Guild Wars 2

zinkz.7045:

Samug.6512:

…amazing leap for both running away and chasing

Rocket Charge is pretty crappy for running away/chasing, it is one of the slowest movement skills in the game, compare it to druid staff 3 for example (let alone any of the blinks in the game), it is just clunky, you can’t even use it take advantage of terrain jumping from high point to another like you can with most leaps (warrior sword 2, f2 on DH, even rifle 5 on engy is much better in that respect and so on).

If you cancel last hit with kit equip→ weapon swap, rocket charge is better by all means.

Running with rifle, you are almost defenseless compared to hammer. Hammer has reflect for ranged attack (+big damage and whirl finisher), block for meele and reflect, amazing leap for both running away and chasing (also potential self-heal or share superspeed), long ranged AoE stun with decent damage for both offensive and defensive purposes. Also does decent damage and autoattack pumps you with mights.

Rifle has one leap (some self heal), but cast and landing time make it clumsy and does almost no difference compared to normal walk. Net Shot is unreliable, it misses more often than hits (despite getting projectile speed increase), can be used only for chasing (if someone chases you, you’d need to turn around to stop them). Overcharged Shot knocks you down, so you need either stability (elixir B ) or Tools traitline to make it less harmful, also, can be reflected, so you risk getting knocked down twice. Autoattack has low damage.

But Blunderbuss is a nice skill.

As for build suggestions, you could try high boon duration gear, Alchemy line with HGH (obligatory for any WvW/PvP build coz of condi cleanse), Scrapper line for Mass Momentum and Applied Force, Elixir B, Elixir U. High Quickness uptime makes Rifle’s auto-attack damage almost decent.

Before I bought HoT, I used to run fully celestial Engineer with Traveler Runes, Firearms (Incendiary Powder), Alchemy, Tools. Healing Turret, Elixir B, Elixir U, Elixir S/C, Mortar/Elixir X.

Once I met a guy with exactly the same build, but he ran Healing Turret, Tool Kit, Elixir Gun, Grenade Kit.

Lonami.2987:

They should redesign the profession to get rid off the tool belt, merging it with slot skills or whatever. Right now it’s restricting the potential of the profession and its future elite specializations.

How is it restricting future elite specializations? We only just saw 1st generation of elite specs, we have no idea what they are capable of, and the game itself is capable of.

YES!

Somebody in other thread quite accurately pointed out that recent turret change made turrets independent from our tool belt. I am 100% sure it’s a step towards elite spec that changes how tool belt works. I’m fairly sure we’ll get something in place of tool belt.

Phantom.5389:

Well, it is a balance issue which need a fix. But it was not such an urgent fix compared to EPI. It still need to be addressed eventually.

We’ll need to wait for a raid boss killed with 5 perma distortion mesmers to get this nerfed.

insanemaniac.2456:

drop healing turret late in the might stack. the fire field will be older and you’ll still blast might, and if you don’t suck at spamming you might even be able to kill your turret before it drops the field.
I don’t see how this is an issue. you know game mechanics right coro. you know blasts go by field age right.

Except, if you actually pay attention to fields/finishers, you will notice how random, buggy and unreliable the whole system is.

I agree with the point made earlier, everything started to be balanced around raids. I hope no engi with kits will attempt to solo a raid boss, because if those will be nerfed to oblivion, we are left with nothing.

OP: do you mind if I post the poll on reddit? I’m really interested with how wider community feels like about the change.

insanemaniac.2456:

no thanks. neither option sufficiently expresses my opinion: its better now that detonation is not on the toolbelt, but it feels like a work in progress because the changes in general hurt overcharging too much.

Looks pretty clear to me.

aandiarie.7195:

:/ condi is more over powered and the way to reduce it has bveen reduced XD nerfed our foods and etc. XD!

But hey, engi got massive cleanse to counter it, once every 90 seconds.

Obtena.7952:

The whole point of the change is that it gives choice. Why are people always so angry when they get choices?

What choice exactly? Turrets themselfs are still useless, Rifle turret will still be taken only for its toolbelt skill, Healing turret will still be overcharged right after placement, only to be destroyed – this time, tho, we don’t have to overcharge manually. Only thing that
really changed is even less reason to keep turrets alive.

1. Leave the mechanic as it is now – turrets auto-cast overcharge;
2. After setting the turret up, it needs a wind-up time of 20 seconds before starts using overcharge;
3. Overcharge skills’ cooldown reduced to 10 seconds (probably would need some individual tweaks)
4. Power Wrench trait gives turrets within x range 2 seconds of Alacrity every time Tool Kit skill is used;
5. Advanced Turrets trait reduces the initial wind-up time to 10 seconds.

Thoughts?

Oh, also, I was reading through the introduction:
“Skills that tether players together now apply Revealed to provide a stronger window of opportunity to players who can successfully land them.”
So, technically, Magnet should get it too? In theory?

Vagrant.7206:

Bravo ANet! Fix a single glaring issue with turrets and call it a day. Nerf the meta, and we’re golden.

What about some real balance adjustments? Rifle has been languishing in obscurity. Our traits are a mess. Most of our gadgets are a joke. This is what has taken the balance team so long?

What came to my mind today is, they have made some time ago a looong, long list of possible balance changes. Now all devs are working on the next expansion, so there’s no HR for real balance team – they just pick some stuff from the list.
3 months later from now, with the next balance patch, we’ll see adjustments to Turrets toolbelt skills, to make them viable with the change they introduced today.

Seriously though, this game needs more frequent balance patches, made by people who actually play the game, at least one person per one profession

Famine.7915:

Not very happy that HT can’t have 15 sec CD anymore.
At work so will need to try patch out later…

HT will go on longer cooldown if it’s exploded. Overloading doesn’t effect cooldowns. You can still pick it up.

The turret change would make more sense if Experimental Turrets trait have been reworked to dump a lot of boons all around in one burst. Now there’s no point to keep turrets up…

Engineer
Most of the time, engineers were taking turret skills and never deploying the turret because the Tool Belt skill was too important to be overridden by the detonate turret skill. In this update we are moving the detonate skill to be the flip-over for the turret itself so that the Tool Belt skill is always available even if you deploy the turret. Because many of the overcharge skills weren’t very tactical and much easier to just press on cooldown, we’ve changed these skills to automatically activate the moment the turret is placed instead. Since this means a turret can only be overcharged once per deployment, we’ve reduced the recharge of a few turrets to compensate.

• Bunker Down: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only.
• Protection Injection: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Med Pack Drop: This skill will now remove all (14) conditions for up to 5 allies upon impact.
• Bulwark Gyro: The cooldown of this skill has been increased from 20 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP only.
• Purge Gyro: The cooldown of this skill has been increased from 20 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP only.
• Turrets: Turrets no longer need to be overcharged. Summoning a turret will automatically overcharge it once.
• Detonate Turret: This skill has been moved off of the Tool Belt skill. It is now the flip skill for the associated turret.
• Thumper Turret: Reduced recharge to 40 seconds. Overcharge attack now launches foes straight up instead of out of the turret’s attack range.
• Healing Turret: Fixed a bug that caused this turret to show a water combo field when none was present.
• Flame Turret: Reduced recharge to 20 seconds.
• Rocket Turret: Reduced recharge to 40 seconds.
• Detection Pulse (Scrapper): Fixed a bug that caused the effect from this skill to incorrectly reflect its radius.

Protection Injection nerfed a little bit, Med Pack Drop’s potentially big buff, some recharge times increased in PvP.

Change to turrets – it essentially means turrets are overcharge only once, upon deployment. What about purity of purpose? It doesn’t make sense to keep turrets up. Useless-ness of turrets intensifies!

Yes. Anything to bring more build diversity, as meta has been stale for a loooong, loong time.

Carighan.6758:

wolfyrik.2017:

Holograms? I’m calling it, new class utlity will be third set of utterly worthless AI.

Could make them stationary and attack on their own!
Or could make them follow us around while projecting AE effects!

The possibilities are endless!

What if, if they will be stationary and project useless effect, like single-target condi cleanse every 10 seconds?

Oh boy I can’t wait!

Supply definitely needs some tweaks. 50-men squad can carry 1250 supplies. It’s 25 superior rams. Who cares about some ACs above the gate if you can just keep building new rams until the gate is down?

leviathan.2148:

Wouldn’t swapping of skills 3 and 4 make OH pistol underwhelming?

If Pistol 5 had gotten longer immobilize time (2+ seconds) I say it would be worthy alternative to shield.

lLobo.7960:

The solution is to swap Pistol #3 with #4 (and improve traits but that is on another topic) and reduce shield CD by ~20%.
It is simple and easy.

This will accomplish:
– Pistol MH will be the condi weapon;
– Pistol OH will be soft CC (blind/immob/cripple) with a bit of condi (confusion);
– Shield is the OH hard CC and defense with useful skills and a solid trait and comparable to hammer.

Also:
– Full dps condi will still use p/p;
– When a bit of CC and defense is needed, Shield can be used without a major loss in dps; and
– Both Pistol OH and shield OH would complement a power setup and MH weapon.

It just makes so much sense.

Good explanation with good reasoning. Pistol/shield would become viable weapon set for bosses with break bar, without sacrificing much damage.

Thanks for all the responses.

From the data I managed to get (looking though some builds, here and metabattle) I gather that it’s always better to get one-two pieces of equipment with pure offensive stats rather than go full celestial. As far as I can see it’s quite flexible what stats I can use, I will start to experiment, to find out what fits me the most.
Thanks again!

Banana’s data is definitely wrong, but otherwise, cool, good job.

As the title says. My only experience with Ele comes from open world PvE, and I’d like to ask more experienced players how viable would full celestial ele be for WvW roaming – solo and small scale, as a DPS-healing/support character.

Stand The Wall.6987:

reward tracks are ridiculously easy to complete. if they agreed then they would have to change the crafting requirement for certain equipment so everything was equal. it also alienates ppl who spent a lot of time and money getting good gear.

Then add a currency, of which you get x at the end of a certain reward track, and then add a new vendor which exchanges that currency for armor with Triumphant Hero Armor skin. Two birds with one shot.

SixVoltCar.5248:

Samug.6512:

OK, looks like formatting doesn’t want to work for me. I agree with Sviel, and it looks like people are force-finding the issues.

Right, because if enough people have a problem with it, it isn’t a problem because you don’t want it to be.

Let’s take travel times between objectives. Sviel’s post clearly shows travel times aren’t that different, and yet people keep bragging how long it takes to travel between objectives.

OK, looks like formatting doesn’t want to work for me. I agree with Sviel, and it looks like people are force-finding the issues.

WvW would become much more attractive. Some new gear is ridiculously expensive and/or hard to farm, forcing WvW players to do PvE. Triumphant Armor already has some selectable stats (core stats, not all, celestial is missing for example), but that’s not enough for everchanging meta. Latest reward tracks do provide gear with all stats, but that’s just 3 (headgear, shoulder and gloves) out of 16 pieces (armor, jewellery and weapons, not counting underwater gear).

Weapons from Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, Tangled Depths and Heart of Maguuma reward tracks could get selectable stats.

Vendor with ascended jewellery with selectable stats for Badges of Honor, just like in Bitterfrost Frontier, would also be a nice addition.

I’m here with you!

Desert BL is amazing, thank you very much.

I like the idea, but it would require another skill bar.
How about passive bonusses you can pick in a new tab in WvW UI?
Builder builds faster, also includes repairing,
Scout tags enemies around him, like sentry,
Artillery engineer gets bigger treb and cata damage, can turn them faster, maybe gets Iron Hide too?
Saboteur improved trap mechanic, traps drain 150 supplies from 15 people, disablers have slightly bigger radius,
Etc

Awesome video. Very nice, extensive sum up.
Also, WP mentioned turrets being use only to detonate.

Isn’t it the exact same thing why ArenaNet nerfed Gyro’s dazes a while ago?

The best way to share superspeed with the zerg is with destroying your gyros. The field stays up for 5 seconds, it’s very useful if you see some people falling behind. If you want the front line to get it, well, you need to stay in front of them. Predict the movement, if they catch it, awesome, if not, pity. Blast Gyro is the best for this, it has the lowest cooldown.

I think hay bales is a really cool mechanic. Adding them to Alpine Borderlands, especially around main spawn, would improve QoL of home servers incredibly.

lLobo.7960:

The theme and mechanics you describe are really cool and might be a great support spec for WvW or PvP, but I don’t think it would work on PvE.

The Barrier mechanic is nice but most of PvE end game content is about dmg and evasion. That is mostly why Necros are not in the meta and chronos are great tanks.

Chrono has low dps but tons of evades, invuls and blocks, so it can tank while providing boons and heals, and on top of that alacrity and quickness are great.
Necro on the other hand can just absorb dmg, but that doesnt help much when attacks are designed to wipe you if you dont dodge.

The mechanic you suggest (barrier) might not help much on a raid scenario. And although the spec provide tons of boons, it seems to lack dmg. And on a raid, if you are not tanking you should be doing dps… even if you are support or heals… as warriors and druids do..

He could add some kind of shatter mechanic to the barrier – when it receives final blow or runs out, it explodes.

That’s a really neat idea and really cool description!

archmagus.7249:

Yeah nothing about it has anything to do with 5(6) seconds. Not sure why you’d slot it anyways, since if you’re using elixirs you’re probably going into alchemy, which has a free Condi clear with all elixirs, and if you’ve got that many condis on you where it’ll be useful, you’re probably going to die anyways.

Eilixir C is still useful if you expect a huge condi bomb from, say, invisible condi thief, which is apparently thriving after latest patch.

Legit Prep In.5893:

Goes hand in hand with the turrets I’d say

What do you mean? Magnet is amazing skill, probably one of the best skills Engineer can provide in PvP/WvW, but has latency problems. Turrets are just… bad.

Engineer got pretty interesting stuff, I admit.
But, why are gadgets, turrets and med kit forgotten AGAIN?
Also, why you encourage people to play invisible condi thief by buffing it? There’s no fun with fighting against them. It’s the exact opposite.

The V.8759:

Samug.6512:

Turrets, gadgets, medkit, shield, rifle, certain traits, gyros’ AI. We are asking for those things to be rebalanced/remade to match current standards for a looong time.

Things like this is whats holding me back from returning to the game. I logged in the game after half a year today, just to see barely anything changed. Very little effective build diversity.
The class philosophy is to be able to furfil every role with every class but with a unique style. However in practice this is just not true. I mean, it’s logic that certain builds are better than others, but the gap is just too big.

There’s a tiny bit of hope now – with the end of Pvp season, there always comes a balance patch. Make sure to take a peek every couple of days.

I’d make the arena a little more spacey. I also have, probably very controversial, vision of a single cap point in the end of OS, that gives something almost insignificant, like +1ppt. Just a thing people could fight over. I think all those fights in the OS back when we could build siege there, were really fun and entertaining.

Turrets, gadgets, medkit, shield, rifle, certain traits, gyros’ AI. We are asking for those things to be rebalanced/remade to match current standards for a looong time.

The spot is here since the beggining, and can hit 2 or 3 walls in Crankshaft Depot tower. It is impossible to counter. As the spot at Alpine Borderlands (main spawn -> east tower) was fixed long time ago, I’d expect this one being looked on as well, the same way.

It happened to me on the weekend in WvW, on a Scrapper. From ~14k hp to downed in less than a second, against a condi mesmer. Unfortunately I don’t have any screenshots.

Kovu.7560:

Well that at least is an easy fix. Put a small amount of direct damage on the traps.
Similar to ranger traps.

~ Kovu

It’s so obvious and easy to implement balance change, I’m flabbergasted why ANet didn’t do it in last balance patch.

Setis.2863:

shion.2084:

what debuf? We now do more damage when we land with rocket boots!

You mean jump shot.

And yes that is a nerf in my eyes. You dont want to get close to an enemy with a rifle. The best thing with a rifle is to stay away as far as possible. Jumping in an opponent is simply madness even if he/she has 10% HP. If He/she block-dodge-etc. you are goofed. You cannot prevail in melee combat… you cannot even prevail in range combat with that weapon since there are no range skills on it except hipshot.

Rocket Boots got damage increased as well.

How about we change, now useless, Expert Examination trait to improve function gyro’s effect:
Upon activating Function Gyro, it grants Steath to downed allies and puts Revealed on downed enemies.

Dawdler.8521:

apharma.3741:

In my opinion this should be changed to either defend events are triggered when a certain number of enemies are in the vicinity(10+) or when gates/walls take more than 100 points of damage in one hit.

Your second condition fails as players will probably hit for more than 100 points of damage on a door with certain high value attacks. It will only work if you increase that number to say 1000 damage or something.

Personally I think contest should have 3 simple conditions:
- Doors are attacked by siege or if they have taken more than 10% damage (counter resets on event done or cap, that way broken doors wont be contesting stuff).
- Walls are attacked by siege
- Lord is attacked

Guards are expendable, they really dont need to be part of the equation.

What about camps? There’s several camps where guards can be killed without pulling the lord, which then could be cleaved down too fast to notice and rescue the camp, before it’s capped.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I can’t speak for WvW because I barely play it, but on Sea of Sorrows I’ve had plenty of success both roaming and zerging with scrapper. In zergs I run a Soldier/Berserker mix and roaming I run full Celestial.

Do you mind sharing your Celestial build?

I play pretty much exclusively WvW roaming/small scale, and scrapper can be quite an amazing character, but it’s pretty situational – double res is nice, AoE stealth is nice too if the enemy doesn’t know your numbers. I also run build with a lot of CC and can share a lot of Superspeed, which helps chasing/escaping.

Ivantreil.3092:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Core engi doesn’t need a redesign. Other classes just need to be brought down.

That the only thing keeping engineer viable in PvP and WvW is having to take all three defensive trees shows how weak the other trees are. In PvE condi ranger even outdamages us despite a simpler rotation and having far superior survivability.

We don’t need even more power creep. We just need elite specs further scaled back.

Or maybe it does, bieng so dpendant to kits seems quite unhealthy for the class, name me a build that has been in the meta with 0 use of kits.

Name me a build that has been in meta of other class with 0 use of weapon swap.

It seem very crippling to me, since ANet clearly wanted Superspeed to be a scrapper thing. Alacrity is much more powerful and it stacks all right.