Guild Wars 2

Manuhell.2759:

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

NevirSayDie.6235:

MonMalthias.4763:

I actually see the Dhuumfire patch as the culmination of a design failure of Arenanet to take into account the base damage of burning and the overall placement of it in traits.

This is so true.

On another note: I tried to edit my original post to say that crit procs were useful to force precision into condition damage builds, but I must have run out of room or something. However, even that design choice isn’t working at the moment, since rangers don’t need it and necros/engineers just need a bit of precision to proc burn. The rest of the procs are negligible in comparison.

I’m not sure that condition procs as basically free, un-counterable damage is necessarily bad. I’ve just never seen a game where that type of damage is so high. This is the only game I’ve played where DoT damage has its own stat and ignores armor and hits really hard. Somewhere in there, something is going to have to change.

NevirSayDie.6235:

MonMalthias.4763:

• Ostricheggs has mentioned, along with you, NevirSayDie, that Incendiary Powder has a weakness against high amounts of summons bodyblocking the IP proc. Would you agree that this mechanic simply further encourages high AI builds like Minion Master Necro or Spirit Rangers – builds that some have commented to be low skill ceiling and therefore should be low reward in the past? If not, do you think that Incendiary Powder should be changed somehow to make it “fairer” in true 1v1 scenarios free of summons?

Yes, it encourages spirit rangers and minion masters. A simple solution could be to remove the 5-target AoE cap, at least in tournaments. The counter to screen pollution should logically be AoE; as it is now, it’s the opposite. I’m not extremely worried about 1v1 balance, although it’s certainly an issue as well. Engineers are already pretty good duelers, though.

MonMalthias.4763:

• You mentioned the following – The best thing for engineers would be a reduction in the condition-meta, either through buffs to cleansing or nerfs to condition application. Would you not agree that buffs to either aspect would further erode the Engineer’s role in Condition cleave? What nerfs should Engineer receive and what buffs should it get in return for the loss in Condition pressure?

I meant that condition bombing in general could stand to be a bit less effective. If that means that engineers need some passive condition application nerfed, so be it—although engineers are no longer the #1 condition bombers. In return, engineers could get another buff to flamethrower, cleave on toolkit, and working turrets; we could stand to get a bit of our survivability back—let’s say a 5-second CD reduction on elixir C.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Should we as the Engineer class continue to propagate the current state of the game (through AOE condition spam)? This refers mainly to proccing cover conditions on our primary DPS condition, Burning.

Condition application and management is a unique mechanic of GW2. I don’t think it’s bad; I find it very fun, especially on the receiving end. RPG combat is about choices—like when you have five conditions on your bar and two cleanses off cooldown. Do I wait for that vulnerability stack to wear off? The bleed stack is covered, I’ll wait until it gets refreshed and then wipe the whole thing…

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with playing conditions if you enjoy that. I prefer to play direct damage but it’s fun either way.

MonMalthias.4763:

• If not, what changes are needed to turn Engineers away from this role? Keep in mind that Ostricheggs thinks that Engineers are well balanced in the current state of the game, and that any changes to Incendiary Powder will make Engineer highly volatile in terms of balance once again.

I would agree that engineers are currently well-balanced. This is mostly because our most damaging skills are difficult to land, so a skilled engineer will do well while a newb engineer will get rolled, no matter the build. This is not the case for all professions. I agree that a change to IP would make engineer balance very fragile indeed.

MonMalthias.4763:

• If so, what do you have as a response to players of other classes? The other class competing for the same role, Necromancer, also relies heavily on procs applying conditions with other conditions. What counterplay exists to procs in your experience?

CC and predictive dodges. If a necro lands mark of blood and chill on you, good luck digging yourself out of that hole. Necro is pretty much the top profession at the moment; their condition specs were conceived as the best bleed stackers, but then Anet realized that no condition build could succeed without burn. Add in yet another damaging condition at exactly the same time and you get a menace.

Rangers have always been difficult to balance. Rangers have low direct damage coefficients to make up for their bonus pet damage, but condition damage doesn’t have that balance check, of course.

After reading through everything, I honestly think one of the best solutions may be a flat reduction in burn damage or duration. I also wouldn’t mind seeing vulnerability go away completely in PvP, since no one uses it as a debuff and it’s basically just a cover, but that’s a little extreme. A slight buff to cleansing skills across professions—let’s say the warrior warhorn/mesmer torch trait removes two conditions, or cooldowns on cleanses get lowered by a few seconds—would be another way to address the same issue. We don’t need all of those to happen; condition bombing is strong right now, but probably only one or two small changes are needed to correct it.

MonMalthias.4763:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I do think it’s a problem that against pet-heavy professions, you’re likely to waste your burn (since practically every engineer attack worth using is AoE). Another problem is that burn is just ridiculously good. There’s no such thing anymore as a condition build without burn.
—The best thing for engineers would be a reduction in the condition-meta, either through buffs to cleansing or nerfs to condition application.
—IP certainly keeps engineers relevant in competing with necros and rangers for condition spam. I wouldn’t mind seeing things shift away from condition spam in general, though, and I think engineers have a lot of other things besides condition spam to offer.
—Engineer survivability has taken massive nerfs since launch (juggernaut, smoke bomb, super elixir, elixir S, and others), but I think it’s still pretty good. We still have ridiculous healing, cc, and blocks.
—I think engineers are balanced right now. They’re not the best condition bomber or bunker, but they’re pretty decent at both at the same time. I feel engineers also have more viable niche builds than other professions (I currently play rifle engineer, no IP).

I’ll have to agree with you on the point that there’s no good condition specs without Burn these days. I have seen the rise of many classes that previously did not have a condition role into one that does. Now, this is a good thing because it brings more classes and builds into the meta, however – all of the new builds that have arisen – Longbow burn warrior, Condition Ranger through Sun Spirit – contribute massively to the condition AOE balance issue.

One thing that Ostricheggs did mention was particularly striking -

conditions that proc while applying other conditions are extremely strong.

We as Engineers running, say, Grenades, have been largely reliant upon things like Vulnerability, Bleed, Freeze and Blind or Poison to cover the burns from Incendiary Powder/Blow Torch/Incendiary Ammo TB use.

For one, it generates a lot of “Cover” conditions that exploit the “Last In, First Out” (LIFO) condition system to “Cover” heavy DPS conditions like Burning with cover conditions like Vulnerability. For another, this kind of consistent reapplication of conditions – even on auto-attacks – swiftly overwhelms the cleansing capability of many classes. The only classes that can keep up are – Ranger and Guardian – each of which have a passive condition cleanse trait every 10 seconds in addition to their other tools for condition management. It’s also contributed to many builds now turning to Lyssa runes as an additional tool – the 6 set bonus grants a full condi clear and all boons on Elite activation.

So now we have passive condition cleanse being used to counter passive condition application. This may have been what players like Helseth and others have been complaining about – that the game has become too much about buildcrafting rather than active use of abilities. Where the presence of a single trait can define a duel far more than cooldown management, expeditious dodging or strong gameplay mechanics.

Buildcrafting over mechanical skill.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I never saw IP as overpowered on an engineer largely because the engineer has so many other sources of burning that IP can become redundant.

I main the turret engineer myself, and the rocket turret is capable of sustaining a near permanent burn on multiple opponents. The flame turret from the supply crate accomplishes this as well. Put them together and any opponent is nearly overloaded with quickly reapplied burns, so cleanse is of little effect.

There’s always the blowtorch and the fire bomb for additional high duration burning. Although I haven’t been in high end PVP like Ostricheggs is, so those alternate options might be so vastly inferior to the shield that they aren’t worth it.

While Pistol/Pistol, Flame Turret, Flamethrower can make a powerful burn build, Pistol/Shield’s extreme utility coupled with just 2 traits – Incendiary Powder and Grenadier – can do the same thing, even better, and from 1500 range. There’s a reason why P/S, 30/0/0/20/20, Healing Turret, Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit, Elixir S/R, Supply Crate is meta – the Grenade Kit’s down state threat, Elixir R down state control, Healing Turret team and personal utility is just too good not to take.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Great topic for discussion. Hopefully the devs will think as critically on the subject as players…I fear they may shy away from changing anything significant, however. I’m assuming we’re speaking from a strictly tPvP perspective here—

I think the only on-crit procs really seeing much use are IP, sharpshooter, and transmute, with IP being by far the most important. I actually don’t think the problem is the RNG in this case, since the trait is essentially to get 1 extra burn every 10-11 seconds.

I do think it’s a problem that against pet-heavy professions, you’re likely to waste your burn (since practically every engineer attack worth using is AoE). Another problem is that burn is just ridiculously good. There’s no such thing anymore as a condition build without burn.

• I don’t think the current IP is overpowered—but only because there are now even more overpowered builds overshadowing that.
• The best thing for engineers would be a reduction in the condition-meta, either through buffs to cleansing or nerfs to condition application.
• IP certainly keeps engineers relevant in competing with necros and rangers for condition spam. I wouldn’t mind seeing things shift away from condition spam in general, though, and I think engineers have a lot of other things besides condition spam to offer.
  *Engineer survivability has taken massive nerfs since launch (juggernaut, smoke bomb, super elixir, elixir S, and others), but I think it’s still pretty good. We still have ridiculous healing, cc, and blocks.
• I think engineers are balanced right now. They’re not the best condition bomber or bunker, but they’re pretty decent at both at the same time. I feel engineers also have more viable niche builds than other professions (I currently play rifle engineer, no IP).

Incendiary Powder is pretty much a “can’t live with it, can’t kill without it” kind of trait right now.

Ostricheggs can probably articulate far better than I can whether Incendiary Powder is balanced in terms of SPvP. In his opinion it is:

• It is the only trait that is making Engineers strong enough to compete in the current meta (with respect to Necromancers fulfilling the same role of AOE Condition cleave)
• Without Incendiary Powder many Engineer builds would largely be crippled of its Condition pressure
• Recent nerfs to Engineer survivability have reduced build variety in SPvP
• Because of its current implementation, it is strong in 1v1s, but tapers significantly against multiple targets / AI classes

However, several viewers were of the opinion that:

• As a passive crit-proc there is little counterplay
• It is too strong for its RNG nature

It is important to note one point that Ostricheggs made as the stream wound down, which I believe to be highly important to any conversation regarding Incendiary powder changes: (Keep in mind that everything below is paraphrased from several statements)
“If Incendiary Powder were ever changed or removed, Engineer would have to receive such a plethora of changes thakittens current position in balance would become highly volatile”

Nova Stiker.8396:

Lupanic.6502:

It is already nerfed for engineers twice. Engineer has a very bad autoattack on pistol for bleeding (compare to necro). Engineer can not apply so many stacks of bleeding. Without IP our condition damage would be very bad.

You think so?
I see it overpowered and not needed, being hit with a Freeze Grenade and be poisoned, chilled and burned in a single hit is not okay.

As a main Elementalist, the issue with Elementalist that cannot go condition damage is simple because our conditions are assigned to an attunement, making 10 of our skills rather worthless.

What’s the issue with Engineers condition damage then?
In my eyes you guys got plenty thanks to grenades and bomb kit.

Aberrant.6749:

That would wind up being quite a buff though as you would get it sort of for free.

Adding it in and then trying to balance around it has caused so many problems…

Siphoned power is blah though lol.

A buff and a nerf.

Applying burning when you fear sounds scary but fear is also a source of the Necromancers defense. Spamming Doom or Spectral Wall on recharge is not ideal.

Not to mention fear is actually not as spammable as people assume, it’s just really noticeable when it happens.

If you go back into the revision history of Incendiary Powder you’ll note that Incendiary Powder has been nerfed twice – and that the Dhuumfire trait implemented the Nerfed version of Incendiary Powder for Necromancer.

Incendiary Powder used to:

• Cause Burning with every explosion which proved to be too ridiculous given the Grenade Kit autoattack

• It was then nerfed to 33% chance per Critical hit to Burn for 2 seconds . Teldo’s breakthrough Rabid amulet build using Flamethrower, Runes of Necromancer, Sigil of Smouldering and 30 points in Explosives meant 100% Burning uptime for his farpoint assault build . The meta, then Arenanet picked up on this and Incendiary powder was nerfed again.

• The present form of Incendiary Powder is as low Burning uptime as IP has ever provided – nerfed from Adept to Master – yet nearly every single condi engineer takes it because Burning is the only strong source of Condition Damage Engineer has. Every other condition Engineer spams out is Cover for burning

I can see where Arenanet is coming from with Critical Hit procs putting a certain requirement of Precision into Condition builds – Condition damage currently scales with only one stat so requiring Stat diversification was necessary. That said, I don’t believe that this was the right stance for Arenanet to take. The “nerf” to 100% chance on crit essentially removed the Precision requirement – as it did for Necromancer as well when Dhuumfire was introduced. So now we are stuck with yet another passive proc that is propping up the condi engi – and without IP, Condi Engi wouldn’t even be in the meta right now.

Anyway, Incendiary Powder was discussed quite in depth in this thread regarding Engineer and Crit-procs. I suggest that you go take a gander. I’ll be reposting some of the things in that thread to here also.

Wow, this thread went downhill swiftly. I suppose it’s to be expected, but it’s kinda disheartening to watch responses devolve into knee-jerk reactions and ad hominem.

As an Engineer, Turret buffs would be appreciated, but care needs to be taken to keep them from turning Engineer into turning into yet another Spirit Ranger. Net Turret and Rocket Turret Overcharge have (potentially) the greatest amount of recurring CC in the entire game – as long as they’re actually targeting your opponent.

Fixing their AI should take priority before re-evaluation of anything about Turrets. Even the Cooldown starting after placing a Turret should be carefully considered only after fixing Turret bugs. Speaking of which, Anymras, any news on your buglist?

Thief still takes the cake in terms of PvP in the form of ganking squishies and going for backcaps as Stealth allows them to evade interception, while Shortbow and other Shadowsteps grant them unparalleled mobility unseen since the days of 15 second CD 1500 range RTL Elementalists.

As a class, I’d say that Thief is doing very well to keep Elementalist pushed out of the meta. Watching Blu’s shoutcasts, it’s the exception to see Ele, while Thief is part of the roster for nearly every team now for Shadow Refuge’s down state control, and for its extreme mobility.

That said, it’s probably more an issue of Ele being quite bad right now than Thief being OP. But one does have to question whether or not the complete absence of Staff Ele in high level PvP is not at least partially due to Thief (And Necro).

Anyway, back on topic. As others have said, Stealth openers are frustrating to play against. Causing Revealed when Backstabbing into a Block may well be acceptable, but I do think it still leaves classes other than Warrior, Kit Engineer and Guardian out in the cold – and those 3 have been classes that have been seeing regular play at the top level. Making Stealth openers harder against those classes isn’t going to be doing much shifting of the meta.

In my opinion, the design of Thief should be looking to de-emphasise the Stealth opener as the frontloader of damage. Instead, Backstab could be made to inflict good amounts of damage – I won’t give numbers – and also inflict a large amount of Vulnerability – say, 15-20 stacks. This has several effects:

1. Damage isn’t frontloaded so defenders don’t start off the duel down 40% HP – less
2. The Backstab mechanic could also be made to return (3-5?) Initiative on a hit, and cost 1 initiative on a miss. This punishes mindless players while rewarding players that hit their window with an extra bit of initiative. (*Optional, but something should be there to promote smart play. Feel free to come up with something better)
3. Since damage is no longer frontloaded into a Backstab, Arenanet now has latitude to buff the other weapon skills (!!! Important!!!)
4. The Vulnerability stacks would then not only allow a Thief a good damage advantage, but also Team utility in bursting down the target. On the defender’s side, getting hit with a Backstab is no longer as devastating; but you WILL die if you don’t start playing defensively and blowing your defensive cooldowns

Stx.4857:

I have read everything you posted, and no matter how you say it, what you are trying to do is nerf stealth, which in turn will nerf thieves. The reason you want to do this, is because you don’t like to fight against stealthers. You then take this opinion of yours(even if it may be an opinion shared by many), and use it as a reason to lobby for nerfing stealth, even though thieves are not overpowered.

As has been pointed out by others, stealth has counters. There is no logical reason why there needs to be hard counters added to the game, not when thieves have such low HP/armor, and rely on stealth for condition cleanses/regen.

Ah, but then that statement could not explain the change to Sic’em, which is a hard counter to Stealth because it inflicts Revealed.

The key thing to keep in mind here that even this Hard Counter has a counter . Sic’em can easily be dodged, and as a Pet utility, it is hardly reliable due to Pet AI. Which is probably why I haven’t seen many Rangers slot it in PvP. I don’t play Ranger at all, it may very well be that Rangers do slot Sic’em in WvW.

I believe that you are taking the stance that more counters to Stealth as a perceived threat to the ongoing viability to your class when Thief is already in a bad place balance wise. I won’t deny that D/P is probably the only real “tourney viable” build after the S/D nerfs.

That said, Thief as a class has languished in terms of design and build variety from the beginning. It is almost literally a 1 trick pony in it’s current state. I don’t deny that. But I will say this: adding more ways for professions other than Thief to counterplay stealth instead will be better for Thief in the end. It will quiet the whiners and allow the senseless nerfs to wane, while allowing the Stealth mechanic to develop.

In fact, I will go out on a limb here and say that Thief is in its current sad state because of Stealth. Arenanet is in a difficult position of being wary of buffing Thief’s other aspects because of the uproar that could result; especially when S/D Thief happened to push Elementalist AND Mesmer out of the meta. I would even say that D/P Thief’s very existence is denying any other build aside from S/X Fresh Air Elementalist from seeing play.

Further developing other classes interaction with Stealth could be what is needed to breath new builds into the game:

• Classes like Ranger could then get a good Power based build if Stealth-interacting skills were introduced through new skills or as an existing addition to present skills. Have you heard of Camouflage? It could well become part of a viable Power Ranger (heh) build if only the Stealth mechanic was more explored.
• You can even see this in the form of PU Mesmer – Stealth is one of the few mitigations keeping condi Mesmer actually viable as they would otherwise lack the utility and escapes needed to pull off their build. Is the build unfun to fight against? For sure. But you cannot deny that the Stealth interaction has opened up a new build.

Again, the fact that Thief is practically the only class with good interaction with Stealth and that other classes do not possess anything but full-on defensive play as counterplay, is unhealthy. For the Thief, for everyone else, and for the game. One merely has to see Thief’s current state of balance.

Ichishi.9613:

its the variety of the effects that made GW1 aswesome, no? A game where you could kill brainless people by letting them kill themselves. A perfect example of balance.

Yes, but then you’d get the unfortunate side effects like Blackout Mesmer (Which is just about as anti-fun on the receiving end as things can get). So it’s very much a fine line to tread.

In my view, putting nearly all the Hex mitigation onto the Monk was a huge mistake, but that’s kind of talking about the wrong game here.

Stillshade.7634:

But the point of bomb kit is that they are… well… bombs…
there is already a kit for throwing explosives.

If you’ve played the “meta” Bomb/Nade build for Engineer (I believe it’s still 30/0/0/20/20 or some variation thereof) you’ll know then that the Engineer experience with BK on points is pretty much 4-5-2-3-1-1-1 while watching for things to dodge. It’s a spammy kit, just as Grenade Kit is.

What’s worse, it’s practically impossible to read; just like Warrior’s Pin Down being the same animation as the rest of Warrior’s LB attacks. Concussion bomb looks like Glue bomb looks like the auto-attack. Concussion bomb is especially egregious as it recycles the Engineer Shield 4-4 animation – itself already difficult to see in teamfights – whilst looking like the auto-attack.

The end result is that classes fighting an Engineer – and I play Engineer myself – are relegated to dodging randomly in the hopes of dodging out that Concussion bomb or that first second of Glue Bomb where the Immobilize is dangerous.

That’s a pretty unhealthy way to counterplay Bomb Kit.

Making it a Charged skill would pretty much be a stealth nerf, because it slows down the rate at which you can drop your bombs. But you are compensated for this by not kiting yourself out of your Bombs.

Think about it. The current way BK works is that you drop your bomb at your feet as you run forward. By the time it goes off, it is behind you. Often by ~200 or so units. You’ve just kited yourself and your enemy out of your attacks.

It’s things like that that have driven the recent change to Bomb kit to increase the baseline radii of BK by ~60 units of radii for nearly all Bombs. I personally thought this change was an awful step backwards in terms of balance because

1. It didn’t address the ongoing self-kiting problem
2. It makes Engineer PBAoE even more obnoxious, which will likely lead to ancillary nerfs in the future that don’t address the real problem here
3. Spammy gameplay is rewarded. (Probably a bad thing)

Making BK a charge skill with coloured Projectiles is a major Step forward in this respect.

Ihales.3820:

Ancient Ranger.3276:

Maesk.8753:

Aza.2105:

The moment Anet introduces a predator for stealth is the moment the thief population will be culled.

Maybe because that would actually destroy the class. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but a large majority of thieves sustain/utility comes from stealth. By reducing the thieves ability to stealth, you’re also reducing their access to almost everything.

As for a ‘counter’, I personally think that’s a little unfair, no? Currently there are no other classes which have their defining class feature countered by a single skill (sic’em). Can I get a skill that destroys all clones/pets in an AOE around me?

Can you not kill a rangers pet? Or kill a mesmers clones? Yes you can so it might not be in a single skill AoE(though it might be provided you have enough dps) you can still counter their mechanic. along with sick ‘em you can still stealth after they have used the skill. Just as ranger can swap pets and mesmers can produce more clones. So no single skill that apply revealed will not break your profession. Every profession can have its mechanic countered. Warriors via *everyone’s* dodge button. Elementalist(my profession) via chill or knockdown, along with guardian and necros I believe. And not to sure if engineers can have their’s interrupted. So currently thief mechanic can only be counter by rangers sick ’em or that ridiculously non-intelligent non-usefull trap in WvW. As for me i believe if i hit a thief in stealth he should become revealed because comon sense says if I hit something that is invisible I know it is there along with physics. Unless this game defies physics then i guess anything goes.

So you can’t dodge cloak and dagger? or interupt heartseeker through blackpowder? Push him out of shadow refuge or drop enormous damage there? Yeah they have blinding powder, warrior have berserker stance/ endure pain also. Conclusion stealth has many counters, you either don’t know them or ignore them -> problem is not stealth but you sir.

Pretty sure the discussion’s moved on from the point about soft counters for Stealth openers, but hey, whatever. Blocks, dodges, PbAOE, blah blah blah. It’s been said; the matchup just isn’t fun. I challenge you to say that the Stealth mechanic is well developed across all classes right now.

I also don’t like the general attitude that (I’m presuming here) Thieves that play with Stealth, or PU Mesmer, or whatever other build uses Stealth as a major component that player frustrations are simply an L2P issue.

Let me ask you this:
Why is it that Thief has received a nerf, direct or indirect, practically every patch?

Here, I’ll make it easy.
Because players whine.

Why do they whine?
Because Stealth isn’t fun on the receiving end and the mechanic is underdeveloped outside of Thief.

I will say this. As an Engineer, my favourite moment in WvW was running Power Rifle (not SD) with 3 kits and running into a “permastealth” Thief. My favourite part of the duel was seeing him drop his Black Powder. Immediately I overcharged shot him out of his Heartseeker Leap Finisher, and bursted him down.

I didn’t even stomp him out. So playing around with Soft Counters with Stealth can be fun. But I’ve equally had frustrating duels starting 10k health down, regain the upper hand, and had the Thief Stealth away. That’s just about the most anti-fun mechanic there is and whilst I accept it as part of the game mechanics at the moment; more should be done with and against Stealth for all classes.

Stx.4857:

If you don’t build around countering a thief, that is your choice. Same as choosing to not build for condition cleanses, or choosing not to build for stability so that Hammer warriors don’t rock you.

The main reason I am against nerfing stealth is simply because thieves aren’t overpowered. You can make all these arguments about changing stealth into something different but the fact is A-Net will not take the time to overhaul something like that, so if you want to nerf stealth, thieves would need to be compensated with other methods of condition cleansing and healing, which wont happen. Then theres the little thing called Shadow Arts, an entire trait line devoted to stealth. What should we do with that? Just forget it exists.

The bottom line is, in every single MMO, people complain about stealth. It happens every time. People just hate stealth classes, thats it. Just because something is annoying to fight against is NOT a reason to nerf it. The thief class is meant to be slippery and mobile, thats why they have a tiny HP pool and lower armor. Thats just the way it is.

I think it’s a little premature to jump into a conversation and claim that the thread’s intent is to make more hard counters to Stealth or that there is no soft counter gameplay against Stealth that indeed, all classes can execute given the correct build.

No-one denies that every class has ways to defend against Stealth and Stealth openers against Thief. But again, no-one can deny that Stealth is simply not fun to play against because the mechanic is not fully developed across all classes.

The putting up blocks, the constant turns to deny the backstab angle (I have bound the 180 turn to my mouse in WvW), the active defense of putting up Protection or of laying PbAOE – no-one can deny that the gameplay and mechanics exist to soft counter Thief Stealth.

Similarly, no-one here (bar a few knee jerk reactions that haven’t read the thread) wants Stealth for Thief to be nerfed. I’m just not seeing where these defensive stances are coming from because Arenanet’s stance (and I believe it is the correct stance) on Stealth for the Thief is that it is indeed in an acceptable place at the moment; D/P Thief is tourney and WvW viable; Shadow Refuge is a part of standard play in down state control. I understand the frustration that other people on other classes are coming from when they hate Stealth classes.

The thing to remember is that no build can do everything. To then take the stance that “if you don’t build around countering a Thief, you deserve to die” is a clear example of a Straw Man . I’d like to think that I’ve elaborated on my reasons as to why Stealth, while an integral part of Thief gameplay and is fun to play around with, is unfun to play against.

As a follow-on point, Stealth as a mechanic is woefully underdeveloped in terms of interaction for classes other than Thief.

I believe that a good direction to take this thread would now be to brainstorm ways classes other than Thief can play around the Stealth mechanic – whether it be through forcing Revealed in an area (Hard counter) – or for Stealth openers such as Backstab to put more of the burden of skill on the Thief rather than on the defender.

I posted earlier proposing that Stealth, instead of being a black border effect similar to Quickening Zephyr, or Frenzy, or Super Speed or Quickness – be instead changed to a Boon (Gold Chevron)

It would immediately allow classes to slot Boon Hate utilities (if they so chose) to be able to force Reveal on Thieves – or take Boon Hate traits such as Destruction of the Empowered to punish the abuse of Stealth – all while leaving Stealth mechanics for Thief intact; while making the matchup of Thieves against other classes a little less lopsided at the beginning of the fight; whilst also making Stealth just another mechanic you can play around

Stx, Lyrsen, what would you say about that? As it stands, turning Stealth into a Boon would change the following matchups (off the top of my head)

• Shatter Mesmer – GS/Staff with Null Field
• Warrior – Running Destruction of the Empowered will make that Earthshaker even more vital to avoid
• Necromancer – Particularly running Well of Corruption or /D
• Engineer – Throw Mine actually has a use now! And Mine field would be a flavourful way to counter Stealth while the Thief can also dodge through them, so counter-counter play can exist (Great for mind-games)

That said, there still remains 4 classes – Thief (ironically), Guardian, Ranger, Elementalist – without any interaction with Stealth even after this change. How would you bring those classes into the Boon Hate fold?

Turret Bugs should definitely be fixed before anything else.

As for making Turrets move with the Engineer, I think it’s a bad idea, because it sounds like another Spirit Ranger fiasco just waiting to happen; whilst diminishing the special status that the Minionmancer enjoys.

If Venoms are indeed to be made more like Hexes then one way to do so is to give them more Conditional triggers just as they were in GW1

Looking through them, you’ll see that the GW1 system of Hexes introduced a lot of depth to Debuffs – from movement penalties (take damage while moving) to debuffing casters (take damage when you cast a spell, or lose energy). Venoms could also do the same thing.

For example, Ice Drake Venom could be a caster debuff, applying Chill, but also inflicting Daze if you strike your foe while they are channelling a skill . You cannot Daze your foe if the Chill is cleansed.

or

Skale Venom could grant extra stacks of Vulnerability the more your Opponent moves alongside the Torment doing condi damage. You cannot inflict more Vulnerability if the Torment is cleansed.

As it stands individual Venoms are pretty weak and not all that interesting either. Traited, they become just another condispam utility; though Devourer Venom and Basilisk Venom are nice by themselves.

@Imagi, @Zacchary;
No-one denies that there are soft-counters to stealth, such as chain skills advancing, or active defense. The fact remains that there is little interplay for classes outside of Thief regarding the Stealth mechanic, which is why there is so much QQ regarding Thieves, and why Thief receives a nerf every patch.

Personally, I’d like to see some changes to Thief as per Jumper’s List and to see where it goes from there; if only to see Thieves hitting more than 2 buttons out of their weapon set most of the time.

Zacchary.6183:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Stx.4857:

I will never understand the crying over stealth. Thieves are so squishy. Without stealth they would be free kills.

With stealth they roam around picking targets and racking up free kills. There’s a reason almost all roamers are thieves and use zerker gear. Stealth is the ultimate defense mechanism.

And without it they are just loot bags.

With regards to Thief being just “loot bags without stealth” that is clearly untrue given the existence of Sword/Dagger Evade Thief. I also challenge you to say that fighting a “permastealth” Thief in WvW isn’t an exercise in frustration – either you don’t see them opening up on you and they win an easy fight, or they lose and Stealth away. In what way does that make engaging gameplay, or put the burden of skill on offense and defense on equal ground?

Again, the hue and cry of “Thief needs Stealth to survive” is Special Pleading . L2P doesn’t figure into it, “Active defense” doesn’t figure into it, Stealth being “Thief’s class mechanic” doesn’t figure into it.

Thief just isn’t fun to play against; and the first step to make it so is to make Stealth interact more with the other classes.

All is vain.

Truer words were never spoken.

As much as I hate to say it, Kontrolle, down state control in both PvP and WvW is part of the game and it will stay that way for 1vX as long as down state exists. Fighting outnumbered, it’s understandably frustrating when you down an opponent only for an intervening Shadow Refuge, but again, it’s something that you need to play around.

One thing that really gets me about Stealth is why Thieves are so hung up on Stealth being their “only survival mechanic”. Or Evade frames being the “only survival mechanic” of S/D Thieves. Or Shadowstep being the “only survival mechanic” because otherwise Thieves would instantly die when stuck in a protracted skirmish. It’s Special Pleading at its worst, and of any discussion regarding any individual profession, I don’t think I’ve seen so much of it except on Thief.

When Arenanet released the gameplay previews of Thief way back when, and their Initiative system bypassing the whole mechanic of Cooldowns being Energy for GW2, I remember thinking to myself, “This class is either going to be garbage, or ridiculously OP, and never in between”. So far, Arenanet has avoided the worst of it, but we cannot deny the days of Quickness Thieves providing the most frustrating one-shot mechanics in the game before it was nerfed into the ground.

It’s clear to me at least, that the Stealth mechanic was entirely too rushed when designing the classes aside from Thief. Too few mechanics and traits interact with Stealth, and Stealth remains one of the few “buffs” with a black border instead of following the Golden Chevrons for boons and Red Chevrons for conditions – that is, it plays by its own rules outside of the Boon and Condition interplay mechanic.

An idea I had of introducing more interplay between Stealth and other skills – all without having to design new skills – would be to turn Stealth into a boon, and making it such that there was a maximum duration. Say, 5-10 seconds? In order to prevent Stealth stacking by Blasting in Smoke fields for too long.

It would immediately render Stealth vulnerable to Boon Hate mechanics like Well of Corruption, or Destruction of the Empowered or Engineer Throw Mine. Unfortunately the Boon Hate mechanic is woefully underdeveloped on classes like Elementalist and Ranger, but that’s okay, because Boon Hate mechanics can also be introduced to those classes through existing skills as well, similar to Thief.

There will be, however, unintended consequences:

• Well Necros will become an incredible threat to Stealth Thieves. Attacking a Necro through DS as Thief will become even more difficult.
• Mesmers, especially, running GS/Staff will have an incredible toolbox to counter stealth while it is already one of the “Meta” builds. But buffing Boon removal on Mesmer’s other Weapon sets could also introduce new imbalances.
• Methods of gaining Boons for Thief such as Lyssa Runes will become further entrenched in the list of “viable” builds for Thief to “cover” Stealth, which will limit build variety

In the end there is no easy answer for “fixing” stealth. But a Fix is necessary.

One thing is clear, though. Thief can no longer be seen in the eyes of Arenanet’s designers as being the sole interactor with Stealth. Thief reliance on Stealth, Thief Stealth openers, and the Stealth mechanic breeds nothing but frustration for players on the receiving end, and senseless nerfs for Thief that cripple it in other ways and further entrench the importance for Stealth in Thief survival.

I am of the opinion that Thief’kitten-and-run playstyle can be retained, even if the role of Stealth were diminished for Thief. Jumper’s S/D innovation is proof enough that Thief can be played without Stealth. Guild Wars 1 is proof enough that even Teleports could be balanced. Altering the way Stealth interacts with Thief will be the first step on the way to make it fun to play and fun to play against.

I agree with Duke Blackrose’s assessment that the Hex mechanic in GW1 was a little too powerful with removals and mitigation being pretty much Monk exclusive. In GW2, there are no skills that I know of that can even deal with Hex type conditions at all, so the situation would be even worse.

I did like the depth that the conditional triggers Hexes brought, especially to Mesmer and Necromancer, but to emphasise the Hex mechanic even more than what little carries over into GW2 (like Quickening Zephyr, or Frenzy debuffs) when there exists no mechanic to counterplay them would be disastrous.

With regard to Thief Venoms, I believe that Spider and Ice Drake Venom should be consolidated, as individually they are pretty terrible at the moment, and the preponderance of Conditions in PvP means that single type condi applications have little to no place due to cleansing.

Venom traits themselves could do with some consolidation to allow for better traiting options – 60 points for a Venomous Aura Thief is hardly useful for anything else. But until more skills interact with the Hex mechanic, I don’t believe that making Venoms uncleansable conditions will make them any better besides from introducing new imbalance.

Rezzet.3614:

defensive stuns/dazes usually last 1 second whereas stealth lasts 3+ seconds

so no i wouldnt call them effective counters or counters at all when thieves can keep spamming #1 while stealthed break your defenses and still land a backstab

I’d just like to point out this post in particular that I feel highlight most player’s frustrations when fighting a Thief that uses Stealth and Stealth openers.

In my opinion Thief stealth openers are up there with the most toxic plays in game, along with Warrior Healing Signet, Necro Signet of Spite, PU Mesmer and full GC, all-in, Fresh Air S/x Elementalist – these builds all have little to no counterplay to them, and fighting them is all too often a binary question of whether one has the correct build or worse, profession or not at the time. It’s a game of rock-paper-scissors and leaves the burden of skill entirely out of the equation.

The proposals I’ve seen for introducing counterplay and actual thought to Stealth and Stealth openers so far are:

1. Making failed Backstabs reduce a 0.5-1 second of the duration of Stealth (Probably the most straightforward, puts burden of skill more on Thief, but doesn’t address the frustration of playing against Stealth openers)
2. Adding another soft counter to Stealth by making damage inflict Revealed (Favours AOE heavy classes like Staff Necro, Engineer and again, leaves certain classes out in the cold like non-Staff/GS Mesmer)
3. Making finishers in Light Fields inflict Revealed (Again, makes Guardian a Thief hard counter)
4. Making certain combos that allow Thief to enter Stealth outside of Utilities impossible (i.e. removing Leap finisher on Heartseeker OR making the damage of Heartseeker apply BEFORE Stealth so if Thief hits, it is Revealed)
5. Making Backstabs on Block or Aegis Reveal the Thief (I don’t like this because it literally turns Guardian into a Thief hard counter while leaving most other classes out in the cold)
6. Reworking the Stealth opener concept, buffing Thief survivability outside of Stealth (The most open-ended and non-constructive proposal I’ve seen, because it’s almost never followed up with concrete ideas)

The fact that so many proposals exist all along different lines is a clear indicator that Stealth is a mechanic that has been poorly implemented, and with the resurgence of Thieves in PvP (First S/D, now D/P) and the ongoing “problem” of an excess of Thief roamers in WvW, it’s a issue that needs to be looked at sooner rather than later.

(Reposted from the other thread about Stealth and Stealth counters)

When I encounter thiefs and attack, they simply stealth, hit me once or twice when I can’t see them and I am down. My toons are not glass cannons ( ranger, guardian). I know AOE can help if it hits the area the thief is in. Is one solution to be geared as a glass cannon and try to one shot them first. I am quite frustrated with this mechanic and would appreciate any ideas to counter this.

Maesk.8753:

Aza.2105:

The moment Anet introduces a predator for stealth is the moment the thief population will be culled.

Maybe because that would actually destroy the class. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but a large majority of thieves sustain/utility comes from stealth. By reducing the thieves ability to stealth, you’re also reducing their access to almost everything.

Tom.8029:

How is an effective way of dealing with something not a counter to that something?

If you play rock paper scissors with someone and they keep using rock, a way to deal with that rock is to use paper. Thus paper COUNTERS rock.

Unless you mean something that automatically removes stealth. If you play Ranger, you can use “Sick ’em” to reveal them for 4 seconds. That’s really it.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Tom.8029:

When a thief uses stealth, you have a few options:
1) Use something that protects yourself.
2) Use something that punishes the thief for hitting you.
3) Anticipate a strike while they’re in stealth and dodge.
4) Use an AoE that damages the thief and stand in it.

Although these are effective means of mitigating a thief’s frontloaded attacks, they can still not be considered specific counters against stealth since I could also use these techniques against other classes that do not utilize stealth.

And pre-emptive usage of these actions if you are aware that a thief is nearby is still playing by the thief’s rules and relies mostly on luck or on the thief’s mistake or lack of experience.

Tom.8029:

Furthermore, we’re talking about how to deal with stealth, not that it is a broken mechanic and should be fixed. There are other threads for that, go complain there.

You guys are just being extremely cynical and quite annoying honestly.
Part of this post are for all of you. I don’t feel like quoting. Marcarus, I hope I helped in some way. Good bye.

Looking over this thread it’s clear that there are entirely too many people having knee jerk reactions to stealth, whether on one side (to have more counters) or the other (react and counter). There’s a reason for this, and the reason is this:

Stealth may be fun to play with, but it is unfun to play AGAINST.

Would you not agree that your list of things to do when an opponent enters Stealth are soft counters at best, and that you yourself have acknowledged that the only “hard counter” is Ranger’s Sic’em? (Let’s talk PvX here, and presume that revealing traps are not available in S/TPVP)

Stealth is unfun to play against because:

• It puts the burden of skill on the defender (By that, I mean that whatever you do, is playing on the Thief/Mesmer/Engineer’s terms when they enter Stealth)
• For thieves in particular, Stealth openers are impossible to punish and are especially frustrating on the receiving end
• For everyone else, losing your target and then being unable to read your stealthed opponent’s animations can be devastating in a game where lots of gameplay is centred around reading animations

Note that I haven’t passed judgement on Stealth one way or another. But this thread highlights a 2 particular problems with Stealth in its current implementation:

1. Only 1 class (!!!) out of 8 has a hard counter to Stealth (Ranger Sic’ em)
2. Stealth, put simply, is annoying at best, and frustrating at worst, to fight against. (PU Mesmer and “permastealth” Thief in particular)

The answer to this would therefore be to distribute more Stealth hard counter utilities to all the classes (Including Thief). If Stealth is to be a mechanic, just as Protection, or Blocks, or Aegis, or Invulnerabilities, then more skills should interact with the mechanic outside of Thief – even if Thief is the one that derives the most utility and survivability from Stealth.

The second problem is significantly more difficult to attack.

How does one make Stealth – by definition a mechanic of obfuscation – fun to play against?

Rezzet.3614:

defensive stuns/dazes usually last 1 second whereas stealth lasts 3+ seconds

so no i wouldnt call them effective counters or counters at all when thieves can keep spamming #1 while stealthed break your defenses and still land a backstab

I’d just like to point out this post in particular that I feel highlight most player’s frustrations when fighting a Thief that uses Stealth and Stealth openers.

In my opinion Thief stealth openers are up there with the most toxic plays in game, along with Warrior Healing Signet, Necro Signet of Spite, PU Mesmer and full GC, all-in, Fresh Air S/x Elementalist – these builds all have little to no counterplay to them, and fighting them is all too often a binary question of whether one has the correct build or worse, profession or not at the time. It’s a game of rock-paper-scissors and leaves the burden of skill entirely out of the equation.

The proposals I’ve seen for introducing counterplay and actual thought to Stealth and Stealth openers so far are:

1. Making failed Backstabs reduce a 0.5-1 second of the duration of Stealth (Probably the most straightforward, puts burden of skill more on Thief, but doesn’t address the frustration of playing against Stealth openers)
2. Adding another soft counter to Stealth by making damage inflict Revealed (Favours AOE heavy classes like Staff Necro, Engineer and again, leaves certain classes out in the cold like non-Staff/GS Mesmer)
3. Making finishers in Light Fields inflict Revealed (Again, makes Guardian a Thief hard counter)
4. Making certain combos that allow Thief to enter Stealth outside of Utilities impossible (i.e. removing Leap finisher on Heartseeker OR making the damage of Heartseeker apply BEFORE Stealth so if Thief hits, it is Revealed)
5. Making Backstabs on Block or Aegis Reveal the Thief (I don’t like this because it literally turns Guardian into a Thief hard counter while leaving most other classes out in the cold)
6. Reworking the Stealth opener concept, buffing Thief survivability outside of Stealth (The most open-ended and non-constructive proposal I’ve seen, because it’s almost never followed up with concrete ideas)

The fact that so many proposals exist all along different lines is a clear indicator that Stealth is a mechanic that has been poorly implemented, and with the resurgence of Thieves in PvP (First S/D, now D/P) and the ongoing “problem” of an excess of Thief roamers in WvW, it’s a issue that needs to be looked at sooner rather than later.

Marcarus.5012:

When I encounter thiefs and attack, they simply stealth, hit me once or twice when I can’t see them and I am down. My toons are not glass cannons ( ranger, guardian). I know AOE can help if it hits the area the thief is in. Is one solution to be geared as a glass cannon and try to one shot them first. I am quite frustrated with this mechanic and would appreciate any ideas to counter this.

Maesk.8753:

Aza.2105:

The moment Anet introduces a predator for stealth is the moment the thief population will be culled.

Maybe because that would actually destroy the class. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but a large majority of thieves sustain/utility comes from stealth. By reducing the thieves ability to stealth, you’re also reducing their access to almost everything.

Tom.8029:

How is an effective way of dealing with something not a counter to that something?

If you play rock paper scissors with someone and they keep using rock, a way to deal with that rock is to use paper. Thus paper COUNTERS rock.

Unless you mean something that automatically removes stealth. If you play Ranger, you can use “Sick ’em” to reveal them for 4 seconds. That’s really it.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Tom.8029:

When a thief uses stealth, you have a few options:
1) Use something that protects yourself.
2) Use something that punishes the thief for hitting you.
3) Anticipate a strike while they’re in stealth and dodge.
4) Use an AoE that damages the thief and stand in it.

Although these are effective means of mitigating a thief’s frontloaded attacks, they can still not be considered specific counters against stealth since I could also use these techniques against other classes that do not utilize stealth.

And pre-emptive usage of these actions if you are aware that a thief is nearby is still playing by the thief’s rules and relies mostly on luck or on the thief’s mistake or lack of experience.

Tom.8029:

Furthermore, we’re talking about how to deal with stealth, not that it is a broken mechanic and should be fixed. There are other threads for that, go complain there.

You guys are just being extremely cynical and quite annoying honestly.
Part of this post are for all of you. I don’t feel like quoting. Marcarus, I hope I helped in some way. Good bye.

Looking over this thread it’s clear that there are entirely too many people having knee jerk reactions to stealth, whether on one side (to have more counters) or the other (react and counter). There’s a reason for this, and the reason is this:

Stealth may be fun to play with, but it is unfun to play AGAINST.

@Tom.8029: Would you not agree that your list of things to do when an opponent enters Stealth are soft counters at best, and that you yourself have acknowledged that the only “hard counter” is Ranger’s Sic’em? (Let’s talk PvX here, and presume that revealing traps are not available in S/TPVP)

Stealth is unfun to play against because:

• It puts the burden of skill on the defender (By that, I mean that whatever you do, is playing on the Thief/Mesmer/Engineer’s terms when they enter Stealth)
• For thieves in particular, Stealth openers are impossible to punish and are especially frustrating on the receiving end
• For everyone else, losing your target and then being unable to read your stealthed opponent’s animations can be devastating in a game where lots of gameplay is centred around reading animations

Note that I haven’t passed judgement on Stealth one way or another. But this thread highlights a 2 particular problems with Stealth in its current implementation:

1. Only 1 class (!!!) out of 8 has a hard counter to Stealth (Ranger Sic’ em)
2. Stealth, put simply, is annoying at best, and frustrating at worst, to fight against. (PU Mesmer and “permastealth” Thief in particular)

The answer to this would therefore be to distribute more Stealth hard counter utilities to all the classes (Including Thief). If Stealth is to be a mechanic, just as Protection, or Blocks, or Aegis, or Invulnerabilities, then more skills should interact with the mechanic outside of Thief – even if Thief is the one that derives the most utility and survivability from Stealth.

The second problem is significantly more difficult to attack.

How does one make Stealth – by definition a mechanic of obfuscation – fun to play against? I’ll leave some of that for you to answer, Tom.8029

I actually like the current Healing Turret design; because it is possibly the best heal in the entire game, untraited. (Outside of Healing Signet for Warrior but that is off topic)

It’s difficult to interrupt, offers cleansing and group utility, and is both a Field and Finisher in the 1 skill. I’ll not forget the days then HT was picked only because the other skills had not been unlocked in PVE/WVW, because of the buggy, 10 second delay and 60 second CD Cleansing Burst and Regenerative Mist.

I’d rather that Healing Turret not return to those days. I also don’t get why people are so hung up on wanting to make Healing Turret an actual, emplaceable Turret. Have Phantasm mesmers, Minion necromancers and Spirit rangers taught you nothing? Passive AI based gameplay is frustrating to play against, and you can bet that the same complaints will fly the way of the Engineer.

In fact, I’d actually argue the opposite to the general tone of the discussion here (Turrets should be long term, emplaceable objects providing area control) and actually argue that Healing Turret’s current design is working as intended. That is, it is a:

• Very short term emplaced object (I’d actually argue that the HT’s current health is too high – The Overcharge is guaranteed to go off before the Turret is destroyed)
• It is short cooldown and therefore, highly disposable.
• There is some manual finagling required, as it is, and as it should be, for all Engineer utilities. Automatic Overcharging simply dumbs down Healing Turret.

• If anything, I would decrease the cooldowns of all other Engineer Turrets to be closer to that of Healing Turret and decrease turret health to further emphasise this disposability, whilst improving on the Overcharge chain skills to provide more utility from Combo Fields and the bugginess of Turret targeting. The toolbelt skills should then be vastly improved in utility to compensate short Turret uptime

• Engineer Traits should then be reworked to put more utility from passive crit procs into 2 things that Turrets are strong at: proccing Blast Finishers, and offering strong CC. Inflicting Bleeding or Cripple from Blasting a combo field with a Turret, for example, or Immobilising a target when a Turret is detonated or destroyed.

The whole system has become so toxic and self-propagating that further attempts to prop up this failed paradigm have resulted in several balancing disasters.

• The first was the ushering in of the “condi meta” with the Dhuumfire/Aetherblade patch. Passive Burning procs along with Torment made 2 extra conditions for Necromancer to cover their Bleeds and Fear and literally made several top teams quit. Did you watch the PAX tournament? I did. There was no skill in that, only spam, and rock-paper-scissors gameplay.

• All this time, the CC-Warrior had largely flown under the radar. With the Healing Signet and Cleansing Ire changes, CC/Stunlock war and the later, more potent Hambow warrior became the hard counter to Dhuumfire Necro, and many more classes with poor Stability uptime such as Elementalist and Engineer.

• S/D Thief remains one of those strange creatures that actually came to the fore after subsequent nerfs . Yet it was powerful enough to literally push Elementalist and Mesmer out of the meta by itself . Thief design has always resulted in overtuning or undertuning; whilst only 2 out of 5 of most weapon sets are actually useful for their initiative. Nothing short of an extremely careful, critical examination of the use of initiative and the possibility of initiative refunds on meeting conditional effects can save the thief – yet we do not see this, and thief remains fun (?debatable) to play, unfun to play against

• Fresh Air and subsequently Diamond Skin were introduced to Elementalists, whilst the Attunement CD restriction remained a baseline issue for Ele. Even reducing base cooldown and halving Arcana didn’t address Ele’s poor condi management outside of Water, whilst Water Magic traits were further nerfed. Again. And 1 or 2 or 3 attunement builds still remained impossible due to trait design and poor utility design.

• Engineer’s Grenade Kit had escaped further nerfs since 2012 and once Engineers realised that going Rabid instead of Zerker or Soldier’s was actually superior, point bunkering became a dangerous profession until HGH was nerfed. Once again, a build that relies on spam to be combat effective. Hell, I myself play Engineer and I can tell you that for Grenade kit, hitting 4455332211 isn’t so hard, and GK will remain spammy until a charge skill mechanic is implemented.

You will note that at no point have I mentioned outplay, mechanical or conceptual. It has almost literally been designed out of the current skill and trait set of most of the professions. It’s a dangerous precedent to set and follow, and whilst people are happy for buffs, it bodes poorly for the competitive scene, which has languished and continues to do so as a result of this design paradigm.

SoulSin.5682:

Also, it looks like you wanna make GW2 some kinda of fighting game of sorts.
Most of the suggestions here are impractical both in gameplay and server limitations.

Skilled gameplay is fun and all at 1vs1. But in a Zerg vs Zerg at WvW it becomes a mess. In fact, PvE would also be a mess.

GW2 isn’t another C9. We are talking about two completely different MMo genres here.
That’s why the game looks to go in the opposite direction of you suggestion.

The thing is if you’d had played in the beta there were more skills of the type which Swagg has presented in various forms. Most distinctively are Charge Skills , which were skills that could be held down to become more powerful the longer the button was held pressed – at the cost of leaving yourself vulnerable to interrupts or rooting yourself, or being dodged because of a highly telegraphed move.

This paradigm was almost entirely abandoned in favour of channeling skills. The only charge skills you will find now are those you’d find in WvW on siege weapons, or in the racial elites . With that one stroke, a large amount of risk and reward was removed, and skillful play and outplay was abandoned. You’ll note that Obliterate, Kill Shot, Churning Earth and Lightning Surge figure greatly in the “old” design, for one. For another, they have been almost entirely abandoned in competitive PvP because subsequent balancing passes have left them entirely too risky for too little reward. This is because:

• Spamming quick, low cooldown skills is now objectively superior because it’s harder to dodge
• Players are now “good enough” to dodge good telegraphs, and thanks to Sigil of Energy, dodges are now “cheap enough” to spam with little punishment.

You can argue WvW or z-axis mobility all you want. The fact remains that the general trend of the game’s balancing passes has been a slow devolution away from risk and reward in favour of passive procs and hard counters – Diamond Skin/Automated Response, Cleansing Ire, Berserker stance, Dhuumfire/Incendiary Powder, Healing Signet/Adrenal Health, the merging of Vigourous Spirits which led to the whole Spirit Ranger fiasco – the list goes on.

Several ongoing issues with GW2’s combat remain unresolved, or worse, exacerbated since launch:

• With the cooldown of many abilities being extremely low and autoattacks granting high damage or condition pressure in many builds, dodging practically everything is necessary for survival, even autoattack “pokes”. The worst offender is Shortbow Ranger.

• As a corollary, Vigor and Sigils of Energy have become de jour for many classes for their ongoing survival (Mesmer, Ele, Guardian, Engineer, Sword Thief). The recent Vigor nerfs have simply decreased time-to-kill (TTK) for some classes, whilst condi pressure from autoattacks has not been nerfed. It’s better to blow all your condi applications, then “cover” your DOT stacks with autoattacks than it is to play tactically, bait out cleanses, then stack DOTs. It’s mindless, toxic to actively thinking, and results in an arms race between condi application and cleansing. I challenge you to look at Cleansing Ire and disagree.

• This kind of low cooldown, low risk, fast-cast gameplay has led to allegations of “spam” for every single class in game. Warriors? Stunlock spam. Rangers? Autoattack spam. Necromancer? Condispam. Engineer? Bomb/Nadespam. Thief? Evade spam. Mesmer? Stealth spam (PU) or the much maligned Phantasm spam. Elementalist? Fresh Air Lightning Strike spam for untelegraphed burst. Guardian? Aegis/Stability spam for infuriating bunkering gameplay.

I really like your series of posts as a result – your proposals re-introduce the concept of play and counterplay, risk and reward. I’d much rather play with a skillset closer in implementation to your vision than the current design paradigm of “press buttons, stuff happens…oh? Missed a skill? Oh, I can’t easily be punished” . Even if it means that pretty much everyone is being nerfed. Everyone.

• The take home message here is Fun to play, Fun to play AGAINST

I also can’t see how people like Arganthium.5628 can get so hung up on the set of proposals for Thief; or nicknamenick so hung up on Warrior, or Ele, or Ranger, or Mesmer, or whatever. Here’s an idea:

Don’t get hung up on the proposal and shout it down, brainstorm an alternative that follows the paradigm of play and counterplay, cast time and punishability . It’s easy to say “no”, it’s harder to say “no, here’s why, here’s my idea”. The entire thread’s purpose is to make every class fun to play, and fun to play AGAINST.
Simply reading into a proposal and thinking, “this guy wants to nerf my class” completely misses the point.

@Arganthium: Thief may be fun to play, but it is not fun to play AGAINST. I challenge you to say otherwise. Why else does Thief get the nerf stick practically every patch? Why did C&D nerfs, then Steal, then Flanking Strike/Larcenous Strike get nerfed? Because players are moaning about it. Not because Thief is OP – I’d argue that the current state of Thief is pretty awful – but because players troubles against Thieves spoke of a larger, unseen problem – Thieves are frustrating to play against. I’d agree with you that Swagg’s proposals would cripple Thief even further – but at least then Thieves would be fun to play against.

• I’d like to see your vision of an overhaul of the Thief; if only to get you past your negativity so far.
• Who cares about animation lengths, or counting invulnerability frames, or timing casts and aftercasts? I like that you’ve done your research, but the argument should NOT be about whether IS is overtuned, it should be about how to implement proper risk-reward so that play and outplay potential exists. Stealth openers remain the most toxic aspect of Thief in my opinion – how would you make them fun to play against? (Please don’t say Spam AOE in general area or dodge in anticipation)

@nicknamenick: Similarly, I challenge you to say that Warrior has a lot of outplay potential right now, when the Pin Down animation is the same as a lot of the other LB animations, or that Healing Signet is NOT toxic to the entire design intent of the GW2 team to make everything “easy to read, easy to play, easy to play AGAINST”

• Simply posting “why not remove this skill and leave it blanco” doesn’t really add anything to the conversation. On the tier of the Pyramid of Argumentation I’d say it sits just above Ad Hominem.
• Would you not agree that Ham/Bow Warrior is an apex build right now, with high survivability from Stances and Healing Signet, high CC from Pin Down/Earthshaker and high AOE potential from Arcing Arrow and Combustive Shot? Would you not agree that the passive play of Healing Signet is toxic to the game as it promotes sitting on the cooldown rather than actually burning it?
• It must be said that Warrior treads a fine line right now with the convergence of Healing Signet and Cleansing Ire allowing even Zerker builds to be very tough while being very damaging. Tweaking a multiple variable system like this could very well doom the warrior to the bottom of the pile again – but I don’t see you proposing your own tweaks.

Good read; though I fear that the ongoing direction of GW2 is away from rather than toward your vision of play and counterplay, risk and reward.

One merely has to see the:

• implementation of Fresh Air and Diamond skin for Elementalist
• the senseless nerfs for Thief (without addressing their core issue of being time-starved, and reliant on only 2 out of 5 weapon skills of each set. FS and IS remain points of contention yet few other weapon skills are looked at)
• warrior’s supposed bane being conditions being utterly abrogated by the Healing Signet buff and Cleansing Ire achieving possibly the highest rate of condition cleanse in the game in a single trait
• Spirit rangers being nerfed; yet; their passive gameplay remains, and the pet mechanic is still overtuned; yet Rangers cannot do without a pet; nor get better, finer controls for it (still salty about the dev response that it may be “too hard” for players to have fine controls for pet behavior)
• Mesmer PU being possibly the most annoying build to fight against
• Guardians still being pigeonholed into Bunker
• Necromancer survivability being turned around into “see enemy, kill enemy before he kills you”

The way I see it, all of the above balancing and tuning has happened to prop up a failing paradigm of deviation from the original GW2 design of “Cast time and Cooldown are mana”. It’s entirely possible to be combat effective simply by mashing your weapon skills in sequence because so many skills are now quick or instant cast.

So many so-called “combos” are simply trying to land as many skills in as short a timeframe to Power Burst or Condi-Burst your opponent to death; with the burden of skill being placed on the defender rather than attacker

I feel that the current “meta” is unhealthy due to:

• Many builds implement passive procs that add complexity without adding depth to combat. Actively reacting to your opponent’s passive procs does not add any additional play or counterplay – it just happens due to RNG, or conditionals that your opponent can’t counterplay or read.

• The condition “meta” has never been about “attrition”. The successful condi builds have relied upon the “Condi burst” – overloading cleansing ability to “cover” DPS conditions. This is clearly a design failure because there is nothing “attrition” about blowing all your condi applications, then using condi applying autoattacks to “cover” your stacks of DOTs.

• Risk for the “apex predator” builds is seriously, seriously beneath than the reward of damage (to down your opponent) or survivability (to outlast your opponent). Hambow Warrior being a true Bruiser build that is far easier to be combat effective with than it is for the opponent to defend against it, Shortbow Ranger being able to put out high condition threat just with autoattacks, Nade Engineer being able to coat an entire area in conditions and secondary Power damage from 1500 range; the list goes on. A proper balance of offense vs defense is required for any “outplay” to develop.

• As a corollary to the previous point, GW2 is remarkably difficult to “read”, and outplay is often due not to player skill, but player build. I find shoutcasts of GW2 PVP to be nigh impossible to read – the only “plays” I can easily discern are objective based like Boss kill steals or point defenses or offenses. The rest of the time, bright flashy lights happen, health bars go down or up, and on occasion someone is stomped out. There are too many passive procs and internal cooldowns to track during a duel – it is far easier to concentrate on landing your own skills than it is to read your opponent and outplay him – any conceptual outplay is marginal because forcing an opponent to miss a skill is rarely lethal or easily punishable. Contrast this with FPS or more applicably Fighting games, where missing your window will often lead to your death.

What follows is my opinion, and my opinion only. I will give it in bullet points in an effort to remain concise and to the point

• Exploit Weakness applies Cripple to enemies at a “% health” threshold, where other professions have increased damage instead.

• For a class that is rife with snares and immobilises, one more Cripple just doesn’t cut it.

• Engineer as a class has lacking Main Hand Weapons, which is why Kits have figured large in every single tPVP build since Beta Weekend ; save Pistol / Pistol HGH before Explosive Shot and Coated Bullets was nerfed into the ground

• For a class that is known for “Hybrid” DPS ; that is, combination of both Condition and Direct Damage ; there are few traits and skills that take advantage of this save for ; Target the Maimed and Flame Jet and with the Dhuumfire patch ; Modified Ammunition .

• Exploit Weakness may therefore become more viable if the “Hybrid DPS” line of thought was expanded:

Exploit Weakness: – Deal 5% more damage to Immobilized, Crippled or Chilled foes. Foes under 25% health are inflicted with 5 Stacks of Vulnerability for 10 seconds if inflicted with a movement impairing condition (Cripple, Chill, Immobilize) (Cooldown 10 seconds)

• With an abundance of Cripples in the kitten nal of the Engineer, new builds may yet arise to the forefront of viability; say; Flamethrower with Elixir Gun; or we may finally see some Engineers run Sigil of Hydromancy or Ice or Runes of Grenth.

• An alternative to be explored is once again with Dirame’s proposals to load up more utility into Combo Finishers through traits. In this vein:

Exploit Weakness: – Successful Blast Finishers in a combo Field also inflict 5 seconds of Cripple on foes (15 seconds Cooldown). Deal 5% more damage to Crippled foes

Summary

• General consensus amongst the Engineer community seems to be that this buff as “compensation” for Incendiary Powder moving to Master is insignificant

• As a general rule, Engineer is most dangerous to fight within mid range – that is between 130 units (outside melee) to 600 (where skillshots reliably connect). Whilst Cripple may seem useful at first for this context, the fact of the matter is that people running a CC build already have ample sources of Cripple and Immobilize through Sitting Duck ; Glue Bomb ; Glue Shot ; Net Shot ; Net Turret ; Net Attack ; Box of Nails ; Elixir F ; and finally Launch PBR . One more Cripple in the kitten nal at a long, 15sec cooldown isn’t going to cut it

• There seems to be a sentiment that whilst buffing the threshold at which Exploit Weakness triggered would seem to be useful at first glance, the addition of Cripple to a low target does not kill it any faster

• General sentiment seems to be either merging Exploit Weakness’s utility with something else ; or reworking the “% health” trigger to do something that actually increases damage ; such as inflicting Vulnerability

I believe Ayestes and Lord Banon’s posts sum up why Exploit Weakness is considered unworthy

Ayestes.1273:

I’ll probably be taking Shrapnel or Exploit Weakness now with my HGH build, but I will admit they feel lackluster. After thinking about it I’ll probably focus on Shrapnel now, but there was a pretty good reason these weren’t considered above Incendiary Powder.

Exploit Weakness’ problem was two-fold and one of those is solved. 25% meant they were probably already dead, so raising it to 50% helps. The other problem is it’s only a Cripple. Given Glue Shot, Chill Nades, and maybe Glue Bomb if I’m going a little wonky (again, in my HGH builds) I already have the slow affect on someone when I need it, although I’d admit all of these are difficult to land at long range. If I’m engaging someone down to 50% though, they are probably in mid range where my damage is effective and I’ve already got them under some control. It’s obviously got it’s uses, but for the value of a trait slot a mere Cripple doesn’t seem like enough. I haven’t experimented enough with it though, maybe it’ll shine a bit more now that I have some chance to use it. I’d rather it be a significant effect with a decent cooldown though to start considering it above Shrapnel.

LordBanon.6803:

Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold. 25% to 50%
This change makes it minimally viable, but it still seems like a weak trait. Given the broad access Engies have to immobilize/chill/cripple effects already. If you care about cripple, you probably already have it in your skill selection, and the additional 33% uptime cripple that requires getting the opponent down to 50% seems marginal.

Luthan.5236:

I like the changes on elixir infused bombs and the “Exploit Weakness” traits. Not using bombs a lot atm but I might try with that trait again. Also might try “Exploit Weakness” – I usually stayed with my rifle and using Sitting Duck atm. Might be nice against single targets and in smaller scaled group fights.

Cyanide.7952:

What if exploit weakness gave an extra 1% damage boost per stack of vulnerability?

Dirame.8521:

Exploit Weakness; Not taken because cripple doesn’t = damage. Since this trait is going to set to proc at 50% instead of 25% I think it will have it’s merits but I feel it only viable in builds that don’t have space for it. Empowering Adrenaline is okay in my opinion. Probably wasn’t taken because the benefit isn’t all that huge.

Deacon.9725:

Exploit Weakness_ – excellent change to health threshold as it makes this trait meaningfully synergistic with a Firearms-heavy build (ie, Modified Ammunition).

hackks.3687:

I understand the move of IP to Master tier, but as it has been pointed out the Master tier in Explosives has a glut of the better traits in the line. So with that being said, how about giving us something at the adept level that shares synergy with IP as well as some new utility or damage sources?

For example:

Exploit Weakness – deal extra damage to Burning foes (20% ?)

mammasaura.5907:

About Exploit Weakness:

This adept trait can be compared with Sitting duck from the Firearms tree.
Sitting duck got a nice rework giving two conditions, but mainly rifle stuff.
Explosives are supposed to help any weapon set and any kit, then Exploit Weakness seems to be a cc trait, if Sitting duck, adept trait, got two conditions maybe also Exploit Weakness can.

Exploit Weakness: double threshold, at 50% and 25%, shared internal cd, conditions mutual exclusive:
#at 50%: cripple;
#at 25%: immobilyze.

• it’s in the context, if you’re weak, I cc you better:
• for both power and condition build;
• it avoids to the burst build both the conditions;
• durable fights are better rewarded.

Kamahl.3621:

(Continued from last post)
For Exploit Weakness, to coincide with the ‘Make mainhand weapons better’ schema from earlier, perhaps recharge your normal weapons’ cooldowns upon making an enemy hit 25% health, kitten cooldown? I’m really just trying to push for other things being viable than facerolling with grenades / bombs, waiting for an enemy to mess up, then blowing your burst on them and hoping it downed them, as that is how most PvP encounters go when you’re not bunkering.

pheroth.5306:

Exploit Weakness – You could say this has a more impactful effect compared to the previous trait but honestly I find this useless because you can usually use other engineer skills most of the time to accomplish that same thing.

Mork vom Ork.2598:

Exploit Weakness – limited use in sPvP, very limited use in WvWvW, completely useless in PvE (…)
This sums up to: for any build other than a bomb bunker spending only 10 points in Explosives is not desirable.

My next series of posts will concentrate on the changes to Exploit Weakness

• Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%

• Intended utility of this trait is as anti-kiting mechanism for Engineers to help “finish off” a wounded target

• Trait likely buffed as “compensation” for moving Incendiary Powder up to Master tier.

Onto quotes:

JonPeters.5630:

One more thing I forgot to mention. The nice thing about Incendiary Powder was that it was a nice build neutral go to for adept tier. Right now the new build neutral traits there are Exploit Weakness and Empowering Adrenaline. I think a good discussion might be why these are not up to par as build neutral adept tier explosives traits.

dragonkain.3984:

Accelerant packed turrets and exploit weakness=both useless, turrets explosion is a measly 120 range which is lower than melle 130 range(rofl) and exploit weakness is a friggin cripple for 5 sec on a single target with 15 icd xD same with aegis, it’s just -1 hit, which is bleh.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Exploit weakness is underwhelming in the sense that you don’t really gain any utility and its tied to a health threshhold…

Banumiel.1926:

Engi is the class with minor DPS, so we are looking for sources of damage. Exploit weakness not deals damage and Empowering Adrenaline is a laughable damage because all the competitive builds are conditions builds, not power.

Engi problems:
-Rifle is meh, SD is funny for hot joins, but power builds are not viable seriously
-Turrets are a joke (except Healing Turret)
-Gadgets are a joke (except Rocket Boots)

Yeah, my english is lamentable, sorry

Deified.7520:

Exploit weakness mostly because of the conditions that need to be met, the cooldown, and then what it actually does. So many class have gap makers/closers that aren’t affected by cripple. Leaps, teleports, etc. Then you have condi cleansing which some classes can do great while others can’t. I mean your sacrificing a trait slot for something that applies a small 5s cripple and only when the player reaches 25% hp. Perhaps exploring using with vunlerability, torment, confusion, or something else that would fit the whole exploit weakness vibe.

Ahlen.7591:

Because they’re both inconsistent and terrible? And completely useless in PVE. Exploit Weakness might be ok if it was 50% instead of 25%, with a 10s ICD in PVP.

Maskaganda.2043:

going extra 10 in explosives without bombs/nades isn’t much worth it although the change to exploit weakness might be decent enough to go 20 for both e.w. and i.p. (Exploit Weakness and Incendiary Powder)

Malhavoc Adhamar.3675:

Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%

Nice but not really a decent trade for IP being moved to Master tier

Peow peow.2189:

engineer needs some mobility weakness atm. ALl engis do right now is run away dodge roll nade spam in an aoe so they barely miss you, they continue kiting and nade spamming until u die as the healing turret burst is so strong they can survive 1v1 like this for a long kitten time.

This change is a good one, more skill to do well with this class.

• If you have read the thread then you will have realised that Engineer as a class actually lacks mobility outside of Kits; and that Swiftness uptime was never the issue at hand, but Vigour uptime through the Invigorating Speed / Speedy Kits interaction

• Most of the Engineer community is in line with the change, including me. That being said, “Skill” has nothing to do with it. Kit switching on a 5 second tempo was already baseline as an entry level requirement for Engineer. One could even argue that reducing the 5 second tempo to 10 seconds decreases skill; also borne out by crit-proc nature of the Infused Precision trait.

• Stability uptime and Stunbreaks for Engineer as a class is still lacking. If you are getting kited by an Engineer, I suggest bringing Immobilise or CC; as with any other ‘slippery’ class. In addition to that, you can expect the ‘dodge roll spam’ to take a 50% hit come December 10.

• I will agree with the assessment that Engineer is very much “AOE Spammy” but this is not the topic of discussion here.

What follows is my opinion, and my opinion only. I will give it in bullet points in an effort to remain concise and to the point

• The first instance of a top level Engineer running the Speedy Kits / Invigorating Speed combination that also streamed was Teldo (again) in his Node Fighter build. Prior to that point, there were forum posts on the Engineer class forum regarding the potential of Infused Precision in Flamethrower builds getting 100% Vigour uptime

• Since the end of 2012, it seems that practically every Engineer was running the Speedy Kits / Invigorating Speed combination in tPVP as i-frame uptime and Evasion became very important to survive the high lethality Burst meta

• Due to short uptime and easy reapplication, this trend continued up to the Condition-Burst meta post Dhuumfire patch, despite buffs to “Boon-hate”

• I think the change is overall a positive one despite being a nerf. Nerfing evasion will in turn allow future downscaling of Time-to-Kill and combat lethality to slow down the game and allow for more tactical decision making over “spam everything, hope enemy falls down” mentality that apex builds seem to favour

• That being said, the APM requirement of Speedy Kits / Invigorating Speed is marginalised again in favour of a passive crit-proc of Infused Precision. One wonders whether this trend should continue “dumbing down” a highly technical class

• I believe that if Vigour uptime is to be addressed over the whole class, Invigorating Speed is the trait to be addressed rather than Speedy Kits. Addressing the Swiftness → Vigour proc and changing its mechanics to "X Uptime on hit will allow for tighter constraints when adjusting balance

• Speedy Kits remains the best trait for Engineer Mobility, and Power Shoes / Infused Precision remain marginalised as a result; limiting Build diversity due to limited access to 100% Swiftness uptime outside of Kits.

• Future buffs should therefore centre around the Swiftness outside of combat and outside of kits for Engineer in order to address the marginalisation of Elixirs, Turrets and Gadgets

Summary

• General community consensus is on board with this change, possibly mollified by across-the-board nerfs to Vigor uptime, indicative of a good, strong first step towards limiting evasion spam

• Some dissent persists regarding the persistence of Mesmer’s Critical Infusion and Guardian’s Vigorous Precision as 5point minors that grant 100% Vigour uptime in combat.

• Some dissent centres around the possibility of 100% Vigour uptime persisting through Infused Precision which has sparked some discussion about the nerf being more about “build shifting” rather than real change

• Some dissent around the actual power level of a Vigour proc through a Swiftness proc requiring a 20 point investment and 2 Major Trait slots

• Others call for the Invigorating Speed trait itself to be nerfed to decrease Vigour uptime that way as it addresses the core issue instead of nerfing Kits in particular

• Leaving open the Infused Precision ‘loophole’ may very well make more builds to take points in Firearms, but this reduces Engineer mobility by reducing Swiftness uptime outside of combat instead and weakens the roaming Engineer role

December.3946:

The nerf to Invigorating Speed will greatly reduce our survivability when we fight on point. Other classes (Mesmers and Guardians) only need to invest measly 5 points to have perma vigor. Engineers, however, need to invest 20! Infused Precision grants SWIFTNESS not vigor. That means if we want to keep out-of-combat swiftness and vigor, we would actually need to give up either Grendier or Automated Response.
We all know Guardians and Mesmers have great survivability. Engineers need to actively dodge CC. I hope Anet will compensate this HUGE nerf to Engineers.

Aberrant.6749:

Lowering eng vigor and moving IP would be lowering damage and survival at the same time… burning the candle at both ends.

Lupanic.6502:

If you have to nerf our vigor (btw a ranger/thief are able to evade 3 times as much as we do in the same time) merge the traits to one trait.

Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.

should give 10 swftness and 5sec of vigor at the same time. So we do not have to spend 20points for something like this.

Cero.5132:

So technically… Putting 10 points into tools and 10 points into alchemy will give us 50% vigor uptime and 10s swiftness over a timeframe of 10s (boonduration not included).
With 2x rune of the monk and 2x rune of water and 30 in alchemy we can push it to 7.5 seconds of vigor every 10 seconds in pvp and 15 seconds of swiftness.
Only thing we have to do for this is change kits. Seeing that latey most engineers use at least 2 kits I guess we swap pretty regularly in a fight. So the active play to get these boons is minimal.

Now looking at a trait that gives automatically 50% endurance regeneration – Adrenal Implant.
It´s an investment of 30 points into tools. The trait itself doesnt need swiftness to trigger it. In fact it works completely passive. Though I think that most engineers would still take Speedy Kits if they´d go for it.
So there´s max 15s of swiftness and always 50% endurance regeneration without the possibility to enhance it. All that for 30! points into tools. The trait is a little bit more useful for engineers that use only 1 kit and thus mostly dont swap as regularly.

In my opinion Adrenal Implant as a grandmaster trait is overall still inferior to the Speedy kits/Invigorating Speed combo. I don´t think it should be moved down to master tier but instead it should get an additional effect. Nothing big just a minor tweak so that people actually consider taking it.

Deified.7520:

Now I understand why you’re nerfing speedy kits, however you need to give us something in return. Dodging was our main damage negator. Without it engineer will be a lot harder to play. Don’t get me wrong, we have a few defensive skills. Toolkit, shield (woot this weapon will be required even more now), and elixir S. (…)
I think if you take care of one messed up mechanic (the infinte vigor which is very bad thing to have), take care of them all. (…)
You either need to significantly buff toolbelt skills are these skills or buff default weapon stats. Till you do that the meta will also involve primarily kits.

• There is some dissent amongst the Engineer community that despite the overall nerfs to Vigour uptime, Mesmer and Guardian still seem to have theirs untouched through their 5 point minors Critical Infusion and Vigorous Precision

Malhavoc Adhamar.3675:

So you want to nerf perma vigor, so you nerf this trait instead…would rather have seen a 10sec CD on IS (Invigorating Speed) rather than this.

BoB.6082:

The vigor nerf will destroy us in team fights. In team fights we don’t have fail safes for getting caught. Once we get caught were done. We also don’t have stability to make up for not having vigor.

Terrahero.9358:

Here’s the dirty truth. To be effective as an Engineer and deal damage you need to get pretty close to your opponent. Simply because of how the profession is designed and how every weapon or kit seems to scream at us “GET CLOSER!”.
Yet Engineer lacks the defenses to actually stay in close range. No series of evades, like ranger/thief. No stealth, like a thief. Not all that many blinds.
No solid healthpool like Warrior/Necro. No heavy armor, like Guardian/Warrior.

Even with perma-vigor, which comes at the cost of 2 major traits and constant APM to keep it rolling, engineer is still rather squishy in close range.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Voramoz.6790:

Stop trying to fight the vigor NERF. It’s happening. 100% swiftness is a lot already 100% vigor is in need of a NERF.

Yes it is. But it’s in need of a nerf across the board and not just targeted at engineers who are one of the least in need of such a nerf and its a nerf that hits home pretty hard given the fact that our survivability has taken a hit every single patch outside of the last one.

There are a large number of good examples to give for classes that have viable builds with far more dodges than engis can get.

AGAIN, invigorating speed is TOO STRONG. But you’re ignoring the blatant offenders (rangers, acrobatics thieves, energy sigils)

zaragoz.6351:

Well, I’m not going to lie to me this feels like huge nerfs across a spectrum of our builds. I don’t know how it will all play out, but I feel like currently one of the only reasons we can run berserker builds and be effective is because of the permanent vigor+speedy kits combination.
(…)
Now once it is changed, I have a feeling we’re going to be a lot worse off. I feel like on my full gc build that is where at least 50% of my survivability comes from.

kangaroosteak.6201:

Being tunneled into using infused precision to sub speedy kits instead of a standard SD firearms trait does not sound like much build diversity to me.

Adamantium.3682:

Try to run without permanent vigor for awhile. I opted out of that trait just to try a build awhile ago and you really don’t need it. If you’re timing the dodges to avoid the most important incoming attacks you should be fine.

Obviously the more you can dodge the better, but even with perma vigor you’re very likely not dodging to the fullest potential of 1 dodge every 5 seconds. I think most people would be surprised how little they actually gain out of perma vigor if they tried to play awhile without it. I know I was.

DesertRose.2031:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Not saying it’s supposed to satisfy their claim, but we still have permanent Vigor. In many cases Infused Precision is actually the better trait.

Infused Precision is only better if you have not a single kit equipped.
Speedy Kits gives you Swiftness also out of combat (very good in open PvE), you can be certain to have Swiftness and Vigor permanently (Infused Precision has only a 50% chance on crit to grant Swiftness, with few points in Alchemy you almost certainly have short down times), and it gives you Vigor exactly when you need it (swap kits during a dodge roll, then you hardly lose an auto attack).

Singer.8740:

Also why are you guys upset the only tings they have done to us that you can think of negative is force us to stop relying on Speedy Kits for vigor. It was a major crutch and i am glad they changed it, also do not forget this is a blanket nerf to all classes with endurance restoration ability’s so the playing field remains equal. (oh wait we can still perma vigor with infused precision and we all know that firearm builds are gonna be a hella popular come this patch.)

coglin.1867:

I am not going to name names, but I see two posters here who complained and moaned about having to swap in and out of kits every 5 seconds and practically demanding they extend its duration now complaining about it.

Dasboba.1652:

This is never about build diversity as anet puts it. It’s always about build shifting as opposed to diversity. (…)Thankfully, looking at the notes, my engy only gets the vigor nerf.

Xaylin.1860:

Perma Vigor is awesome and untill now insanely easy to achieve on Engineers. I use it, too, but I get why ANet doesn’t want it. Engineers still got many different ways to get a huge amount of Vigor and it doesn’t feel right that this was an almost mandatory trait for EVERY Engineer build. So this indeed is about build diversity although it is done in a negative way. (…) I’m having a hard time understanding all the commotion regarding the Speedy Kits change. You can get Swiftness from other sources to gain Vigor.

Nix.3152:

Jon, nerfing permavigor seems strange because engis are really easy to focus down. We are forced to bring kits in order to be effective. we cant bring 3 defence utis like other classes. most of the time engi has only 1 slot for stunbreak.

• The above quote is in reply to this post by JonPeters:

JonPeters.5630:

Invogorating Speed (sic)
The indirect nerf to this through speedy kits will reduce some surviveability in the alchemy line, but we felt like it was important given how much other strong stuff that line has.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Suggestions:

—Make speedy kits give X seconds of swiftness automatically every X seconds. That will satisfy people who dislike having to button mash just to get around. You can adjust vigor cooldowns however you want—you don’t have to tie that to speedy kits.

cottage.3274:

as for perma vigor its still will be doable but to take something you actively did and make it into a passive =boring that is if you feel the need to have perma vigor.

• This is in reference to the possibility of Engineers still having perma vigour through the Infused Precision / Invigorating Speed Interaction

Now; onto the nerf to Vigour uptime for Engineers as addressed by the following change:

• Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.
  In case it wasn’t clear, the above change addresses the interaction between this trait, and Invigorating Speed

• When you gain swiftness, you also gain 5 seconds of vigor. (ICD 5seconds)
• This change effectively reduces Vigor uptime through Kit swapping for Engineers to 50%.
• That being said, it is still entirely possible for Engineers to have 100% Vigour uptime through another trait: Infused Precision
• You have a 50% chance to gain 5 seconds of Swiftness on critical hits. (Cooldown 5seconds)
• The only difference here is a Precision/Crit chance requirement of >30% (easily achievable by most builds) and the requirement of being in combat to receive the Swiftness.

Onto quotes:

welp no more permanent vigor. i’m sad

Vajra.3914:

Shigh, now boon stealing will be even more powerful since the duration of swiftness is increased…

DesertRose.2031:

With the buff to Modified Ammunition and the nerf to Speedy Kits 25+/30 will properly become the new meta.

Maderas.9741:

These changes seem kind of underwhelming from a PvP standpoint, minus the Vigor nerf which is pretty significant.

Terrahero.9358:

The nerf to Speedy Kits, because it is kitten well a nerf, also hurts a lot. We lose out on perma-vigor which was really a big deal to help stay alive. Guess ill just drop those 10 points and put em elsewhere.

DesertRose.2031:

For noobs like me Firearms would offer the highest amount of Vigor uptime because Speedy Kits will only enable to to keep up Vigor ~55% of the time.

Phineas Poe.3018:

At least we still have Infused Precision for perma Vigor.

I will reply only once to the feedback regarding my proposal; because then I’ll be moving on to Speedy Kits/Invigorating Speed.

garethh.3518:

Dirame.8521:

If the use a certain skill procs the burning then people will learn to look out for those particular skills not necessarily the buff bar.

garethh.3518:

It’s a trait, there is no guarantee the person took it so has that effect after the skill.. well I mean, short of staring at their buff bar.

And even if every engi took it so you knew the guy had it, it adds ANOTHER thing to watch out for on a class with 16+ skills, in a game with terrible animations and horrendous particle effects.

In ever way that is just compounding issues.
If the game wasn’t clusterfuzed with shoddy ‘solutions’ like this… this would be fine, the concept is fine, a burning proc after a certain action is a workable addition to gameplay… but that is so far from GW2 it’s not even funny.

Traits shouldn’t be effects that need constant watching in the game, but instead just emphasize things that already exist.
exc.
exc.

Things like… ‘reduced CD if you have 3 toolbelt skills on CD’, or ‘if you use an ability’ or ‘if you use a toolbelt skill’.

That’d create more of a risk/reward playstyle, if you burn skills you get more back faster, but the enemy will see you burning your CDs so have an idea of how/when your vulnerable.

I will say this: I agree with your assessment that the game is already busy enough with particle effects but your reply kind of says to me that you missed the “after using a toolbelt skill” trigger.

MonMalthias.4763:

If Incendiary Powder were instead nerfed to:

• “For the next 2 seconds after activating a Toolbelt skill, your next critical hit has a 100% chance to cause Burning for 4 seconds (Cooldown 15 seconds)

That being said, one can also rework Engineer traits to focus around Fields and Finishers, given that as a class we can pack the most Blast Finishers build for build as per a modified proposal of Dirame’s:

Dirame.8521:

Explosive Powder; Merge with Shrapnel. Explosions deal 10% more damage. Successful blast finishes cause 3 stacks of Bleeding and burning.

• Incendiary Powder: Successful Blast Finishers cause your next attack to inflict Burning for 4 seconds. ICD 10 seconds.

My next series of posts will address the Invigorating Speed/Speedy Kits interaction nerf; however, it’s 1AM over here and so I will continue tomorrow.

What follows is my opinion, and my opinion only. I will give it in bullet points in an effort to remain concise and to the point; however, I believe Ostrich Eggs’s post has outlined many ongoing issues with Engineer and the Incendiary Powder nerf exposes one of the current flaws of Engineer trait design

• Incendiary Powder in the Adept line gave an unprecendented 4 seconds of Burning as a 100% crit proc. Passive; and counterplay revolved around playing around a 10 second timer, and relying on the Engineer’s AOE based kitten nal to hit something other than you

• Previous iteration was 66% chance on critical for 2 seconds ICD 3 seconds. Condition duration runes and a Smouldering sigil enabled 100% burning uptime and Teldo’s Node Fighter 100% burning uptime build became the breakout spec for Engineer as a farpoint assault condi based spec and it was really the seminal build for Rabid condi-pressure for Engineer.

• Complaints levelled against Incendiary Powder mainly centre around it being a passive crit-proc with intransparent counterplay. As a crit proc in 1v1s you can spam AOE – especially with Grenadier to “roll the dice” so often you proc it on ICD

• From a theorycrafting perspective, there is no other trait in Explosives 10 that is as build-agnostic or as universally applicable as Incendiary Powder. You may notice earlier posts from other people arguing that the Incendiary Powder trait was taken not because “Engineers are forced into it” but because there is simply nothing much else worth taking

• Dirame’s point about a passive proc brings up an important aspect of the ongoing trend of certain traits having high efficacy – whilst being triggered outside of the normal game design of GW2 having skills, cooldowns and casting times . Incendiary Powder is maligned because it does not change the Engineer playstyle – you play the same as you do before – only now you have 40% Burning uptime for extra DPS. You don’t burn a cooldown so much as you trigger it on ICD and I believe that this becomes a point of contention for Incendiary Powder’s critics.

• I believe that a case can be made for Incendiary Powder requiring the use of cooldowns by incorporating the Toolbelt mechanic.

If Incendiary Powder were instead nerfed to:

• “For the next 2 seconds after activating a Toolbelt skill, your next critical hit has a 100% chance to cause Burning for 4 seconds (Cooldown 15 seconds)
  This would severely curtail the Burning uptime of the meta Bomb/Nade build to only 2 activations over the course of 30 seconds unless you also ran a short CD Toolbelt skill like Rifle Turret.

• The above change tackles the twofold problem of a passive proc by requiring the use of a Toolbelt skill to trigger; whilst retaining the Precision requirement of getting a crit in the next 2 seconds (Meanwhile, introduces counterplay if the “Incendiary Powder” buff turned up on the Boon bar so you could start to dodge)
  At the same time, Bomb/Nade would no longer be able to efficiently run Elixir R or Elixir S without considering curtailing their Burning uptime

And now, Ostrich Eggs reply to Jon Peters that I feel encapsulates the sentiment of a lot of Engineers in all three arenas of PvP, PvE and WvW:

Ostricheggs.3742:

The change to incendiary does absolutely nothing to the trait except move it up to master tier. This might seem like a good idea on paper; incendiary is too strong to maintain its position as an adept trait and would work better as a master trait. But simple reality is far different.

Quite literally the only thing that this change does is limit the viability of fringe builds that might have had a shot in the meta but nobody plays them. It doesn’t do anything to limit the most powerful build (and in my opinion overpowered build) that engis have in their kitten nal, the bomb/nade build. Simply put it pigeon holes us into going bomb/nade if we wish to do condi damage because the trait spread is unaffected by the change to incendiary.

The first example of the aforementioned nerfed builds that I can give would be HGH nades. Because incendiary powder would now compete with both short fuse, enhance performance AND explosive powder it limits the capability of HGH substantially. The only adept trait even worth looking at would be shrapnel which is simply too underwhelming and RNG to take and do as well with. As a matter of fact any build that chooses to go nades for condi damage without taking bombs with radius is going to take a hit so hard that it’ll be hard to justify running them.

The next example would be non-nade condi builds. I’ve been experimenting a decent bit over the last month with them and ALL of them go 10 up explosives to grab incendiary. Some of them even teeter on the precipice of being viable but simply do not fit my playstyle to play extensively. There is absolutely no point in nerfing these builds because they are not being used by anyone, let alone being used effectively enough to justify such a serious nerf.

And AGAIN, none of these examples do not even come close to being as strong as the monstrous bomb/nade build.

Ostricheggs.3742:

JonPeters.5630:

One more thing I forgot to mention. The nice thing about Incendiary Powder was that it was a nice build neutral go to for adept tier. Right now the new build neutral traits there are Exploit Weakness and Empowering Adrenaline. I think a good discussion might be why these are not up to par as build neutral adept tier explosives traits.

Jon

Because they aren’t quite literally the crux of every condition engi build out there at the moment. It’s impossible to bring either trait up to par with incendiary without fundamentally changing how they work.

Empowering adrenaline is underwhelming in the sense that it’s a very minor damage increase which is tied to your endurance… Exploit weakness is underwhelming in the sense that you don’t really gain any utility and its tied to a health threshhold…

Again, from a developers standpoint the idea of havign such an incredible trait on adept tier is quite a problem. But the simple reality of engineers is that our damage is sub-par compared to every other class in the game without it…

Ahlen.7591:

JonPeters.5630:

One more thing I forgot to mention. The nice thing about Incendiary Powder was that it was a nice build neutral go to for adept tier. Right now the new build neutral traits there are Exploit Weakness and Empowering Adrenaline. I think a good discussion might be why these are not up to par as build neutral adept tier explosives traits.

Jon

Because they’re both inconsistent and terrible?

(WRT: Same post that Jon Peters made RE: Why Exploit Weakness and Empowering Adrenaline are terrible)

Banumiel.1926:

Engi is the class with minor DPS, so we are looking for sources of damage. Exploit weakness not deals damage and Empowering Adrenaline is a laughable damage because all the competitive builds are conditions builds, not power.

Engi problems:
-Rifle is meh, SD is funny for hot joins, but power builds are not viable seriously
-Turrets are a joke (except Healing Turret)
-Gadgets are a joke (except Rocket Boots)

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, almost every engineer uses that because it works with anything, something we can’t say for many of other traits, especially adept ones.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Incendiary powder will stay just as crucial for most engineer tournament builds. Basically this just nerfs the explosive master traits because engineers now can’t take them. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the way it is.

cottage.3274:

i have known a change to incendiary powder & perma vigor would come its very much justified but i never in a million years thought its will be without any real compensation.

Malhavoc Adhamar.3675:

While I can understand the move I can’t say I agree with it. It now means that you’re going to lack the build diversity that the engineer normally would have because people are now having to put 20 into explosives rather than the 10 they had left over after putting points into their core build. Not only this but it’s now fighting with Enhance Performance and Short Fuse.

Dirame.8521:

I think when people discuss Incendiary powder, they also discuss reducing the passive play in the game. I would have hoped that this is what you guys would be working on and I’m left wondering why you are still on the road of things activating passively.
Side note, Autodefense Bomb dispenser is a master trait at best. Just like the Auto Bomb Dispenser, I think there are still quite a few traits that need tweaking to become something worth taking. But if those traits are what you guys are focusing on, those are the things I’d find interesting if I saw them.

Explosive Powder; Merge with Shrapnel. Explosions deal 10% more damage. Successful blast finishes cause 3 stacks of Bleeding and burning.

JonPeters.5630:

Ok I had some time to talk through some of the engineer discussion. Overall Engineer is in a difficult place because they have a ton of good adept traits, not a lot of good master traits, and again a good # of grandmasters so you end up spreading points fairly diversly to get all the good adept traits but lose out on a lot of power by failing to get as many grandmaster traits. Here is what I see a lot of talk about:

Incendiary Powder
Moving this was just something that was a long time coming. It was simply forcing almost every engineer into 10 points in Explosives which was really hurting build diversity. We have tried to counter this by improving other triats that might now be reachable by dropping those 10 points. For example Modified Ammunition, Elixir Infuxed Bombs, and Armor Mods. Now all three of these lines, some more than others, have a strong reason to invest 30 points to match the strong grandmasters already in the other lines.Grenadier, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, HGH, and Automated Response.

My first series of quoted posts will concentrate on the movement of Incendiary Powder up to Master Tier.
Edit: Editing in Saki Asukara’s post RE: Incendiary Powder nerf causing FT builds to be marginalised further as it is a good example of unintended consequences

Bubalobrown.9170:

• Incendiary Powder moved to Master Tier
• Speedy Kits increased Swiftness duration to 10s, ICD 10s
  Thats one way to promote build diversity I guess. Nerfing almost all of our specs… At least its not just our perma vigor being nerfed though.
  I can accept incendiary powder going up since its so good.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Terrahero.9358:

Inc Powder is now Master tier.

I am not actually surprised it is moved to the master tier because it was arguably one of the bests traits in the entire explosives line that could be acquired by 10-dipping.
For instance, 3 out of the 5 specs I consistently run put 10 into explosives for incendiary powder: SD Burst (bonus DPS); FT/EG Healing support (Will take DPS hit but not crux); P/P roamer (burning was large component of condi DPS)

Maderas.9741:

The issue is that it really screws non-grenade condition users, which is a popular build in PvP. Disappointing. I wish our power builds were more impressive.

Ahlen.7591:

That incendiary change is beyond brutal. Kills Pistol/HGH build. =/

Adamantium.3682:

As for the rest of the changes I’m not sure how I feel. Incendiary Powder quickly loses effectiveness in AOE situations, but it was undoubtedly the best trait to grab in non nade/bomb builds that wanted some points put into the power line.

Singer.8740:

The one true nerf we got was moving incendiary powder to master but even that is reasonable considering the power of the ability, just be grateful its not going GM.

coglin.1867:

I am curious as to what trait will be moving into the explosives adept tier with incendiary powder moving.

Sylentir.8913:

The incendiary powder change is regrettable, and I don’t especially see why that needed to move to the next tier up.

dragonkain.3984:

Incendiary powder nerf=ALL engi builds hurt with that, whole class nerfed pretty much.

Linc.6834:

The thing I don’t get is Incendiary powder was already nerfed to adept tier a couple months ago, from 100% burn uptime to 40%.
But moving it to master tier because it “forced engi’s to take 10 points in explosives” makes no sense whatsoever. Engi’s are “forced” to take it because there are literally NO other options. So how is moving our best option further away “opening up more build options”?

Saki Asakura.6479:

So, from a FT engi’s perspective, the change to IP is huge. FT is already very trait heavy, with a pretty much mandatory 20 Firearms 20 Alchemy 10 tools (for speedy kits), leaving only 20 points left, all of which would have to be put into explosives to get IP. This means FT engis have to do one of three things
-Give up their last trait selection (IE no HGH, speedy Gadgets, Protective Shield, etc)
-Give up one of their core traits (Juggernaut, speedy kits, deadly mixture)
-Give up incendiary powder.

IP was one of the only things that was making up for FT otherwise lackluster damage. It synergizes well, triggering often because of the rapid attack from Flame Jet and activating the +10% damage to burning foes effect. Without it FT builds take a huge damage hit.

This topic will attempt to codify and summarise a TL;DR version of the upcoming changes to Engineer in December 10. I will post my own opinion at the end; however, I feel that a separate thread posted here on the PVP forums will centre the conversation more around the competitive aspects of Engineer; why the meta build for Engineer is the way it is, and possible future directions the Engineer class can take. The OP may very well stretch several posts; make no mistake. Summarising 480 and growing posts will not be a short task.

This is the thread I am quoting from, in case anyone wants to wade through 10 pages

Before anything happens I would just like to repost the changes specific to Engineer:

Hebee.8460:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133104

Bringing up Engineer:

Engineer:
We wanted to maintain the engineer’s core roles while still increasing build diversity. We also wanted to take out some of the random effects for some of the class’s traits. The biggest change here is allowing Modified Ammunition to work with any skills so that an engineer, regardless of build, can look at putting 30 points into firearms. By increasing the swiftness duration on Speedy Kits, we hope to allow Swiftness to be maintained more reasonably without having to constantly be swapping between Kits. This change will also bring down the total up time for Vigor due to its interaction with Invigorating Speed. We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.
•Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.
•Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%
•Explosives IX – Accelerant packed turrets. Moved to Adept tier.
•Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon.
•Inventions V – Energized Armor. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
•Inventions X – Autotool Installation. Increased healing percent from 1% to 5%. * Decreased interval from 10s to 3s.
•Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.
•Alchemy V – Blood Injection. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
•Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
•Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.
•Tools XI – Armor Mods. Changed this to now trigger on struck instead of on critical hit incoming. Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 15 seconds

@Dirame, Arkham Creed:
I think that moving Detonate to being the third in the Chain Skill is a wonderful idea; although it would destroy the Turrets + SD build that some people were theory crafting in the forums last month.

That said, Turrets really do lack impactful Toolbelts and it seems that the only improvement so far is to Thumper Turret’s Rumble.

Perhaps moving Detonate to being the third in the Utility chain would then open up another Chain skill in the Toolbelt slot; which would be pretty nice. Engineers really lack impactful choices aside from kits and this may be a good start towards useful turrets in the future.