Guild Wars 2

OneManArmy.5617:

Sadly,the fastest way to kill a downstate thief is to dps him down OR if you have a teleport ability,like the guardian Judgement Intervention, you can start stomping him and when he teleports you teleport as well killing him instantly.

I usually play a profession without teleports or stability, so I usually just dps the thief down. It doesn’t really take that long. Still, it’s not hard to look at the list of eight professions and see that thieves, eles, and mesmers—the only three that have an evade instead of an interrupt as their downed #2—are pretty much the meta. (Granted, most teams still bring one guardian as well). I’m not saying there aren’t ways around that or crying for nerfs—just an interesting coincidence.

daydream.2938:

No weapon swap delay would also favor thiefs , who dont have ability cds but use initiative, they could rotate between there weapons for even more manuverability.

True. If in doubt, shortbow out. Same goes for Mesmer’s phase retreat.

I think it can be revived. Apart from relatively minor gameplay mechanics issues (say, rallying off of a jagged horror, etc) most of the turn-offs to the game have to do with entry barriers and a lack of close matches. When people have to spend a long time researching on GW2wiki to figure out how to play, it’s bad. When people spend hours researching and still lose 500 to less than 50 many games, it’s bad.

The good news is that there are simple, effective ways to stop those two population killers. Now, if we could only make up our mind to support those ideas on the forums…

coglin.1496:

tigirius.9014:

Oh and to the people who keep saying it doesn’t take more button pushing to play an engineer, yes it does especially if you want to do what they expect us to do is use nothing but kits.

They do not expect us to use “nothing but kits”. Get over yourself with the intentional misinformation, false claims, and inaccuracies. Post a link supporting “they expect us to use nothing but kits.” or just stop making the false claim will ya, its old hat, and misleading to new folks like the OP.

Thanks for defending the engineer profession so faithfully, but maybe this is more information than the OP wanted? Perhaps it would be better to start a new thread on the good things about the engineer, or the different non-kit builds that we have. I’m not sure it’s very beneficial to keep this conversation going in this thread. Do we really want the only dev actions in our forum to be closing threads? It’s pretty obvious that the OP is looking for a warrior/ranger for PvE.

/thread, I hope.

I keep resurrecting this thread every time I think of a new one…

“I cannot jump shot the distance! You’ll have to toss me.”
—Gimli (Lord of the Rings)

Gurt.9368:

NevirSayDie.6235:

However, the fact is that it’s very easy to see all those bad skills and think, “aw, this profession is garbage.” It can also be frustrating to not be allowed to take all of our strong skills at the same time—so many of our skills come in strong/weak pairs when it comes to utility/toolbelt.

Personally, I think this is a big deal. Balancing taking strong skills by forcing weak skills is bad design. All skills should ideally be of about the same strength so that no few builds completely outshine others, unless simply put together poorly. Now, I fully realize that perfect balance is impossible, but it should always be striven for.

Fair enough. It’s what makes the engineer more difficult to craft a decent build out of than any other profession—it’s really difficult to avoid the things that don’t work and find a use for the things that are bad, but that you are practically forced to take. I kind of enjoy that, but maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment.

My point, though, was that insisting over and over again that the engineer is fine and those who disagree should reroll or get better is not a very effective way to communicate. Yes, there are some effective engi players. No, the engineer should not/is not going to be “re-worked” from the ground up. No, that does not mean that the profession is fine the way it is, and it certainly doesn’t mean that those who have succeeded at engineering should belittle the suggestions of those who haven’t. There are very good reasons that engi players are frustrated.

Skills that require you to be facing your target sometimes bug out when you are strafing. They will turn you around if your character is stopped, though. Go figure.

Darnis.4056:

This thread pops up quite frequently…. so my response may seem a little harsh but you don’t actually want a response you want people to agree with you, you should have put it into suggestions.

This is a team game, if you don’t want to play a team game you might want to start playing wuvwuv instead.

Yes a team is required if you want to win free-tournys consistently,
because the meta is tryhards..

It’s very easy to get into a team, you send people tells they send you tells back, or you spam your 5-6 guilds “LF1M for tourny” .

QQing isn’t going to fix anything, go out and interact with people…

Let me sum up this post: “no one should ever pug because it’s a team game.”

If that were true, paids would be popping constantly and should be the only real game mode. After all, paids are team vs team. Wait, hold on—there are constant free tourneys filled with 7 pugs/1 premade. Paids come up once or twice every couple nights during prime time? Huh. Too bad everyone is doing it wrong. Well, while you wait for everyone to stop solo queueing, you could always queue for a paid.

People just want exciting matches. Those happen three ways—pug vs pug, premade vs premade, and pug vs bad premade.

JohnDied.3476:

With this someone can run a flamethrower “tool-kit” and run around with grenade barrage in his skills if he wants to. Someone can have elixir R on their toolkit and run elixir s in their slot-skills. If the toolkit is really “balanced” then this shouldn’t be a problem, if it isn’t balanced this change will make it clear which toolkits need a buff.

I think this paragraph illustrates the frustration engi players feel about their skillset. If being able to “mix and match” like that would make us OP, then logically, we can reason that some of the skills we’re forced to take are just plain less effective than the ones we’d like to take. Some of our skills are just bad.

In other words, if it would be OP to use Elixir S and toolbelt Elixir R as one utility, obviously there’s something less desirable about the current setup.

All that is frustrating, but it is essentially our class mechanic: a lot of weak skills rather than a few powerful ones. Add in the fact that our skills are available to us at all times, unlike the ele, which has the attunement cooldown. Thus, our skills are even weaker.

I don’t see this as a problem—I love having 3 skills that make up for 1 of my opponent’s. However, the fact is that it’s very easy to see all those bad skills and think, “aw, this profession is garbage.” It can also be frustrating to not be allowed to take all of our strong skills at the same time—so many of our skills come in strong/weak pairs when it comes to utility/toolbelt. Add in a list of bugs and you’ve got a frustrated playerbase. Add in a list of top-tier players who rank engineer as the worst or next to worst profession and you’ve got a really frustrated playerbase.

Those who have succeeded at engineering (I consider myself one) should take these things into consideration and patiently explain ways to overcome, while working for small, practical buffs to our underperforming builds.

tl;dr? Engineer feels really frustrating for a lot of players. That doesn’t mean the class is awful. It should affect the way we discuss buffs/nerfs/playstyles.

It sounds like it’s the condition-immune trait below 25% health—that’s the only way an engineer can give the “immune” message. Elixir S gives “invulnerable” and only lasts for 3 seconds—although theoretically the trait and the utility could be popped back to back. Block is obvious, and we don’t have any other skills or traits that make us stop taking damage.

If I had to guess I’d say someone was re-applying conditions and there was less direct damage going on than it felt like

Was this in WvW? I’ve heard there have been some glitches that cause damage immunity for a few seconds reported.

Pinder.5261:

NevirSayDie.6235:

True, and there just aren’t a lot of people who are SO extremely casual that they’re all right with hotjoin. I think “semi-casual” is going to become a buzzword in the industry within the next five years.

Since when has an absence of match-making been the realm of the super casual? Most old pvp games with multiple, hot-joinable servers (especially FPS games, whom GW2 used as a model for the server list) have had nothing at all to do with match making. You join the game, and you play your best. Some people were worse than you, some were better, and everybody dealt with that. The concept of casual and hardcore never played in to it, nor did the want for match making. And those games were never worse for their situation.

On the contrary, I’d say everyone acts totally backwards about hot join. The whole concept of necessary matchmaking in non-tournament pvp is a poor byproduct of esports. As if once you reveal to players that they form a qualitative tier hierarchy, those players feel compelled to abide by it, when there’s no actual need to do so.

…I didn’t even mention matchmaking. My issues are with the way hotjoins don’t really feel like a real “match” because of all the joining, leaving, team switching, and zerging. If you’re “all right” with just popping into a game and using some skills on some people without really caring about “winning,” then you are “all right” with hotjoin. There are some players who honestly couldn’t care less about the match, and they are very casual, or perhaps only “competitive” about seeing a big glory number at the end or winning a duel. I wasn’t really referring to how good they are.

Since you mention matchmaking, though, let’s accept the fact that you and I are fine without it. I’m not the greatest player, but I’m good enough to know that I can outplay a decent percentage of other players. When I solo queue, if it’s pug vs pug my team usually wins. In other words, my skill level is in a high enough percentile that I have a high probability of getting interesting matches regularly.

Take anyone in the bottom 40% of players, though, and you’ll find a different experience. In a pug vs pug, their pug will usually lose. Against a premade they’ll lose games 500 to less than 50, sometimes 500-0. They aren’t “okay” with the fact that some players are better than them. They rarely see a victory, or even a loss closer than 100 points.

All of that is “all right” if they’re okay with just hopping into a hotjoin, following the zerg, and rushing toward svanir/chieftan every time they come up. However, there are relatively few people who are so casual they actually don’t care about the match. Most people want to try hard and succeed against the other team, even if they’re in the bottom 40% of player skill.

tl;dr: just because you do all right without matchmaking doesn’t mean the game doesn’t need it.

Hey all—the OP presented ideas that are possible for Anet to implement within the next year. There are a lot of cool suggestions popping around, but things like “core game element X should be re-designed from the ground up” or “class X needs to be re-designed” are not going to happen. There are some very good things that the community could push for right now and see in just a few months. Let’s support those ideas, yes?

On hotjoin: I can’t stand it, but I understand some people like it. As the OP said, the best solution would be to add a random vs random single match. We don’t need to get rid of practice/farm mode for those who like it. Most new PvPers do hotjoin just because it seems like the only thing they can do. Most new PvPers also only PvP to rank 5 or so, then quit.

Arheundel.6451:

They will tell you that you need toughness because you as an engineer got no right to play without toughness like a thief can, but be sure to use just enough toughness for them to say :" You can dodge no?!", don’t use more than that if not you’re OP as you can’t die in 0.3s anylonger

Of course, right after saying “get some toughness,” they’ll say “bunkers are OP”—but I jest

I think balance is acceptable overall, but there are definitely some issues with the lack or a learning curve. Thieves and bunkers are especially difficult to handle right now, since it takes more skill to beat a thief (in low ranks) than to play a thief. Same goes for bunkers. I wouldn’t mind nerfing down specs that take more skill to beat than to play, but that would be a tough decision on Anet’s part. A lot of people would get upset. A lot of competitive players like those “noobstomping” builds for some reason—I’ll never understand why—and yet they’re not that good in high-rank matches.

A lot of the OP-ness would go away if a few of the ideas in this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/How-we-break-the-spvp-learning-curve/1283055 were implemented…

Khyras.8021:

You are mistaking l2p issues with what makes sense and is fair.You can hit 5 when MoOAd but it wont help you if you are imobilized or you get imobilized when you hit 5.You assume every fight with thief is 1vs1 when in reality people already engaged in a fight are those who will attacked by thieves first.As soon as someone points out nonsense and unfairness of thieves and mesmers people like you pull out l2p argument.Thieves and mesmers are not imba or op, their skills mechanics are cheap and unfair and annoying, that is the real problem.

Games have become popular despite some classes being even as annoying as thief and mesmer. I agree with the OP that the biggest problem right now is lack of learning curve. If a lot of people support these changes, we can get some real improvement with the next major patch.

I’m not disagreeing that thieves and mesmers are what turn a lot of players away from the game, but with experience they can become fun to fight. What’s not fun is jumping into your first hotjoin and getting insta-ganked. I think that’s what we should focus on changing first.

I use bomb kit all the time. It’s one of our best kits for PvE or PvP.

Pros: hits hard with power or condition damage; can be used while kiting; has good blind; toolbelt skill is a huge knockback; contains fire field, smoke field, and blast finisher.

Best of all, out of all the engineer’s kits, only the grenade kit has fewer bugs! (sorry, but unfortunately it’s true.)

Cons: delay makes it a defensive-only weapon in PvP; very hard to hit anyone without radius increase trait; the radius increase trait bugs out our evasive powder keg trait and kit refinement bomb; the #5 skill is bad; the kit refinement skill is bad even when it works (which is never, unless you gimp the entire kit by not taking the radius trait).

Even with all the cons, it’s a good kit. I’m hoping the bugs with the radius trait get fixed soon and that the kit refinement effect and #5 skill get buffed.

PlotDevice.1239:

I am assuming that the skill editor page is correct, but that might be a kittenumption.

Made me chuckle. This forum has one of the most hilarious profanity filters I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, looks like a solid build overall. You should know that bleed, burn, and poison only deal damage once every second. So, even if a bleed is 2.8 seconds long, it will only deal damage twice. In other words, don’t bother increasing condition duration unless it will get you to the next even number. You may decide you don’t want all that burn duration either, but that’s up to you.

I’m not sure about the in-game tooltip vs build editor tooltip. The in-game tooltips are mostly accurate now—was there a specific skill that looked different or was it all the tooltips?

I honestly don’t think there will be many balance changes at all this patch, but I’m popping in to say threads like this are actually good for the engineer community overall. Over the last few weeks, as the popularity of “joke” threads like “Famous Quotes” and “Only an Engineer” grew, the number of blatantly dev-flaming, shameless qq-ing, “Anet hates us” posts actually decreased.

People vented their frustration by making jokes instead of writing hate mail. I fail to see the problem with that.

Zodian.6597:

• The most effective thing we could do* is run statistics on which builds for each class are being played the most in tpvp games and just set those as the “defaults” that new players start with upon entering the mists, rather than the complete random garbage traits/utilities/runes/wep sets they start with currently.

• We could also just make the Heart of Mists a cross-server lobby, so that new players who pick a server that doesn’t have an spvp playerbase (like any server but anvil rock and desolation) wont be discouraged from playing the game. This would also unite the community so new players who have questions can actually get answers via map chat from their peers.

• A solo queue ladder. Now anyone who knows me, knows that i’ve been advocating for a solo queue ladder forever, and this is because (pertaining to this thread only, i could ramble about solo queue ladders all day) it’s SO detrimental for streams to develop a larger viewerbase; nobody wants to watch or learn from the “self proclaimed top Mesmer NA”, a strong viewerbase for streams is ESSENTIAL for the casual player-base to be able to learn, and in it’s current state; there is no individual skill progression in gw2, just team-based progression, and not even much team progression even.

I don’t usually get so excited over a post, but…

Thanks for writing an awesome, well-reasoned, practical assessment of the issues keeping new players from enjoying their time trying PvP. The “Billy” story was right on—the devs should be thinking about the “first experience” a new PvPer has. Right now, it’s not a very fun experience your first time.

I quoted these three because I consider them to be the most important out of all the good suggestions. The ranked solo-queue should be listed side-by-side with hotjoin, so that new PvPers know that they can pop into a hotjoin if they want to practice or farm, but it’s not intended to work as an actual team vs team mode. Hotjoin as the “standard” PvP experience is the worst problem currently.

These suggestions are mostly not difficult to implement and without a doubt should be placed next on the PvP devs’ to-do list. The already-shrinking playerbase didn’t make the best choice when we called loudly for spectator mode and custom matches as the “most important” things—they weren’t. These are.

MrAptronym.2846:

My engineer is so bad, he drinks to forget, but just gets swiftness instead.

Gotta love that RNG.

aydenunited.5729:

After running several different variations of the “100 nades” build, I’ve come to these conclusions.

1) It is viable overall if you run with at least one other player.

2) High burst damage that basically sacrifices every single other thing we can and do offer to a team

Basically, when people mention how other professions do everything better than us, this type of build and thinking is the reason why. We are not meant for high-damage high-burst without sacrificing much more than other professions.

I’m convinced we are meant to be CC kings, and stability rules in tPvP. If we are not bunker, I now believe our role in tPvP, which is right now handicapped by ease of access to stability… is to neautralize a node without having to kill. We are potentially the best bunker-busters in the game. Anyway, I’m getting off topic, but there. Viable in a group if you must, but it is a rather gimmicky burst build, with even less survivability than Static Discharge in that it requires getting into melee+ range to do, and usually requires you to tether down your opponent enough to get the full potential.

Nailed it. 100nades is a good build, probably a little better than 100blades is overall. But I sure wish it weren’t the pinnacle of engineer achievements. We have so much fun stuff to theorycraft and play with, and we CAN do something that no other profession can do—approach any enemy bunker 1v1 and fully expect to have the node neutral in under 10 seconds. A build that’s so focused around landing 1 skillshot isn’t bad, necessarily—I just don’t feel like that’s what the profession was supposed to be.

My fear is that the few minor tweaks we need to bring the cc engi into the meta will be overlooked because, well, they have that grenade build already.

daydream.2938:

The casual experience is lacking, in large part because of no match mkaing and barriers to entry in competitive play.

Your either a super casual hot join player, or competitive, its hard to be semi casual which is what grows the community with enough interest in the pvp enviroment to be interested in a competitive e sports generating environment.

True, and there just aren’t a lot of people who are SO extremely casual that they’re all right with hotjoin. I think “semi-casual” is going to become a buzzword in the industry within the next five years.

I think eles are just the only mobile, tanky dps in the game. I wish other professions could build like that.

Edit: scratch that—the only tanky dps in the game. Having great mobility is just an extra.

Engineer players are kind of cranky sometimes

If you’re planning on doing PvP tournaments, yes, guardians would be great. But it sounds to me like you’re looking for a warrior, probably axe or maybe greatsword. You won’t really need to switch weapons ever if you don’t want to.

Hopefully they’re alpha testing it now. If they aren’t, they should be—as you say, it wouldn’t be hard to do. There could be some serious profession imbalances that surface in TDM testing, but on the whole I’d say the game is almost ready for it.

Deathmatch does have the drawback of not working at all with people joining and leaving the match at will. Before they can actually put TDM “hotjoin” in the game, they need a single-match random vs random mode, where everyone starts at the beginning of the match and plays to the end.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

How is it a one trick pony? You have a spike, you have yanks, mobility, condition support/damage and you have medkit which can make holding points a lot easier for others (Lay down a bunch of those bandages before you leave).

It’s not gimmicky at all. If this is gimmicky, what isn’t?

At first, I thought it was total cheese—now I’m seeing that there is some depth to it.

However, it’s a “one-trick pony” in that if you miss your double barrage, you have to re-position. If your “one trick” works, you win, and if not, you play ranged pressure until barrage comes off cooldown. It is also a “gimmick” in that it is extremely effective only under bizarre circumstances, and it’s hard for new players to understand what happened (in other words—why do you do more damage standing inside your opponent’s character model? Until it’s explained to someone, it will never “make sense”).

Haha, yes, in general warrior would be the way to go. They are simple enough and you can do pretty well with just a few skills. They’re also interesting enough to make you think about what traits and weapons you want, etc. In other words, extremely quick to learn, but can still take a long time to truly master.

Edit: engineers would be a very bad choice if you’re looking to not have to give your fingers a workout. Sorry, it’s just the way the profession is.

If you see an engi chucking grenades, just treat him exactly as you would a hundred blades warrior—the burst setup and delivery is somewhat similar, and they have the same weaknesses (slows, cc, condi-remove their immobilize).

The cooldown for the grenade barrage skill is usually 24 or 27 seconds, depending on what version of 100nades the engi is running. They’ll use it once per fight, no more or less.

Geewoody.2017:

It’s already out. Go join an empty Capricorn server.

I…don’t think this is the same subject everyone else is talking about. Dueling, maybe?

Fact is, the PvP community called for things like spectator mode and custom arenas much louder than we called for random vs random matches. Oops.

Geewoody.2017:

I’m looking forward to pug’ing free tournies and farming mid. It’s so easy to get skirmisher/defender combo kills I might even get from r40 to r50 within the duration of the event.

So much truth there. Paid tourneys were supposed to be a poor man’s matchmaking system—the best of the best teams just do paids, making life a little more bearable for solo queue’ers and casuals. Maybe this will bring that idea to fruition. I’ll hop in on Temple once or twice but after that, I’m looking for some random vs random matches for a change.

Ayestes.1273:

I disagree that it’s anything remotely like an ele staying only in Fire attunement. The build rotates through Grenade Kit, Tool Kit, and Rifle constantly and utilizes all of the shortened tool belt skills pretty often.

Fair enough. My thought was that all the grenade skills feel the same and the build relies heavily on landing the double grenade barrage, and does range pressure with grenades before and after that burst attempt. I realize that’s an over-simplification, though, just like it’s an over-simplification to say hb is nothing but rush/frenzy/hb.

Dee Jay.2460:

It’s funny how most balance discussions in GW2 evolve around either 1-shotting people or being an unkillable Bunker.

And then everyone comes into the threads asking for a larger variety of balanced PvP amulets and says it would ruin everything But I digress…

The hundred nades build is pretty much exactly the same as a warrior using hundred blades and frenzy. They have two cc moves to set up their burst—net shot and magnet.

Magnet has a 1.25 second cast time and will show a faint glowing line between him and you. You can dodge it, or just let it hit you and dodge after, because it doesn’t do any damage. Magnet will pull you to the engineer.

Net shot is on a very short cooldown (usually 8 seconds). It is also easy to dodge because it moves so slowly, but you can’t dodge every single one of them. If you’re not in melee range, you can avoid the net shots by walking sideways—you don’t have to blow a dodge. Net shot also doesn’t do any damage, so don’t feel like you have to dodge all of them. Net shot will immobilize you for 2 and a half seconds.

If the engineer does land a magnet and a net shot both on you one right after the other—use every defensive button you have because you’re about to take 9k-15k damage, depending on whether or not you have any toughness. As others have said, the engineer has to be even closer than melee range for it to work—standing right inside of you.

XScott.1940:

- Custom arenas doesn’t do anything for me. On the off chance that I get invited into one, I’m just going to be annoyed that I don’t know the rules.

- I’d probably only check out the spectator thing a few times as a novelty. If I want to learn the subtleties of a given play style, there are many write-ups and videos on the web.

- Tournaments mean nothing to me. I have a hard time getting one other person to play with, and as a casual (bad) player, I’m not going to get on any teams any time soon. It seems like ArenaNet wants tPvP to be the real game, and sPvP is just for practice, but to me – sPvP is the real game.

Anyways, I’m sure some people will agree with me, and I know I’ll get some stupid comments from the PvP elitists. However, I felt the need to vent my frustration at the missing things which keep this from being a really great game.

Hit the nail on the head. The “vocal” section of the forums is mostly hardcore players who are asking for features that might be kind of cool for some people. The average player doesn’t care about watching two pro teams play. They don’t rent custom arenas to “practice” (why would you practice a video game?)

The irony is that the forums are full of people saying “Anet doesn’t listen…” when the reality is that they are probably listening too closely. I wish that it was random vs random coming out this patch instead of 1-match paids. I mean, I know there are over 300 players doing paids, but…shouldn’t we be trying to attract new/casual PvPers?

On tournaments—you may find yourself mistaken. Try submitting your roster solo and see who you get on your team. Tournaments are actually just as casual-friendly as hotjoins, without some of the really frustrating stuff. A lot of casual players have been leaving so it’s a little more likely to get placed against a really good team in voip than it used to be. However, the risk is worth it for me.

Again, for tourneys, I’d suggest having the tournament not begin until all 64 players have accepted. It wouldn’t be hard to have the tournament system wait until all 64 players accept the tourney; if only 61 respond, their spots can be filled by others.

I also see no problem with an afk penalty, and that would be effective for hotjoins. The only thing worse than playing in a 5v6 hotjoin is playing a 5v6 hotjoin where two of your teammates are sitting in spawn. 5v6 is manageable; 3v6 is frustrating. It’s no wonder the PvP playerbase isn’t growing—everyone who tries it has a very frustrating experience at least once in their first 2-3 games.

I don’t think it’s a very beneficial build for engies—the build is strong but the playstyle is very similar to a hb warrior. It is a good build, maybe even a little stronger overall than a hb warrior as far as tournaments are concerned.

I feel like this build is similar to what a “fire elementalist” would be if it was viable to just stay in one element all the time. Let’s say there was one really strong fire attack that eles could use every 25 seconds or so, and if they just stay in fire attunement all the time they can try to position themselves well and gank someone with it. It might be an effective build, but it wouldn’t feel like an ele should.

We definitely have to finish our own combo fields to be effective in any build (except for that one where you try to run up real close to somebody and hope he doesn’t dodge while you use the same skill twice at the same time—that one doesn’t really use any combos).

Bomb kit is great as it has two fields and a blast finisher. Ditto on Elixir gun, and you can get leap retaliation and blast retaliation from it—not all that bad.

Of course, with good timing you can detonate your healing turret in its own water field…

The only use I’ve found for stealth is to drop BoB and smoke bomb while I run to rez someone—it’s such a great feeling when you not only interrupt the stomp, but also stealth yourself and your downed teammate. Unfortunately, BoB’s fuse time is about as long as a stomp, so it’s hard to pull off. If you’re running with a shield you can double tap 4 to get stealth as soon as possible before rezzing.

Good thoughts. I’d say it would be good to just choose a few small but important buffs to push for—Anet’s not going to buff us across the board, even if it’s justified. I’m not sure if we should push for turret buffs, because unless it’s something like double health, double damage, people still probably won’t use them. I’d say we should focus on:

—bug fixes
—projectile reflect for fractals viability
—group stability or easier access to stunbreaks for pvp
—much lower cooldowns for gadgets, so they can be a viable alternative to taking another kit

Although it looks like instead, we may just get an OP portal-like utility (not as good as the real portal, of course) to even out the bad things…sigh.

I completely agree, bombs are our best kit. After level 60, grenades become viable and are probably as good for PvE.

Shrek: For your information, there’s a lot more to engies than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example… uh… engies are like onions!
[holds up an onion, which Donkey sniffs]
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes… No!
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
Shrek: No!
Donkey: Oh, you leave ‘em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs…
Shrek: [peels an onion] NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Engies have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
[walks off]
Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake!
Shrek: I don’t care what everyone else likes! Engies are not like cake.
Donkey: You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits!

—Shrek (2001)

Khyras.8021:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Khyras.8021:

Darnis.4056:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I think a better system would be to force all 64 players to click an “accept” button before the tournament is officially “starts.” If only 61 players click the “accept” button within 1 minute, the game finds 3 other solo-queue players and fills the slots.

This sounds like a solid idea, I hope Anet is looking at this thread because this would be pretty great if implemented.

Solid idea? few minutes ago you claimed that leavers arent big problem in this game now you like the potential solution to that problem? This guy is amazing.

I don’t mind if people aren’t excited about one idea but like another one. To be fair, originally he/she said that a deserter debuff isn’t the best solution. I really like the idea of waiting for 64 players to “accept” the tournament, and I think it would be more effective (for tournaments) than a debuff.

Your solution only works for AFKers and leavers up to the moment the match starts, but not for those who leave when the match starts and during the match.

Fair enough. My reasoning is that, although someone rage-quitting mid-match is a problem, it is a bigger problem to have games that begin 4v5. Also, people who rage-quit from tourneys already can’t join another one until that tourney is ended.

For that matter, you could have a quitter debuff AND an accept tourney button. I’m not against a debuff.

Vision.3541:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Vision.3541:

Imagine a ranger with toughness, vitality, condition damage, and healing power

Imagine him with axe/toch and sword dagger

Imagine him and cry

The mods are limited so people like him dont exist

Umm, tough/vit/healing/condi is four stats, so you don’t have to worry about that combination coming up, since PvP amulets only have three stats on them. We could stand a tough/vit/condi amulet, though.

There is only one stat combination that would “ruin” things—toughness/vit/healing. As long as we avoid that, we’re fine. I don’t understand why everyone is opposed to all other stat combinations because bunkers. The reason bunkers exist is because there’s not really any other way to get toughness in your build at all except to go full bunker. Some new amulets could change that.

Have you ever seen how hard a torch ranger hits with conditions? If they just had healing power and toughness over that they would start a river of tears floating all through the forums. And some amulents have more than 3 stats, go look.

A toughness/condi/healing amulet already exists, it’s called shaman’s. I’m not denying that shortbow/sword-torch condi rangers are deadly, I’m just saying that adding a couple new stat choices that made more balanced builds would not make them gods all of a sudden.

I suppose we could get into 4-stat amulets with all the stats lowered, but there’s already celestial if you want a little of everything and nobody likes it. There’s also zerker’s and rampager’s, but I don’t see any complaints about those?

Khyras.8021:

Darnis.4056:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I think a better system would be to force all 64 players to click an “accept” button before the tournament is officially “starts.” If only 61 players click the “accept” button within 1 minute, the game finds 3 other solo-queue players and fills the slots.

This sounds like a solid idea, I hope Anet is looking at this thread because this would be pretty great if implemented.

Solid idea? few minutes ago you claimed that leavers arent big problem in this game now you like the potential solution to that problem? This guy is amazing.

I don’t mind if people aren’t excited about one idea but like another one. To be fair, originally he/she said that a deserter debuff isn’t the best solution. I really like the idea of waiting for 64 players to “accept” the tournament, and I think it would be more effective (for tournaments) than a debuff.

I support a deserter debuff, but I think a better system would be to force all 64 players to click an “accept” button before the tournament is officially “starts.” If only 61 players click the “accept” button within 1 minute, the game finds 3 other solo-queue players and fills the slots.

The time before the match starts is reduced to 2 minutes to compensate. Players who go to the match before all 64 players click “accept” get the “waiting for players” message, and the 2-min countdown begins as soon as all 64 players are confirmed to actually be present.

GW2 PvP was supposed to appeal to casuals, but hotjoins lack basic features like having even teams and keeping the same teammates for more than 2 minutes at a time, and don’t really function as anything besides practice/glory farm. Tournaments have a casual/solo queue option, but are badly plagued by the way that casuals often have to play 4v5 and often have to play against premades in voip. Random vs random and even teams are the most important things for growing the playerbase right now. Who’s going to keep playing if 3/5 of their first games are horrible experiences?

Terrahero.9358:

NevirSayDie.6235:

The devs aren’t clueless and they don’t hate engies, but people will look at bad responses like this and think otherwise.

I dont think theyd hate the profession, why hate something you create?

But is it really that hard to imagine they might just be a bit clueless? I think not. They approach the game from a different angle. Things that are clear to them are obscured to us, but this works both ways. And things that are clear to us are unknown to the devs.

Do i have to remind you about the whole profession description debacle again? Applying a hybrid tax for being versatile, then recognizing another profession as much more versatile but allowing that without a tax.
The very description of the Engineer conflicts with reality, and no steps have been made to bring reality and intent closer. So they must believe these two already meet.
Good example, they suppose the Engineer is a highly versatile profession. When in reality it is not. The best builds put forward, those that are trailing behind the least, are all highly specialized builds.

Fair enough. Logic tells me that developers skilled enough to create, advertise, and release a popular game like GW2 cannot be absolutely incompetent. However, statments like the one in this thread seem to indicate otherwise.

I fully expect that the original logic is correct, and this statement is just a bad blunder on the devs’ part. However, I can’t say I blame anyone who sees so many badly-worded statements like this and begins to assume that the devs really are that ignorant.

Another thing I’ve often wondered: engies are actually pretty good in WvW, so I’m wondering if maybe the devs are more focused on that game mode than others. Engineers:

Competent in WvW
Fine for world PvE, because everything’s fine there
Sort of all right in PvP, but not good enough for the meta
Bad at dungeons

I think a lot of the players on the engineer forums are thinking of dungeons and tournaments, and maybe the devs are thinking of Orr events and Keep defense. Again, not a shining reflection on the devs’ competence, but it could explain some things. Certainly, most of the players who defend engies as being powerful as-is are WvW players, and most who see them needing buffs are dungeon/tournament players.

Vision.3541:

Imagine a ranger with toughness, vitality, condition damage, and healing power

Imagine him with axe/toch and sword dagger

Imagine him and cry

The mods are limited so people like him dont exist

Umm, tough/vit/healing/condi is four stats, so you don’t have to worry about that combination coming up, since PvP amulets only have three stats on them. We could stand a tough/vit/condi amulet, though.

There is only one stat combination that would “ruin” things—toughness/vit/healing. As long as we avoid that, we’re fine. I don’t understand why everyone is opposed to all other stat combinations because bunkers. The reason bunkers exist is because there’s not really any other way to get toughness in your build at all except to go full bunker. Some new amulets could change that.

Most of the teams that run two eles are not speccing them both full bunker. It’s more like 1 bunker – 2 roaming/tanky dps – 2 glass cannons.

Lord Aargadon.4135:

NevirSayDie.6235:

The devs aren’t clueless and they don’t hate engies, but people will look at bad responses like this and think otherwise.

We know they aren’t clueless, but like you said its still the same issue. We still haven’t gotten a straight answer from devs, we’re left with horrendus patch notes and ‘answers’ that seem more setup than an american reality tv show. It makes us feel bad and they just repeat the same mistake, honestly listening to devs talking about engi is like dealing with missmissmissmiss flamethrower, its just frustrating and there is no apparent reason to why its happening.

Right, that shows what I meant pretty well. A lot of engineer players are frustrated, even though there are some decent builds and the problems aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be (although the problems are real). Why are people frustrated? Refer to first post.

Best advice for new players starting PvP is—don’t do hotjoins more than once or twice just to get a feel for the maps and your skillset. Then jump right in to free tourneys. Hotjoins and tourneys both have pros and cons, but the cons of hotjoins are more harmful to your personal skill development. You’ll be a much better player after playing tourneys for a week than you would after playing hotjoins for several months.

In hotjoins there’s not a reliable option to stay on the same team with your friends. This is probably good because otherwise a group of coordinated friends would constantly kill a group of uncoordinated new players, and the new players would all quit.

If you like playing with friends you probably like working together and playing as a team. In that case, you should try free tourneys. They sound intimidating but they’re usually pretty casual, although sometimes you may meet a high-rank premade. Overall, though, tourneys make for better/closer/more fun matches than hotjoin.

I’m not into dev bashing. The engi does have some strong builds that are capable of achieving at the level of most other professions, in the hands of a quite skilled player, of course.

That said, the dev response to that question was pretty bad. They should not be surprised at taking flak for that. The question started “My engineer feels weak…” and the first thing the dev responds with is, “We just nerfed grenades.”

“Versatility, tricks, and gadgets”—right after championing our cheesiest one-trick-pony build as the engineer’s full potential. Cool.

The devs aren’t clueless and they don’t hate engies, but people will look at bad responses like this and think otherwise.

stof.9341:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Where is toughness/crit damage/power for example? Hell, even soldier mod isn’t available (toughness/precision/power) wtf? Why… This limits already limited amount of builds in the game.

Soldier is Power/Thoughness/Vitality and it’s available.

The OP is thinking of the PvE Knight’s set, which is high toughness/medium power/medium precision. I think that would be a great set for PvP. We might even see balanced power builds for the warrior and necro become viable. Right now, if you want any toughness AT ALL, you can’t get decent offense with it. Why is everyone surprised people are running full bunker/full burst?