[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
TBH I feel bat we won’t be able to use elite weapons on different elites. Holosmith with hammer would also be really cool if it is a power build. Elites would keep adding to classes that way until every class can run all weapons.
I think you guys forget how strong a weapon our shield is. It offers a blast finisher, a “full” (100%) projectile finisher, a projectile reflect, a knockback, a melee stun, a ranged daze (for up to 5 targets), and a 2-second ranged block all in two skills.
The engineer shield is really, really good, and it’s arguably one of the best off-hands in the game. The only reason we don’t use it is because (1) there’s no need for its defensive gains in PvE and (2) the hammer and rifle both hilariously outclass the main-hand pistol as a damage option despite all the years ArenaNet has tried buffing it.
If ArenaNet does the holosmith sword properly, it could be substantially more broken a weapon just on the basis that it gets paired with everything the shield offers. And given the fact that the only offensive option to pair it with would be the pistol having Blowtorch, I imagine that the holosmith will be a condition-damage oriented specialization—or so I hope.
One thing that I was thinking was if they turned Stamina into Gas for the Holosmith elite. You have ways to get Energy and ways to spend it. So you can be very mobile if you save gas or very bursty if you don’t dodge and just ram all stamina as damage!
I’d really prefer they leave stamina alone, given how much the Tools trait line is balanced around it already, and how much powerful traits like Kinetic Battery are based on properly timed dodges already. I’d prefer ArenaNet try and make Tools a more competitive choice with the next expansion and get us out of the Invention+Alchemy rut we’ve been in for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t so long ago that a glass cannon build was a viable choice in PvP—but that depended on Tools being a viable tree line option given all of its obvious advantages.
Either way the change to turret basically means they are indeed switching the toolbelts somehow. The explanation they gave for the change was hard to believe. Most people don’t use turrets and those that do most likely value Overcharging them over the toolbelt. I mean, if you can’t overcharge now then there isn’t much point to keeping them anyway in most cases.
I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that the next elite specialization will change the profession mechanic in some way, especially in light of the turret changes, as you said. I just hope it’s a meaningful adjustment to how tool belt skills are used, and not just something like the tempest where you just overcharge them and get a longer cooldown.
The thing I’d like to really see more than anything is getting a set of tool belt skills that act closer to virtues or facets that emanate some kind of passive while providing a skill activation. That alone would serve as a major adjustment to how the tool belt works on the engineer, and would give the holosmith a pretty different feel over the scrapper and core engineer. It’s not a particularly sexy or original change, but they did well enough making mesmer wells different enough from necro wells in function and flavor (just as they did with guard vs. ranger traps).
This would also shake up the priority list for a lot of core utility skills that are primarily taken only for their tool belt skill (e.g., Rifle Turret or Elixir R) or are seen as lesser choices because their tool belt skills are pretty weak by comparison (e.g., pretty much all gadgets). If utility skills began to be examined solely based on their functionality as a solely-existing utility skill and not a 2-for-1 package as they currently are, we might be able to see some sensible balancing down the road for underperforming utility skills like gadgets and turrets.
Anyway, I do like scrapper a lot. I mean, hammer is the most fun thing ever, it’s just not that great on PVE. I’d argue if they buffed gadgets and add scrapper synergy to it it would be a fun playstyle. Gadget Scrapper. A close quarters fighter with high utility. But having hammer only to switch to granade or elixir gun or whatever just kinda sucks.
It’s pretty obvious at this point that the scrapper’s main purpose was to give engineers a choice in play style that didn’t revolve around kits and was a bit easier to play. I think, looking at things two years later, the scrapper succeeded in both of these goals. While the community imposes a lot of artificial restrictions in raids or fractals, the simple fact of the matter is that the scrapper trait line succeeds exactly what it was designed to do, and that the holosmith will likely help push the engineer away from elixirs and toward gadgets much in the same way the scrapper pushed the engineer away from stacking kits.
I also think the unfortunate reality is that the scrapper is much more heavily a PvP/WvW oriented specialization by design of how the function gyro works, so we should expect something to have more PvE utility in the next specialization.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUBdpitbBGpCEqilJjS8ZKgAg+vr7+Oc7SmwC-TJRXAB0WGA4HAwyXAAA2fAA
Swap to Adaptive Armor and/or Recovery Matrix if facing against good power revs/guards. Elixir X, Elixir C, and Elixir S can be swapped in for flavor as well. Really depends on the matchup and whether you can expect to hold a 1v2 at far versus the enemy comp.
Don’t try to team fight much if at all. Play side points the entire game and +1 mid only when the enemy thief is dead or you know it’s safe to.
I haven’t played at all this season because of WvW changes but I won over 80% of my games in unranked during the off-season with this and will be probably running this build in ATs when I have time to participate in them.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
First of all, thanks for sharing your build. I agree with you that the healing procs probably make Berserker pretty viable, and I’d be willing to try that out. I’ve began with Celestial largely because it fits the play style I’m interested in at the moment, but also because I’m pretty rusty and can at times be bad with my positioning.
To just respond to what you said, however:
Elixir Gun imo is a big waste in WvW since fights are alot more mobile and its quite slow to get the job done for condi clearing and if youve been nailed with conditions suddenly chances are Auto elixir S is going to pop before you can remove them and recover with EG.
Elixir Gun isn’t taken for myself but entirely for Fumigate to support the rest of the raid. Acid Bomb is also a pretty remarkable skill, both in the fact that its damage is unblockable and that it’s a decent gap creator if caught out of position. And if I’m being completely honest, between Tarragon Bread, Hoelbrak, and Adaptive Armor … not to mention having 21K HP, condi damage isn’t that much a threat unless I stray pretty far from the eles.
Not sure how it got there, but Sigil of Disruption is also a mistake. I’ve updated the OP to better reflect my sigil uses. I do use Sigil of Blood, as it scales with Healing Power.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
So, like many, I’ve found renewed interest in World vs. World following this week’s update and have spent a great deal of time playing on Sea of Sorrows. Overall, I’ve found a lot of success playing scrapper, following both pugmanders and open raid guild groups, and roaming with guildies. But one thing I’ve noticed is that we engineers aren’t really much in demand, and are often thrown into the gutter of raid group with other leftovers like thieves and druids. This post isn’t to complain about that in any way. After all, it is what it is; but I did want to talk about how we should properly build around these circumstances with regard to armor stats, sigils, utilities—everything.
As such, it’s pretty rare that you’re in a raid group with a guardian and revenant, with those slots better saved for elementalists and necromancers. So I built my setup under the assumption that (1) I wouldn’t be given stability by anyone and that (2) I wouldn’t be given resistance by anyone. This is what I came up with: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASncoClchtbBWXB0ehlJjKc7SmwS8ZKgAg+vz79G-TlhFABSq+jAXAAAeAArs/AVK/4TJ4mhAAWVJDAxEA-w
To address point one, I’ve opted to take Elixir B. This gives me three stacks of stability every 20 seconds, pretty much fulfilling the role of a poor man’s Stand Your Ground. If I do happen to be graced the opportunity to be grouped with a guardian, I swap out Elixir B for Elixir S. It’s also worth nothing that Perfectly Weighted does grant an additional stack of stability, and is generally used as a non-targeted leap-in skill at the start of engagements.
To address point two, I’ve chosen to run Adaptive Armor with Runes of Hoelbrak. Condition duration reduction food also helps. Swapping runes is pretty expensive outside of owning a set of legendary armor, but if you do happen to run with Heralds regularly and get a good dose of resistance, I’d maybe consider taking something else.
Beyond that, I’d really like some advice and guidance. I haven’t played WvW seriously since Sanctum of Rall died out several years ago, and a lot has changed over the years with regard to ourselves as well as other classes.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
Also I love the coliseum redesign, the sidepoints no longer benefit classes with teleports.
Oh, they fixed this? That’s good. I haven’t played it since the patch.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Unranked and ranked attract different communities with different opinions.
Sure, if I only played for dailies once or twice a week I wouldn’t mind, but if I have to play a lot of ranked matches on Coliseum I’m not going to be happy.
What’s wrong with Coliseum?
The side point ledges create a pretty unfair advantage to certain professions with teleport skills.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
The only “successful” game mode GW2 ever had is going to stay. There’s other things for you to do than to play the thing you dislike so, try that.
With all due respect, this talking point is absurd. Conquest is the only “successful” game mode GW2 ever had because it’s the only game mode that ArenaNet has ever made any effort to support.
Courtyard had the potential to be good, but they never properly supported it with its own queue and they just tacked it onto the map rotation. It’s still just sitting there, exactly in the same form it launched in. They’ve done literally nothing to it.
Stronghold also had the potential to be a good game mode, and it arguably still does. Simplify the game mode and streamline the gameplay experience. Get rid of the supply runs and the trebuchets, and just have critters leave the base at an interval with players fighting over the hero spawns to swing the match in their favor. But instead they’ve just done nothing. Just like Courtyard, aside from adjusting a few overtime mechanics, Stronghold is literally in the same exact state it launched in. People bought Heart of Thorns on the implication that the PvP area of the game would grow and ArenaNet has literally nothing to show for it almost two full years later.
Instead we just see more and more Conquest maps like Skyhammer, Revenge of the Capricorn, and Eternal Coliseum being added over the years that very few enjoy and even fewer want in the ranked rotation. Let me reiterate: people HATED the original Skyhammer, and yet ArenaNet has spent YEARS revising it and now forces us to play it in RANKED PvP.
They’ve even dedicated development time to working on kittening Spirit Watch, a complete garbage fire of a map, adjusting its orb mechanics. The fact that ArenaNet hasn’t made any meaningful progress with Courtyard/Stronghold by mid-2017 is pretty much indefensible at this point, because they seem to have dedicated their attention to pretty much everything else, including stripping out the Mystic Forge from Heart of the Mists and designing, re-designing, and re-designing again the lobby.
I really thought this 2v2 announcement was the first moment that ArenaNet finally listened to its fan base, but I guess that was a mistake on my part. I suppose I’ll just be doing occasional automated tournaments and spending the majority of my time in WvW moving forward.
It’s really a shame, because Guild Wars 2 could still be that dominant PvP MMO they originally envisioned it as if they just dedicated the resources to it. ArcheAge, BDO, ESO, WoW … they all have terrible PvP by comparison, gated either behind an arduous grind/vertical progression or suffering from old/floaty/awkward gameplay mechanics.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/get-ready-for-the-june-2017-competitive-feature-pack/
“Structured PvP will also be updated with a custom arena map for 2v2 battles and a new and improved PvP lobby to hang out in.”
So does this mean we are going to be able to queue 2v2s now instead of just 5v5 conquest? Am I reading it right? Curious cause no one seems to be talking about it.
Only custom arenas. We don’t have plans to support a 2v2 game mode with a queue.
I’m very disappointed to read this.
I’ve played like 4,000 games of Conquest. I’m sick of it. You guys have to grow PvP with more game modes and not funnel all of your development resources into just making new maps.
Season seven is going to be even more of a graveyard with the WvW changes, too.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
What I said was that it’s the worst “elite spec mechanic” as in, there’s next to no gameplay in it.
That’s a very fair point. Unlike pretty much every other specialization, we didn’t see any real changes to our profession mechanic. While guardians got new virtues and warriors got new burst skills, we’re stuck with the same old tool belt skills that operate the same exact way as they have since 2012.
But really: how do you mess around with the tool belt without completely disrupting engineer balance? Engineer has by and far the most rigorous profession mechanic in the game, and it makes any little adjustment to how the tool belt works incredibly difficult to balance just because there’s so many moving parts to it. ArenaNet has to balance three (or, well, six) virtues on guardian but over a couple dozen tool belt skills on the engineer.
I mean, let’s take seriously the idea that they just throw all of it out and replace it with something else with the holosmith. Prior to the turret rework, that would mean literally disabling the ability to detonate turrets. I imagine this is something they recognized themselves, which prompted the recent change … but even afterward it’s important that ArenaNet is very careful when messing around with tool belt skills, because many of the “meta” utility skill right now, whether that’s in PvE, PvP, or WvW, are two-for-one package deals.
The slightest change to how they tool belt skills work would heavily impact the nature of a lot of our abilities and how balanced utility skills are in relationship to one another. It’s not like virtues where they can be easily replaced with something else and everything surrounding the class still fits.
As such, I don’t blame ArenaNet for avoiding that can of worms and just giving us the function gyro. Scrapper still manages to fulfill a very distinct purpose and gives the engineer profession a flavor profile it hadn’t previously: being easy to play.
What you’re suggesting then is that our elite spec is great for bad players.
That’s a bit of a tactless way to look at it—but yes, I suppose that’s an accurate statement. What I think you’re forgetting, however, is that most people that play Guild Wars 2 firmly fit your definition of an “incompetent” player. Just pug a mid-level fractal or dungeon any time you need reminding of that.
To look at it a bit more constructively, scrapper fulfills the same role that a hammer guardian or necromancer does in PvE—it is a support carry build. It’s up to you to make the decision to run it or not, and I’m not really sure I see the controversy in having additional build options or improving the engineer in areas beyond DPS (especially since core engi is already so effective at it at both power and condi). I’d expect more of the same moving forward, though I imagine we’ll settle more closely to druid or chronomancer in PvE in that our supportive role will be more offensive in nature.
The problem with that statement is that almost every other class did in fact have a straight upgrade in both PvP and PvE. Take a look at most of the builds people are running:
- You never see a base guardian, warrior, mesmer, thief, or tempest any more in either game mode.
- Necro occasionally will opt for purely core in PvE, but this isn’t common.
- One ranger raid condi build is purely core.
- Revenant didn’t have a pre-HoT experience, so it’s hard to say.
1. Burn guardian not only is seen in PvP still, but it’s actually a very strong build up until platinum. Burn guardians can (and arguably should) run Virtues over Dragonhunter with great effectiveness.
2. Condi Revenant, a new build for the upcoming season and also fractals following the balance patch, can go Mallyx/Shiro or Mallyx/Jalis just fine, dropping Glint (and Herald) without much sacrifice.
3. Valor/Honor/Virtues is still overall the ideal trait setup for guardian in WvW, and is literally the backbone of any sizable guild raid group, especially with the condi meta we’re in. It’s arguably the most important build-class combination to have ample amounts of.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
Again, I like the Tempest and Berserker mechanics. Overloading is a fun mechanic (even if I would be inclined to say it possibly shouldn’t have been the mechanic for the first elementalist elite specialisation), and Berserker makes using adrenaline a lot more interesting than core warrior. YMMV, though.
It’s not that I dislike them in any way; berserker is actually quite a lot more fun to play than the core warrior build, and I think all of the Heart of Thorns specializations eliminated a lot of the “cheesiness” that plagued the dungeon and FOTM 50 meta for years. All professions feel significantly more robust and fleshed out; I just think that ArenaNet played it pretty safe with the berserker and tempest (and daredevil to a lesser extent). I mean, just look at what chronomancer, druid, and scrapper did to their respective professions by comparison.
Onto the rest, though: Well said. One gets the feeling the way some people talk that everybody is walking around with IDDQD and can never die, and that taking a little longer to kill the enemy is the absolute worst that can ever happen. Now, if you only ever play in a team that works together like a well-oiled machine that may well be the case… but for most people that ISN’T the case. People play some content solo, have learning curves when they first go into group content, or are in groups with people who are still learning even if THEY have mastered a particular piece of group content, and things that help keep you (and your team, if applicable) alive without biting too deeply into your DPS can help in these situations.
I am in a 500-man guild full of both tryhards and casuals on a literal spectrum of skill level. I don’t really PvE much anymore, but when I did, I frequently found the utility between core engi and scrapper often placed in sharp relief of one another depending on who I am playing with. The core engi build is an effective DPS machine, but that’s literally all it is. Core engi won’t keep anyone alive (or even yourself) if the group plays suboptimally, and it depends on a great number of boxes to be checked off to even reach its maximum potential. If I’m being completely honest, unless it’s a group I absolutely trust, I just prefer to run the scrapper line over a third DPS tree, even if I’m running four kits. If people get obstinate about it I usually swap back, but those people usually end up with egg on their face by the end of the run.
It probably doesn’t help that raids have explicit timers, which add more pressure to DPS at all costs… but I do wonder how many groups going in with the ‘DPS at all costs’ mentality end up wiping over and over again when accepting a slightly lower DPS might actually allow them to, if not beat the encounter, at least have more of an opportunity to learn the mechanics so that they can beat it when they do switch to full DPS.
I have friends that have low-manned raid content well below the traditional 10-man raid group. DPS is a convenient tool to measure team success, but the simple fact of the matter is that proper formation and positioning combined with good understanding of the content is really what determines the outcome of a boss fight. DPS is just the low-hanging fruit to solving one’s problems, and is usually a result of a lack of the aforementioned necessities and less about the build one runs.
Of course, I’m not personally advocating people veer from the meta … but I think most PvE players make a bigger deal about what’s “viable” versus what’s “optimal” than they really should.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
Did you not read his post?
Of course I did. The bulk of my post was referring to when he said
> It is by far the worst elite spec mechanic
in reference to the function gyro. And considering I cleared Vale Guardian on the first day it came out as a scrapper, I can’t help but disagree. The ability to resurrect players while on the move literally salvaged my kill run. If people actually sat down and crunched the number difference between core engi versus scrapper they’d come to realize the damage difference isn’t even that much, especially when the upswing in utility is almost immeasurable. I view it simply as: the worse a situation gets, the better scrapper becomes. If I’m with an experienced fractal or raid group I don’t need it, but if I’m pugging content or with less experienced players, its defensive attributes carries parties through content.
T4 Mai Trin, for example, is a complete joke when you can res someone completely across the room with your f gyro while you hold her aggro … or when you can just drop it on someone during bomb phase and potentially get them back up.
The simple fact of the matter is that as far as PvE is concerned for a lot of players: if it isn’t first in DPS, it’s last. Which is why, in any content where DPS isn’t such a concern (e.g., WvW or PvP), or in any content where people actually die (inexperienced raid groups and T4 fractals in general) I don’t consider the scrapper “by far the worst elite spec” or even a little bit. It’s a dominant, well-designed specialization that excels at precisely what it is designed to do. It’s not ArenaNet’s fault the community-made meta is so stringently rigid and driven by a great deal of arrogance that people never make mistakes or play suboptimally.
The title of worst elite spec goes to Herald, if anybody—with Tempest or Berserker having the worst mechanic.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
I think pve players underestimate the amount of people that would have played pvp constantly if it was supported. As bad as the support was, many pure pvp players (myself included) stayed and played pvp exclusively for a long time.
As someone that is a member of a very old and large PvE guild, and as someone that previously managed said guild for years trying to get the general guild population interested in PvP and WvW, I can tell you that, without a doubt, most PvE players have absolutely zero interest in PvP not because of how it is “supported” but entirely because (1) it’s a competitive game mode and they’re not interested in that and (2) they have developed unhealthy playing habits and motivations that don’t align with good game design in the first place.
Season five was a very nice uptick in activity, but it really wasn’t sustainable because they weren’t in it for the PvP: they were in it purely for the ascended gear. And the second they obtained that ascended gear, they were gone.
Every day I’d log into Teamspeak during season five, I’d always reach out to someone in the guild and ask how they were enjoying PvP, and if they’d likely stick with it. Pretty much every time I’d ask they’d answer, “I’m doing this until I get my legendary backpack done.” These aren’t people that actually enjoy PvP in any capacity; they’re there only because the carrot on the stick is enticing enough to stick around—they have absolutely zero interest in the game mode itself. And the second they catch the carrot, or the second they realize the carrot is just a little too out of reach for them or the stick is just too long (as it was in season six), they flee back to the Royal Terrace in Divinity’s Reach and crash each others’ FPS through stacking as many auras as humanly possible as a form of entertainment.
And more to my second point, Ethereal Guardians and other PvE guilds are full of people who are literally willing to grind Molten Duo for hours on end, literally the most boring thing to do in this game, just because it’s the most profitable thing to do in this game. These are people who would literally watch paint dry if it made them 20 gold an hour. These are people who ALREADY stand in one place and auto-attack dragon elbows just because it gives them a chance for ascended gear.
These are not the people ArenaNet needs to be marketing PvP to, because these people aren’t all that invested in the PvE side of things too much either. The community kicks and screams just at the implication that people can inspect whatever gear they’re wearing when clearing a raid wing or a T4 fractal. They don’t take even PvE seriously, so what makes you think they will ever take WvW or PvP seriously?
I literally have to bribe my guild members with gold and rewards just to show up to an in-house.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
The Scrapper traitline is all but mandatory for pvp/wvw – even for non-hammer builds. If you don’t take it, you’re at a huge disadvantage losing access to function gyro. It is by far the worst elite spec mechanic – useless in pve, but good at what it does in competitive game modes.
It also comes with some decent defensive traits and gives you access to sneak + purge gyros.
Coro, you’re crazy man. Gyros are by and far among the most powerful utility skills introduced in Heart of Thorns. They give stability to function as safe stomps and resses, they function as minor healing skills through Final Salvo, and they offer tons of condition cleanse, damage reduction, and projectile hate. The only thing that makes them “useless” in PvE is the fact that they do no damage — and that scrapper by extension doesn’t improve the engineer’s damage.
Beyond that point, scrapper is one of the most well-designed elite specializations. It’ll likely have usage in open world PvE, structured PvP, and both small scale and large scale WvW content for the remainder of this game’s life, long after new elite specializations are introduced to the game. Compare that, for example, to tempest or berserker, which have relatively no identity and are just “more elementalist” and “more warrior.”
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
I agree that the elite specs shouldn’t be upgrades. But Scrapper in pve isn’t even a sidegrade. It’s closer to downgrade.
The issue with the scrapper isn’t that it relies on gyros or hammers to be effective. The hammer is actually an incredibly strong weapon with tons of utility, and the function gyro is a very good mechanic as people always inevitably go down in raids (and the ability to res someone without sacrificing DPS is criminally underrated). The only real problem with the scrapper is that it has no outward party buffs that would make it a remotely competitive support choice in PvE content. As a support role it’s incredibly effective, but it has no edge or advantage over other professions when it comes to elevating party DPS.
The three primary support roles in PvE currently are mesmers dumping alacrity, PS warrior distributing might, and rangers providing healing. And while an engineer could essentially fill the role of a support character providing healing for their team, we don’t have Frost Spirit, Fire Spirit, or Gift of the Land. We don’t have banners or access to alacrity either.
As a sum of its parts, the scrapper just doesn’t contribute as much as a support role as much as other professions do—and that’s why it failed to garner any attention in PvE while being the meta spec in PvP and WvW where the specialization obviously flexes its muscles. It’s a very well designed elite specialization tree, and it has utility in both raids and high end fractals, but it’s just not the best choice—and therefore not a choice at all.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
1) Why is it so long in the first place? Most other games have a ranked downtime between nothing and 1 week, yet were’re stuck with a month, sometimes more.
I imagine the month-long breaks are to encourage PvP players to explore other areas of the game. I don’t think it’s odd that the last season ended around the same time the latest Living Story episode dropped. Whether or not this is a particularly good idea on ArenaNet’s part is another discussion entirely, but I imagine this is one of the primary reasons why they do this.
Another reason is likely due to the cadence of balance patches and giving players time to adjust their builds prior to the next season.
2) Recently we aren’t even told when the next season begins! It’s just unacceptable. Those with a main interest in PvP might just go off to play other games for this rather long period of time, and with no set date to look forward to, people will care less and less about checking for a date when it’s finally set (especially if they like that game).
It is completely normal and healthy to take breaks from Guild Wars 2, whether that’s skipping entire seasons or just the off-season. I don’t think Guild Wars 2 is going to die out just because one season is slower than another, and I don’t think ArenaNet even depends on PvP players to maintain their overhead.
Just acknowledge the game for what it is and enjoy it. And if you’re not, just play something else. It’s just a game, man.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Why put in all the effort to make a 2v2 mode only to have it in custom arenas and not have a queue system for it?
Bizarre.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Folks like myself believe that the culprit was a mix of stale game balance, combined with the rewards nerf and monotone diversity to game modes. All three culminated in the exodus of all the PVE’ers who stuck around in S5, and the departure of veteran PVPers who were getting tired of the meta-game. These in turn, caused the matchmaking to hand out terrible matches, causing even more players who remained for S6 to give up…placing us in the situation we had at the end of S6.
There’s plenty of reasons why, but the truth of the matter is just that this game is five years old, and has very little momentum going for it following Heart of Thorn’s divisive if not outright negative reception from the PvE, PvP, and WvW communities. I am hopeful that the next expansion will perhaps turn things around, but it’s not very common that games that are over five years old see an influx of a ton of players. Hell, even Heart of Thorns sold below expectations, and that’s including the fact that many players purchased multiple accounts for Mystic Coins.
Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if ArenaNet began working on Guild Wars 3 in the next couple years.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
Condition Engineer is all about unloading their condition burst and then getting the kitten out until the burst is off CD,and then proceed to burst again.
And not only is that burst weaker with the loss of Geomancy/Torment sigils, but they’ll now take more damage while unloading it.
The build got nerfed. There’s no way you can look at Tuesday’s balance patch and think core engi in any way got ahead.
This is also not changing the fact that the build was hardly viable in ranked play in the first place. Anyone that actually dies to a condi engi probably needs to revisit their build; condi mesmer, revenant, necromancer, and even guardian are all far superior condition builds.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Looks like a fun set up and I’ll mess around with it a bit in unranked, but I have a feeling that Mender Scrapper is the likeliest candidate of what I’ll play next season.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
so is the power creep still alive?
Huh? Condi engi got nerfed with this balance patch. Protection Injection and Bunker Down were both necessary traits for the build to be even remotely viable, and they both got nerfed last Tuesday. They also removed Sigil of Geomancy and Torment, so condi engi’s damage output is reduced as well.
Condi engi hasn’t really been a viable build outside of unranked for quite a long time, and Tuesday’s patch might’ve been its death knell.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
oh when did they announce season 7 and when is it
I mean, it’s kind of a given at this point, isn’t it?
- There’s no real synergy with the core skills. Scrapper is almost like an entire class apart from engineer, and not in a good way.
- Scrapper is only really useful in PvP or WvW. In PvE, it severely underperforms compared to core. And when compared against other elite specs, it’s a joke in PvE.
- They never even bothered to follow up with our feedback in the forum. It wasn’t until last month that Gaile un-pinned the BWE3 thread.
- The traits are a broken mess because they rushed out a nerf to gyros. I guess they’re consistent about making sure our traits are broken, because the meta is always more important than a vision when it comes to engineers.
I agree in some ways and disagree with others. It’s not that scrapper underperforms in PvE; it’s just that the elite specialization mechanic, the function gyro, is more useful in PvP and WvW where people tend to (ideally) die more frequently.
The other aspect is that scrapper is pretty much a support spec in an area of the game where DPS is the only barometer of success. And since scrapper lacks any damage buff traits like Grace of the Land, other classes can support the raid group while simultaneously upping the group’s damage. The change to Pinpoint Distribution does help, but it’s not really enough—and I can’t imagine that ArenaNet would make the same mistake with the next one.
Scrapper isn’t a broken mess and is in fact quite a powerful and effective elite specialization. Across the game, it’s probably one of the strongest, and it’s likely to be one of the few specializations that remains powerful into the next expansion solely because of the expansive suite of utility gyros provide—most of all the function gyro.
The issue I am raising in this thread is that ArenaNet’s approach to balancing the scrapper has been nerfing core engineer trait lines, essentially reinforcing the need to use it. Engineer will very likely be a tier one profession again for season seven, but it will remain to be one on an even flimsier foundation with the nerfs to Protection Injection and Bunker Down. As Archon Wing said:
- Elite spec too stronk
- Nerfs core
- People become even more reliant on elite specs.
That is HoT balance for you.
ArenaNet’s approach to balancing the engineer in PvP the past two years is akin to pouring gasoline on a fire. Instead of shaving Rapid Regeneration and Final Salvo, and instead of adjusting the values of gyros to make them less dominant (while perhaps buffing gadgets and elixirs in a more significant way), they’re hitting traits like Protection Injection that already have obvious counters (e.g., necromancers) and weren’t the real culprits of our sustain.
The reason engineer is so broken in PvP is because super speed can’t be stripped, and because Purge Gyro literally invalidates condi spam builds as a singular utility skill. But because for ArenaNet making money is more important than making your game actually fun, we’re stuck with the scrapper and will have no competent alternatives for the foreseeable future.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
Med Pack Drop—A buff to Supply Crate that now cleanses condis for your TEAM!
Flame Turret—buffed and reworked
Rocket Turret—buffed and reworked
Thumper Turret—buffed and reworked
Bulwark Gyro—nerfed
Purge Gyro—nerfedCore engi got some love. Not really widening the gap if you ask me.
Not to sound like a kitten, but you can’t just check off how many buffs versus nerfs a class receives and think it automatically comes out ahead. But maybe you’re not familiar with the class and the real extent of these changes, so let me explain why none of these buffs are meaningful—at least as it pertains to PvP—and why all of these nerfs are incredibly obtuse and just damage the class in the long run.
First of all, the turret rework is appreciated, but similar to what they did with Utility Goggles a few patches ago by reducing its cooldown, it’s just not enough to make them worth taking over gyros.
Gyros functionally serve multiple purposes:
1. They grant readily-accessible stacks of stability for safe-stomps/resurrects through Final Salvo.
2. With Final Salvo, when destroyed, they activate lightning fields on the ground. Combined with Rapid Regeneration, they effectively heal for over 2K HP.
3. They provide damage.
This is not even getting into the actual utility that Bulwark Gyro, Purge Gyro, and Sneak Gyro specifically provide. Just existing as gyros, they already check off these three boxes … and they can do all three of these things simultaneously.
Now compare that utility with turrets.
1. Do turrets grant readily-accessible stacks of stability for safe-stomps/resurrects? One does: the Thumper Turret. On almost double the cooldown. One stack. For one second.
2. Do utility turrets provide healing? Natively, no. You can get pretty tricky with some of their blast finishers upon detonation, especially when coinciding with your Healing Turret’s water field, but blasting a water field provides only ~1.3K healing before healing power is added in. Not only is this significantly weaker than just blowing up a gyro, it requires you lining up a water field inside the blast radius to get remotely the same utility.
3. Do turrets provide damage? Yes, but unlike gyros, turrets are immobile targets and easily cleaved down and destroyed.
Even before getting into the fact that Bulwark Gyro layers on a 33% damage reduction on top of protection and a five second reflective dome, even before getting into the fact that Purge Gyro completely invalidates Condi Berserker F1 spam and provides one of the largest and longest duration poison fields in the game, turrets are already systematically outplayed by gyros just by the nature of how they’re designed.
This is why adjusting a few values or changing the cooldowns to turrets literally changes nothing, and this is why veteran engineers like myself just want to uninstall this game and play Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds until Destiny 2 comes out. It’s so completely tone-deaf a change and none of these buffs will shift how engineer is played in any significant way.
To really put it bluntly, these changes are literally a waste of development time.
But really, it’s this continual twisting of the knife that really gets at me most, where with each subsequent patch ArenaNet feels the need to just chip away at the foundations of our class, literally pigeonholing us to our elite specialization and its blase, passive-riddled existence.
The nerfing of Bunker Down and Protection Injection is really just another moment in a long sequence of events that has resulted in the status quo, where engineers are completely beholden to gyros, Final Salvo, and Rapid Regeneration keeping the entire profession afloat. Any further nerfs to either of these traits, or to how gyros work, would immediately bottom out engineer into the gutter.
For such a mechanically diverse and creative profession, it’s a serious travesty what ArenaNet has done to this profession. In PvE you’re stuck either AFK bomb autoing or playing a piano. It’s very obvious to me the people that originally conceived and designed our class are long gone from ArenaNet, and it’s very clear the people making balance changes today have literally zero understanding of what is underpinning this profession or how it is even supposed to be played. As someone that has been maining this class since 2012, I’m baffled that we’re at this point in 2017.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
lol this is why all the elite players leave, bunch of noobs on here talking about what should be done and anet listens to them. 3/4ths the people in this thread probably have not made it past gold three. Enjoy the crappy competition tho, I get 1 competitive match out of 5 now. But hey, its balanced, so I guess the noobs are satisfied.
Take care not to cut yourself with that edge, bro.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
kind of like when they nerfed Healing Turret (0.5s -> 0.75s) to try and address Scrapper sustain and it hurt core engi builds even more than scrapper.
.. or when they nerfed Gear Shield (3s -> 2s) and it hurt core engi way more than scrapper.
.. or when they just broke healing turret altogether in the last patch and now you fail the overcharge half the time when you use it in combat.
The Gear Shield nerf still enrages me. Such a misguided change, and it essentially forces you to take Power Wrench.
Also don’t forget about Automated Medical Response being upped to a 120-second cooldown.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Scrapper…nerfed.
No, they nerfed Protection Injection, a core engineer trait. It is incredibly backward to nerf elite specializations by nerfing core trait skills (essentially widening the gap further between core and elite builds). We want condi engi and rifle engi to be a thing again. This kind of nerf goes entirely against that, and only makes those builds weaker.
The gyro nerf is whatever. Nobody cares about that. You’re still going run two to three gyros this next season because, aside from the Elixir Gun, nothing else is worth using.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
If you define power creep as an improvement to a skill in any way than there will always be power creep. Always.
It’s one thing to adjust a few numerical values and coefficients to make something do slightly more damage. It’s another to literally change the way a skill works and make it significantly more powerful than any previous iteration by adding a daze to it that wasn’t previously there.
The former is simply a buff; the latter is power creep.
There is not a single mmo out there without power creep by that definition.
Guild Wars 1 rarely took this kind of approach to balance, for one. But you’re right: very few MMOs avoid power creep. Many of them actually celebrate it, which is a big reason why vertical progression is so popular.
I played Guild Wars 1 and play Guild Wars 2 because ArenaNet was historically a bit more even-keeled when it came to their approach to balance. They’ve certainly buffed and nerfed some skills over the years in ways I often found objectionable, but yesterday’s change to how turrets overcharge (as welcomed as it is) and to Choking Gas represent not buffs or nerfs but literal reworks to how skills operate literally five years into this game’s existence.
These are not the types of changes ArenaNet should be making here, especially when there’s so much ample low hanging fruit like mesmer mantras or engineer gadgets that desperately need their attention.
Simple fact is: if ArenaNet wants more resurrection denial, they should just reduce the amount of stability they poured into the game two years ago. There’s already way too much CC in Heart of Thorns PvP; we don’t need even more of this. They need to scale back the power creep, not advance it.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
I wouldn’t call a daze that requires certain conditions to be met power creep.
Adding a daze to a skill that used to not have it is the very definition of power creep.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Again, stability or invulnerability. If you can’t deal with cleave you shouldn’t try to get a rez off. Not once in my reply did I say “just stop rezzing”.
Would you try and rez someone through a necro or a warrior’s cleave without some form of invulnerability?
Before Heart of Thorns stability was insurance, not a requirement, to help successfully res a teammate.
This is just a needless introduction of more power creep to the game in a patch that was supposedly intended to reduce it.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
We’re now looking at entering the seventh season of Heart of Thorns PvP with little if any real changes to the engineer. A few token nerfs just to make us feel weaker than we were previously without any compensating buffs to push the class in any visible, coherent direction.
I’m just baffled.
Six seasons into Heart of Thorns, entering what is ostensibly the penultimate or even final season of Heart of Thorns PvP (depending on when the next expansion actually drops), and we have seen no real changes to the scrapper elite specialization or the engineer profession overall since the end of season one.
We are still stuck with only running the hammer with gyros, the elixir gun, and the healing turret. Minus the nerf to Slick Shoes following season one, my build has not changed in any significant way for nearly two years—not to say that those two years were particularly comfortable. In that time: gyros lost their daze, their damage, and had their cooldowns increased; Rapid Regeneration was nerfed; Automated Medical Response was nerfed; Slick Shoes was nerfed; and now Protection Injection has been nerfed. It’s been a consistent if not systematic downhill slide since Heart of Thorns launched, and core engi has suffered some of the worst of it. Not including today’s nerf to Protection Injection, other traits and skills like Gear Shield have also seen significant reductions in their utility, rendering any core engi build significantly weaker to the scrapper—a state, I imagine, is entirely on purpose to drive sales and artificially inflate the value of one’s purchase.
To compensate many of these nerfs, ArenaNet has, to their merit, tried to help us by adjusting values and tinkering with things for seemingly random effects. Every patch I see a few changes like Fire Bomb’s physical damage being buffed or seeing Utility Goggles’ cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 20. Despite the fact that these changes did little if anything to the profession, it was nice to see that ArenaNet was at least trying to make other skills more viable—even if at times it feels like they’re improperly forcing those decisions by just making the status quo less viable.
There’s no denial here that Heart of Thorns introduced a great deal of power creep that needed scaling back. I absolutely acknowledge it and I’m glad to see some of it curtailed. But there’s nothing more demeaning than being forced to run the same build you ran the past three to four seasons while being cognizant of the fact that it’s a lesser version of those previous builds. Much like how the reward nerf crippled season six’s popularity, it’s a tough sell to tell people to keep doing what they’re doing for less pay or—in our case—less effectiveness.
It was Irenio’s comment during one of the AMAs, following the closure of season five, however, that gave me hope, which you can find here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Official-Skill-Balance-Thread-22-February-Update/page/2#post6505559
We would really like to do some in-depth passes on underused utility types across most professions. We did not have time to do that for this update, sadly.
Kits on Engineer are an outlier; as utilities they provide an insane amount of versatility. Inherently it is difficult to bring a single skill up to the level of five skills. This is a difficult conundrum and one we discuss regularly. That said, we do have a few ideas for creating gameplay with other utility revisits in the future.
In particular I’d like to review and revisit Elementalist Conjures, Guardian Spirit Weapons, Engineer Gadgets and potentially Mesmer Mantras.
And I guess I just find myself asking: is this it? Are kits always going to be an outlier for us? Are gadgets always going to be useless? Are we going to just shift from one elite specialization to another, stuck with yet another completely overpowered elite specialization tree that only forces ArenaNet to gut core trait lines further to compensate?
I just don’t get it. They’ve had over 18 months to get this sorted out, and right now, May 17th, 2017, this is what they have to show for it. If this balance patch wasn’t the opportune time to give us something new prior to the next expansion, which obviously will take the lion’s share of the balance team’s focus in the coming months, then when?
I bought into ArenaNet’s fresh take on the engineer when they unveiled the scrapper by purchasing Heart of Thorns, but my hope is dwindling that the engineer will be anything but the scrapper moving forward into the next expansion—to where it’ll then be whatever the next thing is, never again being the class I bought the game to play originally, or being the class that kept me actively playing this game for years.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
The new sigils…I don’t know. They just feel kinda awful to use. In general, the top few classes feel more balanced, but, the game doesn’t feel fun, anymore. Your guys’ thoughts?
This game hasn’t felt “fun” for a while. I’ve been running the same build on my engineer literally since Heart of Thorns launched, and it’s seen nothing but nerfs for two years. I don’t know what Irenio’s deal is, because we never asked for gyros in the first place and he absolutely refuses to let us use elixirs or gadgets in any real capacity—you know, the things that are actually fun to use.
Today they even felt the need to nerf Protection Injection, a trait which ostensibly just managed to, I guess, fly under the radar for five years before needing this change in May 2017. It’s almost comical at this point. What changed that warranted this nerf?
There’s just absolutely nothing inspirational in these patch notes. They just constantly tackle the low hanging fruit like Healing Signet without properly addressing the deep issues that elite specializations put into the game: there’s just very little build variety, and this patch only stifled things further for multiple professions. I didn’t play nearly any games in season six, and I don’t see why that’ll change for season seven. I don’t care how good or bad it is: I’m just tired of playing the same kittening build every kittening season, and it’s sad they continue to nerf our meta build without helping us create any actual alternatives.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
I’m glad, those sigils never made any sense.
Two seconds of chilled is actually very nice, as chilled reduces move speed by 66% versus crippled’s 50%, and also lengthens cooldowns under its effect by 40%.
I would understand ArenaNet believing it does too much with it also doing a decent clip of damage on top of the effect, but its replacement Sigil of Stagnation is hilariously bad. Three seconds of crippled is not a good alternative, and most classes that were using Hydromancy prior to today (e.g., warrior and engineer) already have ample access to crippled.
I acknowledge that some elements of game balance depend upon making some additions by subtraction, but this was a decision I find a hard time understanding. What made Hydromancy attractive was that it offered a mobility condition to melee builds that don’t normally have access to it. Crippled, on the other hand, is significantly less rare … and because of that, significantly less effective.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
Is this something you felt was supremely out of balance? I’m not really sure I understand this change.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Y’all can complain about ANet and balance all you want, but it was the rampant match manipulation last season that killed PvP.
The reward nerf for this season certainly hurt things for everybody, but why should anyone give a kitten about the leaderboards, titles, or badges when a good number of players at the top are throwing games, queue-dodging each other, and even sharing their accounts?
There’s just literally nothing to play for, and there’s zero incentive to get invested when the casual players aren’t there to fill out the matchmaker and the hardcore players are intentionally face-planting the game mode out of some bizarre sense of entitlement and ego over imaginary points.
This game could’ve been something great, and season five could’ve been the turnaround Guild Wars 2 needed to sustain player numbers into the next expansion release later this year.
Instead I’ve dumped 100+ hours into Playunknown’s Battlegrounds the past six weeks and I just log into this game for Living Story content. It’s a real shame. I want to care about PvP in this game but it’s pretty clear nobody else does. Casuals hate the rewards, and the hardcore players hate each other.
This is a perfect instance where you can blame the players, not the game.
If I was ArenaNet I wouldn’t put much effort to maintain this community either.
It doesn’t deserve the attention.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
Did they make the warrior’s second weapon dissapear?
No, but that’s because warriors only have one function key while we have five.
Point is, classes like elementalist and warrior (and even for a time guardian with tomes) are littered with skills that replace their entire weapon set. The only difference between conjured weapons and banners from kits is that they have cooldowns—but this is balanced in accordance to their given strengths.
There is literally zero indication anywhere that I can find that suggests we lost our weapon swap solely because of kits, and there is absolutely nothing stopping them from adding kits to other professions in the future.
So if not kits, why then? Perhaps because of our toolbelt? Perhaps to maintain flavor variety between professions? For example: why does warrior get to trait into a five second weapon swap when no one else does? Or: why does thief have initiative? When Guild Wars 2 launched no one was concerned about dealing unrivaled DPS or playing the most skill-dependent profession, so the fact that the pistol and rifle were weak wasn’t even on anyone’s radar. That naturally sorted itself out later as the game aged.
I mean, what if maybe it’s just because the profession launched with only two main-hand weapons, one condition and one power, and there’s literally nothing they have in common with each other that warranted the ability to swap between them? That’s as good a guess as any.
I mean really looking at things right now, would you realistically gain anything by being able to swap between the pistol and rifle, or between off-hand pistol and shield? Would such changes in any way influence the PvE or PvP meta?
Either way, guessing is all that we have right now unless someone is willing to actually pull up a post/article/statement by ArenaNet that shows kits are the reason we have no weapon swap, or if a dev is willing to officially comment on the matter themselves.
Just to reiterate: I’m sure kits do play some part in balancing the profession, just in the same sense that banners, spirits, and signets play a role in balancing other professions. But that doesn’t make any of them profession mechanics, and it definitely doesn’t mean we can’t see weapon swap being added down the road either.
Remember that the revenant originally didn’t come with weapon swap either.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
the old times
That video is from 2015, and from after the Heart of Thorns trait overhaul.
Hardly the “old times.”
No it is not after the trait rework. It’s before as the old trait system was still in place. Before the first powercreep of 23rd june and HoT itself.
The game felt much different than it does now and most people prefer the old days. Myself included.
Was it not until June 23? My mistake then.
Either way, I still hardly consider any point where Celestial was still a thing to be a desirable time. Baffles me that people are trying to bring it back.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
the old times
That video is from 2015, and from after the Heart of Thorns trait overhaul.
Hardly the “old times.”
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Guild Wars 2 isn’t a twitch shooter. You can be plenty decent at this game entering into your thirties.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Courtyard got removed because anet didn’t want to deal with balancing a combat only game mode.
What difference is there to balance? It’s not like Conquest doesn’t revolve around killing people.
It’s literally the easiest mode in the world to balance around, and it might actually produce some build variety that Conquest discourages—for obvious reasons.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
There are been many times where I failed to understand decisions by ANet in terms of PvP direction. Building new things but not allowing players to play them (CY…), removing things that players enjoyed (8v8…), not providing things that players requested (build templates…).
If there’s one thing you can recognize that has changed since the start of Mike’s tenure as game director, it’s their emphasis on “trimming of the fat.”
Under Colin, it really felt like ArenaNet was constantly laying down new foundations rather than build up existing infrastructure. The Living Story Season One is a really great example of this. Not so much in the sense that stuff would be added and disappear but that the content itself would be so ridiculously different from release to release. This was largely because the LS1 was designed by a number of different teams, but I imagine a lot of this also had to do with the amount of independence granted to each of these teams. And while a lot of the releases were very good and were later repurposed into fractals (e.g., Flame and Frost, Nightmare tower) many of them weren’t, and felt like rushed, interim projects meant to fill the void between the larger releases like the Queen’s Gauntlet, Tequatl, Marionette, Super Adventure Box, and Wurm. There was just a lot of kitten being churned out with very little concern of a broader picture.
As much as I loved the LS1, and even though the LS1 makes up the majority of the best post-launch content in this game’s life span (far better than anything post-HoT, though the recent releases come close) it did often feel like they were just spitballing ideas and throwing them at the wall, waiting to see what would stick.
A lot of what “stuck” ended up coming into shape as the LS2, but a lot of what didn’t “stick” was left behind and forgotten, in what appears to a lot of people, including myself, to be a great deal of wasted resources. I have a feeling that Mike feels largely the same, and is trying to avoid that from happening again.
The problem is that Courtyard was one of the things that didn’t stick—not because it was a bad idea, but because they implemented it very poorly. As you stated yourself:
Courtyard was never given a chance in the first place: you couldn’t play it even if you wanted to (because it was in the Conquest queue), and if you rolled for it, you hadn’t the right build for it. That was so unfortunate.
It is super unfortunate, and I really do believe if ArenaNet made the effort to give it another shot to the same degree they’d give a universally-hated map like Capricorn, they might find a huge success on their hands.
TDM is simple. It’s easy. It’s straight forward. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. Make it 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3. Give it its own mode designation similar to what Stronghold has, and just see what happens.
See if it sticks. They have relatively nothing to lose, as the map assets are already there. It would be a good idea of they deleted the lanes and just give us that main central area to skirmish in, though.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Kits are the thing to cover the lack of weapon swap.
This line of thinking is parroted often, but where has this actually been stated by ArenaNet?
Whenever I try to change to my second weapon I end changing to a kit instead. Also, whenever I try to equip a kit in other professions I can’t do it…
Its very clear to me. Or you really think this wasn’t intended?
Banners work just the same was as you describe. Does that make them the warrior’s profession mechanic?
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Hello.
Like many I returned to the game with the season five reward changes. Overall, I had a great time playing last season. With the start of season six however, I find myself playing less not so much on the basis of the rewards as it is the fact that playing 400-plus games of Conquest in a two month period builds a certain level of fatigue that demands a longer break than what you’ve given us.
A few years ago you guys came out with the Courtyard map: a 5v5 Conquest map with no capture points. It was panned at the time and still harbors a number of negative opinions, but that was largely due to its existence in the Conquest map rotation and not the map itself.
Are there any plans, internally, to do anything with Courtyard—perhaps to make it its own 3v3 TDM mode? It would be such a simple addition to the game that I think would really pay off in the long run, and would give many of us fatigued of Conquest to have something else to do.
PvP is in desperate need of more game modes, and simple additions like TDM and CTF would help greatly to breathe new life into the game mode more than ascended armor would.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
I think they did something to placement. It seems like quite few people that were in plat/legend last season placed in silver/gold this season. If you are in those rating, you going to have fun time in first week.
Placed in silver and had a few amazing matches until the rage-quiters and non-english speaking idiots come in droves and fight on roads and chase 1v3 off of points, or run one by one into the enemy team.
I mean … you’re in silver. What are you expecting?
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
You can’t make decisions based on the top 3-5% of players. Thats ludicrous.
They didn’t make a decision based on the top 3-5%. They did an open poll and people answered.
Like I said already, if people want profession leaderboards, we can have them. Players are now locked to professions at the start of each match. While there’s still account-based MMR, you can simply keep track of the highest rating achieved on each profession quite easily just by following what games they win on what classes.
And just because I only have like 10% the games played on warrior that I do on engineer, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ll have an easier time fighting necromancers with my warrior than I would on engineer.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
I think the vast majority of the people that voted “no” don’t oppose having profession leaderboards, or even profession-based MMR.
The problem is just that the game currently isn’t at a state of balance where you can reliably 1v1 every single profession on every single class. There are hard-counters in this game, and it’s incredibly frustrating when you have, for example, two engineers on your team versus two necromancers … or three guardians on your team versus three warriors. These match-ups happen regularly, and they’re almost always a guaranteed loss.
Disparity in skill level will help you overcome match-ups … to a point. But in Plat 2/3, games are frequently won and lost only by one’s team composition. You can rotate as well as anyone, but a necromancer should never lose to an engineer in any circumstance, or a warrior to a guardian.
Once classes are balanced without hard-counters in mind, we can maybe revisit the topic of profession-based MMR and class-locking.
Until then, I don’t see why we can’t have a profession-based leaderboard in the current system.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Kits are the thing to cover the lack of weapon swap.
This line of thinking is parroted often, but where has this actually been stated by ArenaNet?
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
Question. When you say this do you mean reduce raw damage output in general, o reduce raw damage output that comes specifically from sigils? Because its an important distinction.
Regardless I do want to see some sigils removed. I think that sigils like hydromancy/geomancy that damage enemies purely for swapping weapons is an outdated concept and doesn’t add anything except damage spam to the game mode. I really would love to see them removed. Swapping to a weapon happens when you want to gain an advantage in the current fight, whether that is more pressure, more defense or more mobility. You shouldn’t gain an extra advantage of dealing potentially several thousand damage from weapon swapping. And they just make it absolutely trivial to add cover conditions. You don’t even have to think about it and do it intelligently.
We mean raw damage from sigils. You are spot on in your thinking as we feel the same about sigils like hydro and geo.
Please don’t remove Hydromancy. Without it scrapper gets kited around like crazy.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
I guess to simplify a bit:
If you want to be competitive, you need a lot of on-demand condi clear. On engi, that means elixirs or purge gyro. Purge gyro doesn’t do anything else and pathing/aoe can be a problem, so it’s usually not worth wasting a skill slot on. To this end, I’d like to trade my elite for a regular skill (and our elites are really good! I just need another skill slot for condi clear if I want to survive). The alternative is playing Alchemy & Inventions, like every other PvP build.
Purge Gyro is still pretty valuable just on the basis of its versatility. Its toolbelt is solid, you can activate it for a stack of stability, and blowing it up does a fair amount of damage. I pretty much always run it unless I feel like Blast Gyro would be more worthwhile.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
I understand coro’s dissapointment. Two decent builds aren’t enough to speak of build diversity.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that complaining about build diversity is pointless when there’s literally only a dozen engineer mains in the entire top 250—most of whom duo’d almost exclusively.
Season five was completely dominated by warriors and guardians, and while seeing nerfs to both those classes is great, the light field buff helps even the odds against warriors even further.
It just seems incredibly tone deaf to me to complain about this change, especially when we still have ample access to retaliation through other means.
You guys can complain about build diversity when engineer actually has a build suited for the meta-game.
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)
Yeah.. I’m somewhat disappointed because I want more build diversity, not less…
Why are you disappointed? Power scrapper may be the best build for us in PvP/WvW, but it was hardly an S-tier choice in season five. This change only makes power scrapper better, and makes us a more competitive option in season six. I anticipate seeing more engineer mains in the top 250 this time around.
Does this change ultimately overshadow the Blowtorch and Flame Blast buffs? Maybe. Maybe not. There are a lot of factors that hinge on condition engineer being viable in PvP—most of all its inverse relationship with necromancers. Condition engineer will only be as strong as how weak necromancer is. And while the Blowtorch and Flame Blast buffs are quite nice, there’s a glaring flaw that the core engi suffers from in that it’s incredibly difficult to land Pry Bar and Blowtorch on aegis/dodge-spamming professions like thief and guardian that historically were more easily countered with it. I imagine a great deal of this would be resolved with a gadgets overhaul, and to address your other point:
We already rely SO MUCH on elixirs/egun for everything in pvp. It’d be nice if you could run like .. gadgets or something, but you can’t spare the skill slots when you need all the elixirs you can get to cleanse condi burst.
I would imagine this is entirely what the dev team will be focusing on between now and the next expansion. I already have a few suggestions/ideas in mind for making gadgets more attractive: the most radical of which being that they keep most of their current active effects but doubly function as signets.
Engineer is in a far better state than people think it is regarding the balance between our utilities, and ArenaNet is right to pretty much leave most of them alone.
Honestly, I’d like to trade my elite skill slot for a regular skill slot. Then I could run a fun gadgets/rifle/scrapper decap build and use Purge Gyro for condi cleanse. It’d still suck compared to the meta builds (condi cheese, etc.), but at least it’d be playable.
But why? Elixir X, Sneak Gyro, and Mortar Kit are each incredibly strong. Even Supply Crate is pretty amazing by 2017 standards. Engineer has probably the best selection of elite skills of any profession in the game. For most classes they’re stuck with 1 or 2 utilities for pretty much the entire game.
Outside of quickness resses/stomps in the early months of Heart of Thorns, when has guardian not ran Renewed Focus, for example?
[EG] Ethereal Guardians
(edited by Phineas Poe.3018)