, essentially, for mobs to able to res themselves, dodge, and attack in various, random ways, all that require conscious thought.

As harsh as it sounds, it isn’t as though I don’t appreciate the sentiments, and agree, but what I’m asking for is not only more reasonable, but exceedingly simpler.

I’ll refer you to Kaon’s post, which expanded on my point of mobs attacking too infrequently:

Kaon.7192:

Another huge factor is the discrepancy between the frequency of attacks in PvE vs PvP.

In PvP, even when you’re facing a single enemy, you’ll be showered with constant harassment through auto-attacks that you can’t possibly avoid through dodges alone, and this is what makes mitigation/sustain factor into the PvP build-making process, and why balanced builds tend to do better overall in sPvP than extreme DPS-oriented builds.

In PvE, most mobs literally pause seconds between attacks, as if waiting for you to regenerate enough endurance for another dodge, and each attack hits an often ridiculous amount of health in higher level PvE content, making sustain/mitigation almost irrelevant and DPS the king, since you can and often MUST dodge any and all attacks coming your way.

Significantly reducing the damage of mob attacks and increasing their attack frequency proportionally is what I think would be the easiest and most efficient fix for increasing PvE build diversity.

This change alone would do a lot more to bring up the needs for Support and Control as CC becomes important for denying a lot of the incoming harassment damage from mobs; and Support would be needed to mitigate or heal past that kind of “background” damage. Most importantly, it requires glassy DPS builds build more defensively, which will already do so much more than the Ferocity change ever will.

Indeed with the Ferocity change included, this may have the effect of extending combat encounters to the point at which Support and Control do have actual roles on a group.

Obviously the points I delineated on my other post about implementing cross-mob type combos and CC and Condition and Boon output can and should be a long term goal to strive for, but increased attack speed and decreased spike damage output would already do a lot to alter the DPS DPS DPS paradigm that is so dominant right now.

Qaelyn.7612:

MonMalthias.4763:

I can only hope that more active condition cleanse through traits outside of Alchemy can be introduced because active condi mitigation of Engineer is now at its lowest point.

Which is why AR shouldn’t have been touched unless those things were done at the same time.

What they’ve done here is made one of the least played classes weaker in one of its weakest spots, in all game modes, for all players, because of the bellyaching of a handful of PvPers.

That’s not balancing. It’s being reactionary and not thinking through the broader ramifications.

No, Automated Response absolutely deserved the nerf. Hard Counters are always liable to abuse and AR is no exception. Expect the very same thing to happen once Signet of Restoration is unsplit for Elementalist in April, especially now that Stone Heart is a thing. I fully expect bunker ele to make its triumphant return – albeit with significantly less damage now that Bountiful Power is gone.

That AR was a part of your build and you are upset at the change is unsurprising, but that does not make the trait any less badly designed. Yes, it’s a “counterpick” trait against the condi meta but to be honest the fact that you were relying upon the trait in the first place should ring alarm bells as to its power. Yes, Engineer’s condition mitigation is now at its nadir. Doesn’t mean that AR’s nerfing should be delayed because it is this very attitude that Arenanet has used to justify their stultified meta and lack of frequent changes.

That you happened to be part of a minority of Engineers that somehow ran AR without a decap spec (unlikely, as most of the rest of your active defense would have come from pushes, thus making your spec decap. Feel free to post your build to disprove my assumption though.) does not change the fact that AR was abused by decap engineers to achieve results far beyond their means.

Now, believe it or not, this is (hopefully) some short term pain for some long term gain. With AR as a complete condition immunity gone, it is now justifiable for Arenanet to bring up Engineer condition cleanse in other aspects. What we can do now as a community is to push Arenanet away from passive immunities towards active play using cooldowns. Lamenting the loss of AR without proposing alternatives contributes nothing to the outcome; nor does it give Engineer’s active condi-clear back.

Having said that, the whole condition application through passive procs, being long duration and individually low intensity, the sheer diversity of conditions – 12 (!!!) in game – all of this coupled to an arms race against mass cleansing and immunity is a zero sum game that can only result in collapse sooner rather than later. That Engineers, Warriors and Elementalists needed an Immunity utility or traits in the first place demonstrates that the current system of conditions and condition applying skills is untenable and should be reworked.

There is lots of aspects of the game that are in need of improvement right now. Decap Engineer was one of them; as was Pistolwhip Thief and Hambow Warrior’s big damage despite building tanky. That all 3 mentioned apex predator builds exhibit extreme amounts of crowd control should also clue you off to the fact that there exist vast inequities of Stability uptime between professions and hard CC that is all too easily repeatable in game right now.

Look beyond your own build and class and think of the broader ramifications, as you yourself said. The game’s current incarnation has problems everywhere, but lamenting what’s past does not improve the future.

Perplexity Runes are so powerful that they can literally carry a condition build in WvW and this is even before considering the ludicrous amounts of condition duration one can get from consumables (50% in total after 40% duration food and 10% from Toxic Stone/Oil/Crystal). To bring them over to PVP without the removal of one or the other Confusion applying procs (RNG on hit, on interrupt) is madness. This is also considering the relative power of two condition applying procs for Perplexity as opposed to one for every other condition centric rune, like Rune of the Flame Legion, or Balthazar, or Krait.

Not only should the 4 bonus be removed (no other rune in the game has double condition application procs), the 6th bonus should also be reduced in duration of Confusion stacks applied from 8 seconds down to 4. At 4 seconds, 30% Confusion Duration + 30% from Condition duration trait line will only give 6.4 seconds of Confusion uptime on Interrupt – already ample uptime considering the number of Confusion stacks

As others have mentioned in this thread:

dimyzuka.7051:

Perplexity runes should buff confusion specs, it shouldn’t turn you into a confusion spec.

Any proclamations of build diversity that could possibly result from the introduction of this rune to PVP are all entirely negative. Every single condi-build capable class and even classes that wouldn’t normally be able to build condition damage will be bringing this rune. If this is the kind of game that Arenanet wishes to promote – interrupt and Confusion spamming tempered by everyone blowing their cleanses – then there is little hope for PVP. Dire/Perplexity has already ruined WvW Roaming. That Arenanet wishes to bring this farce to PVP despite player dissent boggles the mind.

Or you could say…perplexes me.

Hard counters are unhealthy for any game, and Automated Response was no different. One should remember that condition immunity also affects Chill, Cripple, Weakness and Immobilise – these are key snares that classes without access to hard CC require to land their damage and immunity to those obviously inflated AR Engineer’s 1v1 capability to beyond just pure Rabid Condition builds.

Having said that, I am unhappy with this change. First of all, this change does not address the underlying issue that Engineers have with the current meta, which is extremely poor active Condition removal outside of CF409 and Elixirs. There is practically nothing outside of the Alchemy line for Condition removal and Engineers are now approaching the point of the post December 10th Elementalist where trait-based condition mitigation is virtually absent – only, Engineers also lack strong condition removal tools in their Utilities.

This is an unintended consequence of the Kit Refinement rework that also eliminated 2 key condition removals for the Engineer – Cleansing Fire for the Flamethrower Kit and Super Elixir for Elixir Gun. Not only did this consequently kill the FT/EG setup’s viability, it also reduced active condition removal for Engineer to practically centre entirely around Healing Turret. Unless you want to go for CF409/HGH, only, that was nerfed in other ways as well, like no stunbreak on Elixir R.

There was also a small, but significant change to Transmute that removed the RNG aspect of it, but kept Transmute’s passive nature and nerfed its maximum potential. There is no excuse for such passives in the game.

We are now approaching the nadir of Engineer active condition removal outside of Elixirs. Every single build that was not using Healing Turret before will now be using Healing Turret. We may even see some Engineers turning to Elixir C, which shouldn’t even be a thing.

To “shave” the passive condition immunity of Automated Response instead of replacing the mechanic with active, cooldown based condi removal like on the Toolbelt is absolutely the wrong way to nerf AR. Yes, on the one hand decap Engineers will no longer be a thing anymore. On the other hand, facing this condi meta with only 8 cleanses a minute (if Turret is detonated, will be minimum of 6 cleanses a minute) will further reinforce Condi Necro’s utter dominance of Engineer and bring up other builds that were already 50/50 against Engi.

I can only hope that more active condition cleanse through traits outside of Alchemy can be introduced because active condi mitigation of Engineer is now at its lowest point. So, here are a few, vain hopes for future changes for Engineer:

• Transmute: Instead of passive conversion of conditions to Boons, tie proc to Toolbelt use. Global ICD 12 seconds. If you think it’s too strong for a Minor trait, make it trigger only on next attack hitting so the conversion can be dodged and Engineer misses a cleanse.

• Introduce Master level Tools trait replacing Scope with Condition cleanse on Toolbelt Skill use. ICD 15 seconds per individual Toolbelt Skill. Scope is useless anyway. Condition mitigation in Tools will do a lot to bring Power Engineer builds back into viability as Power builds sacrifice practically all condition mitigation and utility just to bring enough damage to be relevant in the days of Soldier’s Amulet Hambow.

• Rework Rifled Turret Barrels in Inventions to make Turrets give a small heal and Cleanse a Condition in 300 AOE centred on Turret on use of Overcharge. One of the major reasons for Turret builds being unviable is that pretty much all the Condition mitigation is centred upon Healing Turret. This also lets Engineers make a choice between Projectile negation support with the new Grandmaster or more conventional support with small heals and condition cleanses.

• Kit Refinement: KR Flamethrower: Remove Fire Aura proc, replace with old KR Cleansing Fire that burned foes for 3 seconds and cleansed 1 condition. The FT proc was not the problematic one, it was always Grenade Barrage (100nades) and double Super Elixir (Triple kit bunker). Removing the Cleansing Fire proc was senseless.

• Elixir Gun: Make Fumigate also cleanse 1 condition on last tick of channel for the Engineer. It’s a long enough channel to be easily interrupted and Kit Engineer has a dire lack of Cleansing capability since the Kit Refinement nerfs. This change is also easier to shave: Changing the tick when the self-cleanse procs will change how long an Engineer has to channel before self-cleansing.

• Med Kit: Increase Drop Antidote’kittenbox so that it can also cleanse Immobilise when used. 1 cleanse per 15 is hardly overpowered, especially given that the cleanse doesn’t even work when Immobilised. A buff to Drop Antidote’s cleansing ability isn’t even needed, just make it work with Immobilise.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Soooooooooo broken.
Compare to mender’s purity.
Seriously, asking for warrior buffs right now is like a millionaire asking for a pay raise.
Especially considering that warriors are one of the top classes when it comes to condition removal already.

Actually, I do think that Hooma has a point. Right now practically every Warrior runs Cleansing Ire in PVP or WvW. There’s a reason for that. Up to 3 cleanses per 7-10 seconds is probably the highest cleansing capability in the entire game. Healing Signet having extreme HPS also counters the DoT nature of condis where a spike heal would be significantly less optimal.

Cleansing Ire is so required because every other cleansing capability of Warrior is so weak. Cleansing Ire/Healing Signet allows a Warrior to literally ignore condis. I challenge you to take the standard triple stance Hambow build, take out Healing Signet and replace with Healing Surge or Mending. All of a sudden, you will notice that your health goes down pretty quickly and you die a lot faster. You can and will die to Poison and interrupts. There’s a reason for that.

Take out Cleansing Ire as well and suddenly Hambow dies just as quickly as any other build to condis – it just might live 8 seconds longer due to Berserker Stance. I think this is what Hooma means when Warrior is said to be “pigeonholed” into 20 Defense for condition mitigation because nothing else holds a candle to Cleansing Ire/Healing Signet.

Having said that, I do think that a good first step instead of both reducing Surge and Mending CD and making Restorative Strength remove 4 condis is simply to alter the table for Restorative Strength a little bit:
Original:

• Restorative Strength: Using a Heal removes Chill, Cripple, Immobilise, Weakness
  New:
• Restorative Strength: Using a Heal removes Chill, Bleed, Immobilise, Torment

By changing the Cripple and Weakness cleanse to Bleed and Torment you increase Mending and Surge’s potential to eliminate DPS conditions – which spike heals are less efficient against. Already this makes Restorative Strength a lot stronger and although it obviously won’t replace Healing Signet/Cleansing Ire in any capacity without cooldown reduction of Mending and Surge, it does bring builds using Mending and Surge closer to the DPS condition mitigation capability of Signet/Ire.

What I would give for the same active cleansing capability on my Engineer, even at reduced capacity is unspeakable.

Having said that, the whole conditions system is in dire need of review. A plethora of low-cd, individually low impact condition applying autoattacks and skills backed by RNG condition application Traits is making the whole condition playstyle extremely spammy. I do hope that Arenanet realises their mistakes and makes condition DPS the same as Power DPS – High intensity, short duration, telegraphed attacks with reasonable cooldowns, with the majority of play/counterplay revolving around the Control aspect rather than the DoT aspect of Conditions. Condition builds should have to rely on CC/Immobilise to land their DoTs just like Power builds, unlike now where it’s just AOE Spam until condis stick and players on the receiving end have to blow their cleanses.

With Arenanet’s track record though, they’d probably just introduce more counter-condi hard counters, then call it a day until the next equivalent of a condi-immune decap engineer rolls around and shave it by 8% after 6 months.

Acaro.4067:

Well, I think GW2s PvE could work if they just focus on giving PvE mobs better tooös and improve their AI. Look at PvP, it works there, too. Why? Because of CCs, the need to finish of enemys, condition damage that every build needs to adress in some ways, cause you get debuffed, because the enemys use buffs that you need to cleanse etc.

In my opinion GW2s greatest potential lies in build experimenting, lile in GW1, but you need build diverdity and changes for that. I don’t think I’m the only player that took a break for over a year because of that. And then, when we have that build diversity, we need greatly rewardong content that is incredible hard, so that the players are forced to push their builds and skills to the utmost limits.

Yes, this post is a more concise summary of why PVE should be closer to PVP. The mechanics of PVE support a DPS race meta right now because PVE features:

• Little to no CC. One can easily complete a dungeon or world boss without any Stability uptime or stunbreaks/immobilise cleanses. This leaves more room for players to slot more offense. There is little motivation otherwise. Why build defensively when the mechanics are so forgiving?

• Zero down state control. The Rally mechanic in PVE is woefully one-dimensional: DPS mobs so downed player can tag for Rally.
  Although this mechanic is mirrored in PVP in this aspect, down state control in other ways is virtually absent in PVE, due to trash mobs having small enough health pools that it really is more efficient time-wise to simply DPS down a mob after a downed player tags it for the Rally mechanic to kick in. PVE mobs also have no Downed state. In PVP, there are no trash mobs. Even minions, Spirits, Turrets, Spirit weapons, etc. etc do not trigger the Rally mechanic. Only players do, and player downed health in PVP can last a pretty long time in the absence of corpse cleave.
  • This means that teams in PVP have to make choices – sacrifice a team member to go for a stomp on a downed enemy? Cleave the body to deny rezzing? Or simply leave it be and CC away players that attempt to try a rez? This complete absence of downed state control and decision making in PVE in lieu of Moar DPS is why PVE players joining WvW or PVP for the first time perform so poorly – they have literally zero experience with dealing with down state control.
  • If every mob had survivability mechanics similar to that of players (dodge, short duration/long CD invulns, Block, Aegis, Blind) and indeed, with some mobs even having a Downed State that other mobs try to rez, the whole design of PVE encounters would change to accommodate this mechanic – for the better. It is baffling that Arenanet would introduce this mechanic of literally game changine importance to adversarial modes – PvP, WvW – yet leave it entirely absent in PVE – to the detriment of PvE players looking to transition. I’d argue that it is one of those “hidden” factors for the PVP population being so low – with the rest of the game literally teaching absolutely nothing about Down State Control, joining an adversarial mode where such a mechanikittenerally swings fights is so daunting as to make the barrier of entry too steep to bear.

• Conditions, Boons, Heals. In PVE, mobs have little to no Condition, Boon, or Healing output, if any, at all. This makes them literal punching bags because in the absence of these mechanics, what else is there for a PVE player to play with and against except DPS? PVE Players have no need to Poison the mobs Heal skill, or rip their Boons (Except Defiance…oh wait, boss skills have no cooldown so rupts are useless), or cleanse their condition output. This leaves most “meta” PVE builds being all out offense with each defensive input being considered a “sacrifice”. In an actual fight, top PVE DPS builds would literally get wrecked in seconds because they have no defensive mechanics outside of dodge.
  • It goes without saying that introducing these neglected mechanics to mobs in PVE would do a lot to raising the skill floor of GW2 in general to the betterment of the community. It’s one thing to be “accessible” to the lowest common denominator; it’s another to literally encourage suicidal build-making habits by removing all the threats a full-DPS build faces in lieu of instituting mechanics that all scream, DPS, DPS, DPS.

constantLogic.3486:

snip

I know it’s been said before, actually I’ve said it before, but I really think to have any kind of proper balance there does need to be a separation of pve and pvp. snip.

snip

I strongly disagree with the sentiment that proper balance requires a separation of PVE and PVP, that widespread splits are somehow better for the game. For returning or newer players that may wish to participate in more than 1 game mode, and for the developers, introducing and maintaining splits of skills is a nightmare of un-learning muscle memory and re-learning every time one wishes to enter into PVP from PVE or vice versa. It further divides the community in a game that is already so night and day between game modes.

What is needed instead is for PVE to be closer to PVP. This means:

• Smarter, harder AI with skill rotations and synergy between mob types
• Cross mob-type combos that players can read and try to disrupt
• Making fighting “trash” mobs actually rewarding instead of loading all the rewards into the damage sponge boss/veteran/champion and rewarding stealth skipping/teleport skipping mechanics.
• Overall the mechanics should support the emergence of Control and Support roles.

In PVP, the roles of DPS, Support and Control already exist. Certainly, most Apex predator builds blend 1 or more of the other, but when players clamoured for more hybrid builds, Arenanet answered, for better or worse. As examples:

• Triple stance Hammer Longbow Warrior – High Control and DPS, extremely tanky. Weaknesses: Being outnumbered.
• Spirit Ranger – High teamfight Support with Spirit procs, sustained DPS. Weaknesses: AOE DPS, Stunlocks
• Condi Necromancer – High teamfight Control and extreme condition DPS, yet weak to Control and burst DPS
• Thief – High mobility DPS. S/P offers extreme down-state control/denial, D/P focuses on creating uneven fights – and uneven numbers by eliminating people from a fight. Shadow Refuge is Support. Extreme mobility. Weaknesses: Mostly single target focus, little Support.
• Bunker Guardian – Extreme Support and down state control. Weaknesses: virtually no DPS means you have no counterpressure. Your defense is reactive instead of proactive as a result.

For PVE these aspects are almost completely absent.

At present, 2 major factors prevent the other two pillars – Support and Control – from having any “teeth” in an otherwise DPS, DPS, DPS oriented gametype of PVE

• Bosses (and some mobs) hit slowly, but when they hit they hit hard. This allows players to use active defenses to far greater effect than would otherwise be possible. This cuts out the Support role because taking any damage is super deadly – whereas Support is used to mitigate damage taken and/or heal.
  • There’s no point healing or supporting when the person you’re trying to heal is downed anyway, and rallies at a higher percentage of HP. Rezzing or rallying off tags with more DPS is ironically better support which just boggles the mind.

• Defiance was introduced to remove stunlocking bosses to death as a band-aid fix that still continues today. The Queens Gauntlet does not have Defiance and players are still similarly challenged – yet dungeon bosses still use the Defiance mechanic when developers have proven themselves wrong. Granted, they had to give the Gauntlet bosses certain immunities, but the mechanic is so toxic to the Control archetype that it may as well not exist.
  • Interrupting Boss attacks after having gone through all stacks of Defiance is completely unrewarding when bosses simply get up and perform the attack anyway. There are no cooldowns to watch or interrupt, or boss “Heals” that need interruption. Why take longer to down a boss with Control when you can simply use More DPS and shorten the encounter so there’s less attacks?
  • With the removal of any role Control may have played, DPS is indirect control by shortening encounters and thus minimising the number of boss attacks. DPS is love, DPS is life, and so on.

The unfortunate thing is that to fix these overbearing problems would require a complete rework of most mob AI and redesign of pretty much every PVE encounter. It is thus easier for Arenanet to instead nerf Critical Damage to lengthen encounters and make the Support and Control roles more necessary. It’s a band-aid fix on top of another band-aid fix, but at least it’s something to bring back their alternative trinity. That being said, DPS will still be all the Support and Control you need because the underlying mechanics have not changed. Until the mechanics change, there is no trinity. There is only DPS.

Kaon.7192:

I’m glad this post is gaining traction, because my own post (made in April 2013) raising almost the exact same concerns died in a whimper.

I’m guessing after a whole year, the consequences of the lack of agility when it comes to balancing has finally started to sink in…

Kaon.7192:

snip

Kaon.7192:

Bumping this post I made 6 months ago because sadly it’s even more relevant now than when I posted it…

We need more agile balance passes to quickly bring the meta into a playable baseline state. This last balance pass changed practically nothing. And from the looks of it you’ll be waiting another month at minimum before making any further balance changes.

This combination of small incremental changes and long waits in between balance passes is what’s killing player enthusiasm for sPvP right now.

Instead of pushing a handful of small changes and then doing absolutely nothing for months waiting for the meta to develop, learn to be more adaptive and reactive in your development process. Consistently observe player feedback and continuously push small incremental changes to improve lackluster builds and playstyles, and always be ready to do SOMETHING (again, small incremental changes) to shave down builds that becomes out of line within a short timeframe of its dominance. Be sure to always prioritize the latter to avoid power creep, i.e. stop waiting for other overpowered builds to emerge to match the previously overpowered builds and using these types of builds as your standard measure for viability.

Do this in a public test server if you’re not confident with rolling things out at a faster pace in the main servers. I’m sure plenty of sPvPers such as myself will be happy to be your guinea pigs when given the choice.

I’m glad that I’m not alone in thinking that the current stance of putting everything into Feature patches is a bad trend. I’m sorry to say that I hadn’t seen your post up until now. In terms of what pushed me to make this thread, it was really the meta “freeze” up until the point of the PAX tourney post Dhuumfire patch and then desultory changes that did not, in any way, affect the placement of apex predator builds that coalesced my concerns. I suppose that it was probably a matter of timing for you, Kaon, as April 2013 was still during a time of (relatively) frequent changes and indeed, the April changes were impactful and did bring about changes in people’s builds.

I know that for me personally, it made me stop using invulnerability skills for Elementalist and Engineer and in particular it made me switch from Dagger mainhand over to Scepter due to the RTL nerf making it significantly riskier for me to stay in the fight due to the Block/Aegis bug. Which still exists today, and it’s a little sad that we’re coming up on a year since the change and things like this are still a thing.

Carighan.6758:

I really feel like they should push balance changes – even if it’s only 1-3 of them every time – with the weeks between LS patches.

Yes, this will create imbalance, because not all classes get changed at a time. However, the rapid cycle of deployment -> feedback -> improvement would benefit the balance effort overall.

To be honest, it wouldn’t even matter what Arenanet changed as long as they changed something about the professions to make them better every patch. Every single profession has problems right now – some since launch – that is affecting build diversity. Bugs and tooltips, especially. Fixing bugs in content that not every single player may run into – and this is especially egregious with Living Story whilst leaving the ways players interact with the content – their professions – buggy is baffling to me. I’m hoping that the feature patch does indeed, have “too many bugs fixed to be listed” as they boasted on their Ready Up Livestream because player expectations after such a lengthy period of stultification can only rise. I know I’ll be logging in to test if things really have been bugfixed for the better.

But yes, rapidly pushing out small fixes with every single patch is pretty much the way to go.

The viability of Power Bombs has been steadily nerfed over time (and condi-bombs buffed) to the point where BK is pretty much only useful for spreading conditions then swapping out. For Power Bombs to be viable the condition aspect would require nerfing, or at least a mechanical alteration to the way BK works along with changes in traits, because the way things are right now, even taking Grenadier and Explosive Powder blows Bomb Kit out of the water.

The only time Power Bombs was ever “viable” in the loosest sense of the word was for spiking maximum Vulnerability on a target when Sitting Duck did not have an ICD so your autoattacks were hitting like a truck. With that gone, and with the Smoke Bomb nerf to make sitting toe-to-toe with other melee classes even more of a risk instead of simply dropping Fire and Concussion bomb then kiting in a condi build, Power Bombs does not:

1. Have the damage unless hitting a PVE target and autoattacking
2. Have the capability of staying in melee now that Smoke Bomb is nerfed
3. Have the scaling of Grenade Kit with Grenadier in Melee range since you can guarantee multiple hits with GK and the coefficients are higher.
4. Low coefficients all around, high radius pulsing AOE condition application (esp. Burning) mean that condi-bombs really is a lot easier and safer.
   Making Demolition Specialist a thing would require that Fire Bomb and Concussion Bomb somehow acquire 2.5+ coefficient in difference to even compete with Grenadier coefficients or something crazy like buffing Big Ol’ Bomb to detonate on command and thus removing a lot of counterplay to Big Ol’ Bomb. Then by introducing the trait, you would make running BK without the trait relatively underpowered, thus pigeonholing builds. I do think that for Power bombs to be viable the kit itself has to be viable from a Power perspective. And that means changing a lot of the aspects of BK.

The only way I could foresee Power Bombs ever being a thing would be:

• Making Bombs be placed 60 units in front of the Engineer, thus eliminating the Self-kiting problem when running with Swiftness and Elixir Infused Bombs.
• This change would also make BK a lot more readable as well. Should also colour code the bombs for unambiguity of purpose just like Grenade Kit. Visually, the huge “mushroom cloud” of Fire Bomb should be toned down for clutter reasons. The increased range means that Engineer has a lot more room to land BK1
• Reducing the radius increase Forceful Explosives gives to 30 units now that Bombs are placed in front of the Engineer and therefore the Engineer now has 240 units to work with to kite other melee users instead of 180.
• The October radius buff was when condi-bombs really became a thing because 240 radius covers most points in PVP. I do think that with placement of bombs being 60 units in front of the Engineer, the baseline BK attacks should be 150 unit radius so people still have room to maneuver. 240 is pretty thoughtless, but people may disagree.

• Increasing the baseline Power coefficient of Fire Bomb to 0.3-0.5 per pulse for total 1.2-2 coefficient over 4 pulses; and Concussion bomb to 1.0-1.2 coefficient. This brings the baseline Bomb Kit total coefficient to 3.45-4.45 – now easily competitive with untraited Grenade kit. The lower range is if Big Ol’ Bomb is also buffed to ~2 coefficient (Technically 2.2 is required to give equal total coefficient with GK + Toolbelt Barrage). The upper range is if Big Ol’ Bomb is left unchanged, so more damage is loaded into Fire and Concussion bomb.
• I do think that with a buff in Power damage output there should also be a nerf to condition damage output, although others may disagree. One thing I would like to see in particular though is for the Confusion component of Concussion bomb disappear in favour of something like Crystal Wave in GW1 that cleanses conditions of foes, but deals extra damage for each condition cleansed.
  • A lot of Engineer skills are low-output enough to be (relatively) thoughtless in use (Looking at Grenade Kit and Pistol Mainhand) and introducing combo potential useful for Power specs like Fire Grab does for Elementalists could be what Bomb Kit needs to overshadow Grenade Kit in certain situations. BK also lacks a “finisher” skill with high output and longer cooldown like GK does in the form of Grenade Barrage and Concussion Bomb could fulfil that role.

With regards to Power Bombs, and I mentioned this on stream to you Chaith, I don’t think that using anything bar the autoattack is going to be able to compete at all with Grenadier Grenades given the total power coefficients of GK vs BK. Bomb Kit would require a practical rework for Power Bombs to be viable instead of the kiting Condi-Bombs we see right now. The only Power-centric Bomb Kit build I’ve had a lot of success with didn’t actually use BK extensively; rather as a form of zone-control, which says something about how useful Power Bombs are in a PVP aspect. Obviously, with the meta in PVE being melee auto-attack centric , Bombs have a place since the Grenade Kit nerfs, but using the rest of the kit for direct damage when all the numbers are against it is suboptimal in a PVP context, especially with smarter opponents.

TL;DR: Fix Bomb Kit to be more amenable to use in a direct damage build before introducing the “hero” Grandmaster trait. Otherwise the kit could never stand on its own, and Engineer is already pigeonholed in many ways with Kit grandmasters – Grenadier in particular.

Numbers here from Sentinel Ark and Casia show the following for Bomb Kit and Grenade Kit and as far as I know the numbers haven’t been adjusted at all since:
Bomb Kit

1. Bomb: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 1.25 coefficient, 180 radius
2. Fire Bomb: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0.2 coefficent x 4 hits (0.8 total), 2 seconds of Burning per hit, 180 radius
3. Concussion Bomb: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0.5 coefficient, 5 stacks of Confusion for 5 seconds, 180 radius
4. Smoke Bomb: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0 coefficient, 3 seconds of Blind at 0, 2, 4 seconds for 3 Blinds total, 180 radius
5. Glue Bomb: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0 coefficient, 1 seconds of Immobilise and Cripple at detonation, then 1 second of Cripple per second up to 3 seconds, 240 radius
6. Big Ol’ Bomb: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 1.7 coefficient, 3 seconds delayed detonation, 400 Launch, Blast Finisher , 300 radius
7. Total coefficient: 2.55 in kit, 4.25 with Toolbelt

Compare this with Grenade Kit, and keep in mind that this is the post-sigils working with Kits Grenade Kit as well where GK 1 took a 30% dip.
Grenade Kit

1. Grenade: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0.33 coefficient per hit, 2 hits
2. Shrapnel Grenade: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0.55 coefficient per hit, 1 stack of Bleed for 12 seconds, 2 hits
3. Flash Grenade: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0.1 coefficient per hit, Blind for 5 seconds per hit, 2 hits
4. Freeze Grenade: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0.5 coefficient per hit, Chill for 2 seconds per hit, 2 hits
5. Poison Grenade: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0.2 coefficient per hit, Poison for 5 seconds per second over 5 second Poison Field duration, 2 hits. (will be nerfed to 3 seconds Poison per second in April)
6. Grenade Barrage: 0.5 cast, 0.3 aftercast, 0.375 coefficient per hit, 6 hits
7. Total coefficient: 3.36 in kit, 5.61 with Toolbelt. With Grenadier: 5.04 in kit, 8.04 with Toolbelt

Most efficient coefficient per second in BK is obviously the autoattack, as you can see. Fire and Concussion bomb deal desultory damage for their cast time and as such they would be unhelpful as direct damage in a PVP context, Fire and Smoke bomb only useful for their Combo Field utility in general, and Bomb would be the auto-attack in PVE with everything else being a waste of time.

Compare this with Grenade Kit where every single skill deals damage and with Grenadier, a total of 8.04 coefficient means that every single skill will still be useful for damage in a direct damage build, unlike BK where all the coefficients are loaded into Big Ol Bomb and the autoattack. In the context of direct damage, only the autoattack in Bomb Kit edges out Grenade Kit for more risk of being in melee. Even untraited Grenade Kit is better for less risk if you can get multiple hits every time.

I’ll just comment on Elementalist for now.

With regards to Blinding Ashes:

• Isn’t as good as it sounds and it is precisely due to the ICD. The trait is primarily intended to support active defense in Fire attunement; however, only Scepter Fire 1 can take full advantage of the trait on ICD. Even then, Blinding Flash on Scepter Air 3 is stronger due to easier access with Fresh Air, and you do more damage to boot.
• Fresh Air/Evasive Arcana easily overshadows this trait in terms of Blinding Application, and you also have traits that don’t actually suck at lower tiers. Bonus!
  • On the other hand, if Blinding Ashes made Fire Fields also Blind for 3 seconds every 3 seconds it would be a good trait. Some defensive counterpressure that an Elementalist can lay down where it is most vulnerable. Still doesn’t fix the lower tiers of Fire Magic, but it’s a start.

With regards to Lightning Rod:

• Elementalist’s interrupts are all on pretty long cooldowns. The viability of this trait is contingent upon how damaging the Lightning Bolt is on interrupt. If it is on the level of Halting Strike, it might be good when running with an Aeromancer’s Alacrity Dagger/Dagger build to have better Shocking Aura and Updraft uptime. Even then, Air Training/Fresh Air is so far superior that it’ll be difficult to justify.
  • On the other hand, if Lightning Rod had the added effect of : Foes that miss due to Blind are Interrupted, now we are cooking with gas. It would turn Blind for the Elementalist into another Interrupt – true offensive counterpressure.

With regards to Stone Heart:

• The dividing line for this trait between mediocre and absolutely ridiculous is predicated upon whether it interacts with Arcana 15 – Lingering Elements.
• If it does, Elemental Attunement + Stone Heart and Rock Solid has just become the new meta bunker. If it doesn’t, then it can simply be disregarded.
• With Arenanet’s current implementation of Lingering Elements only working with the 5 point Minor traits, I personally believe the latter to be the case, and once again, Arenanet has wasted time without addressing Elementalist’s core issues, which is lack of useful condition cleanse outside of Cantrips and Water Magic, and lack of useful offensive capability outside of Air.
• At this point Arenanet should seriously consider adding one of the 3 mechanics to Earth:
  • CC-based offense: CC, Immobilise or Cripple inflicting Vulnerability so that Earth is better for something other than applying uncovered Bleed stacks
  • Condition reaping mechanics like Crystal Wave from GW1 . This gives Elementalist condition builds a unique way to play by applying then “reaping” conditions to deal their damage.
  • Condition defense: Diamond Skin replaced with cleansing Snares upon attunement to Earth (an extreme expression of Geomancer’s Freedom) and gaining Might stacks per snare cleansed, or Cleansing conditions on self and foe and dealing damage per condition cleansed (again on the Crystal Wave bent)

With regards to Aquatic Benevolence:

• Arenanet designed the game to exclude healers as a legitimate role when they gave everybody a 6 skill for self-reliance. Then they made it a point to remove player-targeted heals (even Merciful Intervention cannot be player-controlled) to further sideline any possibility of playing a healer. Finally, boons like Protection and Aegis along with active defenses like Block, dodge and evading weapon skills mitigate far more damage than healing can ever do with its minimal scaling.
• This trait represents a complete 180 on the “no healers, active defenses better” stance and it is puzzling that it comes some 18 months into GW2’s product life cycle.
• In addition, the only strong, reliable method of healing allies at current is through Blasting Water Fields – which have a 1320 base and 0.2 Healing Power coefficient scaling. 25% represents a mere extra 0.05 Healing Power coefficient for allies, and it is the Elementalist that is supposed to be doing the Blasting, otherwise the Aquatic Benevolence trait likely will not apply. All around a baffling inclusion.
  • A better alternative would have been to make Blast Finishers in Water Fields also cleanse a condition to even begin to compete with Cleansing Water. Anything less means that the trait will almost always be sidelined especially now that Cleansing Water is unsplit.

With regards to Elemental Contingency:

• Taking hits as an Elementalist is generally considered a Bad Idea. That Elemental Contingency introduce more boons that is predicated upon enemies hitting you is therefore specious at best.
• Possibly the only new useful boon out of all this is Retaliation. Arcane Fury overshadows the Air proc, Renewing Stamina the Water proc, and Elemental Attunement the Earth proc. It’s just redundantly bad all around.