Guild Wars 2

Karolis.4261:

Let me explain you some basic stealth mechanics. If you do direct damage to someone while you are in stealth – you get revealed. That’s exactly what you are describing here.

I don’t know where your expectation is derived from, but mine comes from Heartseeker and Smoke fields.

Has anyone been able to not get the revealed debuff when blasting a smoke field and hitting an enemy with it?

I think this has killed me a few times, because I’m unexpectedly not in stealth and also have revealed on me, so I can’t then use another stealth option like HS, HiS, or Blinding Tuft.

For anyone curious, I stumbled across this on reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/yv3jd/guide_how_to_see_your_ping/

Is there anykind of tool that would help me calculate in Milliseconds the time it takes an action to move from my mouse click to being executed in game?

Or is there a way to check it in stages? Like the time it takes for my computer to recieve a mouse click, then the time it takes for the GW2 client to recieve that from my machine, then the time it takes the GW2 client to send the command to the server?

Forsaker.9213:

Shockwave.1230:

Terrahero.9358:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Cufufalating.8479:

Its not like they have much else in the way of stuns

Pistol whip would like to have a word with you.

And while you’re using a Sword in your mainhand, you also have Tactical Strike for a 2s Daze. Throw in Basalisk Venom elite and thats quite a few CCs a Thief can suddenly push out, not considering Headshot as its mostly an interupt.

Then Stealing a 3sec AoE fear or a 4sec single-target Daze (from guardians) can create a very nasty chain of CC.

S/P doesn’t have stealth for you to worry about. Dodge Skull Fear. Fear chaining is longer duration from ranged, and has to be countered via stability, bcs a single stun break won’t help. If fear chains from range are acceptable, it’s hard to explain away why a 3 second melee range fear that can only be done vs 1 profession isn’kittens

AOE fear not vs 1 and necro fear chain can fear u for 3s becouse necros dont run 30 in spite anymore so the fears are not so long

Points that weren’t covered:

• Ranged fear available to necro
• Runes of the Nightmare extend fear duration
• Skull Fear is only available if you are vs a Necro
• Melee range to get the full 3 seconds
• Thief has hardly any AoE synergy to combine with fear (condi’s, terror, etc.)
• etc.

So I can agree with some points, but I think what we’re really not seeing, is an effort on the part of ANet to iterate these functionalities and get feedback from the community quickly. I could be wrong on this, but it’s great they are doing quick iterations on the living story and all, but they aren’t doing to the same with other things they’re working on as far as I’m aware.

They are very closed doors, and offer very little visibility into what they’re doing until they’re extremely far along into development. They are an agile shop from what I hear, but it doesn’t feel to me like they are getting the kind of quality feedback they need from the playerbase.

I have no clue if most other shops are like this as well, but it feels to me like they are developing without going back and forth between the consumers and the developers. It’s crucial that this communication be fairly frequent, because a lot of the time your consumers think they know what will give them what they want, or your developers are developing something based upon inadequate feedback, or what the consumer wants/needs actually changes/evolves.

For all I know this could be wrong, but we have no visibility to really tell unfortunately. They definitely have play testers, but maybe they don’t have have a wide enough array of play testers. Maybe there’s some glaring gap in the angle in which development is being looked at, we don’t know. We don’t know, because there’s no transparency until late in the process.

Nemiros.3590:

To be competitive: No

To have fun: yeah, the combat is still good.

You can make a tryhard team, but dont expect #espooooooorts

Agreed, and if you’re looking for esports from this game, you’ll want to wait until you hear buzz about PvP updates. Currently all we know is that ANet is developing leaderboards and developing a new game mode, but there’s no release date on them yet.

Recently with the feature patch, there were some interesting changes to runes and sigils that you might want to jump in and play around with, just to stay in touch with what will work and what won’t. The patch also released PvP rewards, so you can go after skins for you’re character in a more direct way now.

As a whole horrible is pretty harsh. The combat system is the best out in my opinion. That said, conquest and leaderboards is getting a bit stale. I can only imagine how the top guys on the boards feel who don’t have rank progression anymore.

It doesn’t seem like PvP is going to change again anytime soon unfortunately. The rewards system is nice. PvPers can get legendaries now because of it. However, if you’re not feeling challenged, competitive people aren’t going to stay around if they find something else that is.

If I ever were to leave from getting bored of the game mode, I’m willing to wait/come back when/if we get some really good PvP updates. Hopefully the game’s best PvPers who have left or will leave in between are willing to as well. Because in order to take this game to the top of the mountain, community is a significant part, but so is balance, fun, and the game’s systems.

Terrahero.9358:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Cufufalating.8479:

Its not like they have much else in the way of stuns

Pistol whip would like to have a word with you.

And while you’re using a Sword in your mainhand, you also have Tactical Strike for a 2s Daze. Throw in Basalisk Venom elite and thats quite a few CCs a Thief can suddenly push out, not considering Headshot as its mostly an interupt.

Then Stealing a 3sec AoE fear or a 4sec single-target Daze (from guardians) can create a very nasty chain of CC.

S/P doesn’t have stealth for you to worry about. Dodge Skull Fear. Fear chaining is longer duration from ranged, and has to be countered via stability, bcs a single stun break won’t help. If fear chains from range are acceptable, it’s hard to explain away why a 3 second melee range fear that can only be done vs 1 profession isn’t.

Rezz.8019:

Darek.1836:

T raw.4658:

Shockwave.1230:

T raw.4658:

Darek.1836:

T raw.4658:

So uhh what’s the counter??

mesmer

Are you being serious…..

Mesmer,Thief glass combo is what they said they’re afraid of. Basically TCG’s comp combined with well coordinated players.

omg you were being serious

LOL

TCG would beat apex. so uh. yeah.

I highly doubt they would beat that overpowered team composition. Their main advantage is that 1v1 2v2 power, where they simply can’t lose. It’s so easy for them to play on 3 points then. Also… thieves are useless against them

Helseth decided to channeling his inner Michael Jordan, so I guess we’ll never know until he channels the rest of his inner Michael Jordan

T raw.4658:

Darek.1836:

T raw.4658:

So uhh what’s the counter??

mesmer

Are you being serious…..

Mesmer,Thief glass combo is what they said they’re afraid of. Basically TCG’s comp combined with well coordinated players.

OP is trading lower recharge steal, interrupt on steal, mug and poison for 2 extra dodges. It’s a fair trade, but an odd one for D/P.

If you’re D/P Hide in Shadows offers your build more than Withdraw, that’s the only change I would suggest. Other than Dropping the signet traits for Side Strikes and Practiced tolerance.

Looking at that chart again, and it’s interesting how when you give people a cash shop they spend more money overall than they do on purely expansion games.

I guess that shows the more opportunities you provide for people to spend money, the more opportunities that are taken.

Even more interesting to me though, is how Guild Wars 2 revenue has never been less than Guild Wars revenue, even without having ever provided an expansion in the 21ish months it’s been released. It looks like it’s normally bringing in more than 2x the revenue that Guild Wars ever brought in at its peak, which is pretty astounding.

It’s interesting how the business model is more successful from a revenue perspective. I just really want to see the world expand and build upon itself, while allowing us to go back and experience everything we’ve experienced before so we can find these little nuggest/connections that we might have glossed over initially.

BlackBeard.2873:

Shockwave.1230:

Why is shelter balanced when it mitigates damage on a sustain build, but withdraw is not while it does something similar?

Counter these 2 skills with Poison, withdraw will heal for like 3.2k it’s very weak.

Shelter has a very long cooldown compared to withdraw, so if a burst guardian (a spec with damage) were to use it, they would only get it once per fight. It also CAN be interrupted with at least a few skills.

Withdraw cooldown is very low, is IMPOSSIBLE to interrupt the healing (even with something like static field/ring of warding), and comes on a class that has plenty of disengages if they had to cover their heal. This means that withdraw is very likely to be cast a couple times during the fight, and trying to wait for the heal to offload damage doesn’t work b/c it will be available so quickly.

Comparing something that is uninterruptable in 99% of scenarios to something that is uninterruptable in 100% of scenarios isn’t a strong enough arguement to say that the 100% uninterruptable skill is OP.

The fact that withdraw is half the cooldown of shelter has everything to do with thieves being squishy and not having additional supplemental heals. A guardian has numerous secondary heals that over 30 seconds heal him for for just as much if not more than shelter by itself.

The desire to nerf withdraw comes strictly from the feeling that it’s OP when synergizing with S/D or S/P. Similar logic could be applied to the synergy between a bunker guardian and shelter, yet the feeling is shelter is not OP.

Behellagh.1468:

Yes, year over year the game’s revenue for 1Q is off by 30.9%, which isn’t all that bad considering the game is 19 months old at the end of 1Q14.

The downturn in Europe is disturbing while the upturn here is curious.

Overall, here is the chart of income per game according to NCSOFT’s quarterly reports going back to 1Q05.

This chart is very interesting. It shows that Aion has performed better than GW2, over a 6 quarter period so far. I’m not sure if the chart even takes inflation into account, so it could be performing even better than what is appearing. One thing that I’m noticing is up until 2012 Aion had been releasing expansions every year or so, then when the new round of AAA MMOs hit, it tapers off, even though they did an expansion in 2013, which seems to have given them a boost.

With how much revenue GW2’s gemshop/box sales has been bringing in since launch, it might make sense for ANet to hold off on expansions, so that they’re wider intervals. If they can get some major overhauls and additions into their expansions (like the next directx?, new contenents?), maybe it’ll be like a release of an entirely new game with huge revenue spikes similar to launch. That’s all speculation, of course, but it’d be interesting to see if it could turn out that way nonetheless.

Dev response to OP should have been.

"
That’s actually not going to be the case, soon™
"

BlackBeard.2873:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I agree that interrupts are important, but the solution is not to arbitrarily insert them but rather to consider interruptibility in the balance of the skill (which is how it is now for the most part), as in you sacrifice heals in order to not be interrupted.

I agree with this completely. In my opinion, the only two that are really an issue are Withdraw and Healing Turret. Healing turret is one of the best heals in the game and isn’t balanced around not being interruptible. Withdraw is an incredibly good heal on high-evasion specs, comes with extra damage mitigation, and doesn’t really lose out in HP/S to other thief heals. This is an issue with thief builds such as s/d and s/p that already have superior survivability and take quite a while to whittle down. Such spec doesn’t need a guaranteed healing skill ontop of it. The icing on the cake is that it procs at the start of the skill, and the theif is rewarded for poor play such as rolling straight into a line of warding, which is one of the very few ways to interrupt the evasion as it is. At the very least, the heal shouldn’t prokittenil the end of the roll.

Healing signet’s biggest issue is that it continues to tick even when the warrior is stunned. At least with ele/thief heals, when they are cc’d, their healing is 0. Perhaps adding a condition that it doesn’t tick while stunned.

I do think shelter is a balanced heal, personally, but only added it for completeness.

Why is shelter balanced when it mitigates damage on a sustain build, but withdraw is not while it does something similar?

Counter these 2 skills with Poison, withdraw will heal for like 3.2k it’s very weak.

Personal scores aren’t an accurate representation of the contributions towards team scores.

As a thief you need to be moving to points quickly in order to give your team a numbers advantage. If an enemy leaves a point empty, you should be decap ping it. That’s really all you need to do strategy wise, if you are getting caught up on a 1v1 with a guardian for 2 minutes you’re wasting time.

There’s no reason to make changes for the sake of making changes. 3 of the 4 skills people don’t have issue with. If you have an issue with it now, ask yourself why? Then go play the builds that use these healing skills and offer some feedback then.

Lux.7169:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Shockwave.1230:

Evan Lesh.3295:

How would you suggest expanding AFK detection?

Initial thought is before starting the countdown timer for a match start force players to manually ready up for the map.

So do your match making, where you try and find 10 players of similar ‘quality’, utilize whatever existing logic there is to expand that quality range over time.

Give players X seconds (60 for example), to ready up prior to joining the map. Give players 2 options when requesting ready up, Ready | Cancel. If not all 10 players have readied up to join the map, boot the ones that haven’t, and search for fillers. Don’t allow players that have already been booted/cancelled to be found for the same match, to prevent potential abuse. To avoid syncing, flag players that cancel / are booted for inactivity, and avoid matching them up together in the same matches.

After 10 players ready up, match up the teams based on whatever ‘quality’ balancing logic y’all have.

Finally send them to the map.

What problems do you forsee with this kind of suggestion?

I assumed the OP was talking about intentional in-game AFK, which is much harder to detect. Not starting matches unless 10 people are actively present is another story. It requires a large overhaul to our PvP infrastructure, but it can be done.

No interactions with any mechanic necessary to win for X minutes.

Mechanics would include: capture points (contesting or defending decapping or capping), combat interactions, secondary objectives, etc etc etc.

Whether or not that’s realistic to implement is a different story altogether. But IMO and I believe many others would agree, if a player is not actively seeking any of those objectives/mechanics then he is in practice and in theory afk, even if he is not literally afk.

Running around in base to bypass the auto-kick mechanism or even running around outside of base should still be punishable—IMO—unless they are seeking any form of mechanic that could influence the game for the better.

Without a proper report function for that toxic behavior in-game an acceptable alternative would be a feature that can detect if players are not meeting -any- objective-based mechanic.

I don’t know that these kinds of detections really would be useful for afk. You don’t want an afk person in match in the first place.

It seems more like stuff to detect rage quitting. I’ve seen rage quitters just give up and sleep on a point, jump off skyhammer all game, just plain leave map. If you’re trying to detect and punish these kinds of rage cases, implementions around the above still don’t necessarily solve the problem. People can always just run to a point and do nothing.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Shockwave.1230:

Evan Lesh.3295:

How would you suggest expanding AFK detection?

Initial thought is before starting the countdown timer for a match start force players to manually ready up for the map.

So do your match making, where you try and find 10 players of similar ‘quality’, utilize whatever existing logic there is to expand that quality range over time.

Give players X seconds (60 for example), to ready up prior to joining the map. Give players 2 options when requesting ready up, Ready | Cancel. If not all 10 players have readied up to join the map, boot the ones that haven’t, and search for fillers. Don’t allow players that have already been booted/cancelled to be found for the same match, to prevent potential abuse. To avoid syncing, flag players that cancel / are booted for inactivity, and avoid matching them up together in the same matches.

After 10 players ready up, match up the teams based on whatever ‘quality’ balancing logic y’all have.

Finally send them to the map.

What problems do you forsee with this kind of suggestion?

I assumed the OP was talking about intentional in-game AFK, which is much harder to detect. Not starting matches unless 10 people are actively present is another story. It requires a large overhaul to our PvP infrastructure, but it can be done.

I’m going to assume this has been on y’alls radar, perhaps as part of ladders etc. So you may have already begun working on this.

If you haven’t already you’ll probably run into a problem where you need to solve for filler player wait times. A good way to solve for this, is to check parallel matchups that are already in progress of being built and ‘borrowing’ players from those. This would likely require some parameters to be updated on the fly in the other matchup that a player was borrowed from in order to update the player ‘quality’ you’re looking for in the other matchmaking that’s occurring.

It is an overhaul, but whenever you guys get it done, we’ll be happily 5v5ing and largely forgetting about 4v5s involving afks. Raging unfortunately will still happen, but I think it’s safe to say that is less impactful, and perhaps less frequent.

Evan Lesh.3295:

How would you suggest expanding AFK detection?

Initial thought is before starting the countdown timer for a match start force players to manually ready up for the map.

So do your match making, where you try and find 10 players of similar ‘quality’, utilize whatever existing logic there is to expand that quality range over time.

Give players X seconds (60 for example), to ready up prior to joining the map. Give players 2 options when requesting ready up, Ready | Cancel. If not all 10 players have readied up to join the map, boot the ones that haven’t, and search for fillers. Don’t allow players that have already been booted/cancelled to be found for the same match, to prevent potential abuse. To avoid syncing, flag players that cancel / are booted for inactivity, and avoid matching them up together in the same matches.

After 10 players ready up, match up the teams based on whatever ‘quality’ balancing logic y’all have.

Finally send them to the map.

What problems do you forsee with this kind of suggestion?

coglin.1867:

BlackBeard.2873:

Healing Turret – 1/2s cast time, which is not enough time to be interrupted. Also, one of the best heals in the game, giving cleanse, huge water field (actually 2 if you time the F1 skill well), a blast (if needed), and condi clear on a short 16s CD (20s if blasted to support team with health). Even if this skill were able to be interrupted, it would still EASILY be the best engie heal. One of 2 healing skills that has less than 3/4s cast time.
Proposed fix – Make it a 1s cast time, or put an additional 1/2s cast animation on the overcharge.

This one struck me as odd. Because the healing turret itself is the lowest heal in the game. To gain its full benefits, you must use F1 – 5 – 5- F1. That is a 4 key system to accomplish all that you suggest it can do. Not to mention your claim of it being the best heal, is no more then a very subjective opinion.

Not only is this skill actually interruptible in its current form, and portion of the chain required to utilize its full benefits can be interrupted. They can be knocked out of its range, and so on. I am not saying I am against making it a 1s cast time to place the turret, because the healing kits actual heal is 1s and Elixir H is 1s, while A.E.D. is 3/4s, I simply feel that the fact that it requires a well timed system of 4 key presses to utilize its full benefits, puts it apart from the other heals you mention. Not only is there a multiple key press needed, but they have delays to give proper timing to blast it as well.

He’s kind of right, you can get over 4k healing from healing turret just by spamming the healing skill so the overcharge triggers near immediately after the turret spawns. Blasting it for the water finisher is actually instant.

Not saying the skill needs a cast time nerf, but he’s at least right that the 1/2 second cast time isn’t feasible to regularly interrupt. You’ve gotta be REALLY good at anticipating the heal to pull that off. But it doesn’t really need a nerf, none of these skills do imo, except maybe a change to heal sig.

coglin.1867:

Shockwave.1230:

coglin.1867:

So what was the point of your thread?

I keep pointing out kits can always be used to counterplay the enemy’s weapon set, because it seems to be true so far. If there are any apparent weaknesses in particular match-ups it’s worth being aware of.

Understanding counterplay options is crucial.

How do you counter play conditions with kits? You have 2 separate kits that each cleanse 1 condition. One requires you can move, the other requires ground targeting.

By the way, how do you lecture everyone on counter play after you already stated you have little to no experience on the engineer, so little play even, that you admit you do not even have a build to run.

Again, I am not suggesting it is not a solid profession, as it is. But your making claims based on theory and not experience.

I’m still working through what works consistently and what doesn’t for sure.

You’re heal removes two conditions immediately. Tool kit is nice for blocking out conditions to bide some time for the turret to come back around, the CC also helps bide some time. Condi’s can be overwhelming it’s not like you’re completley immune to them as an engi, if that’s what you think I’m implying it’s not what I’m trying to say. Sometimes I feel like it’d be nice to have have Elixer C, but I’m trying to stick with Elixer S because I like it’s utility

coglin.1867:

So what was the point of your thread?

I keep pointing out kits can always be used to counterplay the enemy’s weapon set, because it seems to be true so far. If there are any apparent weaknesses in particular match-ups it’s worth being aware of.

Understanding counterplay options is crucial.

dancingmonkey.4902:

What build do you use again Shockwave?

I’m by no means pro @ engi, I don’t have a set build I use yet, since I just started getting into it after watching my buddy play and trying it out with him.

I’ve just experimented and tinkered and I find it super useful that I can always be using a weapon to counter my opponent’s weapon, no matter what the situation. It’s very empowering.

I guess I have intuitively known how strong they can weapon counter from all times I’ve played against them holding down a point, but have only recently realized how useful it is to have the ability to always counter the enemy’s active weapon.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Shockwave.1230:

The great thing in spite of any of this or anything else is that as an engi, I’m still always able to counterplay the opposition’s weapons set.

If that hambow is coming, I know to swap to the skills that will counter him as he swaps between his weapons, so that he can’t get a leg up on me be his weapon choice. It’s best to do that against any profession not just warriors.

And what weapon set it is that counters hambow exactly? For you that is. Different folks use different builds, obviously. What build do you use? What weapon set do you use to counter hambow?

As well, I am curious, you speak about defending against these builds, how do you, personally, kill them?

It’s not that you use one weapon set that counters a build. What you should be doing is swapping between your kits and your main set depending upon the weapons the enemy is using, because you can at will without a swap cool down.

A couple examples were listed above. But vs melee for example, bomb kit and forcing your opponent to chase while you drop bombs behind you is very effective. This is a great strat on nodes.

Vs ranged you have your main weapon set and tool kit 4&5. Vs 1200+ range you may need to play off behind the node in order to coax in the opponents or use LoS that’s available on some maps like legacy waterfall or the side nodes on forest.

So vs hambow for example, say you have P/P with bomb kit, tool kit, and elixir S. When he’s in hammer and he’s close to you swap to bomb kit to slow blind and condi vs the melee, if he swaps to bow, start laying on the condo’s and try to anticipate an interrupt of combustion shot with magnet or supply drop, if he’s in berserker stance from range swap to tool kit and use gear shield vs pin down or arcing arrow, and Dodge the other. When he swaps back to hammer swap back to bomb kit, and big ol bomb if he already blew his Stab. If you Really need to use elixir S, but if it’s full capped don’t get off point again, because it will decap in 1 more second, unless you’ve forced him off point afterwards.

There’s other situations to offer counter suggestions for, but those are probably some of the most common.

coglin.1867:

-snip-

The great thing in spite of any of this or anything else is that as an engi, I’m still always able to counterplay the opposition’s weapons set.

If that hambow is coming, I know to swap to the skills that will counter him as he swaps between his weapons, so that he can’t get a leg up on me be his weapon choice. It’s best to do that against any profession not just warriors.

Terrahero.9358:

So you had to pick a certain healing skill, a certain utility skill and certain traits. Thats not exactly great.
I can typically get similar or better condition removal for a smaller investment then that on other professions.

The condition removal comparison wasn’t meant to be impressive, it was compared to a Mesmer lol, which has extremely underwhelming condition management for viable PvP builds.

I’m highlighting some of the pros and cons of condition/cc removal while continuing to point out that an engi can always counterplay any profession’s active weapon set via their instant swapping available in engi kits.

coglin.1867:

The main downside of the mechanic of requiring kits for a weapon swap is that it takes up a slot that other profession can utilize a stun break or a condition cleanse. Thus the engineer has to chose between a very weak weapon set, designed so to balance towards kits, or to lose a slot for the stun breaker or cleanse.

I wonder why people wouldn’t be using Smoke Bomb from the Bomb Kit, or Healing Mist from the Elixer Gun, or Gear Shield from the Tool Kit to counter CC’s.

I’m pretty sure I’m able to remove 2 conditions every 20 seconds with healing turret, you just have to spam like crazy to get that effect immediately is all, I might be noticing things wrong though. I could take Elixer gun to remove another condition too, and remove conditions from allies, which is a nice bonus. If I have the Transmute trait that’s another condition too, but that depends on the build. All in all though being able to remove 2-4 conditions every 15-20 seconds from myself is really solid. Slightly better than what’s viable for the Mesmer, plus I can counterplay the active mesmer weapon sets! Yay!

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Being tied to kits, the engineer utility slots have the highest competition out of any of the classes. In this sense, the greatest asset of engineers is also their most limiting. Engineers are balanced around multi-kit use, so if you don’t use multiple kits, then the engineer becomes severely limited. While it may seem like an engineer can do anything, this is only true so long as your opponent doesn’t know what your setup is.

Likewise, engineer skills suffer from mediocrity issues. While you speak about always having a counter on hand, the fact is that engineers lack anything potent enough to be a true “counter” to most players. Sure, engineers get a blind field for meleers, but it isn’t nearly as strong as the blinds doled out by thieves. Sure, engineers get knockbacks, but they can’t chain-stun players to death like warriors and mesmers. Sure, engineers get condis, but they can’t burst players down like Necros can. Sure, they get stealth, but they can’t pick and choose their fights like thieves or even mesmers. Sure, they have some movement skills, but not as much as the elementalist or the warrior.

Etc. and so on. Also, engineers almost always have some big holes in their setups. For one, engineers have few and bad stun breakers, leading to engis getting chain stunned to death. A lot. Second, engis don’t have good condi cleanse, so they frequently get torn up by necromancers and rangers. Third, engineers have bad boon removal, so they often get stuck fighting opponents at their strongest. This is pretty severe, since retaliation chews through most engineers quite quickly.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

I’m not saying you can’t argue about mechanic details, that just has relatively little impact in regard to what I’m pointing out.

All I’m pointing out is that an engineer can always counterplay opponents depending upon their opponent’s active weapon. It’s pretty awesome.

Has the potential art for the Echovald Forest been discussed in this thread?

Such potential! I loved the eery dark gothic feel it had, I’m realizing how strange that statement is. It was such a unique an interesting area in Guild Wars. Maybe a more gothic Pale tree could be there!!!

Engineer Kits are effectively weapon swaps.

There’s something extremely interesting about them though, I can swap between them all at will always.

It’s not like when I play ele and my attunements lock me out of skills. It’s not like when I play necromancer and I’m locked out of deathshroud for 10 seconds. It’s not like when I play any profession and swap weapons being unable to immediately swap back.

It’s that I can always use whatever suits my situation best at will. This means when my opponent swaps weapons, I can always swap to counter them. Someone comes up on me from Range? I can always counterplay them. Someone comes up on me in melee I can always counterplay them. The nice thing is they can’t do the same thing back.

Whether it’s running circles around a point with bomb kit/grenade kit vs melee, or using my main weapon/tool kit to counter range. I can always swap to whatever I need without being locked out of skills like every other profession.

Given that Engi has access to pretty much every mechanic in the game from Mistform (Elixer S), to stealth (Elixer S), to CC’s, to condi’s, to boons, to transformations, it seems pretty favorable to be an engi and only have to worry about the cool downs on these and never being able to be countered by weapon set.

Just some food for thought.

Don’t worry about ascended items unless you plan on doing fractals.

In PvE, the more Berserker stat’ed gear you can grab the better.

Trinkets, armor, weapons, doesn’t matter.

I know for sure that Slight of Hand from the thief’s trickery line always prioritizes Stability if it’s on the target.

I’ve heard this isn’t always true of other boonstrips in regard to stability though.

I’d like to start a thread to gather as much knowledge as possible about these areas from the community collective.

Hopefully this will shed some light on this. If there are threads on this already, I apologize, the forum search isn’t results for me when I do searches like ‘boon priority’ or ‘condition priority’.

This is a direct result of the Might stacking that occurs on some Elementalist, Warrior, and Guardian builds, but I also wanted to bring in conversation about condi cleanses because they are the other side of this coin.

Onward then, what information is the community aware of regarding the behavior of Boon Stripping and Condi Cleansing priority?

Boon stripping prioritization seems to vary per effect.

For example, Slight of Hand always prioritizes stability if it’s there. However, I’ve seen others say that Sigils don’t do this, and the Mesmer Shatter boon strip doesn’t prioritize stability either.

Personally I think boon stripping and condi cleansing are both underdeveloped areas within the game, but I feel that way because the actual behaviors in various situations aren’t well understood.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Stealth and run. Pick your battles, so you’re always fighting with an advantage. Also, you only get the revealed debuff if you attack while in stealth, so if you become visible through stealth running out, you can re-enter stealth immediately. This means you can weave back and forth, bombing with Cloak and Dagger while being nearly completely invisible.

^^^

Unless you absolutely need to hold a 2+v 1 to give your team an advantage elsewhere, but you’ll usually won’t live long enough to make it useful, usually as in 99% of the time.

However, if you’re an evade tank feel free to stay as long as you’re able, because you should be able to live plenty long enoug.

Thief is in a good state.

In PvE it’s got a lot of value, being a high dps class. It also can spam blast finishers via SB2 for lots of might off fire fields.

In WvW you can also be a combo field battery, Shadow Refuge is solid to help hide a havoc group, they’re the best roamers in WvW too and therefore good for scouting.

In PvP they only have 1 role currently, which is roamer. They do it very well, but don’t have much support to offer in team fights besides SR or contributing to a team spike. Their mobility makes them incredibly valuable. The challenge is that the thief is one of the hardest professions to play well in PvP. D/P is the most versatile weaponset and has the highest skill cap. S/D is very effective too, because of it’s tradeoff of some utility for more consistent damage. P/D is the other viable build, which is a ranged single target condi pressure build. If you plan on PvPing you might want to try S/D|SB with 2/0/0/6/6, it’s is a decent training wheels build that will also work at high level play should you wish to go in that direction.

Happens to me too, the steal is especially annoying because you know it hit sincec you get the bundle.

Orpheal.8263:

-snip-
So far I know has Anet made no direct answers about Sub Classes yet and how long it would take to make them, like 3+ years…
Where did you get that from???

I don’t have the insight into their backlog and timeframes to fully understand it all, but 3 years is a high end ballpark.

Assuming they haven’t begun work on it in the past and don’t prioritize subclasses above their existing work, they’ve had a backlog of items prioritized for work since launch that has been growing.

The sigil and rune redesigns happened last month. It’s been 20+ months since launch?

The trait system simplification shouldn’t have taken that long, so it probably wasn’t a priority on the business side until the 8 or so months.

Adding new traits just happened, it was only 40, but that obviously wasn’t a priority either and may have started in the last 6 or so months potentially longer though, I would imagine they have numerous combat mechanics cycling through testing as we speak.

Talks of getting rid of glory and adding pvp rewards, and keeping ranks has been going on for over a year I believe, and that just impacts PvP, not PvE or WvW.

Again I don’t have good insight into the development start date and development end dates for these milestones to understand how long it’s been taking them to actually do things, but my personal feeling based upon how ANet has been prioritizing work and how long it has taken for them to implement thigns is that we wouldn’t see sub classes for 3 years from the end of the discussion on the CDI, assuming they decide they want to implement it.

Chaith.8256:

Shockwave.1230:

Chaith.8256:

The impact on the build make-up for teams is 3 delicate balances.

• Direct Damage vs. Condition Damage (Tied in further to Condition Removal)
• Tanky Stats vs. Sustained Healing.
• Sustained Damage vs. Burst Damage.

So on those three fronts… we’ve encountered a pretty large shift away from a focus in Condition Damage. That’s because Eles now do a great job of counteracting that, with the re-buff of Cleansing Water, and Generosity/Purity Sigils have become viable.

We’ve also encountered a shift away from Tanky stats (toughness, vitality) and a movement towards group sustain. Monk Runes, Sigils of Renewal, Celestial Amulets, all of these April 15th additions helped on this front.

In regards to Sustained Damage vs. Burst Damage, the presence of Strength runes has allowed sustained damage builds to flourish, and simply overwhelm enemies with might stacked Auto-Attacks and cleave. Burst damage is rewarding still, but the defensive risk makes it hard to justify over a sustainable, high sustained pressure DPS.

So… what we’re seeing on NA is a huge focus on high Sustained Damage carries, and a nigh invincible healing-based Core, of Guardian, Ele, and Engineer/Ranger.

Something interesting in my mind is that the second comparison made in the list above doesn’t apply to glass cannon’s at all.

Something else that’s interesting to me is that for the 3rd comparison, It seems like D/D ele and Warrior can do both burst and sustain.

Well, I consider Glass Cannons to be a kind of wildcard in a comp, not something that NA players build their comp out of. Heck, even Thieves that run 10/0/0/30/30 berserker S/D are more sustained damage than burst.

I think that Ham/Axebow Warriors and D/D Eles have a couple bursty moves (Eviscerate, Churning Earth, Fire Grab) but I feel like sustained DPS suits them better.

The burst opportunity on top of that high sustain is potentially why I’ve been noticing lots of D/D ele’s and warriors.

I think why we’re seeing a lot of S/D is exactly that comp you posted, it’s got a lot of sustain, with some burst opportunity and high mobility. It also counters the might that has been floating around in the meta.

Orpheal.8263:

Azhure.1857:

Orpheal.8263:

God, not just another of these threads…
When will people finally get it, that none of the old GW1 classes that aren’t again in the game will ever return back. None. Ever!

Well aren’t you just the wannabe prophet.

Call me a wannabe prophet, call me whatever you want.
It won’t change my opinion over the point, that I think that Sub Classes will be definetely the way better option for GW2 to add more Character Progression, Character Customization and to keep the game interesting over a far longer run in one go, like a 3 in 1 surprise egg, than to go with the method of keeping on adding new seperate classes just to make some GW1 veterans die happy.

If I’d be a prophet as you say, then I’d tell you about what hapens in the future…
Just saying that somethign won’t happen based on an own oppinion and logic.

If I’d be propheting here anything, then I’d tell you also a date, when something happens, because thats what prophets do.
They tell you about things, that WILL HAPPEN with a clear date.
Not about things that will never happen.

Like Nostradamus, the most well known prohet, which prophesized that the world will be doomed on the 21th od December 2012….
See what happened >.>

Nothing xD LOL

With logic I mean here, that simply too many signs speak against any chance for Ritualists to return as a seperate new class. Therefore simply have already too many other classes too much gameplay mechanics of the old Ritualist and I doubt that many people would like to see Ritualists to return, when the result would absolutely not feel at all like the GW1 Ritualist due to net having way too much to redesign to give that class enough features, that make an implemention as a seperate 9th class worthy at all.

It are mostly only all of those old GW1 veterans only, that are screamign here for the Ritualist to return to GW2, because all those people that have never played GW1 before, could care less about them. And as said I doubt it very much, that Anet would make up all of the effort and work to add Ritualists as a seperate Class, just to please a vocal minority of GW1 veterans, when Ritualists as a Sub Class udner a general Sub Class System could improve the whole game far more and could make far more players happy, than just only some GW1 Veterans.

Thats just my whole point of view As said, I look onto the whole picture, not just only on a small puzzle piece.

Looking at the whole picture, I don’t believe ANet would do expansions without an eventual addition class for numerous reasons.

First off, it’s become an expectation that at some point new classes get added to MMOs.

Second, even if you replace classes with subclasses, all that does is force you to redesign every class, aka an incredible amount of rework, aka loads of regression testing for value you could get more easily by not touching what works and additing something new. There’s no way to get around this between all 3 game modes available..

Third, you can try to reduce the extensive rework by only allowing subclasses to work at level 80, but that’s not exciting to newer players, it’s only exciting to people who want that kind of character progression, but the revenue design doesn’t offer much support to incentivizing ANet to do more vertical progression at 80+, unless they start trending their gemstore towards pay to win.

Fourth, it’s less complex to utilize your existing infrastructure and framework in place to add something new. Adding a new profession is just this, no need to come up with yet another system, no need to redo the work that’s already there.

Fifth, people want new, and they want new fast. So while a long term goal for them could be to do subclasses, if they don’t add new things from now until then like new classes they won’t be giving people things they are clammoring for in a time efficient manner.

Sixth, the first I saw ANet commenting on considering subclasses was a few months ago, expect to see these systems in 3+ years with their current resource availability and allocation. And it’s not something they can throw 2 times the people/money at to double/quadruple the speed, because that’s not how system design and redesign scales.

However, thats just my opinion and experience in Software/Systems design. It doesn’t mean ANet can’t choose to make subclasses happen if they don’t want to, I just imagine they understand the sacrifices they’ll have to make to their overhead or other areas of the game if they choose to do that before adding addition classes.

Chaith.8256:

The impact on the build make-up for teams is 3 delicate balances.

• Direct Damage vs. Condition Damage (Tied in further to Condition Removal)
• Tanky Stats vs. Sustained Healing.
• Sustained Damage vs. Burst Damage.

So on those three fronts… we’ve encountered a pretty large shift away from a focus in Condition Damage. That’s because Eles now do a great job of counteracting that, with the re-buff of Cleansing Water, and Generosity/Purity Sigils have become viable.

We’ve also encountered a shift away from Tanky stats (toughness, vitality) and a movement towards group sustain. Monk Runes, Sigils of Renewal, Celestial Amulets, all of these April 15th additions helped on this front.

In regards to Sustained Damage vs. Burst Damage, the presence of Strength runes has allowed sustained damage builds to flourish, and simply overwhelm enemies with might stacked Auto-Attacks and cleave. Burst damage is rewarding still, but the defensive risk makes it hard to justify over a sustainable, high sustained pressure DPS.

So… what we’re seeing on NA is a huge focus on high Sustained Damage carries, and a nigh invincible healing-based Core, of Guardian, Ele, and Engineer/Ranger.

Something interesting in my mind is that the second comparison made in the list above doesn’t apply to glass cannon’s at all.

Something else that’s interesting to me is that for the 3rd comparison, It seems like D/D ele and Warrior can do both burst and sustain.

Orpheal.8263:

Shockwave.1230:

Orpheal.8263:

-snip-

While you have lots of information here, non of it is really a problem. The mesmer is hardly like its GW1 counterpart. No reason the same can’t be true of the ritualist.

If the same would be true, then we wouldn’t have Engineers in the game, but instead Ritualists.
If the same would be true for Ritualists, then we wouldn’t see Necromancers havign now the ability to use Spirit Powers with their Spectral Magic Skills, which they haven’t had in GW1, which is a clear sign, that Naet has partwise merged the concepts of the Necromancer together with the Ritualist.

If the same would be true for Ritualist, we wouldn’t see Guardians in GW2 having spiritual Weapons that are a manifastative changed core concept of the Weapon Spells and Spirit Summons of the Ritualist in one go together basically, just only with the difference, that those spiritual weapons of the Guardian don’t work like Buff Effects to your Equipment, what is the old functionality, that I suggested here to reimplement under the term of “Jinx” for Ritualists becoming a Necromancer Sub Class.
Because Jinxes are basically curses or charms, that you can bewitch on something/someone and it absolutely fits to the Necromancer as Master of all kinds of Curses.
—-

As said, Anet would have to completely redesign the Ritualists to give them a good reason to get implemented into the game.
Howeve,r as said, the efforts for doing this in my opinion aren’t worthy of all the work.
Adding just a new class to the game is not impactful and gets quickly boring.

Adding for all classes sub classes is far mroe impactful, far more interesting and keeps also the game far longer interesting, plus subs are alot easier to implement and to balance, thaan it is to implement and to keep balanced a whole seperate new class.

Anet even has problems and struggles with balancing the current 8 seperate classes and there you want a 9th complete new one ?
Come on, please stay realistic.

The pro’s and cons in my opinion clearly overweight for Sub Classes, which are based on what we already have and just improve that content, than to progress this game with adding more and more seperate new classes, what leads quickly to massive balancing problems so more seperate classes you have.

But Sub Classes, which share the same pool of Basic Utility Skills and share the same pool of the Basic Class’ Traits, its alot easier to add completely new facetts to the game and to keep at the move move the classes and all of the builds you can make with the help of the Sub Classes as balanced as possible, without losing the oversight and control over what happens due to the limitation with weapon skills.

Adding new seperate Classes adds nothing special to the table for the whole game. itaffects in no way character customization, what Sub Classes can do, as Anet could easily link to that System for example special sub class based weapon/armor skins that could be used only with equipment that fits to your Sub.
They can link with that system together the progression of our characters in regard of becoming able to use more new weapons.
A new seperate class could just add only new weapon, but that alone adds nothing for all other classes.

You must understand, I don’t look just only at the small puzzle piece, that is addign a new seperate class.
I keep on looking at the whole picture with my Sub Class Concepts.

Anet absolutely will have had their reasons, why they have decided themself agaist readding the Ritualist as a seperate class and instead chose over to give necromancers, Guardians and mostly Engineers all of the most well known key elements of the GW1 Ritualist which are basically those “problems” that you are trying to deny here.

However, as said, I’d also like to see a kind of way for the Ritualist to return, but I’d personally absolutely dislike to see it as the method of adding them as a seperate new class.
As long it would find its way into the game as a Necromancer Sub Class, you will see me always supporting the basic idea of the Ritualists to return

Interesting opinion. You want subclasses. I’m not down with that but w/e.

Still looking forward to the dervish and ritualist when we return to elona and cantha though!

Letifer.4360:

Shockwave.1230:

Orpheal.8263:

-snip-

While you have lots of information here, non of it is really a problem. The mesmer is hardly like its GW1 counterpart. No reason the same can’t be true of the ritualist.

In fact Mesmer is so far from what it was from GW1 that it could have been named Illusionist or whatever, so what people really want is some class named Ritualist lol

I just want the lore and the themes all bundled up into the class again more than anything. Channeling Magic, Restoration Magic, Spirits, Spirit Weapons, Spawning Power, Communing. I’d love to see mechanics similar to Ancestors’ Rage and Item spells. It’d be interesting to get a bundle of ashes that doesn’t clear your 1-5 skills, but when dropped created some effects.

I’ve got lots of ideas, I just really liked the theme and lore as mentioned.

We’ve had several meta shifts since launch. I recall the direct damage meta, the condi tank meta, and now we’re in this bunkery meta.

These meta’s significantly change the way players need to respond and play in general. You really aren’t playing the same way when the meta shifts occur, and players must l2p for the current builds and strategies.

Inherently there’s nothing good or bad about this, but psychologically on the playerbase is this good or bad to have the way PvP plays change so noticeably?

Is it an issue that there’s a lack of consistency in matchmaking?

Or is it interesting that there’s something different going on?

Orpheal.8263:

-snip-

While you have lots of information here, non of it is really a problem. The mesmer is hardly like its GW1 counterpart. No reason the same can’t be true of the ritualist.

Maugetarr.6823:

I still like the idea of this being a single target rollover skill for 2 initiative that gives your target a debuff (like warrior’s impale) that sits there for about 10 seconds (no DoT though). Activating the rollover (2 initiative, instant cast) shadowsteps you to your target and cripples them for 3-5 seconds. Small damage on both the initial hit and the shadowstep. P/D would use almost all of their skills and D/D gets a slight utility boost with a little more mobility to keep up with D/P. I don’t think it would be too powerful with CnD to have it instant cast because the total cost would be 10 initiative.

Minato fan?

Lol, kidding aside, it’s a cool idea.

Rit would be fun, it’d be cool to see how they revamp spirit weapons and spirits for the rit. I can think of some really cool things they could try.