A PTR, while an excellent idea, will never work in GW2 where you have a monthly development cycle built around events. Think about it. In one month the code has to be finalized, QAed, and implemented. There simply is no window of time in which a PTR could play its role and add value. While I support the notion of a PTR, it makes no sense while monthly events are perceived as a large part of the GW2 value proposition.
It runs into aggro like a moron, it stands still like a moron, and it dies like a moron.
.I had to laugh just a little. That very accurately sums up the pets total 10 second life span.
I had to laugh too. Critickitten it sounds like you play an Asura ranger.
This sadly is the price of a monthly development cycle built around events. Developer resources are prioritized and I can guarantee you the monthly events must happen. Fixes to balance and the core game are at a very low priority…obviously. It’s very sad that they’ve made the events a large part of their marketing value proposition. It means, for one thing, that rangers will be limping into combat for the foreseeable future.
It’s not an overreaction, it is a snowballed reaction.
You see with each patch ArenaNet has habitually made design choices that are…well…less than great. With each of those sub-par patches the players patience and goodwill has died a little. From the complete lack of major class balancing, ignoring WvW, Karka chest debacle, Ascended gear introduction, laurel system, and now guild missions; ArenaNet has been angering people.
It happens with every MMO and usually the 6 month mark is the breaking point. ArenaNet has consistently not made good changes and shown that they need “informed” of their poor choices. It just doesn’t help there is 6 months of pent up frustration behind those posts. As the months roll by there might be less posts due to people quitting(reached their breaking point) but they will be more and more hate filled.
Pretty much this. People who dismiss the uproar as overreaction miss the fact that the reaction is to specific named aspects of the patch. The specific named complaints have substance as rationale is given. The charge of overreaction is just an assertion. Is it overreaction or is it that people really want the game to succeed but are nonplussed given the actions of Anet? I’m inclined to go with the later.
I see the doom and gloomers are out in full force. “Oh, it’s all over now. Oh, we’re totally excluded from this content. Oh, Anet sucks. Oh, Anet doesn’t listen. Oh, sPvP is totally ruined.”
What a joke. Try being less drama queens please – quitting a game you don’t pay for monthly that has given you 10x any content that a single player game can offer is laughable. Let me know when you try another MMO or go back to one. The grass ain’t greener and you’ll come crawling back.
But please, keep up the amusement.
It’s always like this. Something new comes up. People will 100% of the time find something to complain about it. More people will join in. Lots of emotions at forums. Eventually, people reading will care less. Emotions die down. And people live with it. If it’s one thing that the human race is capable of, it’s the ability to adapt.
Exactly, just give it a few weeks. It happened with fotm but now fotm doesn’t really concern people now.
Actually I view the 11/15 patch as the worst of the patches. FotM was simply the mechanism for the introduction of vertical progression. It is of concern to many people still and is discussed almost daily on the forums.
How are you liking it? It feels pretty annoying to me. For the younger people on the forums that doesn’t mean hard. At pent/shelt they’ve added pseudo-champs that are champ enough to be annoying. Of course they don’t drop anything of value—they are champs after all. And, champs can be up non-stop. Before you were able to avoid them in the game, now they are in your face. They’ve billed it as making Orr more interesting. You interested?
I myself just logged out with the latest fix brokenness build and don’t know if I’ll log back in tonight. I used to go to Orr daily—even the old annoying Orr. But, I really don’t feel like going back to the new/improved Orr.
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I just decided to send an email to ArenaNet. Maybe that way this message could be noticed. I doubt it, but I feel the need to express myself, so here it goes:
“I was never one of the complaining types. I know that the highest tier gear is not necessary. I will never aim for a legendary and I’m fine with it, but I really wanted ascended items. So much so that now I’m feeling a bit depressed. The system after the update makes no sense and is actively stopping the guild that I’m in from expanding. It’s actually breaking the game.
Here’s the game breaking part:
I’m in a 15 member guild. We were slowly getting our upgrades, one by one. We were never big, so we never complained about how slow it is for us to get it. But here’s the thing – we will never be able to get enough influence to be able to run guild missions. You might say “just get a few more members!”. Well my recruiting efforts are going to waste now, because first thing that people want before joining is to know that your guild will have enough influence to unlock and run guild missions right now. Well we can’t have that because we don’t have enough members. And we can’t get enough members because we don’t have it.
Here’s the solo player based part:
I was able to get ascended rings no problem. Running fractals is easy enough. I thought that their laurel price made no sense (they have less stats than the amulet, but cost more), but because I already had them from fractals I had no complaints there. The amulets came out. I thought “that’s where I will spend my laurels!”. Yes, it takes 20 days to get even one and I have 8 alts, but I can do it! All it takes is time, right (it would take me about 5 months to get the amulets for all of my alts)?
But then the accessories came out. Here where it makes no sense – they have less stats than the amulets and the rings, but they cost more! 40 laurels + 50 ectos. 50 ectos would already push it close to impossible for me, but I won’t complain here, plenty of ways to get ectos, it would be my own fault if I wouldn’t get 50 of them (15 gold to buy it, so a full earring set would cost 30 gold, or if I would want to get free exotics to salvage and my luck would stay what it is – about 150 dungeon runs). But 40 laurels when their stats are lower than the amulet? Let’s see, so I have 8 alts – that’s 14 months of dailies and monthlies + 240 gold spent if the prices don’t change if I want to get it for them. "Earrings are impossible for me. At least they’re impossible for me if I want to gear all of my alts. Either that or I’ll have to be one of those cheap shots that joins a random big guild (or more than one of them), only to get my stuff and leave. And I don’t want to resort to doing that. Yet I do want the earrings. I agree to work for them, but 40 laurels for each is something I will not be able to afford.
Mirta, Mirta, I can’t believe you are QQing about any aspect of vertical progression. Remember, it’s all optional. You don’t need any of it to play the game. Simply ignore the ascending power curve if you think any part of it is too steep.
/tongueincheek
1) Don’t run glass cannon mesmer
2) Don’t run GC Mesmer.
The endless string of broken updates from ArenaNET hints that they have no test server or even a test environment.
They finally fixed the cabbage patch in the Harathi Hinterlands which has been inaccessible since launch. A developer at first commented in a post that they couldn’t reproduce the problem in their test environment. As a developer myself, the clear takeaway is that they don’t have a properly designed test environment that is running production code.
They also reverted Orr to annoying. Farming is much more work (I think they call this ‘interesting’) as you have to deal with numerous champs that still drop what they’ve always dropped—nothing of any value. The only difference is you could largely avoid them before and now they are in your face. Hell, they could have just added the name change contract and many would have called it a good patch. The real headscratcher is that the game started out awesome (new game problems notwithstanding) and seems to get worse with each patch. They broke my Foefires Essence this patch as well. I suppose this is what you can expect with a monthly release cycle. How any developer thought that was a good idea with a sprawling MMO codebase is beyond me.
We’re currently investigating what caused this change, so I don’t have more information at the moment, but I can assure you that we are looking into this.
Thank you for your patience!
Thank you for the reply on this. Just knowing that it was unintentional was all I needed to know.
Looks like it may have been unintentional. Whew!
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Removed-particle-effects/first#post1519293
Generally speaking, it’s more appropriate to thank someone for good results rather than ‘hard work’? I’m sure they work hard and that there are many bright people there. But, I log in and look at the ugly bright plainness of my Foefires Essence without its awesome effects and I just shake my head.
Whether you like them or not, find them easy or hard, they are most definitely a departure from the “play your way” philosophy.
pls stfu and listen. This is an MMO. stat/gear progression is NEEDED to keep people wanting to play and hopefully for anet buy more diamonds There is a reason wow is so successful
There’s a reason i don’t play WoW.
Hah! The game culture and those it attracted was a major reason for me to leave WoW and come to GW2. Vertical progression was an aspect of WoW that created many of the problems.
OP, ignore the kids. There are threads already on the new dailies and many people have issues with them. They are a departure from the “play your way” philosophy and people are calling Anet on it. There are obviously a lot of people used to the old MMO’s that told you what to do when and are OK with it, but GW2 was supposed to be different in this regard.
Spirit Links just looks… pathetic.
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/49832/gw299.jpg
Wow, I don’t own that one and it truly is bizarre without the effects. Just, wow.
Then don’t do the daily. No skin off my back.
You can’t be bothered for 10 minutes of your time, so don’t expect ANet to spend 1000s of man hours catering to your every whim at the expense of other players, princess.
If you’re going to make exaggerations, don’t expect anyone to take your post seriously.
Look princess, you clearly don’t understand what a dev team needs to do when developing a game. Updates to this game are not a simple process. It takes a lot of real people doing real work trying to make millions of players happy. The experience simply cannot be personally tailored to each and every princess in this game so that that princess will never have to do anything she finds boring. That, princess, would take quite literally 1000s of man hours.
You misunderstand what is required to implement a design goal. The experience doesn’t need to be tailored to each and every person. All they have to do is tailor it to the design goal “play your way”. It’s simple really. The original dailies met this design goal. The last dailies came close as I could still play where and how I wanted, for the most part. The current daily wants to tell me where to play the game. This is a distinctive departure from a game that described itself as having “play your way” as a design goal.
Just logged in again and you know what? Foefires Essence isn’t simply ‘less’ without the effects, it’s ugly. It’s just way too much bright plainness in your face. Now I’m OCD around the issue, we really need an answer.
There is now a growing thread in general on this. You might want to follow it in both places to see if we get an Anet response. If they say it’s a bug, it belongs here, if not then the PR event can occur in general.
I had a good laugh at the champ chicken too. Bottom line though is they haven’t made a farming location more interesting, they’ve simply made the same level of reward more work to achieve. It used to be possible to avoid champs because they weren’t worth the effort—now, they’re in your face. I would love for them to create a video of a session where they decide to introduce stuff like this. It would be very helpful in understanding the thought process behind what they do.
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I would certainly like to give them the benefit of the doubt and think it’s a bug. However there’s a thread in the bug forum and here and no response. Given the cost of, say, Foefires Essence, this is certainly a ragequit level issue. They can settle it with one response. Of course, if they intend to say it’s intentional they’ll have to gear up for another PR event.
I haven’t experienced lag but I can report that the massive culling introduced 1/28 is still there in the 2/26 patch.
Foefires Essence has lost its distinctive glow as well. The price varies but people have paid up to 700g for a cool looking weapon and now it’s flat like any other weapon. If this is not a bug I am going to be very upset. I would like a quick response from Anet.
It’s funny, I thought the lack of choice was what made the old ‘new’ dailies a problem. Today, on the first day I have a choice I have to completely change my planned play for the day. I would much prefer that I decide where and how I play. At least with the old ‘new’ dailies, and I didn’t like them, I could pretty much fit them in whatever I was up to. No longer. Once again, they have improved it worse.
I need to do dailys and monthlies, without skipping a single one, for 16 months in order to get two for each of my characters.
Doesn’t that seem just a LITTLE excessive?
I have 11 characters total and all the professions at 80 except necro and engi. The addition of vertical progression has put a definite damper on my enjoyment of alts. It doesn’t take a lot of intellectual horsepower to realize you won’t be able to move all of them along the power curve. GW2 has become a game where one main and zero alts is really the only character composition that is feasible. While I have enjoyed playing my characters, I truly feel like my purchase of the additional slots was a waste of money.
10 people is a very good size for a Tier 1 bounty mission.
In a 10 person guild it is highly unlikely that you will even have 10 people online, let alone have everyone wanting to do the same activity. I think the issue still stands. Guild missions exclude small guilds. This is one of the changes that will make mega-guilds more attractive and make it harder for smaller, more personal guilds to survive.
Having played a couple of my characters I’d say it’s in the running for the worst patch ever. Of course 11/15 is pretty securely in that spot.
My experience so far:
What were they thinking with Foefires Essence? They removed the distinctive glow of a weapon that people paid as much as 700g for. Simply, what were they thinking?
They added champs and multiple vets to pent/shelt. While this could arguably be “more interesting”, c’mon, it’s a farming location. Working harder for the same reward is not particularly interesting or fun. Were the rewards commensurate, I would have no problem with making it more interesting. This has been the historical issue with champs all along…they are not worth the effort. Normal mobs are a much better choice for drops as you can kill many more in the time it takes to kill a champ.
I had finally made my peace with previous new dailies. Now, on the first day that I’m given a ‘choice’ of which dailies to do, I have to completely alter my planned play for the day. I’d much prefer that I dictate when and where I play than to have the game developer give me choices of which area do I least want to play in. I’m not sure how long it will take to make peace with the improved dailies.
I am very disappointed that the name change contract didn’t make it into this patch. I am glad they added gender change without it as it makes the game more visually entertaining.
I’m sure there is much I have yet to experience in the patch. On a positive note, the guild queue seems to be working and they didn’t utterly destroy any of my builds. I suppose I should be thankful; it could have been a lot worse.
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Actually, it’s even simpler still. All items find their price by the amount people are willing to sell for and buy for. There is no problem here, it’s simply the way an economy functions. However, as in any economy, we have special interest groups that seek to control some niche of the economy solely for their profit. That’s actually not a problem either as long as they don’t have the means to regulate anything. Let the market come to a natural homeostasis and everything will be fine. No worries mates.
Big disappointment that this wasn’t in the February patch. I changed the gender of my Guardian because I could no longer stand the vocals or weapon skill animations. I knew the impact, but figured I could wait for the name change contract which was coming sooner rather than later (I have 11 characters to play after all). Besides the fact that offering gender change without name change makes no sense at all, this is a feature that should be in game regardless. At this point, after all the promises of soon, I would like to know when we can expect to see the name change contract.
Quick, sell the pies!
That would have been useful info yesterday. I think we’ll be eating the pies.
It all remains to be seen, eh? The once per day aspect probably means some people will need to solo the boss on some servers.
I believe to cast the issues around RNG here in terms of ‘fairness’ is a bit of a red herring. Ideally, a loot system handles a part of the ‘reward for play’ dynamic—fairness really doesn’t come into it at all.
The idea in games is that while we play for a variety of primary reasons (fantasy, abnegation, etc.), we play games because they are fun and rewarding. Part of that reward comes from the gameplay itself and part of it comes from that sweet, sweet loot. Even our characters know good loot when they see it and they respond to it verbally. And, in an MMO, you actually need loot to expand your characters, craft, travel, repair, etc. This is standard in all MMO’s.
So we like loot and we need loot and this is where the loot system comes in. First of all, the current system is not purely RNG, as that would only be appropriate for trash loot. There are some rules involved you can be sure. The bottom line is the loot system can be anything Anet wants it to be. There are a variety of models for a loot system and they can be hybridized and commonly are. As I mentioned, the notion of ‘fairness’ to make the issue contemporary is simply extra baggage here. What is desired is that the common player experience reward for playing the game beyond the gameplay itself. It’s the job of the loot system to pull this off.
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The server you play on determines your open world PvE experience to a large degree. I’m on Tarnished Coast and every zone is populated from starter areas to Cursed Shore farming areas. Try guesting on TC and check it out.
Guesting is not the ultimate solution as ideally it should be around, well, guesting, playing with friends and the like. Right now, it’s a solution to the dead server problem. It’s natural for the population to peak and decline somewhat in a new MMO. However, their introduction of vertical progression in the 11/15 patch emptied the open world on my original server. It was like in one day there was no one around anymore outside LA. I did two server transfers before landing on TC which I am very happy with.
This is not true. The time when this game lost the most players is the month or two following release. People that came to GW2 expecting a WoW competitor started realizing this game was not a gear treadmill and didn’t have raiding so they started leaving in droves. We are now left with the small percentage of the mmo community that doesn’t need raiding or a gear treadmill in their MMO’s.
This game will never compete with the BIG MMO’s out there that have raids and gear treadmills. Are there enough gamers in the MMO community that don’t mind the absence of raids, the gear treadmill and the trinity? I don’t know as only ArenaNet knows how many people they need to be playing this game and spending money in the gem shop to make it a profitable success.
If this game ever wants to achieve massive major success they would have to institute a gear treadmill, raiding and the trinity system. This game is a niche MMO as it stands.
If you read my post carefully I never said anything about a decline in the player base. How would I know? I only spoke of an emptying of the open world, and that was actually due to funneling players into one dungeon to grind for the gear with the better stats.
And, there is nothing big-league about vertical progression (your gear grind treadmill). The major MMO’s have it and it is increasing viewed as a negative element in game design. It’s only purpose is to give players an illusion of progress. Let me illustrate. Before the new tier of gear everyone is at power level X. When they get off the treadmill they are now all at power level Y. Meanwhile the environment has also assumed power Y. There has been no relative change in power level among players or between players and the environment. No one has actually gone anywhere. That’s why it’s called a treadmill. You get on and off at the same place. Thoughtful gamers have begun asking for more than illusion from their gameplay and the time they invest in a game. And, no, a game doesn’t have to be a WoW-clone in any respect to be successful. They just need a design philosophy and vision full of ideas whose time has come. GW2 has distinctively improved on WoW in a number of ways, primarily in a design that allows players to successfully play with other players. VP is a step backwards in my opinion.
Guild queues are still stuck and have been since 2/23. I have an upgrade that’s already completed with zero time to go blocking an upgrade that was executing before the bug. Any word on time to fix?
I like seeing the effects of my abilities too—it’s awesome. The problem comes with having a screen full of players all with their awesome effects. Often large parts of the screen are simply obscured and often I can’t even find my own cursor. It would be nice to have the cursor made more visible in combat and for there to be a toning down of the overall effect of the effects.
Well if they do do a rebalance, I hope they tweek up the percieved weaker class, rather than tweeking down the percieved stronger class.
I’ve spent alot of time and energy on my 3 main toons. Don’t make me mad by weakening them.
I can live with the so called weaker classes being made better, but don’t dumb me down to them.
Heck, if you make the weaker better, I may make one of them my toon as well, and be happy about it.
I don’t get this logic. If everyone is on the same level everything should be fine, right? It doesn’t matter if that means that bad professions get better or “good” professions get dumbed down. If every profession is on one level it would be the best.
No, there is a difference. One of the markers of a successful profession is that you feel strong, i.e., you actually feel like a hero rather than a sissy that spends as much time running from a fight as he or she does running to a fight. While nerfing the stronger class will provide balance vis-a-vis other classes, it will feel weaker vis-a-vis the environment. If you buff the weaker class they both can feel strong against the environment. I think it’s far preferable to model success and determine what has made certain professions more successful, then apply the learning to all classes. This is what makes for good class design and satisfying professions to play. In this sense fun is as important a concept as balance when considering class design.
Since the 1/28 patch culling, which used to be episodic, is now a universal and continuous problem. Always now in events, but running into the TP in LA will demonstrate this as well. When you run in the place will be empty. In a few seconds you will be in a sea of other players. Culling has gotten worse. But, what would you like more, a stable balanced game or monthly events? As we have seen, you can’t have both.
While obviously well-bred, the Queen is at liberty to make herself comfortable in the broader context of court etiquette. She is simply evidencing her wisdom in finding that, yes, it is more comfortable barefoot in the confines of your own palace.
I too am continuing to wonder. I have a character on the table for a sex change operation and I don’t want him to wake up from the anesthesia with a female name. Talk about permanent psychic damage. This is an important feature to many players and I would like to see a higher priority given to it. I know we have the monthly events to consider as obstacles to core game progress but they should be able to throw a bone the players way occasionally.
After 6 months of 12 hours per day playing with ranger I finally reached lvl 70
I hope the next patch nerfs ranger a bit, I feel way too powerful most of the time
At least you’ve kept your sense of humor. If you lose that falling prey to boredom is all too easy.
This is a good post OP as it ties the cultural effects to their cause. Condition damage, or perhaps better, condition builds are broken in several ways. Perhaps of biggest concern is that sustained damage in a condition build is not on par with direct damage. In another thread Colin attempts to use the technical limitations (server bandwidth) get out of jail free card to explain why this is so. I’m sorry but you implement technology to achieve design goals you don’t simply use it to justify broken-ness. It may very well be so but the solution is to fix the design or technical implementation.
Too many people are willing to go to “human nature” when it comes to game culture, not realizing the effects game design has on game culture. This is one of those negative effects that we can tie directly back to game design.
That all said, I wouldn’t have a problem with this if they weren’t ignoring it. I realize they have a monthly schedule built around events and that makes core game issues a “nice to have” level priority. I’m sorry but the current prioritization of developer resources is askew, to put it mildly.
So I thought that if I want a shot at that precursor I need more chances of getting anything, meaning more attempts on same day, meaning more daggers. I figured 50 attempts should be ok for a fair chance of getting it
Something that a lot of people don’t realize is that there is no magic number when dealing with a random event.
If you have a 1% chance of getting a precursor (I don’t know what the actual chance is, this is just for example), then the average is 1 precursor per 100 attempts. But the thing is, there’s no one counting attempts and saying “oh, he’s tried 99 times that means he gets it next time.” You might get it the first time, or make 200 trips to the forge for nothing.
You have a 1% chance the first time you make the attempt, a 1% chance the tenth attempt, and a 1% chance the 100th attempt. Each attempt is a “fresh” event and is not influenced by the previous attempts.
Making 50 attempts in one day does not increase your chances any more than making one attempt per day for 50 days. It just means if you get lucky then you get lucky now instead of maybe getting lucky six weeks from now.
Exactly. It’s why financial advisors don’t recommend that you just buy more lottery tickets to increase your wealth. When the odds are fixed, each time you play you face the same odds. And, consequently, there will be players who get a precursor on the first try and there will be players who never get a precursor. Most will fall somewhere in between. At 1500 hours logged I got my first precursor as a drop from a random mob. Sadly it was Venom, an aquatic weapon. And, conceivably, you might well get the precursor you want in 10,000 hours or so by drop.
And this is why Anet is exploring alternate ideas around getting the precursor. Humans just aren’t wired for RNG. Our tendency is to create order and exclude ambiguity, defying all odds. It never feels quite right to be at the mercy of chance. Even the old capricious gods fell to heroic sword of order and predictability. Hopefully the game will move in the direction of reward for play in all it’s various systems.
What do you guys use for a mouse? Noticed a lot of these bindings have upwards of 5+ extra buttons. My mouse currently has 2 side extras. I’m trying to find a good brand other than Razer. Lot of problems with their devices whenever myself or friend’s have tried them.
I’d recommend you give Razer another try. I’ve been using the Naga for a year and a half or so without problems. It gives you the standard mouse keys plus 12 buttons which can be activated by your thumb. There is one button, ‘10’, for which I would alone buy this mouse. ‘10’ is where I naturally place my thumb and I use it for dodge. For a mouse mover using the mouse wheel for dodge requires you to move a movement finger off its button. Having it on the thumb feels natural and requires no change in finger position. I’m big on minimizing hand/finger movement and that’s why I use the Dvorak layout for general keyboarding. I try to use the same philosophy in game layouts. I’m not a purist and realize you can play effectively with a variety of layouts. Reckful, arguably one of the best players in gaming, uses ‘z’ and ‘x’ as strafe left and right which he picked up from an earlier game he played. Those are horrible keys for strafe but it didn’t prevent him from mastering a class and playing it at the highest level in a game.
I initially thought swtor was the most balanced game I had played, up until 1.2 or so when they started nerfing classes and changing skill trees which destroyed builds. I found that they really didn’t understand balance and were just responding with a whetted finger to the wind. That’s why I hate nerf them buff me threads. This thread gets my stamp of approval. If there is a successful class design ask what about it makes it successful and how can we work to make all classes equally successful. I realize peaks and valleys need to be addressed, but successful professions and builds don’t need to be destroyed to do it. I love what one developer (of the original Diablo) said about balance: fun always trumps balance. Work on making the game fun for all players. Nerfing is not fun. It’s the crudest tool in the toolbox and it’s the last one that should be employed.
I agree on the value of a PTR, but don’t believe it will work in GW2 as it’s currently conceived. PTR’s are very successful in a longer development cycle. When releases are monthly there really isn’t time for a PTR to play a meaningful role. I’m sure there is barely (well, not) enough time to develop the code and have it run through QA. I’m very sad that Anet has made monthly releases a large part of their perceived value proposition. I’d much rather have a longer development cycle which yields fully-baked permanent content and includes a PTR.
yeah, if you have one in your aquabreather it will count that one whether you have it on or not.
I noticed that upgrades were stuck in queue yesterday (2/23). I have one completed one in queue with zero time to go blocking one that was in progress two days ago. This really needs to get fixed soon.
I went back a couple times after the event. I decided, based on the drops and nothing to do that there was no point in going back. With each new 80 I go and get the waypoints just in case, but never go back. This is one of my objections to monthly events. I would much prefer a longer development cycle yielding permanent content that was fun to play.
As others have stated, pre-11/15 I would agree that play it your way ruled the day. My opinion is that that was a good thing. Post 11/15 we have a yellow brick road to follow to get the goodies we need to remain at the max power level. In my opinion the game no longer has enough play it your way.
Least played would be ranger, necro, and engi. If you like overcoming obstacles and playing against the odds any of them would be fine. Engi probably brings up the rear and since you already have it at 80, I’d stick with it. Necro and engi are the only professions I don’t have at 80. I’m waiting for a bit of rework around class design before I commit to playing the class.