Guild Wars 2

@Timeslice: But.. they’re the ones who created the system like this. If we chose this kit system then I could understand ANet saying “Well, it’s a lot of work for us to rework our system around your custom design”. But they did it. The same argument doesn’t really work otherwise.

While I have to agree that it would take a lot of time and resources to accomplish what might not seem like much .. it’s one of those things where .. if you can’t finish it, don’t start it.

“Engineer” was left off the “Profession Happiness Ranking (Happiest to Unhappiest)” results..

Very interesting though, Nice job! Always neat to catch a glimpse at the person behind the character.

I did re-work most of the hotkeys. I bound 6 7 8 9 0 to Q E R F T. Works pretty well. I had rebound the F keys to Z X C V but I kept reaching up and pressing them anyways.. so I figured I’d just leave them. Not too hard to reach.

You guys have given me some things to think about. Absolutely swapping between 3+ weapon sets is daunting. Don’t know if I’ll ever be up for that. Rifle is fun though.. grenades are fun. Rocket boots are fun. Maybe I’ll just play with that stuff for now and stop worrying so much about how I can fit the flamethrower into my arsenal.

Lol.. really didn’t expect that to get kitten’d .. it wasn’t a swear in the slightest.

Lol.. really didn’t expect that to get kitten’d .. it wasn’t a swear in the slightest.@Karast: Not extensively

I never said engineer sucks. Not once.kitten

Yeah, I’ve seen the whole 4-kit thing .. and I’d honestly rather not deal with all that. From what I’ve seen, running only 1 other weapon kit simply isn’t enough because a weapon kit is not as good as a weapon swap that any other (not ele) profession gets. That is to say, an engineer needs to be able to swap to 2 other kits (not incl med) in order to compete/surpass the capabilities of another profession. I do not find the flamethrower or elixer gun to be anywhere as near well-rounded as rifle/pistol and they cannot stand on their own. This is where the class has lost me.

I’m fine with a weapon swap. Absolutely. But:

1) Can’t swap with the weapon swap button. Means I gotta remember what kit I put on what utility button.
2) Can’t seem to get away with only 1 additional kit. That single kit can’t seem to fill the role of a weapon that any other profession would have gotten. I’m really not interested in needing to swap to 2+ kits depending on the situation. Not only do I feel like it would be spreading the profession too thin by being able to do damage in 10 different ways, but it’s a whole new level of micromanagement and reactions I’m simply not prepared for.
3) … thought I had a 3. Maybe something with the lack of non-kit weapon choices.

I guess I just don’t see how anyone can be successful with less than 2 weapon kits.

I’ve said quite a few things without having much to say, but now I think I’m starting to understand why I don’t feel comfortable as an engineer. The bottom line: I’m not good enough.

I’m a pretty casual gamer. I have a full time job, I don’t play games nearly as much as I used to. I don’t have the time or energy to “work” at getting better. If it doesn’t come naturally, I lose interest.

Engineers have fun mechanics. Their weapon abilities can be fun to use. But unless you’re able to get over that learning curve, you will never do well enough to compete with other professions.

I can’t swap weapons 3 times in a chaotic fight. As another profession, sure.. I can hit ` to go back and forth 3-4 times in a long fight. But to be that good at reacting to a situation to be able to swap to a weapon, use a skill or two, swap to another, use a skill or two, swap to a third… reactions, reactions, reactions. I don’t have them. I can’t do that and the idea of it drives me nuts.

Props to everyone who can. I am clearly not an engineer. The longer I play, the more I realize .. ANet didn’t mess up when making this profession. They just made it for better skilled people.

Hahaha take a whiff.. amazing. Would be nice to see some ranged options in there though, seems to be primarily melee.

Mesmers are fun. Some neat mechanics and once you get used to illusions, they can be pretty powerful. Require minuscule amounts of micromanagement but not nearly as much as a ranger (which still isn’t much). They also have a large amount of utility skills making you useful in many situations.

Necromancers are fun as well. Lifesteal mechanics make combat very interesting, plus their death shroud is a very nifty utility useful for PvE and PvP. They have some great mechanics playing with conditions.

Guardians I thought were a little boring. They’rekittenuseful, but I didn’t think they were terribly exciting.

Lots of engineer aspects feel like they just had an assortment of ideas and a couple gallons of super glue and just forced it all together rather than making sure the pieces actually fit.

I don’t see a scenario where a lot of this stuff won’t get addressed. I’m fine with ‘random’ factors, but maybe isolated randomness. If using an “oh kitten” ability, give protection, regeneration, or, idk, stealth. Three boons that will accomplish the same thing of staying alive.

This way, it does make a difference as far as play style goes which random effect you get, but they can all be used to accomplish the same goal in different ways.

Wow.. this thread makes me want to roll another race. Currently Asura and there’s nothing really visually pleasing about it.

So I’ve been looking through a lot of builds lately and I was wondering why I never see any based around support with the elixer gun. I joined a sPvP and tried a build with it but due to my in-experience with the class, I just got stomped.

It seems like you can pump out some good condition damage, plus it gives you access to another 2 heals on top of your heal button. The spray seems to suffer from some of the same issues flame flamethrower does and the #1 skill kinda has an odd, unappealing sound (sounds like you’re shooting bubbles at them), but other than that I would love to run a support build with this.

Ideally, I would just follow around 1-2 teammates, healing, controlling, and poisoning. Would need to be focused mostly on survivability .. as a supporter cannot support if he’s dead.

This needs to be implemented. Every other class can customize how their weapons look but we’re stuck looking identical. Allow us to somehow customize our weapon kits so that we might have some uniqueness.

All weapons seem to be good depending on your playstyle. I recommend trying them all.

As far as crafting, weaponsmithing and artifice can make all your weapons, tailor and jewelry for the “armor”, cook for food.

I personally enjoy FINDING new loot, so crafting my own equipment takes the fun out. For this reason, I went jewel/cook.. but any of them can be useful.

I did end up grabbing mirror images, find them useful to instantly create and shatter 3 illusions. I like feedback, but I find it to be too institutional for PvE (especially when I only have 2 utility slots.. hard to justify using it for 10% of the enemies I face).

I remember someone else saying that trait that heals when using mantras (I believe worded the same way – heals nearby allies) heals you as well.. so this is why I was thinking it might be the case.

The whole purpose is adding some longevity to phantasms, although probably not much.

Sounds like best case scenario .. the phantasm takes 2 hits to die instead of 1. Which doesn’t bode well for OP’s complaint..

With the (2?) ways mesmers can increase the health of their phantasms, do they still go down when someone looks at them?

You only use one weapon?

I’m still pretty new to mesmer myself, but from my limited experience, I’ve gathered the following about weapons:

Greatsword: Solid long range damage and a good phantasm and illusion come out of it. If they’re pretty close to you, I wouldn’t continue using GS. Swap to another.

Staff: Great for defensive/supportive play. Solid clone generation, bouncing boons and conditions are fun. Chaos storm is great.

Sword: Supposedly the best weapon damage output. An OK gap closer (kinda seems like you could just run to your target instead and be just as fine), skill 2 is clearly the best. Good aoe damage while invulnerable.

Scepter: Some people like it, I find it boring. Not much to say about this.

/Sword: Nice to have a block, lots of people hate the swordsman phantasm though. Not 100% sure why.

/Focus: I use it only for the speed boost. Warden is good too, but seems very easy to muck it up and waste the skill.

/Pistol: Supposedly great damage on the pistol phantasm. Each bullet counts as a separate attack, having a chance to crit which combos nicely with the bleed on crit. Magic bullet.. didn’t think was anything special.

The only way I can rationalize switching weapons is to have one set for close range and one for long range. I will probably always use greatsword for long range .. I just enjoy it too much not too. For close range.. any other weapon. Staff for survivability, sword for damage.

Really enjoying that there isn’t just 1 set ‘build’ that’s better than everything else. Honestly, I would just .. play. Read all the tooltips so you can see what combos with what. I imagine there’s a decent synergy to be found in every weapon combo, so it’s more about what you enjoy than anything else.

I’m amused at how you went from “Thank you for reading” to ripping on every person to post here.

But .. if you have 1 phantasm, he wont have regeneration?

Title says it all. I think the tooltip says “nearby allies” but .. you are your own ally .. and you are near yourself.. so can they heal themselves?

I had a tough time picking my race, but it was 90% about aesthetics instead of abilities.

Charr: Was never really considered. Cloth armor just doesn’t look good on them.
Norn: Mammoth greatswords. Looks awesome. Other than that, they don’t seem to embody the feeling of a mesmer.
Human: Armor looks fine. Not much to be said.
Sylvari: Too leafy. Leafy versions of everything. Odd.
Asura: Cute and all, but too small. I like to be able to see my armor and weapons, not be drowned out in a sea of normal-sized beings.

It was really between humans and sylvari. Went with human .. safe route.. kinda wishing I went sylvari though….. might have to re-roll.

Seems to be a lot of ‘tells’ for mesmer clones. I would be very surprised if ANet didn’t address them.

I am currently level 17 and so far, I think I’m playing wrong. I’m using GS+S/F currently. Firstly, I don’t have any combo fields… from what I read here, it’s a big mistake.

I use the default healing ability. I was using the mantra one for a while but .. I don’t see the point. It takes time to charge, you get to heal instantly twice for slightly more than the original one, but more often than not, I find myself needing to re-meditate in mid-combat which isn’t good.

I have 2 utility skills – the mantra that deals damage (for some quick nukes) and a passive that grants a random boon every 10 seconds of combat. The random boon one doesn’t seem great.

Most of my combat goes as follows (against a mob of equal or lower level):
1) Max range with GS, use skill 1 to get attention and do some decent damage.
2) When mob has closed 50% of gap, use ability 4 then 2 to get phantasm up, give him a buff, and get clone up.
3) If the mob has reached me at this point, I use 5 to get him back and get a couple more 1’s off (not great damage at this range though). I’ll pop a 3 in there as well because it is a nice little burst of damage.. for the most part the mob doesn’t have any boons so it’s for damage only.
4) Mob will be at about 30% now, if 2 is off cooldown, I’ll get another clone up and mind wrack them, usually enough to finish them off.

This is how it usually goes against an enemy higher than me or a vet mob:
1) GS 1 at max range
2) Summon phantasm and clone. Clone dies before it can attack, phantasm gets to 50% immediately.
3) Realizing the phantasm will die in a second before he can get another attack off, I shatter it.
4) Skill 3 then 5 to get some damage and distance. Swap to S/F
5) Skill 3 for clone, 5 for phantasm and throw the wall up (4).
6) 3 again to swap to illusion, use skill 2 to deal some good damage while p.warden spins.
7) P.warden dies after mob looks at him, I need to pop my heal. Mob is at 40%.

This is where it tends to fall apart and where I start to feel week. Mesmer seems to have a lot of ‘build up’ as far as ramping up conditions and illusions, but I tend to lose illusions before I can see their effect. I’ve looked through the trait tree and it looks like the only buff you can give them as far as survivability is 20% increased health. If they’re getting 1-shot now, this will either not help or give them another 2 seconds to live. I don’t want them to tank for me.. I don’t even want them to distract for me. I want the phantasms to do damage and the illusions to be shatter fodder, but they act more like lemmings.

I feel like I need to use a staff. GS is great for weaker guys, can burst them down quickly. Also great for groups when I can sit back and nuke. I love the melee capabilities of sword/focus and sword/sword (sword/torch is interesting and I’d like to play with it more). Staff should allow me to keep illusions longer, remain in the fight longer, and kite easier. Not sure if I should do staff+s/(whatever) or staff/gs.

So I’m really enjoying mesmer, but I’m a little confused about the illusion mechanics. It seems like, even if you’re in combat, as soon as your current target dies, your illusions go away. So if you pull 3 enemies and you’ve only finished fighting the first, all the illusions go away. However, if you target the next enemy before the first one dies, you can kill off the first one with some AoE and the illusions stay. Is this working as designed? It just seems really odd.

No idea what the hell is going on with my posting right now. Must have divided by 0 or something.

Wow.. I’ll take a look at that guide. From my perspective, I can’t see why you would possibly need all those abilities available at once. Med kit.. seems most useful for the speed boost you get with 5. The heal packs don’t seem to heal enough, but I suppose if you’re just all out running away and need some health, it would be good.. kinda..

Wow.. I’ll take a look at that guide. From my perspective, I can’t see why you would possibly need all those abilities available at once. Med kit.. seems most useful for the speed boost you get with 5. The heal packs don’t seem to heal enough, but I suppose if you’re just all out running away and need some health, it would be good.. kinda..Flamethrower .. I liked the 2 skill at max range. Did some good damage to a single target. After that I swapped over to rifle to finish em off though.

Wow.. I’ll take a look at that guide. From my perspective, I can’t see why you would possibly need all those abilities available at once. Med kit.. seems most useful for the speed boost you get with 5. The heal packs don’t seem to heal enough, but I suppose if you’re just all out running away and need some health, it would be good.. kinda..Flamethrower .. I liked the 2 skill at max range. Did some good damage to a single target. After that I swapped over to rifle to finish em off though.Elixer gun and toolkit both sound neat, I haven’t been able to play with them.

Wow.. I’ll take a look at that guide. From my perspective, I can’t see why you would possibly need all those abilities available at once. Med kit.. seems most useful for the speed boost you get with 5. The heal packs don’t seem to heal enough, but I suppose if you’re just all out running away and need some health, it would be good.. kinda..Flamethrower .. I liked the 2 skill at max range. Did some good damage to a single target. After that I swapped over to rifle to finish em off though.Elixer gun and toolkit both sound neat, I haven’t been able to play with them.Maybe I should watch some videos of people playing engineer so I can see what exactly people DO in combat.

And are you constantly switching between 2+ kits?

I replaced 6 7 8 9 0 with Q E R F T

I liked how, with other professions, ` was weapon swap. It felt much more natural to have it there. I would have preferred have my first utility be ` and assign it to a kit. This would be fine for my engineer but .. it would muck it up for the rest of the classes.

Yeah.. I did some PvP at 16 with my engineer. Very discouraging.

Yeah.. I didn’t know about weapon switching when I started. When I found out about it, I thought “Oh.. that’s a nice option”. Kind of like Diablo 2. Then I found out it was pretty much required and I needed to re-evaluate everything.

Yeah.. I didn’t know about weapon switching when I started. When I found out about it, I thought “Oh.. that’s a nice option”. Kind of like Diablo 2. Then I found out it was pretty much required and I needed to re-evaluate everything.Elementalist is not for me. I can see that. The question now is .. what is? I can deal with swapping out a weapon. 2 might be too much for me. Maybe I’ll go back to engineer and just run with rifle / grenade kit, who knows. At least those are two very different weapons with very different uses where the time to swap is clear.

Yeah.. I didn’t know about weapon switching when I started. When I found out about it, I thought “Oh.. that’s a nice option”. Kind of like Diablo 2. Then I found out it was pretty much required and I needed to re-evaluate everything.Elementalist is not for me. I can see that. The question now is .. what is? I can deal with swapping out a weapon. 2 might be too much for me. Maybe I’ll go back to engineer and just run with rifle / grenade kit, who knows. At least those are two very different weapons with very different uses where the time to swap is clear.I’m trying to be open minded .. just .. I’m very indecisive when it comes to picking a profession. I am in every game. I find games to be most interesting when a party is comprised of a diverse group of people, which is why I’m avoiding playing the classes my friends play. As far as not enjoying some of the core mechanics of a profession (ranger’s pets, thief’s stealth), that’s just how I am .. it’s a matter of personal preference.

Yeah.. I didn’t know about weapon switching when I started. When I found out about it, I thought “Oh.. that’s a nice option”. Kind of like Diablo 2. Then I found out it was pretty much required and I needed to re-evaluate everything.Elementalist is not for me. I can see that. The question now is .. what is? I can deal with swapping out a weapon. 2 might be too much for me. Maybe I’ll go back to engineer and just run with rifle / grenade kit, who knows. At least those are two very different weapons with very different uses where the time to swap is clear.I’m trying to be open minded .. just .. I’m very indecisive when it comes to picking a profession. I am in every game. I find games to be most interesting when a party is comprised of a diverse group of people, which is why I’m avoiding playing the classes my friends play. As far as not enjoying some of the core mechanics of a profession (ranger’s pets, thief’s stealth), that’s just how I am .. it’s a matter of personal preference.The only class I can say I’m being truly closed minded about is the mesmer. I didn’t like how it felt and I never gave it too much of a shot. And I don’t really want to. I’ll leave it as a last resort.

Yeah.. I didn’t know about weapon switching when I started. When I found out about it, I thought “Oh.. that’s a nice option”. Kind of like Diablo 2. Then I found out it was pretty much required and I needed to re-evaluate everything.Elementalist is not for me. I can see that. The question now is .. what is? I can deal with swapping out a weapon. 2 might be too much for me. Maybe I’ll go back to engineer and just run with rifle / grenade kit, who knows. At least those are two very different weapons with very different uses where the time to swap is clear.I’m trying to be open minded .. just .. I’m very indecisive when it comes to picking a profession. I am in every game. I find games to be most interesting when a party is comprised of a diverse group of people, which is why I’m avoiding playing the classes my friends play. As far as not enjoying some of the core mechanics of a profession (ranger’s pets, thief’s stealth), that’s just how I am .. it’s a matter of personal preference.The only class I can say I’m being truly closed minded about is the mesmer. I didn’t like how it felt and I never gave it too much of a shot. And I don’t really want to. I’ll leave it as a last resort.Edit: Not sure what’s going on here .. when I see the text here, it looks fine.. but as soon as I press to post it, it does some bizarre stuff to my text.. it looks like I started 4 paragraphs the same way and just added onto it every time. Not sure if this is my browser or it’s really posting strangely. If you see it, I’m sorry .. I didn’t do it. If you don’t see it .. it’s limited to my browser and you can ignore this.

I’m Bad luck Brian when it comes to GW2 I guess. Unfortunately, I haven’t found much to love in the rest of the classes. Warrior seems like the only other one I might like but.. there’s so many warriors. And apparently they’re an easy class to dominate with .. I’m not really looking for that. My friends are playing guardian and necromancer, so I wanna stay away from those. I don’t like thief’s resource system, ranger’s pets annoy me, and mesmer just seems like a sorry excuse for a class (clunky illusions.. no thanks).

Oh well, I had a good 3 weeks with guild wars.. :-P

Hm… well.. that’s going to be the case for all classes then, huh? I guess I picked the two classes with the MOST weapon swaps though. Engineer kits means up to 4 swaps including main weapon, elementalist means 4 elements.. I think everyone else just gets a single weapon swap, right?

Tradewind.6913:

If this is how you feel, all I can say is don’t ever play Elementalist.

Why not? I understand there’s still balancing to do, fixes to be done for each class. That doesn’t concern me. What I am concerned about is how the class PLAYS, not how it performs. Right now, it plays very messily (although not as bad as the engineer).

Edit: I want to supplement this by saying.. I don’t expect one weapon/stance to do the job 100% of the time. You need to adapt to your situation. What I’m saying is.. I’m not adapting to the situation here.. I’m adapting to the limitations of a single weapon/stance. I’m combating the CLASS instead of the enemies.

I am a big fan of picking a build or loadout and rolling with it, making the best of it, taking advantages of its strengths and weaknesses.

First I rolled an engineer. Rifle is neat, pistol/shield was useful too. But I started getting these kits. I could understand swapping to a grenade kit once in a while to lay down some heavy AoE, but 90% of the time I just wanted to stay with Rifle. After doing some PvP and seeing what engineer felt like at 80, I was very discouraged. Not with how poorly I did (it was bad, though), but with how clunky everything felt needing to constantly change my 1-5 skills four or five times per fight. I thought for sure .. it must be just engineers that need to deal with this. I bailed on the engineer.

I rolled an elementalist. While I enjoy many aspects, I find myself needing to constantly swap between multiple elements in a fight. I am currently using dagger/dagger and the fire element is the only one that can hold its own without needing to swap between the rest. I feel like I’m headed right down the same path as engineer.

Is the only way to play this game by constantly doing the ‘stance dance’, trading out your main skills for alternate skillsets multiple times per fight? It feels SO messy.

I could understand needing to swap out your skills under certain circumstances. Like the engineer.. got an event with lots of guys? Grenades. The rest of the time? Rifle. With the elementalist .. the only justification I can find is.. hey.. my weapon skills are on cooldown. I can either spam autoattack for 20 seconds or swap to a new element. That seems trashy.

Is it like this for all classes? Am I really forced to play this way?

Basically, how does a typical long-term fight (not necessarily PvP) go with an elementalist? I guess, more specifically, how often do you switch between different elements in a single fight?

I thought it was really odd that they would make the trait trees element specific .. but then encourage you to switch between them in a fight. Then again, I suppose you could spec into trait trees and easily make swapping between 2 elements viable.

Thoughts on this?
Thanks,
Chumble

For whatever reason, I can’t get rid of my Q and E buttons for movement. I use Q and A interchangeably .. and E and D interchangeably. If I put a skill on Q or E, I just end up pressing them when I try to move and spam abilities uselessly.

I ended up keeping 1-5 for weapon skills, putting healing at R, Utilities at F T and G, interact at Shift. It’s not bad but my inability to not have 6 buttons for movement (when you really only need 3) really hinders me.

I agree, this needs to be fixed asap.

Warrior is a weapons master. Engineer likes to tinker with stuff.

Warrior absolutely sounds like he would be able to use any standard weapon with its standard usage more effectively than an engineer.

I like that you seem to have taken a fairly objective stance here. Nice to see someone not just saying “engineers suck”.

I’m only lv12 so I don’t have many slots open, but I’m trying to plan hotkeys and kits .. was wondering how many kits people normally run with.

I’d think, ideally, I would use a rifle and 1 kit… but I suppose to be more versatile, people might equip 2 (maybe even 3?) kits to their bar to be prepared for any situation. I suppose when you get further into the traits, you sort of specialize a bit so using 3 kits won’t be appealing.

I think the whole weapon/kit swapping mindset is a difficult concept for many people (me absolutely included) to get used to, and I think it all stems from not having proper hotkeys setup.

What if there was a system in place where you could combine kits? I have no idea how it would be implemented, but if you could have 3 flamethrower skills and 2 grenade skills, I think this would be better than 5 grenade skills…