Guild Wars 2

Chill slows the recharge of skills, does this affect kits that are not equipped?

For example, if I am chilled while using the Grenade Kit and Gear Shield is on recharge. Is the recharge of Gear Shield affected by the chill?

PvP has a running trend right now, every single warrior is using Berserker Stance with Endure Pain to survive longer. There is no real drawback other than recharge.

However, as annoying as it is, Warriors are not the issue with abusing glass with invincibility.

For those that is in a lot of top tier PvP, you know there is no worse offenders than Necromancers and Engineers.
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The Tool Kit Gear Shields 20 second (16 if you’re a smart engineer) recharge, making it the lowest in the game. Making it very difficult to focus when they can switch at anytime to pop their invincibility, yes, it’s blocking but the fact remains you are immune to all incoming damage.

Then Necromancers Deathshroud, it’s not invincibility technically but you are still blocking your health bar. Now, this wouldn’t be a big issue if they are allowed to do insane damage thanks to Deathly Perception.

Not to mention the condition spam that these two classes to deal out. A combination of conditions, high damage and the lowest invincibility recharge makes these two classes the go to damage dealers.
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I’m not going to go into skill balancing, that’s not the point.

The point is, low recharge invincibility + glass cannon builds has to end as skilled players know exactly when and how to abuse their get out of damage free cards and return favor with massive damage.

It GREATLY limits high end PvP to favor classes with low recharge, damage denying skills that can dish out major damage.

The getting of out damage for X seconds free buttons with high damage needs to end for every class.

Why do engineers have a 3 second block on a 16 second recharge?

Why is it not a 30 second recharge?

Engineers, can do everything better.
Let the conditions run rampant!

gesho.9468:

Nova Stiker.8396:

1. Lots of conditions on the power trait line.

2. Lots of conditions on skills.

3. High healing on a low recharge with a get out of damage free card.

1 makes a good point how condi engi needs to choose right traits with wrong stats (power) or right stats with useless traits. did you bring this as an example of shiny traits? really?

2 where else would engi has skills if not in tools? do you expect engi to get by with 3 skills on pistol, which has auto-attack of quarter of meta, and cooldown of whopping two confusions?

3 really? we are talking of this theoretical healing turret hps, which need combinations of five or six spells, which can be interrupted in five different ways, which binds you to a location, when healing signet gets the same for just being afk?

if youve been spiked for 17k by engi, i hate to say, but l2p. what did you do, aa under 5stack of confusion?

Shrapnel, Incendiary Powder, both in power trait line.
Second, WTF are you talking about?

Third, Healing Turret is a fast, powerful heal.
The issue is Gear Shield. Super fast recharge.

Dynnen.6405:

Kill the phantasms if its a PU phantasm mesmer, walk away if its a condi PU mesmer, if its a PU shatter mesmer you can probably kill it. They easy way to balance PU would be it can’t repeat the same boon back to back.

But yes, engie is kittened and has been since around launch. Most were just too dumb to realize how strong their condi burst was.

No one knew how to build engineer at the time (and mostly still don’t) and apparently ArenaNet doesn’t pay much attention to high end PvP.

It’s only a matter of time the Engineer spike build gets out, I was on my Elementalist and it dealt 17k damage with Grenade Barrage, 3 tool kit skills and blowing up a rifle turret. All in just seconds. I managed to survive and killed the engineer because it was hotjoin so he was done for once his spike went on recharge.
If it wasn’t hotjoin, the engineer would have gotten all the help he needed to finish me off.
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Against organized and skilled teams, having 2-3 engineers is a must.
1 Guardian Bunker.
1 Roaming BS thief
2 Engineers spamming high damage, condition spamming, powerful AoE
1 Debunk engineer
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Focus the squishy Engineers? Gear Shield! 16 second recharge, 3 seconds of invulnerability, you’ll always have a get out of damage free card every 13 seconds.
It puts the Warriors shield block to utter shame.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Maybe nova is a bunker, in which case decap necro op.

A million times this.
Wells cover the entire capture point, making it near impossible to stay on it.

I don’t find wells that much of an issue but the combination of high damage with the wells is not okay.

In my opinion, the fix to this is Chill of Death.

Chill of Death was actually WEAKER at the 25% threshold than the 50%, allow it to hit hard early against a low health target.

Say you’re a thief with 13k health, squishy, built for spiking.
25% is roughly at 3k health, at 3k health Chill of Death will instantly down you.

At 50% health, 6.5k, now the trait can easily chop most if not all the health away, instantly downing you if you got hit by a stray Life Blast.

Killing you FASTER at 50% than at 25% health.

It’s the perfect trait.
Good against both heavy armor targets and squishy targets.

Hey ArenaNet, where is my trait that instantly casts Phoenix? I’d love an instant cast Grenade Barrage against low targets too.

Karl McLain

We feel that the engineer is in a decent place right now, but we did take this opportunity to scale down a few outlier skills in terms of potency.

Engineers are in the BEST place. They can do everything well and effective, with everyone crying about Warriors, a good engineer is an unbeatable one.

Please ArenaNet, take a second look at this class before changing JUST the RNG.

1. Lots of conditions on the power trait line.
This makes no sense, it allows Engineers to effective build high power AND spam conditions on a single tree. That needs to change.
Also, why is Autodefense Bomb Dispenser in Explosives?

2. Lots of conditions on skills.
Look at the Grenade and Bomb Kit, skills 2-5 offer some sort of unique condition. There is a reason why it’s the spamgineer, no matter what you use, you stack a bunch of conditions and apply a lot of damage by facerolling.

3. High healing on a low recharge with a get out of damage free card.
I do not mind the healing turret bursting heal with 0 healing power, but the block everything button on Tool Kit has to end.

4. Grenades scale way to well with power!
Grenades have a lot of conditions and a lot of damage, pick one or the other ArenaNet. Both is simply not acceptable.

Why is this an issue?

Engineer traits are absolutely are terrible!
Seriously, it’s so limited it utterly puts the Elementalist to shame on how some traits vastly outshine the others.

Engineers HAVE to take Grenades, they HAVE to take the Tool Kit, traits do not allow variety.

In my opinion, the first step to balancing engineer is hands down getting rid of Static Discharge.
That trait alone is holding back variety for the Engineer, it’s an okay trait but can be utterly broken if built around it.
Like PU Mesmers spamming invisibility while their phantasms do damage, alone PU is okay but built around the single trait, it can be utterly broken.

Rym.1469:

Remember it’s a Master Slot trait and it can crit that high only for Powermancers. In most cases, it won’t hit that high. It’s a good master tier slot but it isn’t overpowered.

Everyone is running well powermancers now. High damage and relying on Deathshroud to effectively kite and keep up the high sustained damage.

The aid of Chill of Death, is not helping.

This trait is incredibly over powered, it’s a full, instant casting Spinal Shivers that can easily hit 4k, remove three boons and chill.

You don’t even work with the trait, as it can trigger at times you don’t want it too and then goes into cooldown.

Here is a better idea, reduce the casting time of Spinal Shivers!! Why is it 5/4 seconds long?! There is 0 reasons why that skill has to be 5/4 seconds long.

Here is a better idea than that, make it Grandmaster and move the nerfed Dhuumfire to 25 Spite.

Overkillengine.6084:

Immobilize needs to be treated as a CC instead of a condition, since in the right situations it is effectively a stun.

Then less bonuses would apply which would help reign in the stacking, while still keeping it non trivial to remove since regular condition removal does not apply.

I would agree with this as it would be a decent fix.

Except everyone is already running around with 2-3 stun breakers on their bars because of how useful stun is.

It would drastically hurt Immobilize, the best and easiest solution in my opinion is reverting it back to 1 stack max.

Duka.5864:

Thing that Gw1 was great game and devs wanted to create something even better,well they actually done to much and made it worse! Two damage sources power and cond are too much, power damage should be main source and cond damage should be for pressure!

That is how it was in Guild Wars 1 and it made sense.

Look at Poison Arrow, deals no additional damage, costs 5 energy and a ELITE skill.
Seems pretty worthless, which it is all by itself.

Combined with Barbed Arrows, you got yourself a mean combo of long Poison with Bleeding that you can share across the entire enemy team.

In Guild Wars 1, power killed people, conditions killed teams.

There comes a point where the monk couldn’t outheal the damage being inflicted to everyone, everyones health is getting lower and lower and lower to a point you have to make choices to who you save.
That is where pressure plays a key role. You NEEDED pressure (unless spike build) for people to start dropping.

But conditions/hexes alone couldn’t kill people, you NEEDED power. Even a novice monk could easily out heal pure heavy pressure.
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At some point ArenaNet combat developers kitten ed and allow conditions to kill teams AND kill people.

insanemaniac.2456:

delete pizza
delete lemongrass soup

condi balance 101

Yes and delete RNG.

Arcane Precision, I have a 3% chance to apply burning for 1 second?! Why the hell do you even exist?!

Do you know what I liked in RNG?

• When Mesmer clones hit me with 10 seconds of weakness because they ALL applied weakness when they died.
• Engineers 40 seconds of poison, 15 seconds of chill, 10 seconds of burning and 10 stacks of bleeding that lasts for 12 seconds with 2 get out of damage free buttons on low cooldowns.
• Necromancers Chill of Death hitting 3.6k, I wish I had a trait that instantly does nearly 4k damage, removes 3 boons and applies 7 seconds of chill.
• Minions sometimes protecting players from damage because of the AoE cap. I remember League of Legends removing dodge because randomly taking 0 damage IS NOT FUN.

Warriors OP? No, just Pin Down. Bleeding alone does 6k damage. Hell, revert the hammer nerfs and remove the 8 seconds of weakness from that one hammer attack.

ArenaNet still fails to realize how powerful Weakness is, but there will be a stupid update where some class can spam weakness while the “balance team” scratches their heads in confusion of why half damage is broken and everyone swapping to condi.

Watch, it’ll happen. I bet it will happen to Elementalists. Swapping to air applies weakness to nearby foes. GG.

Hey ArenaNet, as an Elementalist with thousands of hours under my belt, why BUFF 2 REALLY good dagger skills? Why not fix the bug with Magnetic Grasp or add some USEFUL traits to Fire, Air and Earth traitlines?

If I see Powerr running around on his Elementalist I’m going to stomp him on my own Elementalist to prove we don’t need buffs with daggers!

The biggest problem with conditions is simply you DON’T work with them.
You spam them, there is no thought and strategy, the more you spam the better.

It’s ArenaNets combat design shining failure of mechanic design, failing to expand mechanics from Guild Wars 1, in fact, it took a step back.

ArenaNet needs to step back, take a deep breath, be modest and ask themselves, “we need to make this better and we can make this better.” But no, they hug their precious mechanics like a starved indie developer, as a game designer myself this behavior frustrates me to no end.

For example, remember Disease? It spreads to an ally on contact. WHY IS THAT NOT TORMENT?! Torment is just another generic damaging condition, along with burning, bleeding, confusion.

The trait system only makes it worse, instead of changing a condition function, they just spam more! I know you can alter the function of a condition with a trait because of Terror.

I like it, turned my Charr Elementalist into a man kitten.

Although I liked the old version significantly better.

ManCaptain.3154:

I think specific skills are the problem. Devourer venom thief can immobilize for 4 sec before any extenders. Someone mentioned Glue Bomb as a problem…. really? 1 sec immobilize is the problem?

The problem isn’t the 1 second, the issue is AoE.

In my opinion, it’s okay to single out a target with 4 seconds of immobilize.

IT IS NOT OKAY to hit 3-4 people with 2-3 seconds of immobilize. Since it stacks, sure you hit 3 people with a 1 second glue bomb but then your Mesmer got hit with a Pin Down and Net Shot.

Now your Mesmer is dead in the water and you are in no position to quickly go and rescue him/her.

tPvP matches are boiled down to that, snare the enemy team, focus a target. Rinse and repeat.

It is a pain AS BOTH teams are doing the same tactics. Making for some very limiting and stale gameplay.

A common trend in PvP is filling your utilities with damage immunity skills and run around with glassy armor.

Now, this is not an issue for most classes but the worst offender is Engineers.
Delaying time so they can bring up their powerful turret heal while still keeping insane damage with their grenades (nerf please)
Mesmers distortion is in a good place, Endure Pain, Berserkers Stance and Shield Stance is not.

Instead of nerfing the turret healing or engineers defenses, just change most abilities across all professions that give unconditional invincibility or certain damage immunity.

Mbelch.9028:

Marcos.3690:

The ideal patch:

Ride the lightning: CD reduced to 20 seconds.
Cleansing Water: Doesn’t have internal CD anymore
If they don’t remove the internal CD in cleansing water, there’s no reason to add regeneration to #3 scepter (You waste the iCD on watter swapping)

I like. This cleansing water change is crucial to restoring ele in SPvP.

Agreed with Ride the Lightning, disagree with cleansing water.

Using 3 cantips to survive is just showing you’re a terrible Elementalist.

There are two ways to buff ele:

1. Give us more condition removal.
2. Reduce the conditions the other classes spam.

ArenaNet is sadly only smart enough to understand one. When the second option is the ideal one.

SIGNET OF SPITE, legit, I love a button that puts 10 seconds of 6 different conditions. It forces the player base to forever use Lyssa runes for Stability and heavy condition removal.

The condition meta is here to stay, limiting ALL builds to carry heavy condition removal to keep up.

Conncept.7638:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Conncept.7638:

Nova Stiker.8396:

runeblade.7514:

I disagree. When I was playing a sword and board war and I was using flurry, people use their 1 second immobilize and then the enemy gets away. I rather not get greifed by my own teammates accidentally every time

You’re just going to have to live with it.
If I use a maxed Skull Bash and a thief uses Pistol Whip, my 3 second stun is turned into 1/2 a second, just how it is.
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The major issue isn’t stacking on a single person, the big issue is it stacking on MULTIPLE people.

For example, in a group fight, two sword Warriors both use Flurry on two people. Maxed out, that is easily 8-10 SECONDS of immobilize on two people.

Cleanse it right? Well no, it’s a group fight, conditions are being tossed everywhere. Necromancers spamming Marks, Rangers bleeding with Axes and Warriors spreading fire.

Immobilize is LAST on the cleansing order, you’ll get rid of the bleeding but with the amount of conditions being blasted around everywhere on basic attacks, you’re going to be stuck for 10 seconds.

THAT IS NOT FUN!!

So anything you don’t consider to be fun has to be removed, but things which somebody else may like and wish to keep have to be removed, because ‘tough luck my fun is more important’?

That sounds perfectly fair and logical.

So, you enjoy this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IALcvY6cTzw

I am… Amazed.
Check your logic because I believe it is broken.

And yes, there is a cleanse order. PvP more and you’ll see it.

Your pointless snide remarks are so very helpful.

Unless you have empirical evidence that an overwhelming amount of players find this anti-fun and want to see it removed, then your opinion isn’t any more valid than that of anyone else. And even less justified since it is based on nothing but making your own play time enjoyable without any regard to game balance.

And if you had paid attention and actually participated in the thread rather than attacking people and enforcing your opinion as word of God, you would note that I stated on that very page that I don’t think it should be reverted or stay the way it is, it is overpowered, but it was worthless, there is an area of balance between those two points. An area we’ll never get to so long as rage-driven zealots insist on one extreme or the other because of a few poor experiences.

You can deny plainly obvious mechanics all you want to excuse your poor play, there is no cleanse order. The cleansing mechanic is explained on the wiki plain as day and no evidence indicates it works otherwise. What is put on first is removed last, it works just like the FILO system in MTG.

There is a cleansing order, the order conditions that have been applied is the same order that gets removed. You’ve basically been arguing with me on the same exact thing.
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The cleansing order is bugged, immobilize is ALWAYS put last. So if a Warrior uses Pin Down through a fire field, the order SHOULD be Burning > Immobilize > Bleeding.
But no, it’s Immobilize > Burning > Bleeding.
If an Engineer lands a critical with Net Shot, it SHOULD be Burning > Immobilize but it’s the other way around instead.
Conditions applied by skills have order priority over additives (traits, fields, runes, sigils etc.) but that rule does not apply to immobilize, making it very easy to stack because it has so much protection.
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Secondly, your ‘suggestion’ doesn’t fix anything, the biggest issue with immobilize is team fights. Because the order immobilize is applied, it has the most protection. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?
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Also, poor play? That’s adorable considering the fact you can never beat me in a duel.
No matter what build or class, I know your skill level is far inferior to my own and I’ll be happy to prove it; I’ll even use a handicap and bring my Elementalist.

Velimere.7685:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Attachments:

All I needed was to look at your attachment to see that you, Sir, are a kitten WIZARD, and you probably have vastly many more leather bound books than I shall ever acquire within my own humble lifetime.

Cute. Here’s a slow clap for a slow thinker.

The point is I love the Elementalist and know it inside and out.

This is my Elementalist.

I have 1500+ hours on him, not only that, I am a former top tier PvPer before the meta went to kitten with necromancers, stun locks, immobilize spam and petting zoos gimmicks.

I completely agree with Zuik.
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These ‘buffs’ are completely UNNEEDED. Seems to be a running theme with ArenaNet and Ele’s, doing stuff that is uncalled for an unneeded.

Signet of Restoration and Armor of Earth, yeah, they needed some love.

The issue with Water Trident wasn’t that is was weak, it was to SLOW, the projectile speed is pathetic and casting on a mobile ally is near impossible and now still is!

Burning Speed and Frozen Burst, good skills, typically nothing wrong with them. WHY buff them?!

Why not buff, oh, I don’t know, RIDE THE LIGHTNING, Ring of Earth, Magnetic Grasp, Lightning Touch, Flame Wall, Fire Aura, Flame Burst, Dust Devil, Shatterstone, Lightning Surge, Traits, Utilities THE LIST GOES ON!!
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You don’t need to main an Elementalist to prove ArenaNet wrong Zuik, there are plenty of skilled players already faceplaming at this and trying to get their voice out to the balance teams deaf ears.

Conncept.7638:

Nova Stiker.8396:

runeblade.7514:

I disagree. When I was playing a sword and board war and I was using flurry, people use their 1 second immobilize and then the enemy gets away. I rather not get greifed by my own teammates accidentally every time

You’re just going to have to live with it.
If I use a maxed Skull Bash and a thief uses Pistol Whip, my 3 second stun is turned into 1/2 a second, just how it is.
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The major issue isn’t stacking on a single person, the big issue is it stacking on MULTIPLE people.

For example, in a group fight, two sword Warriors both use Flurry on two people. Maxed out, that is easily 8-10 SECONDS of immobilize on two people.

Cleanse it right? Well no, it’s a group fight, conditions are being tossed everywhere. Necromancers spamming Marks, Rangers bleeding with Axes and Warriors spreading fire.

Immobilize is LAST on the cleansing order, you’ll get rid of the bleeding but with the amount of conditions being blasted around everywhere on basic attacks, you’re going to be stuck for 10 seconds.

THAT IS NOT FUN!!

So anything you don’t consider to be fun has to be removed, but things which somebody else may like and wish to keep have to be removed, because ‘tough luck my fun is more important’?

That sounds perfectly fair and logical.

So, you enjoy this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IALcvY6cTzw

I am… Amazed.
Check your logic because I believe it is broken.

And yes, there is a cleanse order. PvP more and you’ll see it.

-Signet of Restoration: Removed the split on this skill so that the signet passive heal amount will be increased in PvP to match the current PvE amount.

• Okay good.

-Armor of Earth: Reduced recharge from 90 seconds to 75 seconds.

• What about Arcane Shield? 3 Blocks on a 75 second recharge? In the right situation it can be very good BUT 75 seconds is ridiculous, using it every other fight rather than every fight.

-Water Trident: Added 3 seconds of regeneration to up to 5 allies in the radius.

• The problem is it’s speed!! You can run faster than the Trident!

-Burning Speed: This ability now evades attacks.

• Why?! Why buff this?! This does not need a buff!

-Frozen Burst: This ability is now a blast finisher.

• Stop buffing things that are already good! This is utterly pointless!

This absolutely profounds me.

Lets look at the issues with the Elementalist that is more than just balance.

I’m not even going to mention traits and utilities.

League of Legends has had champions redesign, professions should get some updated love that they needed since closed beta.

Hell, make it a Living World Event. I’m sure you can squeeze in powerful characters from a foreign land bringing knowledge of the professions.

runeblade.7514:

I disagree. When I was playing a sword and board war and I was using flurry, people use their 1 second immobilize and then the enemy gets away. I rather not get greifed by my own teammates accidentally every time

You’re just going to have to live with it.
If I use a maxed Skull Bash and a thief uses Pistol Whip, my 3 second stun is turned into 1/2 a second, just how it is.
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The major issue isn’t stacking on a single person, the big issue is it stacking on MULTIPLE people.

For example, in a group fight, two sword Warriors both use Flurry on two people. Maxed out, that is easily 8-10 SECONDS of immobilize on two people.

Cleanse it right? Well no, it’s a group fight, conditions are being tossed everywhere. Necromancers spamming Marks, Rangers bleeding with Axes and Warriors spreading fire.

Immobilize is LAST on the cleansing order, you’ll get rid of the bleeding but with the amount of conditions being blasted around everywhere on basic attacks, you’re going to be stuck for 10 seconds.

THAT IS NOT FUN!!

Bombsaway.7198:

I wouldn’t wanthem to weaken individual immob skills (critical for squishy classes to keep heavies at range). Instead, they should have a maximum duration one can be immobilized for.

This isn’t ideal either, it still rewards spamming immobilize to keep the duration at the cap.

1 stack. That’s it.

Yet, Mesmers spamming invisibility while Phantasms blast away opponents isn’t being look at.

Backstab an issue? Try phantasms doing ~6-8k damage per attack while the Mesmer remains safely invisible.

Aberrant.6749:

Retal still is very strong in large scale WvW fights.

It’s quite unbalanced as to what gets hit the hardest even now (things like eng nades=‘s up to 15x retal per attack, pp thief unload =’s 8x retal etc.). Your suggestion would make it way too strong Vs. what it’s already strong against.

You’d lose all retaliation after it triggers.
If a Thief used unload and you got hit by 8 bullets, only 1 bullet will trigger retaliation then it’ll end, the remaining 7 bullets will not harm the thief.

Like confusion, the idea is you don’t want to hit someone with a lot of stacks unless you are prepared to take a lot of armor ignoring damage in a single hit.

Unlike confusion, since it ends after a single hit, feel free to spam away if you can take a hit or wait for an ally/minion to hit the enemy.

Aberrant.6749:

Popping a stability to make sure you can heal is fine imo. You’re giving up a stability which you could have used later to secure a stomp etc.

It is fine to pop stability to use any skill, the problem is stability is too rare for some classes.
Necromancer, Elementalist, Engineer, Thief and Mesmer don’t have good options for stability, which is fine as they have other areas they make it up for in.

I’m not saying the other options isn’t viable, just the opposite it’s very good.
The problem is it’s limiting.

• Engineer, don’t like Elixirs? That’s okay, you’re forced into using Tool Kit for it’s block.
• Mesmer you must carry 2-3 stun breakers and Mass Invisibility, forget about using the other utilities. Mantras are lackluster anyways.
• Elementalist … Just hope for the best your powerful channeling spell gets off.
• Necromancer you have Doom and well, hope the enemy doesn’t have Stability while they are beating your face. Go ranged glass or bring your minion army.

• Thief… despite having only one source of stability, every weapon and weapon combination has a viable skill to teleport of the way, evade, go invisible or stop your opponent.
  Making every alternative, no matter what weapons or traits you pick, you have plenty of viable escapes.

It’s a double edged sword, you can only have so many alternatives to defense.
The alternatives to defense for a lot of classes is good but you only have so much.

Oozo.7856:

Substance E.4852:

Carighan.6758:

Oozo.7856:

When we are running venom sharing, people we hit are rooted for over 20 seconds. Rooted from first contact to dead. For those saying all they have to do is remove the condition. Well, they have every other condition on them covering that root.

You know you are describing a single target being attacked by a group of 5 players?
I’d call imbalance if they wouldn’t go down easily.

They die because they have a 20 sec stunlock keeping them from kiting to avoid damage and maneuver with their group. A single person can kite a group easily with the right skills and ability. They can’t do that, however, if they are forced to stand in one spot and get steam rolled.

^ Some people understand this. Other people, including the developers don’t.

The issue isn’t 1v1 or 5v1. The problem is TEAM FIGHTS in coordinated tPvP teams.

It’s an AoE immobilize spam-fest, the more immobilize your team has, the better.

These two boons, one is a must have and the other can easily do without.
The idea of these two boons are good but poorly implemented, lets examine the issues:

Retaliation – Damaging without fighting.
There was a time where perma Retaliation was possible, sadly, it was also disastrous. Guardians would build extremely high defense and rely on this boon to do a majority of the damage. In team fights, this boon alone could be responsible for 25% if not more of the damage dealt to you. If you had a lot of AoE, it would easily be nearly HALF of the damage you took.
Obviously, that is not ideal and Retaliation had to go. So it was nerfed, hard. Very hard. Reducing its damage as well as making its damage output based on power.
This hurts the mechanic, you can’t really make it stronger without balance issues and right now, it’s underwhelming.

Stability – Your skills cannot be interrupted.
What makes this boon so powerful is NOT the fact the enemy cannot CC you. What makes it good is your skills CANNOT fail. In the current state, this boon is very good.
Which is exactly the problem! It has to be rare and/or in low doses how useful it is. It hurts the mechanic rather than helps it.

My goal is to propose more mechanics that can aid these boons. The problem with stability is it’s too rare, so weaken it for it to appear more in traits and skills.
Retaliation needs more options in it’s mechanics, too much is too powerful; too little is too weak.

• Retaliation – Stacks in intensity rather than duration. Reflects damage back to the attacker, then retaliation ends. The more stacks of retaliation, the more damage that gets inflicted.
  The damage of retaliation should be dependent rather than given. It will open up so many more opportunity for traits and skills.

For example, the trait Spiked Armor, right now it is gain retaliation for 5 seconds when struck by a critical hit, cooldown of 10 seconds.
It makes the trait too situational, yes, it has a use in PvP how a lot of builds are condition builds that trigger on critical hits but no one is going to spend 30 points into Defense when there are simply more powerful defensive options like Cleansing Ire.

Now, changing Spike Armor to something like:
Grant a single stack of Retaliation that lasts for 5 seconds, every 3 seconds. Basically, a perma 1 or 2 stacks of Retaliation outside of combat.

Lets say, 2 stacks of Retaliation is equal too 800 damage.
Now, that would be overpowered if that could trigger multiple times but since it only triggers once, it opens up more opportunity in builds.

Compared to the current Retaliation, 800 damage is equal to hitting an opponent 4 times. Since it stacks in duration, if you attack every 1/2 second for 10 seconds against an opponent with 10 seconds of retaliation, that’s 4000 FREE damage.
Retaliation is simply too powerful, which is why it’s so hard to achieve high duration of it.

By making it stack and ending on a hit, it will vastly open up more uses for this boon to shine.

• Stability – Stacks in intensity rather than duration. Protects against a control effect then lose a stack of stability.
  Like how Champions have defiance stacks, Stability should work the same.
  It will undoubtedly become weaker, which is good, that means it must show up more.

For example, Healing Breeze and Ether Renewal. Giving those two healing skills stability while casting will undoubtedly make them the superb healing skills as the heal cannot be stopped. Shelter cannot be stopped but in contrast, it’s a weak heal. Now, if Healing Breeze or Ether Renewal grants a single stack of stability, that would be undoubtedly harder to stop and require more thought or teamwork.

It can benefit offensively too with skills like Hundred Blades and Fire Storm. Utilities that grant stability already like Rampage as One will offer have multiple stacks.

The idea is to make Stability more accessible but in return, weaker as well.

The meta is in a jumbled mess right now, Mesmers dealing lots of damage while invisible, Necromancers and Rangers with protection from minions because of the AoE cap, Warriors running rampant with get out of damage free cards, Engineers having insane damage, CC and defense.
Everyone is stuck into Lyssa Runes for the condition cleanse or stability.

Maybe when the dust is settled ArenaNet should start looking at mechanics they have instead of adding new ones too enhance the gameplay COUGH TORMENT COUGH

Soilder.3607:

No one ever asked for immobilize stacking. It was completely unnecessary and is bad for the game. Remove it already.

This 100×.

Who the heck thought stacking Immobilize was fun?!

Want a fun condition? Then change Torment, lower it’s base damage and have it spread to the enemy’s allies (Like GW1 Disease, except it can only transfer once)

Immobilize stacking has to go! No one ever wanted, needed or even liked it.
Why do we still have it?

Geff.1930:

Stun breaks should remove immobilize.

Better yet, reduce it back to 1.
Punish those that spam it.

hihey.1075:

Magnet is single target and has a long casting time.
Staff Elementalist and Staff Mesmers have both CC options at 1200 range, both with a shorter casting time and AoE. Even Mesmer’s Focus has a longer range, considering that you can place Temporal Curtain in 900 range which pulls every enemy in a 600 radius toward it (so it’s basically 900+600=1500 range, aoe). LB Rangers, when traited, have a CC option at 1200 range too. Necro’s fear are 1200 range too, istant cast.
So you are completely wrong about Magnet being “the” longest CC skill in the game.

That said, the Block is awesome and it’s the main reason why Engineers take Tool Kit.
Pry Bar is a really good skill even without concussion bomb: 5 stacks of confusion will either mean that your opponent will not attack for 5 seconds (so more survivability for you) or that he will kill himself with 1k HP drained every action he performs (if you are condi specced).
Box of Nails is garbage mostly for the long casting time, but the cripple is nice so I don’t mind using it from time to time. Throw Wrench is awesome as a projectile finisher to proc an extra burn (if you have bomb kit) or poison/regeneration. It can even proc 2 times if you are lucky.

I think that Tool kit is fine as it is. The upcoming change in Box of Nails, with a reduced cast time, is what will make it even more balanced. I don’t think it is a “must have” for every engineer, but it surely has it uses.
100% ok with Tool Kit.

EDIT: I forgot about Mesmer’s Pistol when traited (1200 range stun+daze) and Guardian’s Line of Warding (1200 range)

First off, Doom is the only legitimate CC skill that matches Magnet and in my opinion a impassable wall is not CC. Yeah, it stops people from moving but so does an actual brick wall, it’s barely control as you can easily play around it. As for traits to increase range, no, by that logic of alternatives to increase range, the catapult has the longest CC in the game.

Secondly.
I’m not asking for a nerf or a buff, by design, the Kit is fine ONLY because the Engineer ISN’T.
Like the way Mesmers are trapped into Deceptive Evasion. Elementalists are trapped into Water Magic and Arcana as the other traitlines are absolutely worthless/boring.
Lets not forget the Warriors get out of damage free cards.

But with the RNG going away with the Engineer (HOPEFULLY) this kit could possibly have more use than a block or a pull that works whenever it wants too.

I hope this Kit doesn’t get overlooked in the “in every build” problem ArenaNet is trying to address.

In my opinion, this Kit is badly designed. I’ve never played an engineer but the skills this Kit offers ranges from absolutely insane to completely worthless.
________________________________________________________
Here are the skills that in my opinion, are a bit unbalanced.

• Gear Shield – Block attacks. 3 Second Duration. 20 Second Recharge.
  Basically a 3 second invincibility every 20 seconds, it’s not much of an issue as Engineers don’t have the same recovery as Warriors but when it comes to waiting on skills recharging, it’s a God send.

• Magnet – Pull your target to you. 5/4th Casting Time. 25 Second Recharge. Range: 1,200
  The range is absurd. It is the longest CC skill in the game but the casting time makes it very situational. Too situational, it’s a powerful skill but is the long casting time combined with the long range really ideal?
  ________________________________________________________
  Now the skills that are lackluster:

• Pry Bar – Confuse your foe by smacking them with a pry bar. 5 Stacks of Confusion for 5 seconds. 1/2 Second Casting Time. 15 Second Recharge.
  The confusion and damage is really good but why the 15 second recharge?! It’s basically asking, “Please use me with Concussion Bomb or I’m pretty useless.”

• Box of Nails – Scatter nails that bleed and cripple foes.
  IT’S CALTROPS. I’m not even bother going into other details. It’s freaking Caltrops for Engineer.

• Throw Wrench – Throw a wrench that returns to you, striking foes each way.
  This is self explanatory. It’s damage is less than Dancing Dagger, a wasteful 1/2 of casting time.
  ______________________________________________
  There are a lot of traits, utilities, elites and weapons that need redesign, this one could use some much needed love. How about something that buffs turret damage or actually build something.
  As of right now, the Tool Kit is less about using Tools and more about using a Shield.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Argon.1563:

Or just learn to carry Condition Removal? I have a whole build that focuses on immobilize, and it is not overpowered in any way shape or form, beacuse all anyone has to do is blow their nose and they lose 3 conditions.

There’s no way to guarantee that condi removal removes immobilize, that’s the problem. And most classes don’t have a “remove all conditions” skill, most of them remove only a limited amount of conditions.

Bingo. Immobilize has the LOWEST priority.
________________________________________________
For example, a Necromancer uses Signet of Spite then Dark Pact. You’d think the Immobilize from Dark Pact gets removed because of the order that was applied.

NO!

Then a Warrior comes with Pin Down, now that’s 7+ seconds of immobilize that cannot be cured because of every other condition.
__________________________________________________________
So, fix the priority?

That still leaves the problem of most tPvP matches, skilled teams SPAM THE HELL out of AoE immobilize trying to focus people.
Leaving both teams fighting Immobilize more than fighting each other.
__________________________________________________________

Oh AND IT’S NOT FUN.

I went to Tranquility, got stuck with 10 seconds of immobilize.

THIS IS NOT OKAY ARENANET!

Want to balance PvP? Then fix Immobilize!!

I don’t understand why ArenaNet assumes zerging is fun.
I don’t understand why ArenaNet thinks Immobilize stacking is fun.

I don’t think ArenaNet understands fun.

Do I enjoy zerging content?

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

I fully support this. Being 5+ seconds immobilized is just silly and unfun.

When they buffed Immobilize to 5 stacks, who the hell in ArenaNet staff thought it would be ‘fun’ to be a sitting duck for 5+ seconds?!

Imagine playing League of Legends and Luxs snare lasts for 5 seconds.

It completely ruins fast pace and any chance for recovery.

I agree about moving it but not replacing it.

As a main Elementalist and as much as I hate Dhuumfire, this nerf was a bit too harsh.

In my opinion, in Spite, replace Siphon Strength (25) and have it so whenever you Fear, you also apply burning, no cooldown.

Being a nice passive trait it will benefit condition, power or mixed based builds without making it a must have.

Vuh.1328:

Conncept.7638:

I would prefer they make it like Fear, counts as a CC and a condition, has the advantages and disadvantages of both.

please no, fear shouldn’t count as a condition and “stun” at the same time.. just causes more balance problems with + -condi duration, condi immunity, condi clear+stunbreakers

I agree.

The game was designed for ONLY 1 stack of immobilize.

Any more changes to mechanics would be unnecessary.

Conncept.7638:

I would prefer they make it like Fear, counts as a CC and a condition, has the advantages and disadvantages of both.

What does that mean for Stability?

alanis.6094:

Should be like daze/stun/etc.

Yes and no, reduce the durations for skills like Earthshaker and Supply Drop then I’ll have no problems with it stacking.

As much as I hate the OP Engineers and Necromancer damage they produce with conditions, this isn’t ideal.

I’m a main Elementalist and this balance is not the right step, adding another blast finisher AND making Burning Speed evade attacks is just bad.
Undo the Ride the Lightning changes, give some more interesting Fire, Air and Earth traits.
The Elementalist does not need to be stronger, it needs to have more options.

I made a suggestion regarding Dhuumfire and it had a similar idea, whenever you fear, you burn, it has no internal cooldown.

I wouldn’t mind this change for Life Blast to burn, IF they replace Siphoned Power (25) with Dhuumfire and make it a passive trait.
Making it helpful for both power and condition builds.

Right now, that nerf is WAY to harsh, if you must choose between Dhuumfire and Close to Death, the answer is now obvious.

No one will spec 30 points just for Dhuumfire to trigger on Life Blast :\

Are we going to get the option to hide again?

Having the name always hover above the player is annoying and ruins any sort of stealth tactics.

Aberrant.6749:

Eng just got hit with nerfs last update… and has been consistently nerfed since launch… it’s most certainly not stronger than ever… I would rank it upper middle overall atm.

It would depend on how IP was nerfed …again… as to how viable eng would be after.

Engineers don’t need nerfs.

Engineers need fixing, the amount of crit-procs is unacceptable, being heavily reliant on them for damage chance.

Willson.8170:

You sound like the kind of person who would destroy a team

Change dat attitude!

and by destroy a team I mean your own team

I’m playing with a guild, a rag tag of pals and friends. I continue playing with them because I like them.
They have no idea I’m looking for a tPvP team.

Plus I fully intend to keep tPvPing with my guild when I am not playing with a competitive team.

Do not accuse me of a rotten attitude based on my reasoning to find a team.

I got one invite but turned it down after a couple duels.

Bumping my own post, I can only deal with guildies going far when we don’t even have home stupidity for so long…

shimmerless.4560:

Damage conditions on the whole are poorly implemented, burning is the worst offender thanks to very common Nec/Guardian/Engineer passives being wildly tossed around all the time.

Anyone who thinks that Engineer is only hanging in there because of Incendiary Powder is completely bonkers, by the way. The class would still be strong with or without the trait.

It doesn’t help that Engineers has the most Crit-proc passives.

Whether Incendiary Powder is key or not, the amount of on-chance passives has to be fixed.

Lupanic.6502:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Lupanic.6502:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Lupanic.6502:

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

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

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

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

Come on, a Freeze Grenade does not apply poisen. So a freeze grenade applies chill and maybe burning on a 20 sec cooldown (and 10sec cooldown for IP). That is far away from overpowered.

With the Doom Sigil it does.

The problem isn’t the application of burning.
The problem is burning on ANY skill.

wow with that sigil every of your Ele skills applies poison. So you can apply burning AND posion as well. And you have burning precision as adept tier skill.

No Elementalist will ever run condition damage, a Guardian would be more viable with conditions.
That’s not including the many issues Elementalists currently have in balance.
If condition Elementalists get a buff, then Burning Precision will definitely have to go.

For now, keep the thread on focus, Incendiary Powder is overpowered because it can apply burning on ANY attack that critical.

MonMalthias

So now we are stuck with yet another passive proc that is propping up the condi engi – and without IP, Condi Engi wouldn’t even be in the meta right now.

If that is the case, engineers wouldn’t even be in the meta at all without the trait. Gimmicky glass rockets won’t work in competitive play which leaves the condi-bunker.

The crit-procs and RNG for Engineers is unacceptable, I knew they had a lot but Elementalist traits make Engineer traits look bad.
I’m linking your thread in the OP.

Lupanic.6502:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Lupanic.6502:

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

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

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

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

Come on, a Freeze Grenade does not apply poisen. So a freeze grenade applies chill and maybe burning on a 20 sec cooldown (and 10sec cooldown for IP). That is far away from overpowered.

With the Doom Sigil it does.

The problem isn’t the application of burning.
The problem is burning on ANY skill.

Lupanic.6502:

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

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

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

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

Aberrant.6749:

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

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

Siphoned power is blah though lol.

A buff and a nerf.

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

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