Guild Wars 2

I believe Anet’s goal was to use warrior as a kind of “base” to balance other professions around—if something is stronger than the warrior it needs a nerf, weaker needs buff?

Warriors are already so good in PvE/WvW that Anet needs to be careful about buffing them for PvP (I don’t really do fractals, but you don’t want people saying “can’t do fractal level XX without 3 warriors in your group.”) I think they need better condition removal traits and some more tempting utilities than the 4 (?) viable ones (I don’t play warrior but I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than 4-5 of their utility skills used).

Chi Malady.2015:

You don’t play tournaments for glory and bunkers are really only for tournaments. You shouldn’t be using a bunker in hotjoin. You should be glory farming there. Not only are you preventing yourself from accumulating glory, you’re also stopping others from doing so. :P

I don’t disagree that you’ll get more glory by just thief ganking, but this is basically equivalent to saying “lol you’re trying to use strategy? Just zerg.”

Unfortunately, it’s all too true that most people join 8v8s just to follow their group and get as many points as they can. Things like playing as a team or trying to win the match—that’s only in tournaments.

Since there are no “build templates,” this was done to allow people to quickly change to a different playstyle without having to spend several minutes changing every piece of equipment or being confused by sub-optimal stat choices (for example, Power/toughness/crit damage might be an awesome compliment to a certain trait selection for a certain profession, but for most builds it would be awful.)

Now, a lot of people are asking for more options/customization. However, there’s one option that wouldn’t be healthy for PvP (namely, tough/vit/healing) and so some players say there should be no more combinations at all to be certain we avoid this bad one.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Damage.7493:

It has to be substantial to entice people (strange as it may sound) to win the match.

I get what you’re saying, and I agree with the sentiment. However, I needed to quote this, because the fact that games have devolved to this point, where the reward means more than the competitive spirit, is ultra sad to me.

Even when the reward is purely cosmetic.

Agree 100%. I’ve never understood the fun of “farming” for anything, especially PvP rewards. I would say the issue with hotjoin is that there isn’t really a “competitive spirit” because the “team” you’re on may have all its members leave and be replaced with new ones by the end of the match; or, you may be forced to join the other “team” multiple times. The fact that playing badly is rewarded with extra fashion points probably makes the problem worse, though.

JohnDied.3476:

The diablo 3 forums became a cesspit because a large percentage of the player base became dissatisfied with the state of the game. Likewise, there is a large percentage of players who find their engineers to be unsatisfying (due to bugs or nerfs) or underwhelming compared to other classes.

One thing I’ve found interesting, is that looking at the other class forums you don’t get this much of a “Troll” feel from them. What I mean is that over the months it seems like the people who go to the engineer forum have gotten embittered with the lack of communication/bug-fixes/improvement and the forum begins to mirror this mood. First it was complaints about bugs, then became unrest with the nerfs, followed by self criticism/dark humor. This behavior has actually begun to dance around the fine line of blatantly trolling people willing to work around the issues and discreetly (or not) badmouthing Arena Net.

Whew, the D3 forums were (are?) horrible.

For a while, the engineer forums got kind of bad—especially the first couple weeks after the (biggest) nade nerf. There were a lot of gloomy “Anet hates us” posts. As of now, I think things have calmed down quite a bit. We still have all the same bugs/weaknesses but there are some engies performing very well in PvP, and that helps a lot. In other words, everyone knows the profession still has issues, but as long as somebody has found a way to make it work, there’s hope.

The tone of the engi forums is actually pretty cheerful, in a kind of light-hearted, sardonic-Asuran-humor sort of way. We make fun of ourselves, quote famous sayings about engineers, and create turret builds that we all know are awful—all with the satisfying knowledge that we are skilled enough to beat a backstabbing thief with a WRENCH!!!

Engi is a good profession if you enjoy constantly tweaking your build. Even the smallest changes can have a huge impact on your playstyle There’s a high skill floor (at least for our best builds; we have a couple of gimmick builds that don’t take long to pick up).

A lot of the issues people talk about on the forums are real. Some are exaggerated. There are a ton of bugs to learn to work around, and some things flat-out don’t work at all. Engi has been heavily nerfed, but is still great in PvE and WvW, and pretty good in PvP. Our weakest/least represented areas are high-level fractals and paid tournaments.

The other posters are right—engi really is fun. That’s why we all keep playing them.

We definitely would gain a lot of versatility from more traits that affected multiple utility skills. Why is kit refinement good? Not because it’s OP, because it’s one of our only traits that gives a benefit to more than one utility skill.

Grenadier and juggernaut are both good traits, but don’t leave room for much of that versatility that we were hoping for. My favorite build is a crazy 4-kit that doesn’t have 30 points in any single traitline, just because in my opinion being a “flamethrower engi” or a “grenade engi” is the opposite of what the profession was supposed to be.

Even our traits that affect all elixirs, or all gadgets, are lame because most of those are cooldown reductions, etc. Traits like static discharge and kit refinement are fun because they actually add versatility to our skillset.

Wow. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this…very nice work. Bump because every engi should know about this.

1-yes
2-yes, I love playing a healer.
3-no, I feel it made balancing harder. However, overall things seem to be going decently well as far as balance. A trinity is easier to balance, in my opinion, because the ones with the most important skills are also the easiest to kill.

In GW2, damage and survivability trade off at a 1:1 ratio. Thus, bunker/burst. I don’t like that aspect of it—I wish there were more choices than just offense or defense. In a traditional trinity, there are characters with low damage AND low survivability, and yet they’re still important—a third dimension, outside of the sliding scale of armor to damage.

tl;dr—having no healers is fun because it means everybody gets to do everything. Also, team composition is much more flexible (no mandatory healers). Unfortunately, it’s also harder to balance and more binary.

The flamethrower was originally conceived as a light AoE damage/control kit, but then the devs decided that the control was too much (they were right, by the way; the old flamethrower/juggernaut was the most OP skill in the entire game). However, when they nerfed both stability and control, they didn’t really make up for it by increasing the damage, except for handing out a few might stacks.

I think there used to be a 20-something pyro-maniac plays-in-a-metal-band developer for Anet who designed the engineer, but then he got fired.

I like it. Detonating the turret flamethrower #4=another 3 might stacks. Shield 4=another 3. Shucks, if people really want the might grab trait #10 in explosives and use med kit. Even after the buff to HGH, I’ve always felt like it was a huge tradeoff to have to constantly chug elixirs to get the same dps increase you could get from comboing a couple fire fields or just switching to med kit every 10 seconds.

LegoTechnic.5910:

Which is less played, the engineer or the necromancer?

I’m actually curious, because I rarely see either.

I’m pretty sure the engineer is miles behind necro—Anet hasn’t released any stats on that recently, but a couple weeks after launch necros were middle of the pack and engineers were last. I don’t think engineers have gained a lot since then.

Edit: Oh, and if engineers get nerfed even more they’ll still be super fun to play. I don’t really care about paid tournaments or fractals, and engies can do everything else (with a generous helping of extra effort) so…bring it on, Anet! Engi never gets old. Switch one utility and your entire playstyle changes.

MelonGuy.2473:

“Do a reroll!” – Peppy Hare

Excellent. Possibly my favorite in a long, illustrious list of awesome quotes.

Ostricheggs.3742:

It’s because of the long respawns IMO. Before they changed it to 15 seconds the game felt a lot more small scale. Now if someone is out of position they get gang kitten then their team gets pushed on another point before they can respawn, usually losing the point in the process.

It’s a snowball effect. If I decide to roam over to henge from mine and get ganked by an ele and a thief, my team is down a player for almost 30 seconds because of the time spent respawning and running back. If I get bled out you can make that almost a minute. In the time it takes for me to get back to a fight at henge my team has been getting kitten on one man down and are usually almost dead before I even get there.

Khylo feels like the only opportunity to get any small scale fights. Foefire is a kitten show because graveyard is too kittening big and graveyard is crucial to that map.

Edit: I might also add that this is why things like eles are so popular. Not only is it near impossible to lose 1v1 but they’re also one of the fastest roamers in the entire game and are absurdly strong sustained damage in team fights (which seem to be forced more and more in the current meta).

Thank you so much, that perfectly answered the question that was bugging me. Something felt a bit off with the way I was playing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something also does feel off about the lack of meaningful small-scale fights.

I’m curious about your thoughts on khylo. Why does it encourage small-scale encounters? I always feel the other way around—since the team that controls mid can see the entire map, don’t 2v2s become 4v2s even faster?

I think the appropriate question is, can you usually 1v2 against other professions successfully? I think the point here is that you’re fighting a necro and one of his teammates. Plus, necros are mostly attrition-based, and attrition=death by a thousand pinpricks, i.e. you can’t aegis that.

I don’t usually see guardians winning 1v2 against any two professions (except those under rank 15 or so) and your chances are much smaller when one of them is an anti-bunker. The way I see it, if you’ve got a necro and somebody else attacking you, your teammates have about 15 seconds (if you’re a good guardian) to save your hide.

Thanks for the responses all. I didn’t mean to say I’m a total noob—I’m rank 30—I just haven’t done much in the way of paids and I wanted to hear some opinions from people who have.

Again, I’m not complaining about anything. I tried to think of a different way to phrase the thread title but couldn’t really word it differently; I know it sounds like it’s going to be a qq thread.

I agree that a lot of games and sports are built around forcing uneven fights. For example, in hockey, penalties result in a “power play” where it’s 4v5 for a brief period of time. Basically, for GW2, I’m trying to find out if it’s better to put five people “on the ice” who have everything they need to beat the other five—or is it better to try to draw a penalty and take advantage of your 5v4. It’s looking like both are viable strategies, but forcing uneven fights (via portals, high-mobility burst, and guardians) is the more common tactic.

Most of the reason I asked was I noticed a lot of roamers from good teams didn’t do very well in 1v1s or 2v2s when they were cornered into them. My guess is that it’s because they’re built to take advantage of quick 2v1s, and it looks like that’s correct based on everyone’s responses. I’m looking forward to team deathmatches—it sounds like a lot of things we “know” about viable comps and builds will change in structured 2v2 or 3v3 fights.

kostbabis.8791:

But engies already have better mobility than many classes.Stupidly easy perma swiftness and a mobility skill that is better vertically than rtl in rifle.Necro would be more appropriate.

“Easy” swiftness =/= good mobility. Also, rifle 5 doesn’t really do vertical.

Sorry, people seem to think that ever since they first saw an engi in PvP last week they’re OP so I tend to overreact to things

I want to hear some opinions. I’m not the best player out there, but it seems that a lot of the good teams I see never engage in 1v1s or 2v2s, they try to create situations where they can 2v1/3v2 people down fast.

I’m not complaining about anything, I just want to know if people think it’s worthwhile to have a build that excels in a 1v1 or 2v2, or is it better to go full glass so you can 2v1 someone down faster?

Engineers are not as good at bunkering as eles or guardians, and the only thing that makes us decent is a wide array of cc available through our kits. Just warning you, the build you’re looking for doesn’t exist (yet…if turrets ever get better we could conceivably make a turret bunker build).

Archaon.6245:

A Tough/Healing/Vit jewel would be the end of pvp.

Which is why no one has ever suggested it. When people say they’re looking for more options for stat breakdowns in PvP, usually it’s some of the balanced combinations that are missing (i.e. 2 offensive stats/1 defensive stat). Or, it’s for more customization so they can spread their stats out more, like you can in PvE.

There are a lot of offensive abilities that negate defensive cooldowns. Teams still usually use 1-2 bunkers, so my guess is it’s best to keep it that way or bunkers would be too powerful.

Examples:

Backstab>blind
Pull>block
Ground effect cc>dodge/block

Could be something is bugged, but my guess is that this will just get added to the list of odd counters that don’t necessarily make sense.

Dee Jay.2460:

aaron.7850:

Dedalus.3065:

Didn’t we already get ctf in wintersday? Did anyone actually enjoy that?

yes we did, your point is?

The problem with the Wintersday map was that there was a single flag in the center of the map. The first team to reach it had an instant upper hand and it just got easier from there.

CTF is better when you have to steal the Flag from the enemy’s base and bring it to your own.

2-flag capture and center flag capture are both fun, although this is true. 1-flag capture basically means “control the middle, and periodically run a flag to your base.” I like center-flag better in shooters, because LoS is more important than distance. Especially in GW2, where almost all dps is melee, it would be difficult to make a center-flag mode work (although possible). 2-flag ctf sounds excellent, though. I personally like the idea of keeping weapon skills while holding the flag and trying to “muscle through” a couple of attackers, but giving the carrier “flag skills” could make this mode even more accessible to beginners (i.e. you don’t even have to know what your weapons do to contribute—just grab that flag and let your teammates support you). This “casual-friendliness” has been tested in shooters as well to good effect—creating more roles than simply winning fights seems to be good.

It can feel out of hand sometimes, especially since every single profession can build for at least decent cc. No diminishing returns on CC is also one of the things making guardians practically mandatory in top-tier teams, since guardians have by far the best ability for giving allies stability.

I don’t think it’s really possible to change, though—most cc combos are something like immobilize+knockdown+stun. I suppose an immobilize could trigger DR, but that seems excessive. Burst is high enough that even when someone gets “stunlocked,” it’s usually just an immobilize and one or two other cc skills. It would take a huge level of DR to effectively change that.

I think the best solution is to change the underperforming professions’ access to stability. Some common complaints about the weakest classes are that they have sub-par access to stability. Necros have stability as a grandmaster trait down a pretty bad traitline. Engineers have only one skill that gives stability, and that’s a 50/50 RNG on a 60-second cooldown. Rangers can get stability only from an elite. Warriors can get stability but it’s difficult for them to include it as one of their utilities.

And viola, there’s a summary of the four least-played (probably) professions in paid tournaments. I think we can solve two problems at once here.

Chi Malady.2015:

Balance is already a mess, let’s not make it worse.

Some wisdom there, and vit/tough/healing would be a nightmare.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Anet “released” some new stat combinations for PvP, though. There’s nothing that says you have to include a vit/tough/healing combination. A lot of people complain that “balanced” builds aren’t viable, and I would agree to a point (although I’ve seen some very impressive builds that seemed to sit nicely between burst and bunker). Releasing something like Power/precision/toughness might encourage a tanky-dps warrior or power necro. It probably wouldn’t make already-powerful builds better because no one wants a tough thief with 10k hp.

“Probably” wouldn’t cause balance issues—but would need testing. There are certainly some stat combinations to avoid.

Because the only way to actually see/talk to people cross server is to meet them in a match. Basically, it’s more difficult to form groups, organize unofficial tournaments, organize “deathmatch” rounds, organize premade vs premade fights…currently, the only people you can talk to are the ~30-40 people in HoTM on your server.

I’m not sure of the solution. Cross-server chat? Better lfg tools?

Ersahi.9723:

I’m not opposed to the idea of a hammer for engineers. It made more sense than the two dual shield concept I was working on. And the best part is that it can be our long range skirmish weapon of choice (considering rifle is short ranged and pistol is medium range). Easier to make up long ranged attacks using a hammer instead of a main hand shield.

I would play a dual-shield class in a heartbeat, even if it made no sense and was horrible.

I think the main thing holding back hammer is that hammers seem to be melee cc weapons. We already have a melee cc weapon, only it’s rifle. It would just feel…weird to choose rifle for melee, hammer for range…but maybe that’s just me.

I think hammer as a one-hander would be cool, since currently main hand pistol is the only option for including a shield. It would end up feeling a lot like toolkit, though.

I like it but even if the idea actually caught fire, it would just mean every other server would be empty while anvil rock would be causing overflows. I have been thinking about the lack of communication between servers as far as PvP is concerned though. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s actually a really important issue, more important than a lot of the features we seem to want badly.

Correct, all forms of complete invulnerability and all forms of stealth cause the player to stop contesting the point. If you’re down to 25% health, though, you were about to lose the point anyway, so it’s kind of a moot point. It is a strong reason to consider using a different utility skill, however.

I would say our bunker builds are significantly less survivable than guardian or ele. However, we are usually able to bring more knockbacks than an ele and more AoE than a guardian. I’d say our strengths are more suited to far-point harassment/bunker than mid-point.

Nkuvu.2570:

NevirSayDie.6235:

the bottom line is they are essentially not profiting from it or hurting other players.

Again I ask — where in the definition of botting does it say it needs to be profitable?

This is leveling while AFK. Slowly, but still possible. But it’s using ArenaNet’s own game play, so the question remains.

Also, in regards to not hurting other players, that’s another thing that’s nowhere in the definition of botting. And of course in the Sylvari tutorial my new characters couldn’t unlock any weapon skills before heading to the dragon. Not a huge deal, really, but annoying.

At the farm in Queensdale (the first one, with wurms) the turrets can prevent players from quickly completing the heart — turrets can target the wurms while they’re still underground. Again not a huge deal since you can complete the heart other ways, but you’re actively interfering with another player’s kills by “stealing” them first.

Of course now that we’re in the Engineer forum rather than Account Issues (where I think it’s more appropriate to ask about potentially reportable actions, thanks mods!) I doubt I’ll get a definitive answer.

That’s why I said I merely thought there were other issues the devs should resolve first (such as people using actual “bots,” or computer programs, to play the game for them) than turret farming, which is not significantly profitable, nor does it harm the economy or players legitimately playing the game. I never said this wasn’t “botting,” just that essentially, if I were running a company this would be the last problem I would address concerning engineers. Maybe in 2015 or 2016 they should take a look at it. It’s just not important.

I like the idea of a turret kit. Actually, I think if there was just a kit that had an auto-attack and four turrets, it wouldn’t be overpowered. Rifle turret, flame turret, rocket turret, and thumper turret, all in their current state but without the toolbelt skills, might actually finally be used if they were all included in a single utility slot. The only thing that would need adjustment would be knockback on explosion—that would get out of hand if you could have that many turrets available.

I’m not one of the people who thinks that engineers are awful at everything and Anet hates us, but turrets are bad, period. I am seriously suggesting that combining four utilities into one would not be overpowered at all.

I like the idea of being able to create a “super turret” also. That sounds more like expansion material or a major, major patch, though.

Kardiamond.6952:

It’s Hotjoin, anyone can kill anyone, with any build.

Unfortunately, this is absolutely true. I do appreciate the things that show the engineer excelling at a chosen role, though.

Xruptor.3965:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Honestly, after watching your video of your 3-kit build I think your build is already pretty sweet. I do regularly run four kits though, with (I feel) good success in free tournaments.

Which video are you referring to? I don’t think I ever seen a video that has a Engineer using more than one or two kits. Could you please share again so I can take a look at it?

I think you were referring to a video by Aydenunited.

Yes, I was referring to this video: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/v2-0-Rifle-AoE-conditions-build-video/1178409

He also uses several other 3-kit variations.

I agree that signets were likely left out due to their “magical” component. Also, to make a signet for the engineer there would have to be a passive effect, an active effect, and a toolbelt skill. Possibly the devs didn’t want engineers to be able to stack a bunch of passive effects on top of each other and still have all those utility skills to use.

Did you try to “recruit” a team from the mists or just submit your roster? Tournaments aren’t explained well at all but they’re actually working pretty well. If you submit your roster, you’ll be put on a team with four other people (although one does sometimes drop, which is unfortunate).

Average wait time is about 30sec-3min in the evenings and 10-15 minutes in mornings.

Edit: if something is still preventing you from joining a tourney, check this information: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Playing-with-friends-2/1206338

I keep enjoying the engineer because it’s fun to play—using four kits, no two fights ever go exactly the same way in PvP and there’s an extremely high skill cap that I certainly haven’t hit yet. It’s also very rewarding to do well with an engineer because you know you’re playing against the odds.

Sigils were patched to now work with kits, which has pretty much been our only buff so far. In other words, not much has changed, but engineer players are now so pro that when the profession gets balanced engi players will look like superheroes

Basically, if you can manage to get grenade barrage (toolbelt skill for grenade kit) to land exactly right on top of an enemy, it will do quite a bit of damage. The trait in Tools (kit refinement) makes you drop grenades when you switch to the grenade kit, so if you’re standing right on top of an enemy and switch to grenade kit and use grenade barrage right at the same time, it will do a pretty fair amount of damage. You’ll need to use net shot (rifle 2) to set it up. If you are running all offense/zero defense, fighting a target that’s all offense/zero defense with no condition removals, you can do maybe 14-15k damage in the span of a second or two.

Very solid build. I’ll agree that other professions can achieve similar results more easily, but that’s kind of par for the course right now. One thing that you can do with the engineer that other professions don’t do as well is lifesteal food—the high attack rate of the flamethrower can make you a mean lifesteal tank in most PvE/dungeon situations.

Oranisagu.3706:

@NevirSayDie:
now THAT’s some information ANet really should make more accessible. I expected the tourny master to explain this stuff. this also explains the always empty tourny browser – my server is pretty desolate (after lots of guilds left because of some kindergarden, sorry WvW-drama) so it’s no wonder there are no tournies of our server.
thanks a lot for your explanation, I’ll try it tomorrow and see how it goes =) and it can’t go worse than losing – which doesn’t count towards the monthly but at least in groups of 5 there can’t be 8 thiefs on one side, so it should be rather relaxing ;-)

Certainly. It kind of looks like Anet didn’t expect tournaments to be played by anything except hardcore 5-man teams on voip, and they didn’t really add any features/explanation for casual/semi-casuals who want to try it out. And yes, I find it much more relaxing than 8v8, and more exciting at the same time. Remember, it doesn’t matter if your server is dead in PvP—tourneys will pop all the same. There is a chance of running into a high-level, well-organized team and getting stomped, since there’s still no matchmaking, but I consider it well worth the risk.

Kamahl.3621:

PowerBottom.5796:

- The engi has no real gap-closer

Magnet. Hardly even has a tell. Works 70% of the time, every time.

Love it. Oh, also has an added bonus of working great on flat terrain.

Oranisagu.3706:

also, whenever I enter the mists I usually make a quick detour to the tourny announcer and look if there’s one scheduled. I’d really like to try it out some time, but of course, I’ve never ever seen a tourny in progress or in queue. the list is always empty. so either I completely misunderstood the whole system (then how would I actually go about finding out if a tourny is running soon?) or my server (and/or tPvP in general) is just completely and utterly dead.

tl;dr: I want to play with my brother – in sPvP it’s pure luck if it works out after the first match (i.e. when the teams are the same size) and I simply can’t get into tPvP – not for lack of trying.

The tPvP browser is not explained well, but I assure you that free tourneys are happening practically all the time.

Basically, tourneys are cross-server, so the entire region (north america or europe) is put together in a single tourney. HOWEVER, the tourney npc conversation only shows the information from your specific server. So even if there are 7 teams queued up for a tournament across the region, the npc will probably show only 1 or 2 queued up.

Other information about tourneys that isn’t really explained anywhere:
—you can join as an individual (or party of 2/3/4); the game will fill your party to 5 before the tourney starts
—you may get the “waiting for a full roster” message while queueing because someone on your team left the queue; in that case, you’ll need to re-submit your roster because the game doesn’t have a system for replacing the lost party member
—the word “tournament” sounds intimidating but actually there are a lot of low-level and casual players doing tournaments because you get to play with your friends and the problems of hotjoin are lessened (zerging, leaving, auto-balancing, etc.)

Hope that helps! Try submitting your roster to a tourney sometime—wait times are usually between 30sec-3 minutes in the evenings.

Edit: the tournament npc also has conversation options reserved for special, scheduled tournaments—there haven’t been any of those yet, they just wanted to have that stuff in place for when they do organize special tournaments. Just ignore those options (I believe they’re at the top of the conversation box) and go to “free tournaments.” Those are the kind that happen all the time.

I think this is pretty low on the priority list of “exploits” for several reasons:

1. It’s only possible in very low-level areas. Turrets can’t beat anything above level 4 or so on their own, and if a turret is placed so the mob can’t hit it, the mobs will go invulnerable.

2. It’s impossible to get anything except a (very) small rate of xp doing this. Your turrets can’t get loot or coin for you. The problems the game developers are concerned with are people farming stuff using bots (usually to sell to actual players for real money). You can’t do that by turret-afk-ing for a trickle of xp.

3. Leaving turrets up won’t stop the game from kicking you to character select after about an hour.

4. Turrets can’t kill even level 1 mobs fast enough to be a detriment to players actually playing the game. Anyone actually sitting in front of the computer will be able to tag the mobs no problem.

So, maybe one or two people are leaving turrets around just for the novelty of it, but the bottom line is they are essentially not profiting from it or hurting other players. Disclaimer: I don’t even PvE, so I don’t care about “farming” at all. I just hope the devs will focus their bug-fixing resources on the bugs that engineers actually have with their skills and traits.

Wow, the hate for engies is coming on strong today. On the rare chance that you see an engi in a decent team, this is probably similar to the build they’ll be running.

But yes, this burst is more difficult to set up and land with a longer cooldown and fewer escape options. On top of that, it does less damage than traditional roam/burst professions.

It seems people are afraid their own professions will get nerfed, so they are calling for nerfs on weaker/less-desired professions?

Darnis.4056:

Disgustingly OP burst in what looks like 16k in 0.1 seconds , is this a legit build ? I’ve seen this twice now… Makes warrior/thief burst look like it takes skill.

Can we stop using threads like these to say that the weaker professions are actually OP? I realize it’s uncomfortable to come to the forums and see a lot of calls for nerfs on your favorite profession, but the correct response is not to call weak professions OP.

There’s certainly a lot wrong, so don’t hear me saying everything is fine. However:

—the meta has evolved somewhat already. Teams only use one bunker now. It’s not really fair to say there is still a “bunker meta,” when team composition is 4 dps/1 bunker. However, seeing nearly every team run one guardian for mid point does say something about how necessary having one guardian is.

—Balance is actually pretty good for an MMO’s first year, especially considering the lack of a traditional trinity to make balancing easier (in a traditional trinity, all tanks can survive about the same length of time, dps classes have similar damage output, healers have similar heal outputs).

—On crowd control: engineers were supposed to be masters of the “stun+” cc you describe, yet they are considered one of the 2 weakest professions. I think balance is much more complex than “who has access to the most skills of type x.”

On the other hand, the current pvp population basically says that the negatives do outweigh the positives for most people who try GW2 pvp, so essentially the OP is correct. However, I choose to be cautiously optimistic about the future.

Divinity.8041:

Chi Malady.2015:

Thief is also good.

High mobility: Thieves have tons of teleports/speed buffs meaning you can get from point to point quickly (your objective in hotjoin is to neutralize/cap as many points as possible and not worry about holding)

High damage: Thieves have the highest burst in the game. They can kill most targets in 2-3 seconds which saves time (it can take other professions over 30 seconds to kill someone in a 1v1). It’s extremely important not to get bogged down in fights in hotjoin

High survivability: Stealth/teleports means that thieves can disengage from fights with ease. They are extremely difficult to kill, especially if you don’t have much CC

Grrr….what build are you talking about?

You know, the thief build. In fairness, the OP did say he didn’t want to play a thief, so this thread is basically about the other good builds for “scoring.”

Of course, THE best profession for “scoring high” in hotjoin is the one you hate, which is one reason why there’s so many of them. Apart from that:

—A mobile ele build will get you a lot of points because you’ll tag a lot of people and be in every fight
—A mesmer will get you a lot of points because it’s hard for players below rank ~10 to fight against them

Those are probably the second and third best “scoring” professions. Although, if I might give my own personal opinion, playing tournaments might be much more enjoyable for you. You don’t have to have a team, just submit your roster and you’ll be put in a pick-up group.

MotorshoW.3291:

I started playing engineed because of such tools.
But can’t play with them, because they are ineffective.

You, sir, just perfectly summed up the problems the engineer profession has.

Turrets are very bad right now. There are actually a lot of good things about the engineer—the profession isn’t as bad as a whole as everyone thinks. However, turrets are not part of the “good things.”

“Simple” =/= “easy.” Yes, there are aspects of this game that are “simple,” like how many skills auto-target or are AoE. That doesn’t mean the entire game is easy. In fact, 90% of players would tell you that PvP suffers from being too unfriendly to casuals.

There are also problems with the feedback the game gives its players. Anyone who creates a thief and jumps into an 8v8 could be fooled into thinking the game is “easy” because he’ll get a lot of glory. Put that same player in a free tourney and he’ll still think he’s good, but he’ll probably think his teammates are bad. Put that thief in a premade vs premade and he’ll realize he has no earthly clue what he’s doing. But the point remains, he’ll think he’s mastered the game by level 5 at the latest.

The alternative is also true: any player who creates an engineer will jump into a hotjoin and think he’s awful. Then it will start to look like the game is really easy—for the other professions. Then he’ll join tournaments, and again see the same professions on top of the leaderboards, and think that the balance is horrible.

It’s a difficult problem to solve, but I think over the next several months things will really start looking up.

Anymras.5729:

Aaah, I see. I’ve never been much for a lot of theorycrafting, preferring to just take something and tweak it as I go along. Not really sure if difficulty of theorycrafting should be seen as something to consider from a game balance perspective (which is how I believe the question of ‘what would happen if they gave us a kit we could make?’ should be treated), though. I may be missing something.

My thought is that engineers are already confusing enough. Game devs have to be careful about each profession’s effectiveness in the hands of a new player as well as the hands of an experienced player. Right now, the engineer has some a few good builds that experienced players have meticulously put together through serious thought and testing.

In other words, creating thousands of possible new combinations of skills would be really fun for the high-end players but would make the profession something of a hardcore-gamer-only-godmode. That’s what I mean when I say the profession is already “difficult enough” to theorycraft.

Edit: of course, some extra options within reason could only make the profession better and more fun.

Good thoughts by the OP, and not in the slightest a “whine” thread. Even in glass vs glass duels, fights are usually decided by which player AVOIDED attacks the best. There isn’t much emphasis on hitting—hitting is something that automatically happens when your opponent misses a dodge.

That said, I think the combat system itself is pretty sweet. It doesn’t seem to be very casual-friendly, because if don’t have those reflexes for avoiding stuff you’re straight out of luck. Once you get used to it, it’s tons of fun.