Guild Wars 2

Choops.3710:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Choops.3710:

A mesmer calling an engi OP? You sure know how to make a guy blush

I did a couple paids tonight with three engies, a necro, and a warrior. After we won a match one of them was calling us names in map chat for using “OP classes.” It was…humorous.

lol, I get that sometimes because of the 100 nades burst. I think the OP calling would drop a little if people knew how often things go wrong for that setup before you finally get 1 that lines up perfectly.

The best thing is, only one of us was even using grenades…

Choops.3710:

A mesmer calling an engi OP? You sure know how to make a guy blush

I did a couple paids tonight with three engies, a necro, and a warrior. After we won a match one of them was calling us names in map chat for using “OP classes.” It was…humorous.

You’ll find it very difficult to feel powerful using only a main-hand pistol to inflict damage. The autoattack is just extremely weak. If you really don’t want to use any kits at all, I think you’d better use dual pistols so you can at least keep burn up.

You can take some turrets, but the don’t do a lot of extra damage. 10 more points in explosives could give you turrets that knockback when they die, which is a pretty good defensive trait. I would suggest rifle, flame, and healing turret. Unfortunately, you’ll give up a lot of might stacks unless you take flamethrower/juggernaut.

Kamahl.3621:

And they made lifesteal food stop working with kits. Thanks Anet, now D/D elementalists are even more stupid.

Whoah. When did that happen? That’s a pretty huge nerf to the only real PvE flamethrower build. Maybe they just gave it an ICD?

Oh no, there are tons of groups doing paids. I was very surprised tonight to get the same group twice, usually that does not happen for me at all. Of course, I’m probably firmly in the middle of the rankings and don’t play more than a couple hours at a time—people in different situations might have different experiences.

Arheundel.6451:

The staff requires a different playstyle…when people will catch up on it..it’ll become even harder for you guys..then you can really start crying

I’ve played against some good staff eles—I just meant that the really good d/d 10/30/30 ele build that everyone hates is pretty much the exact opposite of a mage build, so it’s not surprising that it didn’t catch on right away.

By the way, saying things like “then you can really start crying” is not the best way to convince people that your profession is not OP. Just saying.

I would appreciate a new weapon. Theoretically, we have way more build options than any other profession in the game, so it’s odd that power builds = rifle and condition builds = pistol (I know that some people use pistols in a power kits build just for the second sigil, but…that doesn’t count).

shrewd.5319:

Arenanet is rapidly digging the gw2 grave. The elementalist profession is ridiculous in pvp and wvw. No profession comes even close to being as good as elementalist. For 2-3 months now I’ve barely played spvp/tpvp. When will arenanet get a brain and nerf the elementalist. It needs a real comprehensive and thorough nerf. People have even stopped complaining about guardians since elementalists surpass them by miles – this is enough evidence as to the gravity of this game’s status.

I don’t disagree that eles are incredibly strong, but let’s be logical—Anet did not buff eles, so they are not “digging the gw2 grave”—ele players/theorycrafters just finally figured out how strong d/d tanky dps is. It’s not surprising it took so long. Most people signed up for ele to use a staff and cast spells, not be some kind of weird melee-AoE-mobile-tanky-healing-cleansing-boon stacking build. These things are difficult to predict.

It’s better to make slow balance decisions. Before you disagree, consider that if Anet made balance changes any faster, eles most certainly would have gotten some buffs in the first month after release. I personally used to consider eles very weak and difficult to play—they were free kills for me until October or so. Guess I was wrong.

Paid tournaments=15seconds to 2 minutes in primetime.

Unfortunately, free tournaments are anywhere from 2-15 minutes right now. There are just a lot of people doing team vs team.

There are several ways to increase your damage and survivability. First, you could trade one pot for flamethrower and take juggernaut. You’ll get more might stacks and 200 toughness. You also won’t need so much precision, so you could get some carrion and rabid gear instead of all rampager’s. (You won’t need so much precision because the flamethrower hits very fast, so you’ll get maximum burn/bleed/whatever else to proc on crit with lower crit chance.)

What food are you using? Just using 40% condi duration pizza would raise your damage dramatically.

It sounds like he just wants kits mapped to F1-F4, not actually a change in mechanic. He said he likes “the idea of having multiple kits to slot, but I don’t like the design of the controls.” As people have pointed out, automatically giving the engi four kits would make us exactly like the ele in terms of mechanics.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. You could just reverse the keymapping—change the default 6-9 keybinds to F1-F4, and change the toolbelt skills to 6-9. That way, instead of having skills “hidden” in the utility buttons, they’d be “hidden” in the profession mechanic buttons.

kostbabis.8791:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Ooh, people arguing about balance! This is fun!

Engies’ rifle 5 is 700 range with a lot of mid-air hang time. Yeah, we could nerf that to be 1200 range with a target required. No problem.

would you really want that?i mean instead of buffing it by making the transition faster..
And what about the warriors,thieves,rangers..a ranger can cover almost as much distance as an rtl and 2 IA are 1800 range.Warriors rush is 1200 and is affected by slows so changing to that would be a possible nerf to rtl.And then dont forget we are talking about the lowest health/armor class.Nerfing mobility that much means that there will be no other build than bunkerish ones..Glass canon ele (if it ever existed) is now dead as well as EVERY other build that doesnt focus on pure survival.Nobody s gonna play a dps ele that is dead the moment that warrior closes the gap..
No good ways to disengage+squishiest class+mediocre damage=only bunker builds..
I thought you wanted to get rid of them.

Whew. All I wanted to do was hop in for one post and explain what jump shot does. I’m not even really concerned about eles being OP. I just wanted to say that if eles are in favor of buffing jump shot, that’s fine with me

Ooh, people arguing about balance! This is fun!

Engies’ rifle 5 is 700 range with a lot of mid-air hang time. Yeah, we could nerf that to be 1200 range with a target required. No problem.

I usually love looking at my numbers and getting satisfaction in knowing I played really well even if my team lost the match. I’m not sure that would work very well in GW2, though.

Even in traditional MMOs, the top “damage done” player is usually some range AoE fluff damage add.

Agree, it’s a very good choice. Note that it only works in combat. If you’re running multiple kits you’ll practically always keep the multiple might stacks up, but if you’re just running one or two you’ll have to consciously remember to switch.

You can definitely report them. You can also ignore people or open a different text window that shows team chat but not map chat.

They seem to take abuse reports very seriously, though, so that’s probably the best step.

Shar.3402:

5 eles vs 5 eles is the way
infinite matches ending like 10-5 with all 3 points perma-uncapped.

This is legitimately hilarious.

NaturalPortman.9562:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m not doubting the effectiveness of the build, but I have some questions:

—What does it mean to “counter multi-ele”? Bring them down in a teamfight? 1v1 them on a point?
—Why does taking multiple engineers help? One engi reapplies burn constantly already, so the second engi would add maybe six stacks of bleeding and two stacks of confusion?
—Condi engies have no cc or chase ability. In a 1v1, can a condi engi really do more than take an ele down to 1/3 health and watch them RTL away? Or is this build more for laying on conditions while your teammates try to lock the ele down?
—I know that elixir gun is very effective vs. eles—I imagine we are talking about grenades as the second kit, and a stunbreak? Why are people mentioning flamethrower?
—The concerns Ostricheggs raises seem very important. For every situation that a condi engi would do well, it seems there are two they would do poorly. Are there any ways to “hybrid” this, or is it basically just a counter-pick to the current cheese comp/strategy?

Gameplay questions, not build questions. I understand how a condi engi works, I’m just wondering what specifically countering eles means.

When hiba says countering it really means a way to “deal” with them. There isn’t really a straight up rock paper scissor like counter in this game for anything.

Oh definitely—that’s why eles are good, there’s nothing that makes them scared like rock scares scissors. I’m just trying to get a feel for the gameplay. It sounds to me most like a teamfight build designed to apply pressure to a downed-state-heroes comp. If that’s all it’s really meant to do, the concerns aren’t too meaningful—it’s a counter-pick, after all. Just let it do its one job and be satisfied.

I think counter-picks can really only be used effectively by really great teams. For example, when I do paids with whoever’s on, I want to be effective 1v1. I also need some defense because I can’t depend on people peeling for me. If I were playing with PZ, I would just want my build to do exactly what they want me to do, and I know they’ll always be in the right place to make up for its weaknesses. (I’ve never actually played with PZ…just a hypothetical)

This guide https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Five-Gauge-s-100nade-Guide/1268400 will tell you everything you need to know about glass cannon engineers. It’s a pretty solid build, but once you know what’s going on it isn’t hard to avoid.

I’d say engies are “point control,” not really bunkers. I agree with posters saying engies neutralize points well. Yes, eles aren’t too tough to de-cap. Guardians running full stability, sword/shield + hammer are much harder.

Sounds good to me. Neither one is a good “standard” PvP experience right now. I think it makes sense for the “standard” experience new PvPers receive to be a single random vs random match. Hotjoin=practice/farm, free tourney=pug vs premade, weird layout. I can’t see any drawback to changing the standard experience to be a single, organized match.

Hotjoin could still exist as the practice/farm mode, though.

I’m not doubting the effectiveness of the build, but I have some questions:

—What does it mean to “counter multi-ele”? Bring them down in a teamfight? 1v1 them on a point?
—Why does taking multiple engineers help? One engi reapplies burn constantly already, so the second engi would add maybe six stacks of bleeding and two stacks of confusion?
—Condi engies have no cc or chase ability. In a 1v1, can a condi engi really do more than take an ele down to 1/3 health and watch them RTL away? Or is this build more for laying on conditions while your teammates try to lock the ele down?
—I know that elixir gun is very effective vs. eles—I imagine we are talking about grenades as the second kit, and a stunbreak? Why are people mentioning flamethrower?
—The concerns Ostricheggs raises seem very important. For every situation that a condi engi would do well, it seems there are two they would do poorly. Are there any ways to “hybrid” this, or is it basically just a counter-pick to the current cheese comp/strategy?

Gameplay questions, not build questions. I understand how a condi engi works, I’m just wondering what specifically countering eles means.

Mufa.1326:

I am not gonna go into the huge differences in ability to stomp or prevent being stomped in team fights by different classes. It is just laughable. In our first tourney together we ended up fighting PZ. Ranger buddy and I were fighting two eles most of the game.

This would be the problem. Matchmaking is coming, so (hopefully) soon first-time tournament players won’t be pitted against the best teams in the world (500+hours of practice together vs. team’s first tournament…good luck).

Also, if you’re in a 2v2 against 2 eles, you gotta down the same one twice within about a minute, or down both at the same time. I’m not qq-ing (we have plenty of pages on that already) but it’s an extremely harsh learning curve for teams trying tournaments together for the first time. The “rules” aren’t exactly intuitive.

I love threads on slick shoes. Some things (almost) never get old.

That’s actually really cool that a top team is running creative builds.

I think that the re-design of the free and paid tourney system (that we seem to be in the middle of right now) will hopefully address this problem. For example, I’d expect to see fewer leavers from a single, ranked match that pops instantly, than the current system.

Wow, I had no idea that the problem of being mistaken for an ele was actually so widespread. This could actually turn into a serious suggestion thread.

A single wrench still seems like the best option, although I think a gear would be fine as well. The icon only really matters in dungeons/PvP, and no one in those modes would confuse it for a black citadel icon.

Okay, two things—

1. I could have sworn our icon was a bomb, but now that people mention it, it does look like a jug of some sort. An even better reason to change it.
2. I’m kind of surprised that other people have actually experienced the same problem (people think you’re an ele because they’ve never seen an engi before)
3. All these icon ideas are awesome.

Well, that turned out to be three things. Guess I’m an engi who can’t count.

Choops.3710:

ONE OF US. ONE OF US.

OOOOhhhhh snap nightmares!

Shanks R Us.2489:

So I decided to go with engineer, won 1st place in my first free tourney. Having lots of fun, think I made a good choice. I can’t wait until I have a solid grasp on everything the class has to offer – and being an engineer, it might take a while.

Yay for engies! I’m actually starting to see one once every few matches now, it’s cool!

That’s the map mechanic on temple of the silent storm. When the match timer hits 8:30, a buff appears at the very end of the bridge over the water area. It’s a 10-second channel, and if you get it, your team instantly takes all the points.

Toolbelt abilities also don’t “queue” correctly. Possibly a related issue?

My solution: use so many kits that you never have to autoattack!

Schixeno.8596:

If we were to have a new icon, I’d suggest a wrench.

Hmm, that’s actually a really good, non-joking idea. +1.

In the spirit of “famous quotes,” “only an engineer,” etc. etc…

It has recently come to my attention that engineers are in dire need of a new profession icon. The current icon (a small bomb) looks somewhat similar to the elementalist icon (a small flame).

This wouldn’t be an issue, except for the fact that engineers are extremely rare. In fact, often when I solo-queue a free tourney, my teammates look at the scoreboard and say “lol, we have three eles, we’re gonna win”—when in fact, we only have 2 eles and myself, an engineer. (All joking aside, this has actually happened to me, more than once.) Because of this problem, most players in the game don’t even know that engineers exist. When they do see an engineer, they figure it’s a new ele build.

We need a new icon. Post suggestions below. I’m thinking maybe some slick shoes…?

Choops.3710:

Mesmer, guardian or Elementalist. These are the most well rounded professions with great roles in PvP. If you’re the type of person that buys a new game and immediately starts it on the hardest difficulty, then Engineer.

Hehe no one else knows engineers are UP because we’re all so good at them

While I would prefer completely separate random vs random/team vs team matches, I can understand why they’d hesitate to implement that. Unfortunately, the combination system means that good solo-queuers are doomed to fight bad premades constantly. I don’t mind it too much, but basically it means good puggers will be making the opposing team look silly and incompetent while still losing to them because they’re on voip and rotating faster. So, kinda like free tourneys. That’s just as big a drawback as not being able to “track solo and team rankings.”

All that said, I understand it’s difficult to implement a completely split queue, and anything’s better than nothing. So we’ll just wait and see what happens.

Some builds heal for so much because their base health is low—sounds like you are describing a guardian (blocking heal) who probably only has 16k health or so. With the extra healing power, he can easily heal for about half of his total health pool.

Don’t use magnet—its cast time is longer than a healing skill. Try to apply a long poison (close-range pistol 2 or grenade 5) and then “cover” it with other conditions. In a group fight, you might be able to interrupt their heal and focus them down before they get it off again, but 1v1 it will be difficult. In general, don’t save your interrupts for the heal, use them to interrupt their burst combos or stop a rez or stomp.

I don’t think there have been very many new builds popping up—d/d ele is really the only one that’s significantly more feared now than 4 months ago. Grenade engies have always been around, but there have always been so few engies total that no one has ever really noticed them. I see far fewer permastealth attrition thieves now than I did a few months ago.

Still, it’s kind of cool that d/d eles rose to the top without huge buffs.

No, people haven’t expected engies to be bunkers for a while. It was super annoying when they did, though. The learning curve is a little higher than other professions I’d say, although I still haven’t played every profession in PvP.

100nades is not a stellar 1v1 build, so expect to lose most of those until you get pretty good at it. It’s not too tough to get a feel for teamfights, though. There’s a fair amount of hidden cooldowns, bugs, and tooltip insufficiency to keep track of. Other than that, go 30/x/x/x/10+ and start blowing stuff up.

Engineers are super fun. If you’ve had success as a warrior, you can as an engi…as I most commonly see them ranked 7th and 8th as far as OP/UP.

However, if you’re just looking to “learn another profession” go with thief or ele. Both of them have a “standard” playstyle that’s effective, but right now the engi has literally zero playstyle continuity. I find that extremely fun, but if you tell your team “I’m bringing an engi” they’ll have no idea what that means.

The “100nades” engi build plays somewhat like a greatsword warrior, just with ranged pressure instead of mobility/gap closers.

Edit: ah, and if you enjoy creating your own non-standard builds, engi is the profession for you.

Ostricheggs.3742:

There are some niche builds, but really you have to be a masochist to try and theorycraft a “new” build on an engi that actually works in TPvP. I literally know of no effective build that does not go 30 up explosives for grenades and 20 up alchemy for the cleanses. Healing turret as your only condi cleanse is a death sentence. Have fun allocating 20 other points

Don’t forget that flamethrower and elixir gun both remove a condition with kit refinement. It’s still super hard to squeeze them into any “new” builds, as you say, but I find them far more fun and effective than 409 or healing turret for cleansing.

If those kit refinement cleanses are ever removed, though, we’re in serious trouble. Well, even worse than we already are.

I don’t think it’s coming this patch. Right now, they’re focusing on the new paid tournament format and introducing matchmaking for teams. They’ve said free tournaments are going to stay the same for now, so I’m guessing paids will stay team vs team, frees will stay team/random vs team/random.

The community has never really gotten behind it unfortunately…I think it’s the most important feature that Anet could add right now.

hharry.1967:

Please Anet add this already, even your ‘knight’ jewels dont have the knight stats they have in PvE.
Im sick of being forced to go full on something, if i want healing i need to go full healing 0 vit, if i want vit i need to go full vit and 0 healing, what if i want a little of vit and a little of healing?

PS: im not asking for gear with vit/healing on it, im asking to bring back the multiple accesories we had in the first beta where you could actually have more distributed builds not like now.

I would agree with this, the lack of a power/precision/toughness amulet has really hurt necro and warrior.

I know people are scared of adding new stat combinations because, you know, Anet would probably introduce a tough/vit/healing amulet. /sarcasm off

felivear.1536:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I agree that solo queue is the most important new feature to be added. This could be accomplished by reforming hotjoin into a single-match queue or reforming free tourneys into a single-match queue. I’m guessing it’s gonna be free tourneys that become the random vs random game mode.

My concern currently with free tournaments is that they are going to be completely vacant currently with the paid changes, because frees will stay on the 8 team format.

You will find, and I’m sure Anet already has seen this, that frees will become obsolete.

Yeah, I saw that Anet intended to keep frees the same format. Too bad, I don’t think they’re going to touch hotjoin, so I guess we’ll wait a few more months for random vs random matches. It’s okay, I’m having a lot of fun doing the more casual paids but I think the playerbase would really expand with a single match solo/duo queue.

I agree that solo queue is the most important new feature to be added. This could be accomplished by reforming hotjoin into a single-match queue or reforming free tourneys into a single-match queue. I’m guessing it’s gonna be free tourneys that become the random vs random game mode.

Bomb kit + flamethrower + elixir gun = instant 25 area might stacks, permanent area retaliation, and ~12 seconds of stealth on demand. Hahaha, this would be pretty amazing.

hharry.1967:

Engis are kicking kitten nowdays with some high burst spec they can survive a lot and do huge damage reminds me of d/d eles.

Yes, we do have a spec known as “100nades” that has similar effectiveness to a hundred blades warrior. It’s really not much like a d/d ele.

Rozbuska.5263:

Stealth while immobilize is awesome imo (in minor Inventionst isnt some other useful trait anyway) Once some mesmer wrote me how its totaly ruin his single target spike.

Engis traits are fine, personaly only trait what iritating me is Scope where you must “must standing still” witch is against game philosophy of constant moving.

Agree: cloaking device is a decent, very fun trait, especially for adept level.
Correction: scope doesn’t actually work at all. So, not exactly fine. But we do have some good/working traits, which can be crafted into several super fun, reasonably effective builds.

Wreckdum.8367:

Braxxus.2904:

daydream.2938:

In korea they broadcast top videogamers on tv.

Which is pretty lame. Worse than America’s ‘snookie’ type tv broadcast fascinations.

America’s most watched television spot is the Superbowl… A bunch of drugged up meatheads giving each other permanent brain injuries while selling obese people food products during the commercial breaks…

I’ll watch a video game over that any day.

But but…the commercials…!

No matter how good it is, no patch can be a “holy grail.” I expect we’ll see several small improvements.

I also agree that the PvP population has stabilized somewhat (after dropping to dangerously low levels) so the devs shouldn’t be rushing emergency content. That’s usually something poorly thought-out and implemented that hurts the game in the long run. So, let’s take the several good, small changes that are most likely incoming and continue to have fun playing a game most of us already enjoy, and should only get better.

Kamahl.3621:

you watch them swap to flamethrower, push 2, then go back to rifle and overcharged shot you into the explosion.

Pro. This is why engies are fun, there are so many ways to get a near-dysfunctional set of abilities to do wonders. I can’t wait to try this out…